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Baby Comes to His Senses
Watching neural pathways form in real time
When our baby first opened his eyes a few minutes after birth, both of us sighed: dark irises, thick black lashes. But they were open only for a moment, staring at nothing. Sweet. Unfocused. Back to sleep.
For a few weeks, the baby didn’t do much other than eat and sleep. I knew his sense of smell worked because he would calm a hunger cry when I held him up to my chest. He mostly kept his eyes closed: blind, frantic snuffles when latching, the focused heavy breathing of a feed, the gradual quiet of returning sleep.
Then, abruptly, he began stay awake for a few minutes after eating. His diaper was clean; he didn’t want anything. Accustomed to his neediness, I would stare down in a puzzled, sleep-deprived stupor at his open eyes. He would spend long moments staring at the lamp behind me.
One evening, the baby was having quiet wakeful time on Robert’s lap when Robert noticed the baby tracking the movement of his face.
“Look!” Robert called me over.
For several minutes, both of them were locked in this attentive-responsive moment. Robert swayed back and forth, and the baby’s head pivoted to track him.
In the morning, I lay baby on his floor mat, scrambling to get breakfast before he…