Luminous Baby Wisdoms

Helping Babies in the Womb and Beyond During Challenging Times

We are in the midst of a grand evolution of human consciousness as we awaken and realize more and more of our true nature as vastly complex, interconnected, and multidimensional vibrational consciousness. “Luminous Baby” is the name I have given to babies to honor their dual essence as both transcendent sentient beings who are fully present prior to conception, and as sensitive human beings. The luminous baby’s transcendent Self is the light of their true nature as timeless, nonphysical consciousness.

This ancient wisdom of our primary transcendent nature has been evidenced in the decades of clinical work in prenatal and perinatal psychology—exploring and “deep listening” to the baby’s perspective of early experience. This perspective takes us beyond traditional understandings of early development and revolutionizes our lens of who babies are, what they are capable of, and what matters most to them at the beginning of life.

We now know that the primary period of development—from pre-conception through pregnancy, birth and bonding, and the newborn period—is the most sacred and profoundly important time in the baby and family’s life. From pre-conception forward, babies need our help more than ever to successfully transition into becoming a human being with the most intact alignment and connection possible with their transcendent Selves, especially during these times of uncertainty, challenges, and chaos.

Yet how do we best help them when our lives are more complex and stressful, with increasing demands? How do we help our luminous babies in the womb have the most beneficial beginnings in our increasingly uncertain times?

Connection and Mutuality

Above all, your luminous baby seeks love and connection, and to be in a mutual relationship with you from pre-conception forward. The most fundamental priority we have is to connect and communicate with our babies, to let them know we are consciously receiving them as their caretakers. We want to communicate with them that we love them, honor the full consciousness that they are, and want them to feel safe, loved, and a part of the family from pre-conception forward. We want to recognize, acknowledge, and respond to their behaviors and communications with us as well.

To babies, a lack of connection and feeling isolated is unnatural, just like it is for us. We want them to feel a sense of belonging, and to know that we are listening and learning how to communicate and deepen our relationships with them as transcendent sentient consciousnesses and as sensitive, vulnerable, developing human beings.

In the womb, babies are aware, resonating with, learning from, adapting to, and imprinting their experiences. From these experiences they develop their core human selves. They’re immersed in the thoughts, feelings, and energetics of those around them. They utilize these early experiences to establish their core states of being, storylines, human dynamics, and the level of safety and love they feel in the world. They experience what their mother experiences at all levels of their being— physical, emotional, mental, energetic, and transcendent.

What matters most to our conscious, luminous babies? The transcendent experiences of love, connection, well-being, and presence in joyful harmonious moments, as well as feeling us honor and protect them in their deep vulnerability and sensitivity.

When parents first learn about this new understanding of babies, it can feel like a lot! Most parents respond by trying to manage or suppress their difficult feelings and thoughts, and to be positive and override what might be detrimental to their baby. Yet that doesn’t work with our luminous babies, because what they experience in that strategy is the incongruence between what is really going on for us and our trying to manage it. They experience the tension and disharmony between these parts of ourselves and the stress pattern it creates at all levels, including in the nervous system and heart’s energetic field.

Other times we try to mentally distance ourselves from our babies, thinking we can protect them by avoiding contact or connection when we are in a difficult place. In my experience, this leaves the baby immersed in those stressful and painful feelings but doing so while feeling alone and isolated.

Protecting Luminous Babies in the Womb

What luminous babies have taught me is that some part of them is taking in all these mutual experiences, and from these experiences they are forming the very core of their being. Everything is recorded and becomes a part of their history. Our traditional strategies of protecting babies from this can actually do more harm than good, because it diminishes our connection with them.

One of the most powerful ways we can protect our babies is by authentically and consciously dealing with our feelings, thoughts, and sensations by being lovingly present with ourselves and willing to be uncomfortable, rather than trying to manage, avoid, or push through despite them. The more we can hold loving, compassionate acceptance for all parts of ourselves, the more elegantly we can move through things and return to a more coherent, open-hearted state of being.

As you do so, your baby will learn and imprint how to do this as well. They have the experience of When painful or difficult things happen, we can be loving and present with ourselves, and can find our way back to our more open-hearted, good-feeling presence. This process imprints a resilience and confidence in your baby’s subconscious.

As you bring loving presence and focus to difficult feelings and thoughts, include your baby. Communicate with them about what you are experiencing and your process. Tell them that you know they are having this experience with you and you want to acknowledge these thoughts and feelings, and that you will do all you can to help you both feel better.

