The Baby is in the Shadow: How Going Back to Heal Our Earliest Life Trauma Can Help Us Go Forward

The call was unexpected. I was moving from one state to another, so it was a surprise to have a parent call me with a breastfeeding crisis from my new home city. We were building a house, so I had no office, and was traveling back to my previous home to work every few weeks. Maria* had just had her first baby and she was having trouble breastfeeding. Would I come to her to help? Yes of course, I said. 

Her son, John, was a good-sized baby so I knew he was getting some nutrition, but he cried all the time and his body shook in jerky movements. He was having trouble latching and if he latched onto her breast, he had difficulty staying there to get a comfortable feed. She was having trouble producing milk. It was one of those frustrating cycles that mothers and their newborns can get in. Maria had labored a long time with her baby and ended with a C-section. He was over 10 pounds at birth and had swallowed meconium. They had to suction his lungs because they feared he had breathed the meconium in (aspiration), which can be deadly for babies. She showed me the video of the birth and the procedure. I watched the doctor carefully drop a line down the baby’s throat and saw those same jerky movement that he was showing me then. This baby had trauma from birth.

My work with Maria pendulated from helping her make decisions that were best for her and the baby and treating John with craniosacral therapy. Therapy dragged on for weeks. The mother would sometimes be very dissociated and not attuned to the baby, and sometimes quite upset and wanting more for him. I was soothing. We ended up with a combination of formula and breastfeeding. I taught to her to feed on demand, the baby’s cues, and baby massage. Still, the baby showed me the jerky movements that said, “I am suffering, scared and don’t know what to do.” 

Finally, one day, the couple came to see me and the baby was . . . . . fine. I looked at him. He looked at me. There were no more jerky movements, fear, and helplessness. He was settled and happy. I looked at Maria and her husband, Jack and asked, what happened? They gave each other “that look” that said, should we tell her? And I said, Yes, please tell me. It turned out that this couple had been fighting ever since the birth. In the delivery room, the father fought with the mother to not have a C-section even though she was exhausted, and it was clear that the baby was in distress. They fought about using any formula, too. They fought about work, as the mother was a financial advisor and she wanted to go back to work and he wanted her to stay at home. 

In my office that day, the father told me that he felt his own history was getting in the way of the health of his new family. He had a C-section when he was born, and he wasn’t breastfed. He wanted something different for his son and put a lot of pressure on his wife to have birth and breastfeeding his way. As I worked with his history in his body, he softened and started to glow. The couple explained they were on the edge of a divorce and came to clarity, deciding to stay together and Maria would stay home with the baby. The tension between the parents was adversely affecting the baby, along with the trauma of the emergency C-section and suction of meconium aspirated fluid. All the bodywork and support I could offer was not going to take hold until this work with the couple was done. This family went on to have four more children, and to this day whenever Maria sees me around town, stops me and tells me, “You saved me.”

We are told that we often become our parents when we start to parent; in fact, many of us vow to not go down that path. But few of us are told that our experiences as a baby may influence our decisions and behaviors. The truth is that we all have the experience of being a baby in our body. As we come into form and make our bodies in our mothers, we gather sensory experiences that inform how we prepare for and experience the world. In prenatal and perinatal somatic and trauma resolution approaches, we call this Implicit Memory, or memories that our body has, but not our cognitive mind. 

Our bodies register experiences since before we were born. The science of epigenetics tells us that trauma crosses over into future generations. We see this in the research of the impact of natural disasters, famines, wars, and tragedies. For example, we know that the trauma of the holocaust survivors impacted their children and grandchildren (Yehuda, DATE), and that the famine of the Dutch Winter predisposed children and grandchildren of those who suffered to health conditions such as obesity and cardiovascular disorders. We see research on animals that showed how stress crosses over into as many as five subsequent generations, often compounding as it goes (Gerlinde Metz).

Birth psychology has long held that the baby’s experience in the womb, during birth and after birth shows up in our lives as patterns of behavior, thought and/or belief. Babies of stressed mothers are more likely to be sensitive to novel stimulation and not settle easily, therefore being less resilient (Monk, DATE). We also know that connecting with the baby through touch, song and relaxation may impact many indicators: increases in cognition, physical movement and growth, emotional regulation and mental capacity as well as decreases in difficult births and postpartum depression (Schroth, Van de Carr, Manrique). 

But what about the experience in this family, where the birth of the son impacted the father and the marriage? We can say that the baby’s experience may lie in the shadow of the parent. Shadow material, often defined as an unconscious part of the personality, can wreak havoc in the life of a person until the material is made conscious. In the healing of our earliest traumas, we expand our consciousness around the baby’s experience so that we can bring it into the light and heal it.

