ABSTRACT
The newborns need is for mother to be readily available to make the loss of physical connectedness to her body less traumatic. Mother's ability to feed him, to comfort him, to understand his communications and to relieve his distress puts him in touch different from himself but intimately relating to him. Not every mother can respond to the babys loving gaze with profound love, often because she herself has not had the experience of being lovingly mothered when she was a baby. She may feel herself to be undeserving of such adoration and fear that her babys penetrating gaze will find her wanting in goodness; she may then react by turning away from being looked at, turning away from such intimacy. There are also many mothers who feel gratitude both for having been given a baby capable of such profound love and for having been endowed with a body that can nurture him.
