ABSTRACT
Time seems to go in slow motion, with a relentless bombardment of feeds, nappy changes, washing, always the next thing to cope with. Bathing the baby may seem like a pleasure, handling this tiny miracle of a body, or a terrifying ordeal. It is best for baby and parents if the world can be kept simple. Ideally, this means that the potentially overwhelming barrage of new experiences is sifted out so that the baby is exposed to only a small sample of the environment. The psychoanalyst Joan Raphael-Leff has worked extensively with pregnant women and mothers. In her practice she observed a range of approaches to baby care routines, which can be understood as fitting somewhere on a spectrum and reflecting aspects of the parent’s identification with the baby. At one extreme is the ‘regulator,’ who expects the baby to make a passive adaptation to her lead.