Prenatal and prenatal somatic practices intentionally recognize the layers of a person’s experience and engage early implicit memory to heal it. Our earliest layer lies in the ancestors or the previous generations. If the parents who want to conceive a child have not done their own personal work, undigested and ungrieved issues in their lives may show up in the children. We call these imprints, or in the case of John and his parents, an echo of the father’s experience. 

The next layer is conception. We ask whether conception was easy or if the pregnancy was planned. Half of pregnancies in the United States are not planned, with roughly 18% of those babies not wanted (Guttmacher Institute). This is a difficult pattern for a baby to bear, and if unhealed in the family may result in the baby not feeling wanted, seen, heard, and understood. 

The prenatal period is the next layer. Many mysteries can happen during this time that are quite impersonal but can have an adverse impact on the developing baby. Impersonal mysteries that may occur include placental issues, heart defects, intrauterine constraint, or adverse experiences in the parents like the death of a loved one, natural disaster or chronic stress. Parents can be coached to relax, connect with the baby, sing or read out loud to the preborn, move or exercise, in addition to getting good prenatal care. 

The next layer is the birth process, which itself can have a big sensory imprint, as we saw with John’s father. His unconscious material (the baby in the shadow) was behind the tension between the couple and frightened John. 

Finally, after birth is another layer. This is the time when babies relax on their mother’s belly. Historically, babies were often removed and put in the nursery so the mother could rest. But if the birth was traumatic or there was a C-section, the baby might be put in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), separated from the mother, and then subjected to necessary or unnecessary procedures. Some babies receive up to 65 procedures a day.

There are many experiences that babies have that can show up in everyday life. One of the aspects of healing overwhelming experiences in these implicit somatic layers is coaching parents to see and “get” their baby’s story. Babies will show you what happened and will continue to tell their story for a long time, sometimes never stopping. In the case of John, his jerky body movements told me that he was still experiencing stress and overwhelm. John’s father was able to reflect and feel that his early overwhelming experience as a baby was showing up in the present. This parenting moment was a success. John and his father’s baby-in-the-shadow felt heard, seen, and understood so their nervous system could settle. 

There are nine things that every baby wants to know, whether it is a preborn baby, newborn, or in a child or adult:

·  Am I wanted?

·  Am I welcome?

·  Am I safe?

·  Am I protected?

·  Am I seen?

·  Am I felt?

·  Am I heard?

·  Do I belong?

·  Am I loveable?

I coach parents to understand that their baby in the womb is super sentient and super sensitive. They are a sensory and perceptive being with the ability to deeply feel. Connecting with the baby is key, and sometimes parents do that before birth. Ideally, if I could work with couples before they conceive then we could clear childhood or baby wounds so that their children would not have to bear them. We can go through these nine questions with the parents to they can reflect on their experience and grieve childhood losses or development needs that went unmet. They can find adult appropriate ways to meet these needs and heal before they conceive.

Early in my career, I read a story about a village in Africa where each time a woman said she was pregnant, the villagers would put on aprons of leather strings. For each person with whom they had a disagreement, they would tie a knot and then go about the village finding these people and working out the issues so that each new being had a completely clear energetic field to be born into. No conflict. This would be my wish to help increase health, vitality and peace in our time. If the wounded baby is in the shadow of the parent then the new baby may be given the job of carrying that burden, as William Wordsworth has said: The child is the father of the man.

There are some exact steps that parents can take to heal their inner baby. The first step is to examine their own layers of experience, especially in the presence of a competent therapist or educator who is trained in prenatal and perinatal somatic experiences. They can map out their families looking for patterns of incomplete or overwhelming experiences, as well as positive relationships. Research has shown that different tools, such as the Benevolent Childhood Experiences study (Narayan, et al 2018), or the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire (Felitti and Anda, 1994) may help parents reflect on their lives. They can see if any of the nine previous questions are a “yes” or a “no.” They can reflect on their conception, prenatal, birth and after birth experiences and get the felt sense of their internal baby. Sometimes there is a development need that was skipped or absent. Parents can be given inner child (inner baby) tools so they can recognize when their history is present and what to do about it.

The next step is to become familiar with their nervous system patterns of responses to stress and threat and learn to self and co-regulate. Many people don’t know how to help their own nervous system to settle and flow. Many of us live in chronic stressed out states that are habituated or even  become addictions so that we don’t have to face our demons. We know that the stories we tell ourselves impact our state, and our internal states drive the story. 

