Connection first, always.

For a good stretch a few weeks ago, my most-used phrase became just a minute. Just a minute, I'm in the middle of something. Give me one second, I'll be there in a bit. I said it so constantly that the sound of my own voice started driving me a little mad, and I could feel the connection between us thinning with every one of them, though I was too frazzled to do much about it in the moment.

Connection is the thing I believe in most, in my own home and in every clinic room, and these past weeks were a humbling reminder of how easily it slips down the list when life gets loud. It is the thing I lost first, and the thing I had to find my way back to before anything else in our days would soften.

We were moving house, and it had been hanging over us for months, never quite going through, sitting in that unsettling not-knowing that everyone in the family can feel, toddlers included. Then it all happened at once, and within a few days we'd moved. If you've ever moved house with a toddler in tow, you'll know exactly the sort of chaos I mean, and how quickly it pulls you all out of step with each other.

The thinning showed up at the table more than anywhere. Eva needed sameness to feel grounded, so every day became the same meal, the same familiar plate, and we had to sit with the discomfort of that very limited variety. Any suggestion to try something new was met with a firm no, and I had to hold myself back from nudging her toward change. What I was watching was a little girl clinging to the one thing she could keep steady while everything around her shifted, and the kindest thing I could do was let her have it.

The pushback showed up everywhere else too. Those first days in the new house brought all the upheaval you'd expect, and Eva met it the way toddlers do, with big feelings and a firm mind of her own. She is the most glorious little girl, full of vivaciousness and independence, and I wouldn't change a hair on her head, even though all that spirit can be a real handful on a frazzled day. I think, looking back, that she was feeling the very thing I was feeling, that same fraying thread, a bit unmoored and a bit disconnected from our usual selves.

What made it so obvious was that we'd not long come back from a week away, where we'd slowed right down and folded back into each other. I could feel the difference sharply, how close we had been and how far apart the weeks that followed had pulled us, and it caught me off guard how quickly that thread can fray when everyone is running on empty.

If you are in the early days with a baby who turns away from the bottle, who arches and refuses and leaves you holding milk they will not take, I want you to know that I see the very same thread at work. The details look different, though the pattern underneath is the same. Your baby pulls back, and the fear rises in you, and you find yourself pushing a little harder, offering more often, chasing the millilitres that feel like proof your baby will be alright. Your baby feels that push and pulls back further still, and somewhere in the middle of it the closeness between you starts to thin, until feeding becomes a thing you are managing rather than a thing you are sharing.

None of that is your fault, and none of it means you are failing your baby. It means you are frightened, as any loving parent would be, and fear makes us reach for control. What I have learned in my own home and in every clinic room since is that the way through runs back along that thread. Once connection is intact, whatever the upheaval happens to be, whether a house move or a bottle, little souls feel secure in their surroundings, and only from that security are they able to open up to new possibilities.

Now that we're in and finding our feet, I've noticed a real shift. We've found our way back to each other, and slowly we've dropped back into step together. The meals have loosened along with everything else, and Eva has started reaching for new things again, her variety returning on its own now that the ground beneath her feels steady. It's worth saying that none of it happened overnight, and it took a good few days of reconnecting before things eased.

What's stayed with me most, though, is something I see so often in my online clinic. A baby will be partway through a feed and reach around toward their mum for a cuddle, and rather than meeting that little reach, she picks up the bottle and checks the ounces. I understand it completely, because I had been in that exact place myself only days before. Unsteadiness makes us hasty, and it rids us of our patience and our ability to observe our baby in the moment. When the connection underneath us frays, we reach instead for what we can measure and control, for the numbers that promise us we are doing enough, and we find ourselves watching the bottle rather than the baby in our arms.

That is the moment feeding quietly stops being love poured through and turns into something anxious and grasping, and it is the very heart of why I do this work. Feeding flows well when the connection underneath it is whole, when a baby's reach is met as readily as their hunger, when we can slow down enough to see the little person in front of us rather than the amount they have taken.

It's reminded me of something I clearly need reminding of now and then, that connection is the thread that holds us together, and everything else, feeding included, runs on it. When it frays, we all feel it. When we find our way back to it, your baby feels safe enough to open toward you again, and feeding softens along with everything else.

Laura x