And Baby Makes Three Quotes

“The greatest gift a couple can give their baby is a loving relationship, because that relationship nourishes Baby’s development.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Our gridlocked conflicts contain the potential for great intimacy between us. But we have to feel safe enough to pull our dreams out of the closet. When we wear them, our partner may glimpse how beautiful we are—fragile but shimmering. Then, with understanding, our partners may join us in being dream catchers, rather than dream shredders.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Couples who have learned to dialogue about their perpetual issues ask just such questions. They ask, “Is there a story behind this for you, maybe some childhood history that makes this so crucial for you?” They want to uncover not just the topmost feelings, but the deeper layers as well.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“We discovered that the way a conflict conversation goes is determined by how it starts 96 percent of the time. When we introduce an issue with harsh start-up, one of us blames the other, usually with criticism or contempt. In response, the other partner gets defensive and critical right back. Anger bubbles up, then skyrockets. No problems are resolved. In contrast, when softened start-up is used, no one gets blamed. Instead, one of us begins with a complaint. A complaint states what we feel about a situation, and the situation is described neutrally, not like a shot across the bow. Next, we state what we do need, not what we don’t need. Softened start-ups are easier on the ears. They don’t hurt us the way harsh start-ups do.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“they talked about the core of the issue for each one personally—what they each needed, what they could not yield on. They defined that territory carefully, but also made it as small as possible. Then, feeling safer, they defined what they were flexible about—the parts of the issue that weren’t so central to them. Then they felt safe enough to compromise, because their core beliefs were accepted and protected. We call this method the two-circle method of compromise.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“When we accept our partner’s influence during a discussion, we are honoring our partner as someone who is intelligent, thoughtful, and well intentioned. Who can resist feeling so respected? Accepting influence is a great aphrodisiac.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Contempt is toxic, indeed. What’s the alternative? The antidote for contempt is to express our appreciation and respect for each other, to each other, in small ways, every day. How often do we say, “Thanks for doing the dishes,” or “I love how you look when you’re nursing Annie”? It’s words like these that we need to say, often. They shouldn’t stay bottled up inside us. Admiration and fondness, when they are outwardly expressed, go a long way toward creating a culture of appreciation in our homes—that’s the antidote for contempt. •”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Here are their ingredients for healthy conflict management. Soften how you start the discussion. Accept influence by recognizing there are two valid viewpoints. Calm down by physiological self-soothing. Compromise. Process and understand the fight later, after you’ve calmed down. Figure out the conversation you needed to have, instead of the fight. Move from “gridlock” to “dialogue” when you face unsolvable problems, using the “dreams-within-conflict” method. Now”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“If we slip up and a bad fight happens in front of the kids, more repairs are needed. Babies need to be comforted and held. If at all possible, holding the baby between us both is best, but only if there’s peace between us. If there’s still some tension, one of us needs to take the baby aside for cuddling while our partner gets some space.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Like 21 percent of our couples, these folks are duking it out over how they fight, not what they’re fighting about. Most of us have this kind of fight. It’s about process, not content. The underlying issue gets swept away by our indignation at how we are being treated. We claw at each other about how our conflicts blow up, how we’re torn apart by our partner’s attacks, and how we end up as enemies, not allies. We rail about being taken for granted, pacified, or shut out altogether. In other words, we argue about how we’ve just danced, not which music to choose.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Like 21 percent of our couples, these folks are duking it out over how they fight, not what they’re fighting about. Most of us have this kind of fight.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“DON’T move your face in front of the baby’s face wherever she moves her head (this does not allow the baby to look away and take the break she needs). • DON’T move your face too close to your baby’s face, such that it is difficult for her to look away. • DON’T increase the pace of play or increase stimulation after your baby has given you a signal that she is overstimulated. • DON’T switch back and forth between activities quickly after your baby has given you a signal that she is overstimulated (such as going quickly from a peekaboo game to a zooming game to a song with actions). • DON’T physically move the baby’s torso so that she is looking at you. Again, this doesn’t allow the baby to look away and calm down, and babies usually don’t like being physically constrained. DON’T stimulate the baby further by doing things like poking her or repeatedly wiping her mouth. Our mouths have a great many nerves in them, and stimulation of the mouth is especially arousing to a baby.