Bathing the Newborn

Chosen by Arietta Slade, Ph.D.

Professor of Clinical Child Psychology, Yale Child Study Center

Co-Director, Minding the Baby mtb.yale.edu

Author, with Jeremy Holmes, Attachment in Therapeutic Practice

https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/attachment-in-therapeutic-practice/book248097

I can't remember how I found this poem, or -- I should say -- how it found me.  At the time (probably 6 or 7 years ago), I was thinking a lot about fear, how common it is in infants' experience, but also how critical it is that it be soothed and contained.  This is how the child learns that even the most difficult experiences can be held and regulated, first in their closest relationships. And there, suddenly, was Olds' poem...putting into such beautiful words and images just what I was after.  Both mother and baby are afraid, briefly, the child of what is new and unknown, the mother of the baby's fragility.  But the baby finds that he is safe, and safe to explore.  And the mother finds that she is more than "good enough", she has given him the gift of calm and of discovery.  These moments, of finding who we can be and what we can give, are what we wish for all children and their parents.     

Bathing the New Born

by Sharon Olds

I love with an almost fearful love

to remember the first baths I gave him -

our second child, our first son -

I laid the little torso along

my left forearm, nape of the neck

in the crook of my elbow, hips nearly as

small as a least tern's hips

against my wrist, thigh held loosely

in the loop of thumb and forefinger,

the sign that means exactly right. I'd soap him,

the long, violet, cold feet,

the scrotum wrinkled as a waved whelk shell

so new it was flexible yet, the chest,

the hands, the clavicles, the throat, the gummy

furze of the scalp. When I got him too soapy he'd

slide in my grip like an armful of buttered

noodles, but I'd hold him not too tight,

I felt that I was good for him,

I'd tell him about his wonderful body

and the wonderful soap, and he'd look up at me,

one week old, his eyes still wide

and apprehensive. I love that time

when you croon and croon to them, you can see

the calm slowly entering them, you can

sense it in your clasping hand,

the little spine relaxing against

the muscle of your forearm, you feel the fear

leaving their bodies, he lay in the blue

oval plastic baby tub and

looked at me in wonder and began to

move his silky limbs at will in the water.