Understanding Babies: Newborn Development for Parents

The first three months of your baby’s life, sometimes called the ‘fourth trimester’, is a transitional phase, in which each of you is processing the birth experience you shared and acclimatising to a new way of being. It can be hard to interpret your new baby’s behaviour: is she arching her back because she has tummy ache, or does she simply enjoy a stretch? Does sucking his hands indicate hunger or something else? As you navigate these early days your emotions might be all over the place and it can be hard to find and trust your instinctive need to connect with your baby.

In Understanding Babies, experienced movement specialist Ania Witkowska looks at what your baby needs to thrive, and how they show you they need it, revealing how you can tune in to your baby so that both of you can relax and enjoy your new life together. By explaining how your baby’s development is supported through movement and interaction, and guiding you through simple exercises and activities, she helps demystify the early days of parenting so that you can feel more joy and less anxiety as you and your baby flourish.

Ania Witkowska led movement development programmes for ‘babies, children and their grown-ups’ in Manchester based on her training in community art practice, interest in contemporary dance, and studies in somatics, integrative bodywork and movement therapy. When she moved to Germany with her husband and three children in 2006 she developed this further, working as a movement therapist and educator in Berlin, Vilnius and Moscow until her death in 2019. Her delight in fostering responsive parenting through movement permeated every aspect of her work.