Parents who recognize when they need to resource themselves, get some selfcare, connect with a partner or a friend, or simply take a walk in nature have a more regulated nervous system, parent better, and may teach their children these healthy habits. The regulation of the nervous system allows for the prefrontal cortex, or the executive planning part of the brain, to come online. We all lose our cool, and in fact, research has shown that when we misattune to others and make repair, that the relationship is better and the nervous system more resilient. This system of attuning, misattuning and repair is part of attachment dynamics. Parents can reflect on their attachment style, or how they were parented, and learn new skills. 

Finally, there are many skills parents can learn to help connect with, support, and heal their own baby experiences. Prenatal and perinatal somatic approaches often call the baby in the adult the Little One. The journey back to heal in the present can be difficult without a guide. These earliest traumas can often feel like they are real and present, and they can fool us into thinking that we ARE these overwhelming moments. The example of John’s father is a case in point. His baby experience was unconsciously driving his behavior. Fortunately, he recognized that. Here is an exercise sequence that all parents can do, besides the layers of experience as described above.

Recognition of Nervous System States

We each have a central nervous system that operates every day. Recent advances in neuroscience tell us we have three nervous systems: Social Engagement, Sympathetic and Parasympathetic (Porges, DATE, Dana, DATE). Simple and fun exercises help anyone who may want to master their internal state so that stress and fear don’t hijack our lives. 

This simple image (on right above) provided by the Somatic Experience Training Institute, shows a window with two lines between which is our nervous system function. The normal range between the dotted line is called our social engagement system (or the functional range of our regulated nervous system), our energy rises and falls naturally related to when we need mobilize and when we need to rest. In this range we feel balanced, appropriately reactive, curious, able to sleep, eat and rest.  When we get overwhelmed, we either go above the line beyond where we can cope or below it. When we go above the range, we speed up and become irritated, annoyed, angry, upset, sometimes rageful. We want to fight or flee. If we drop below the range we dissociate, numb out, freeze or collapse. Here is another map.

It is simply important to know where you are on the map, and what your nervous system responses are. What are your triggers, or cues of danger? What are your glimmers or cues of safety? Parents can be taught to help each other regulate their nervous system to make sure that the states they are in help their children, especially when the mother is pregnant and parenting a baby. The baby is a hitchhiker on the nervous system of the adult. Parents can be taught to see their body as a healing tool. 

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There are several ways to regulate your nervous system. We can identify things in our lives that comfort us, help us feel safe and connected, or just free and empowered.  

Resourcing: On a piece of paper draw three columns. In one column, list your internal resources, or things about yourself that you like or that help you. This can your integrity, curiosity, sense of humor, or courage. In the middle column, list external resources, or things outside yourself that help you. Examples are exercise, music, time alone, walks in nature, hot baths, cooking or talking with a friend. In the final column, list missing resources. These are experiences that you wished you had, have or will need in the future. Ask yourself: What did you need when you were little and didn’t have? What do you need now? And what will you need? Read them out loud to your partner or a friend and notice how you feel in your body.

Then engage in settling your nervous system. You can do this by simply noticing where in your body you feel okay, or what helps you feel present. 

Here is a script:

·  I invite to close your eyes, or at least lower them, and get a sense of yourself in the chair, couch, or where you are sitting. 

·  Notice your body and what you are making contact with. Can you describe it? Is the chair or couch soft or hard, cool or warm? 

·  What happens in your body when you notice? Is it more on the left or the right, or on the surface or deep?

·  What helps you feel okay just now, in this present moment? What helps you feel here, present?

·  As you name that what happens in your body?

·  When it feels right, have them open their eyes, or if they had their eyes open, just complete

Differentiation

Our final exercise is differentiation. It is important to notice when you are not present. If you are in the past, then notice if it is trauma that brings you back there. This is a younger part that wants to be remembered, and an experience that is seeking integration. If you are thinking of the future, that might bring anxiety. It is important to recognize where you are in your thoughts. After you recognize your nervous system responses, and use resources or the present time to settle, ground and center, make sure that you differentiate from overwhelming experiences with a simple phrase: that was then, this is now. And then really feel the present moment. 

For parents who are pregnant or who have children, they can especially differentiate for them, saying: We are having a stressful time, but it is not about you. Babies and small children tend to feel experiences in their caregivers. It can be confusing. It can become a parenting tool to say the babies (including babies in the womb), that we are having moments and stories in our lives that are not their stories. They have their own lives and have our permission to be different than us. 

Bringing the Baby Out of the Shadow

We can integrate understanding the baby’s experience into our parenting journey and heal our earliest traumas. We can clean the slate for our children so that they don’t need to address unmetabolized grief, fear, and pain. Babies are very special. They are deeply spiritual beings that are hardwired for delight and joy. The parenting journey that includes the baby helps bring our unhealed moments out of shadow and into the light.