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“TRY IMITATING BABY. Doing exactly what Baby is doing will fascinate her. • ATTUNEMENT. Here’s a twist on imitation. Babies love it when we imitate them in a different way than they are acting. For example, if Baby is banging a spoon in a rhythm, we can imitate that rhythm with our voice. This will really catch Baby’s interest. Baby”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“The key to repairing our interaction with our baby is to be calm and let the baby take the break he or she needs. Once Baby is calm and looks ready to engage, we can gently call her attention back to us and resume our interaction. To repair the interaction, we need to back off, let our baby look away, and see if she can self-soothe.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“SIGNALS THAT BABY IS OVERSTIMULATED As we watched babies playing with their parents, we witnessed how babies say to their parents, “Give me a break for a minute or two!” Here are the signals they give when they need to self-soothe. • LOOKING AWAY. This signal can be very clear, with the baby turning her head away, or it can be simply looking from our face to our less-stimulating shirt. • SHIELDING FACE WITH HANDS. Babies will put their hands in front of their face and look like they are trying to shield themselves. • PUSHING AWAY. When the baby is more coordinated, he may push a toy or other object away to show that he doesn’t want to play with it. • CLEARLY WRINKLED FOREHEAD. When the medial (middle, above the nose) portion of a baby’s forehead is bunched up (that is as much wrinkling as is possible with all the baby fat in the face), it means she is getting upset, often because she is overstimulated. The forehead makes the baby look like she is sad, or angry. However, when the baby’s forehead gets only slightly wrinkled, as though there is a butterfly on her forehead, this is usually not a negative sign and means she is concentrating. • ARCHING THE BACK. One sign that a baby is upset is that she arches her back and tenses her body. • FUSSING. The baby’s voice starts what seems like the beginning of crying and protesting. • SHOWING A MIXTURE OF EMOTION, such as the baby’s expression going back and forth between joy and fear. • CRYING. There are levels of upset in the crying of babies. The baby may eventually build up to a cry in which there is about a second of “winding up” intake of breath. Then the baby really hauls off and lets out a cry that is loud, shrill, and painful to hear. This is called a Valsalva cry. In a Valsalva cry, the lungs are working against a resistance, like when we blow up a stiff balloon, or lift a heavy weight. It is very stressful for the baby. For example, the baby’s blood pressure will increase, and the number of white blood cells in the baby’s blood will increase. WHAT”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“there are two pokers that can pop Baby’s balloon and ruin her fun—and ours. The first is uncoordinated play between parents. When we parents compete for Baby’s attention instead of joining together to play the same game, Baby seems to hate it. One parent may suddenly withdraw from the play, or swoop in and cut off the other parent. In response, Baby may arch her back, frown, cry, or, in baby language, seem to yell, “This is messing me up. Knock it off!” The second balloon buster for Baby is being overstimulated. When we parents are ignoring Baby’s cues that say, “No! I don’t want to do this!” Baby may signal this subtly at first, but if she’s ignored, she’ll turn up the volume. If “No” still doesn’t work, she’ll just plain withdraw. That’s not good. We’ve lost connection with Baby. But”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“The message here is profound: how we answer our baby’s cries and how we also play with her is cementing in place Baby’s attitude toward her future world. Ignore our baby now and it’s likely she’ll learn to withdraw later, perhaps into a cocoon of depression. Respond to Baby now and she’ll most likely stay engaged with her world.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“When we experience emotion, it is reflected in the activity of the frontal lobes of our brain. Brain-wave research has demonstrated that when people experience emotions related to withdrawal, like sadness, fear, or disgust, their right frontal lobe lights up like a theater on Broadway. But when people experience emotions related to engaging with the world, like interest, amusement, affection, happiness, and anger, their left frontal lobe fires up.