Bonding with your baby

Bonding is the feeling of love, tenderness and protectiveness you feel for your baby. This can start in pregnancy. Welcoming a new baby can be an exciting time. For some parents they like to cuddle, smile and look at their baby. For others, until they get to know their baby, everything can leave them feeling overwhelmed. This affects most new parents but sometimes they don’t want to tell people how they are feeling as they do not realise it is perfectly normal.

Attachment is the relationship that you and your baby build over time. It can begin in pregnancy and develops as your child grows. Attachment happens through interactions with your baby in everyday moments, such as nappy changes, feeding, offering comfort and playing with your baby.

Link to First few days | Parent Club

Find out more

Find out more about bonding with your baby at NHS inform.

Video

This video from the Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust covers the importance of attachment and bonding and some of the difficulties new parents face.

If you’re finding it difficult to bond with your bump or baby, or you feel sad, hopeless or guilty all the time for weeks or months after you’ve had a baby, you can ask for extra support from your healthcare professional, for example, your midwife, health visitor, family nurse or GP.

Some parents find it hard to ask for help about bonding with their baby. They worry people will think they can’t cope or their baby will be taken away. It’s very unlikely that your baby would be taken away.

Perinatal mental health services are designed to support you to be the best parent you can be and to continue to care for your baby. Your healthcare professional may also look at who else in the family may be able to help and support you, and help care for the baby.

It is important that you tell your health professionals about any thoughts you have about harming your baby.

Your healthcare professional may ask you questions about how you are bonding with your baby, to see if you need extra help. This can help to support you and your baby, while keeping you both safe.

Your healthcare professional may suggest a referral to an infant mental health service for a specialist assessment. Infant mental health services provide support for parents to build a relationship with their baby and support the baby’s mental health.

Infant mental health is the development of a healthy mind in the infant. An infant with a healthy mind is able to establish and maintain rewarding relationships, express and control emotions, and explore and learn about their environment. 

Infant mental health services can work with you and your family from pregnancy until your child’s third birthday.

This video tells you about the support available for you:

This video from the Perinatal Mental Health Network Scotland provides more information about community perinatal mental health teams.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists provides more information about perinatal mental health services.

Maternity and neonatal psychological interventions (MNPI) teams provide help if you have mental health problems related to the pregnancy or to giving birth that can be treated with talking therapies. Treatments might include anxiety management, cognitive behaviour therapy and other types of talking treatments. MNPI teams also help parents if their baby has additional problems and needs to spend time in hospital after birth.

This video from the Perinatal Mental Health Network Scotland explains more about MNPI teams.