Even though you may think that you’ll never feel as close to your baby as you did during pregnancy, your bundle of joy will only become more attached to you after you give birth. The mother-baby bond doesn’t perish with a simple cut of an umbilical cord, but it grows into a fabulous relationship that both parents need to nurture. Dads are just getting accustomed to having a newborn around, and their bond is just as important as the one with the mother. We’ve prepared a few tips to help you bond with your infant easily and quickly.

Breastfeeding is crucial

First and foremost, if you’re able to, breastfeed. That is the biggest of all bonds between a mother and a baby. Skin-to-skin contact after birth and then feeling your child pressed against your body at feeding time will create an unbreakable and beautiful bond between the two of you. Not only the physical contact but the fact that it’s time you two share with each other several times a day won’t be able to compare to anything you’ve ever experienced, and your baby will grow closer to you because of it.

Talk, laugh, and play with your infant

Having fun, playing with, holding, and sharing happiness with your baby is essential if you want to raise a happy and healthy child. Smiles, laughter, touch, and interaction are a crucial part of baby’s development almost as important as food or sleep. Your body language, tone of voice, and loving touch will allow the baby to recognize you and feel safe and comfortable around you. Those are all the essential ways of communicating with your baby before they know how to speak and walk.

Baby massage encourages bonding

Touch is a very powerful element in human bonding, and infant massage can be helpful in encouraging the connection between parent and child. Massage also gives fathers a chance to connect and interact with their child on a deeper level. Massage is one of life’s simple pleasures, and it provides all the essential indicators of intimate parent-infant bonding and attachment. From eye-to-eye contact, touch, voice, to smell, movement, and thermal regulation, massage has an array of benefits for infants.

Baby massage will promote bonding and secure attachment, development of trust and confidence, feelings of love, respect and being valued. If you want to spend some quality time with your newborn and make sure both of you are relaxed, get a soothing baby massage oil and start enjoying the time you spend with your newborn. Not only will you bond more, but your baby’s circulatory and digestive systems, hormonal and immune systems, coordination and balance, and mind and body awareness will be improved. Baby massage is likely to relieve gas and colic, growing pains and muscular tension, constipation, teething discomfort, cramps, pain and it can also promote calmness, peaceful/longer sleep and the feelings of love and cherishing.

Room-in with the newborn

Rather than having your newborn in a nursery, room-in with your baby to create a stronger bond. Not only will you feel closer, but the baby will cry less and have more readily organized sleep-wake cycles. Instead of soothing your newborn electronically by tape recordings of a human heartbeat or music, room-in with the baby and soothe them by real and familiar sounds. A rooming-in mommy is more likely to sleep through the night along with her baby, and she experiences less separation anxiety.

If you feel like you’ve lost that special bond with your baby after giving birth, think again. Your baby is now close to you just as it was when you were pregnant, so all you need to do is focus your attention to spending quality time with your bundle of joy, and the bond will naturally develop.