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Because of their immature nervous systems, it’s easy for babies to become too stimulated. They’re like sensitive antennae. With too many signals, they’ll just hear static. And we all know how aversive that is. At those times, babies try to tune out the stimulation they’re getting, so they can reset their dials and tune in again. They may turn their heads away from us, not because they dislike us, but because they need to withdraw in order to calm down. After a while, they normally turn back toward us. They may also try to soothe themselves by sucking on something, like their hand or a toy. Through tuning in, and then tuning out or self-soothing, they attempt to regulate their response to stimuli. Babies”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Studies also show that depressed people have more brain-wave activity in the right frontal lobe of the brain. They process everyday experience with “withdrawal” emotions. In contrast, nondepressed people have more brain-wave activity in the left frontal lobe, and they involve themselves more in the world.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Research has shown that during the first three years of life, fundamental neural structures are being built that have to do with Baby’s self-soothing, his ability to focus attention, his trust in his parents’ love and nurturance, and the security of his attachment to his mother and father. In other words, Baby’s experiences of parental respect and love are literally laying down patterns of brain tissue that will dictate Baby’s future responses to the world.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“One of the best lessons babies learn in face-to-face play with us is that the world (and we are the baby’s world at that moment) will respond and not ignore their wishes. We can do our best parenting if we: Stay emotionally warm and available. Stay responsive to our baby’s cues.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Through research, we now know our parental instincts are right, and this idea of “spoiling” babies is misguided. We reassure parents that when a baby cries, it’s simply sending out an SOS. If we ignore our baby’s crying, we are teaching our baby that the world is a place that won’t respond to his message. We cannot spoil a baby by responding to him. Our emotional availability and responsiveness to his emotional cues are the most effective ways of creating independence and resilience in him.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Babies also need our support to self-regulate. So what happens when we don’t respect our baby’s looking away and we try to force her to stay tuned in to us? We rob our baby of one of the main ways she has for calming down. Then Baby may whimper, fuss more, and eventually full-out scream her distress. Baby is learning that she can’t control her world, and, worse, that the people in her world don’t care about her discomfort. If that happens once or twice, it’s no big deal. Especially if we parents see that a repair is needed in our response and we make one. But if we frequently block our baby from turning away and self-soothing, then our baby will have no choice but to withdraw.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“The challenges, the stresses, the strong emotions, the hassles, the work, and the joys, too, are what we all get. But we can choose to either cope well with the challenges, or not. We won’t eliminate the stresses. They’re a natural part of becoming parents. But the good news is that we can stop thinking they are the fault of our partners, or the results of a bad relationship.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“during this transition time, it’s crucial for husbands and wives to find the time to talk, to stay attuned to one another, and to reach out to one another. Sexual intimacy arises from emotional intimacy. And emotional intimacy comes from partners making the effort to find each other through the maze of duties to perform. When partners feel cherished and appreciated, affection comes naturally. It’s no longer the last chore of the day. Then romance and passion can reawaken. WE’RE”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“If we disrespect each other during conflicts, conflicts become destructive; relationships are marked by criticism, defensiveness, the silent treatment, no compromise, no warmth, and no humor. Closeness spirals downhill fast. We wind up walking on eggshells, fighting louder, or withdrawing and avoiding one another. None of us wants that.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“The secret to managing conflicts for new parents is to make the fights constructive, not destructive. Constructive means respectful, not disrespectful; gentle and not critical; and taking responsibility for our part and not being defensive. It means listening, not just broadcasting, and acknowledging our partner’s point of view, not just repeating our own.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“The greatest gift a couple can give their baby is a loving relationship, because that relationship nourishes Baby’s development. The stronger the connection between parents, the healthier the child can grow, both emotionally and intellectually. Children can’t thrive in stormy seas. No family wants to end up in the disaster column.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“The children would probably be lagging behind for years to come.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives