Missing the Moro

It was my daughter's 3-month-anniversary yesterday and with it brought the dawn of a new developmental milestone. Frankie is no longer a newborn. She is now just a plain old regular baby. This has its good points I must admit, but already I miss some of the joys known only to the newborn bub. And the most enjoyable of all - for me - was the distinctive Moro reflex.

When Frankie was born I remember the nurses explaining to me that newborn babies will often accidentally startle themselves when placed on their backs. Once startled, they'd fling their arms out to their sides and fan their fingers out in hope of clasping onto something to halt their descent into an imaginary vacuous pit.

This startled behaviour, called the Moro reflex (after the Austrian bloke who identified it) used to serve a good purpose. Once upon a time when we were hairy primates 'nomadding it up' in Africa, we'd carry our infants on our backs. As we travelled vast distances these bundles of joy would cling on to our fur for dear life - much like chimps do today. And as you can see, the Moro reflex, just like the swallow reflex, was a sophisticated evolutionary tool for survival.  

So really, I shouldn't have laughed when I first witnessed my terrified infant startle herself. It happened at her inaugral nappy change in hospital and for some reason quite beyond my understanding, she felt as though her whole world was slipping away.

Like some kind of jumbo Jack in the Box, Frankie's wee body literally bounced in fright. Her arms went out, waved a couple of times for good measure, and were then pulled forcefully back into her ribs. There they stayed, bound so tightly you'd need to pry them open with industrial equipment. It looked like an audition gone wrong for Glee club; Frankie's co-ordination was severely lacking, but I had to rate her A+ for effort. She really, really, meant business.

From that very first Moro, I was in stitches. My partner and I would giggle and chant with big wide smiles "Good Moro to you" at our crying baby.

Now, you may rightly question what kind of perverse satisfaction I drew from my daughter's primative instinct for survival? It's a tough one to answer, but upon reflection I think I relish the redundancy of the reflex. What purpose, exactly, does it serve in today's day and age? We no longer carry our children on our hairy backs. And (with a few exceptions) our backs are not actually hairy enough that a falling child could save themselves by clutching to our thick manes thereby avoiding a long, lonely plummet to the hard earth below.

There is a lot to look forward to as my bub enters babydom, but it is a sad occasion to have to wave goodbye to the newborn Moro as Frankie matures enough to realise that, quite frankly, it really is pointless.