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By the middle of the first year or earlier many babies, who may have started off rather fretful and colicky, have settled into a more comfortable routine. Mothers of first babies have learned a good deal about being mothers and have usually recovered from the tendency to feel depressed and oppressed by the responsibility that motherhood brings.
The baby has now become more alive to and interested in the world outside him. His horizon is expanding. His increasingly varied social responses, his welcoming, his recognition, his interest - all his forward movements and changes reassure the mother that he is thriving and that she is really able to look after him.
This interest, this wondering about the world, bringing things together, can initiate for us, as mothers, a fascinating period of re-discovering the world through the baby's eyes, if we can only make the time and the necessary mental space available from our other commitments.
Of course, the baby's hopefulness about the world, his readiness to explore, to take in new things at this stage, depend on what has gone before. They depend upon