Hey Mommas, don't you know that you have superpowers? And your babies are just crazy about you.
From getting pregnant to a woman's body stretching to welcome another human inside of her, to giving birth and healing, and to taking care of her baby most of the time through a mother's instinct and their special connection, a mother indeed has a lot of superpowers.
"As new parents, we're eternally stretched to new limits we didn't know existed, and then we're stretched a little more," said Tracy Gillet, mother, writer, and founder of the award-winning blog "Raised Good." This in itself is already a superpower. And yet there are more.
Gillet has gathered a list of "little known miracles" only mothers can do. The list has helped her trust her instinct as a mother, find supernatural strength through sleepless nights and long "nap-less" days, and move forward in this crazy yet beautiful and precious parenting adventure.
Mama's Superpowers
1. As mothers breastfeed, not only are they the only source of nourishment for their children, but they are also nurturing their evolving vision.
A newborn's range of vision is 8 to 15 inches, which is also the distance between a mother's and a baby's face during breastfeeding. Thus, during breastfeeding moments, the mother has the power to nurture her baby's sight and evolving vision every two hours round the clock.
2. Mothers give their babies the perfect temperature.
Babies' temperatures are dependent on the temperature of their mother's breasts. This is why skin-to-skin contact is gold. The warmth of a mother's breasts is naturally attuned to give the baby a perfect temperature that promotes restful sleep and optimal oxygen saturation and allows the baby to save the energy they need to be warm, redirecting the calories into more vital things like growth. Breast temperature rises and falls depending on the baby's warmth. Once the baby starts to cool, a mother's breasts heat up again.
3. Mother's voice encourages language development.
According to research from the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Centre, a mother's voice "preferentially" activates the parts of a newborn's brain responsible for language development. Lead researcher Dr. Maryse Lassonde said their research proved that a newborn's brain responds strongly to their mother's voice, concluding that scientifically speaking, a mother's voice is very much unique to babies.
4. A mother and her baby can have synchronized heartbeats.
Just by merely looking and smiling at each other, mothers and babies can synchronize their heartbeats within milliseconds. Bar-Ilan University's research in Israel revealed that visible affection from mothers caused "discernible physiological effects" on their three-month-old babies.
During the research, mothers and their 3-month-old babies were observed in intimate moments during face-to-face interactions, and cardiac output was collected. The time-series analysis revealed that mother and baby coordinate heart rhythms within less than a one-second lag. It is a beautiful reassurance that mothers can effectively calm their baby's emotions and heartbeats just by looking at them with warmth and tenderness
5. Lastly, and the ultimate superpower, is a mother's unconditional love that transcends all difficulties and challenges.
Gillet ended her list with unconditional love. Fathers can give this as well, which is as important, but as uniquely a father and a mother are created, a mother's unconditional love is like no other.
She expressed that new parents will never be able to escape the truth that parenthood can drain all the energy in the room, and nobody can prepare parents for that. However, mother nature battles these parenthood challenges with the "potent spell of unconditional love." It is the key ingredient that makes every parent dig deeper when they think they have nothing more to give and pushes them to be the best parents and people they can be.
