[Last modified: November, 18 2024 11:55 AM]
I decided to analyse the body in a quotidian context that relates to my pilot research project: the experience of holding a baby. For parents, siblings, grandparents, carers, nursery workers, labor and delivery nurses, and many others, holding a baby is a frequent and ordinary part of their day. Yet a body ethnography of the experience, not just based on the infant but on the holder, is a surprisingly deep well of observations.
Let’s start with the universal aspects. When you hold a baby, you feel its physical weight in your arms. Much emphasis is placed on baby weight; in a birth announcement, a proud parent declares “7 lbs, 6 oz!” to indicate a healthy infant. Pediatricians rigorously document the weight gain of growing infants to ensure they’re receiving proper nutrition. The distribution of weight as you hold an infant also holds disproportionate importance; think of worried parents handing over a newborn with the admonishment to “Support the neck!”
You also feel the warmth of the baby in your arms, an obvious indication of metabolic processes that confirm, “Yes, this creature is alive.” You and the baby share body heat, a symbiotic exchange that is comforting for both parties.
Then there are the body techniques that are more contextual. How you hold the infant–cradled and upright against the chest, horizontal in your arms, held out in front of you–depends on the age of the baby and your familiarity with them. A seasoned dad comfortably holding a 6-month old with one arm while carrying trays of food at a family barbecue is having a different experience than a new teenage uncle getting handed his newborn nephew for the first time: the tension of the neck and shoulders, the slow movements and extreme caution, the hesitation about where to put his hands to ensure the baby isn’t hurt, dropped, or awakened. Both parties feel a similar emotion toward the baby–love–but context deeply affects their embodiment of the moment in question.
Let’s probe deeper, to involuntary body processes. A breastfeeding mother may take an infant into her arms and experience physical reactions without even beginning the feeding process. Just the weight, warmth, look, and smell of their baby is already priming their body to nourish the infant. Many mothers, myself included, would experience the tingling sensation of “letdown” in their breasts even before the infant latched on to begin nursing. It’s an extremely unique and peculiar sensation that I remember distinctly even now, six years since my last child was born. There is an entire library’s worth of body ethnography that could be written about the experience of breastfeeding, and all of it is mired up in cultural and social norms in addition to the physical processes.