What Do Babies Expect?

It's simple, but incompatible with gender ideology

Hint, this isn’t what babies are expecting! Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Until the transhumanists get their way (which I hope will be never), we, along with every other life form on this planet, are dependent on biological reproduction in our wish to produce new living versions of ourselves. Even for those who don’t wish to embrace parenthood having sex with an opposite sexed person always holds the prospect of pregnancy. The only 100% way to avoid pregnancy is don’t have sex (unless it’s with a same sexed person).

Because that’s the purpose of sex for mammals: procreation of the species. Fun (or not) as sexual intercourse for humans is, from an evolutionary point of view, creating the next generation is what it’s all about.

Yet despite futuristic delusions of cutting out one of those sexes, for the foreseeable future we are stuck with the system that evolution has given us.

Even a woman who has never gotten intimate with another human can become pregnant if someone else has a play in a lab and inserts an embryo into her uterus. Nevertheless, the main components of mammalian reproduction remain two different gametes that are produced by our binary sexed bodies. Females produce ova (eggs) and males produce spermatozoa (sperm).

Because adults are well, grownups with words, developed brains and for most, some level of formal education, baby making when it is planned tends to be a negotiating exercise between a woman and a man. When, are we ready, what do we need to have in place, are all questions that may arise in the course of discussions. Especially for women today, unlike our foremothers, having a baby is an active decision, not an expected result of entering into a partnership with a man. Before reliable means of contraception were devised and widely socially acceptable, avoiding pregnancy while maintaining a relationship with a man was a herculean feat that few women managed.

There was no ‘decision’ to start a family; it was considered a natural outcome of adulthood.

This is no longer true, at least in most developed countries. There are now many decision points where a woman can jettison motherhood either temporarily or permanently without any social opprobrium or penalty.

Women can avoid becoming mothers by not having sex with men; they can earn their own income and live independently. If they want to have sexual relations with men, they can use contraception either openly or they can use a method that their partner will not know they are using (if he is pressing for a child). If the contraception fails, depending on where we live, (in most developed countries) we are able to terminate a pregnancy. And as a last resort, we can place a baby for adoption by others who do want to be parents.

To become a mother in 2023, you must actively opt in because you can always opt out, unlike previous generations of women who did not have the choices available today. Women now have the most education and opportunities to live the lives of their choice than at any earlier time in recorded history. (I am in no way saying that women today ‘have it all’ or that it cannot improve. Patriarchal capitalism is a crap system for humans, especially those born without a penis, but my point is that relative to earlier generations, we have better lives.)

Parenting is a learned experience because we were all parented ourselves. Even an orphan has some sort of adult figure who stands in for the parenting role. Some adults make a decision to do what their parents didn’t do for them, but all parenting emerges from our learned experience as children.

So, something that I find puzzling is the missing voice in this conversation. We are so caught up in what we need and want that we fail to consider the life that is the most vulnerable by any measure you can use; that of the baby born as a result of our decisions and our actions.

If you don’t believe that babies are intrinsically more vulnerable than any adult, then please do not become a parent as you are not equipped to care for children of any age.

The needs (not wants; unlike the grownups in the room, babies do not want anything, they only have needs) of babies are routinely and frequently ignored, glossed over, reduced to a state of nothingness in comparison with our own needs (which when examined are usually actually wants or desires and not needs at all).

So when mammal babies are born what do they need and what are their expectations? Although we share many characteristics with other mammals, for brevity’s sake I’ll only be discussing human babies here.

The expectations of babies around the world in every country, culture and time period are the same because they are not learned. They are instinctual and necessary for survival. Babies are not totally helpless; they are designed to elicit care responses, especially in their mothers because this ensures their growth into children and into tomorrow’s adults. When we fail to meet their expectations and needs, we make it more difficult for them and for ourselves.

Babies do not expect to have to deal with drugs in their systems. The placenta is not a filter; anything ingested by a woman, is injected into her or that is given via an IV drip is shared with her baby. Women’s physiology is designed to conceive, gestate and birth babies, but in our present reality, it is rare for any woman giving birth in a modern hospital to go through labor and birth without a bit of help from a medication. The effects of a drug can seem to wear off quite quickly for women, but babies have different metabolisms than adults and drugs given to women in labor can have effects that are profound and negative.

A question not being asked is, what effect does excess testosterone have on a fetus? Trans “men” who escaped the double whammy of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones that always leads to sterilization, may opt at some point to become pregnant and have a baby. Additionally, testosterone is not a contraceptive and women identifying as men have had unexpected pregnancies as a result of intercourse with a man.

Most of the relevant research has been done on women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), as these women have naturally higher levels of endogenous testosterone than women without PCOS. It should come as no surprise that ‘too much’ testosterone does indeed have effects on fetal development that can persist after delivery. Animal studies have shown that deliberately high levels of prenatal testosterone can upset normal development and change physiology forever.

Placing yourself at the top of the “needs” pyramid can violate the expectations of your baby and derail their opportunity for optimal lifelong health.

Your baby expects to be near you after birth. A mammal baby is born expecting to be embraced by his or her mother. Skin to skin contact on the abdomen of their mother is what human babies expect to happen. Babies need this to regulate their breathing, heart rate, temperature and blood sugar levels. All of these are crucial systems for new babies. Yes, sometimes babies need a bit more outside care to get kick started, but all the routine newborn checks can usually wait. There is nothing urgent about finding out how much a baby weighs.

A baby whose mother had an unmedicated birth when placed on her will crawl up to her breasts all on their own, find her nipple, latch and suckle, normally within the first 30-60 minutes after birth.

If a baby is recovering with drugs onboard from labor analgesia, then it will be more challenging for them to find those instincts that all babies are born with.  Missing those “magic hour” steps following birth can negatively impact normal bonding and breastfeeding behaviors that are central to healthy development. Additionally, if there is immediate separation between a mother and her baby in those moments following birth, a mother’s own instinctive reactions to her baby may be muted and altered because women too, find separation from their babies so stressful it can be measured by others.

When babies crawl from their mothers’ abdomens to their chests, they expect to find the breasts producing milk that until recently, was the only guaranteed way to survive infancy. Colostrum is being made from around 16 weeks of pregnancy so if you have not surgically altered your breasts in any way, colostrum will always be there for a baby.

“I did it all by myself!”

Certainly babies are not expecting to find nothing other than mastectomy scars. You normally cannot produce milk after “top surgery” and even if some lactiferous tissue remains, there is no path to the ‘exit’ for that milk. Women who have had mutilating surgery grieve about being unable to breastfeed their baby and often feel guilty about this as well.

Another thing that babies absolutely do not expect is to be given over to the care of biological strangers. Babies don’t read or agree to contracts and do not care that someone other than the mother they grew in purchased them.

Mothers and their gestating babies are communicating with each other right from the start. They are exchanging blood, hormones and bits of cellular material; mothers retain some of this for the remainder of their lives, even if they miscarry and never produce a live baby. When a baby is born, he or she is not meeting a stranger, but a friend they already know well. Any mother/baby separation in that first hour after birth results in a physiological trauma for a newborn.

What damage is done to a baby that is created with the aim of permanent separation? Baby adoptions are the best response to a set of difficult and unfortunate circumstances, but surrogacy is child abuse; being a parent is not a human right for anyone and babies are not lifestyle props or a bucket list tick box and should not be for sale.

After that first breastfeed, a baby expects to fall asleep next to you or in your arms. It’s hard work being born and a baby is really tired! A baby expects to be cuddled next to the familiar heart beat, breathing and all the usual gurgling noises that mothers produce. This will steady a baby’s breathing and heart rate and allow a deep sleep to follow. Babies won’t have to remain on alert for danger, because they will know that their mothers are looking out for them and keeping them safe.

This baby knows who is important.

A baby expects unfettered access to their mother’s breasts. Babies can’t regulate their own temperature, but they do know when they are hungry, and they won’t be shy about letting their mothers know that it’s mealtime again. Because breast milk is so easily digested, it needs frequent replacement and babies really don’t care about adult fatigue levels or imposed schedules. Waking, feeding and sleeping with their mother in close proximity is what a human baby is counting on to keep themselves safe and well.  

All mammal babies have some way of protecting themselves from danger. Some can run fast within hours of their birth, some babies are born in camouflage colors, some hide. Human babies have large eyes and a piercing cry that elicits caring behaviors in most adults, but especially in their mothers. They are counting on mothers to meet their needs as they arise without any wait times and to watch for their communications directly, rather than watching a clock or reading an instruction book.

And it is not an accident that just at the point when a mother is so tired she feels she can’t go on that her baby will look into her eyes and smile at her for the very first time.

Organizations that work with families need to consider who they are serving. Who is being prioritized when the wants and desires of adults are considered to be of primary importance, while the needs and expectations of babies are sidelined and ignored in the quest to make adults happy? Is it right that wholesale acceptance of say, supporting “everyone” to breastfeed means that the foundational mother/baby dyad can be disrupted? Who are you helping if you are only listening to the words of adults and ignoring babies who can’t speak? If we’re being kind, who has first claim on our goodwill?

Babies are human beings too and their real needs, expectations and indeed their human rights are at least as important as any adults.