How Developing a Trusting Bond with Your Baby Effects His/Her Brain Chemistry and Why this is Such an Improtant Part of Your Baby's Development

 You’ll learn to understand how your baby communicates with you with smiles, coos, and varied types of cries. When you respond to your babies needs, she learns to trust you.  A strong bond of trust between you and your baby will help to foster the security that she needs. It’s through the development of trust that your baby will form an attachment with you.  Attachment is a necessary component for the emotional development of your baby.

When your baby is first born, she’s bombarded with new sounds, sights, movements and feelings. The world can be a scary place.  While in the womb all your baby’s needs were taken care of. Now she must rely on the environment to have her needs met. Consistently responding to your baby helps build trust. Your baby uses her trusting relationship with you, her attachment, to keep herself regulated through you. Her immature brain and body cannot do this alone.  When your baby is not feeling safe, her sympathetic nervous system will kick in. Her heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure will increase.  Her brain chemistry will change.  Her adrenaline increases and the stress hormone cortisol is released.  This is a defense mechanism for your baby. She will become agitated and cry.  In the beginning this is your baby's way of communicating her needs to you. Conversely, when you soothe your baby or respond to her needs, her limbic system kicks in.  Now the hormones of oxytocin and vasopressin are released to calm her baby system.  As you well know, being stressed or panicked is not the optimum time for learning.  Stress or panic can lead to confusion raising your stress level even more. Your baby is learning about you and her world every day and needs to be in a calm state to conquer this awesome job. She needs to make sense of what she sees. She must learn to communicate. She must learn about every new item in her environment.  Keeping your baby calm and relaxed will aid her in this process. 
Three ways to keep your baby clam and relaxed are:
1) Following a routine and schedule your baby can count on and learn to expect.
2) Making sure your baby's environment is not overly stimulating especially when she/he is tired.
3) Reading your baby's cues and soothing her in the consistent manner that you have learned works best for her/him.