Even when we are in dark and painful places, if we are authentically in our truth in that moment, we are more congruent and there is a rightness. The tension of our managing strategy disappears as we hold more coherent light—the light of acknowledging our true experience— and this is part of “home” for our transcendent selves. Including your baby and going through this experience together lifts the darkness and opens the moment to be transformational for both of you.

I’ve been so deeply moved by families and mothers who were willing to be honest and present with uncomfortable feelings with their baby in the womb. They allowed themselves to be with what they were experiencing and to speak their truth with their baby, to help both of them process and integrate their experience together. In this way, your baby experiences your caring about them, recognizing that they are going through this with you, and that you want to authentically address what is distressing so that you both can feel better.

When families go through hard times, painful experiences, and scary situations, that is the time to step up the light of connection and love and include your baby in what you are experiencing. Let them know, We are going through this together.

This is the most important time to communicate with them and keep orienting them to what is happening and how you are feeling, to intuitively sense how they may be feeling and reacting, and to lovingly address it for both of you and the entire family. Doing this consciously and together as a way of life can dramatically mitigate the potentially life-diminishing imprinting of stressful times and can increase the light that love and connection brings.

Your luminous baby can then experience and imprint valuable life-enhancing ways to traverse difficult human experiences in love and connection with you. This is also a wonderful preparation for staying connected, attuned to each other, and working together through challenges, including the challenge of birth itself. As you teach them about how, even in dark times, we can find the goodness, truth, and beauty of our special moments of love together, these moments can then become the light in the darkness that nourishes our souls.

A Story of Three Luminous Babies

I had the privilege of supporting a family from their preconception baby planning through the baby’s first birthday. The parents were committed to creating a life for their future baby that would welcome, meet, and support their baby’s full consciousness coming into human life.

They wanted to have midwifery care, birth at home, and use holistic approaches; experience skin-to-skin bonding without any separation at birth; and, to breastfeed and practice attachment parenting. The family supported and were guided by 12 Guiding Principles–Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology (12guidingprinciples-ppn.com), which distills the core findings, values, and recommendations from our field’s clinical experiences of the baby’s perspective of early development.

To the couple’s amazement, they conceived three babies—triplets! After the stunning news, they began to celebrate that they were going to be supporting three conscious beings to come into human life! Wow!

Then it began to get more serious. It was scary and difficult at times. The pregnancy was considered high-risk, and there was a whole medical protocol and a way of looking at pregnancy that was quite different from what they had expected. It was often overwhelming.

The mother had a significant uterine hematoma in the first few weeks, which threatened the babies’ survival. There were endless ultrasounds and medical discussions of possible complications. As the babies grew heavier, the mother developed almost unbearable sciatic nerve pain that lasted for weeks. Then at 33 weeks, one baby stopped growing. The doctors wanted to deliver the babies the next day by C-section.

Throughout the pregnancy, the mother communicated with her babies and developed a deep understanding with them. She would process her experiences and feelings with them, meditate and join them in their transcendent states, and talk to them about what was happening. She always emphasized that they were going through this together, and that she was committed to deeply listening for their communications, wishes, and transcendent wisdoms.

When the doctors wanted to do the C-section, the mother was scared, and deeply sad to miss the next two months of her babies’ womb time. It all felt surreal. She processed it with her babies, talked with them about their upcoming birth, and asked what was best for them. As she listened deeply, she felt that they wanted to be born vaginally, and felt the rightness of this path. The mother asked the doctors to let her labor and have a vaginal birth as naturally as possible. The doctors agreed, even though that was not their standard care option.

The babies were born the next day with only a minimal amount of Pitocin and assistance. The pediatric staff took them directly to NICU, so they were not able to experience the sacred hour of skin-to-skin and bonding. Two of them weighed 4 pounds, and one weighed 3. They stayed in the NICU for three and four weeks until each one met the weight requirement to go home.

It was a very difficult time for the couple, going back and forth to the hospital and also caring for their other children at home. But the parents were committed to care for their babies as much as possible, and never missed a day at the NICU. One of them was there 12 to 14 hours a day. While the parents were with them, they gave them hours of skin-toskin connection and loving presence. The mother successfully nursed all three babies and brought pumped breastmilk for the nighttime feedings. The babies progressed beyond all expectations. But the nightly separations were very stressful.

The family knew how important it was to talk to their babies, to be fully present with them, and to acknowledge the full range of feelings that could come up as significant and meaningful. The mother would hold those feelings with them, tell them what was happening, and would let them know when she was leaving and that she would be back in the morning. She would process with them and acknowledge what they appeared to be going through.

The NICU staff really did not understand family-centered care, or skin-to-skin care and bonding, and they had never seen a mother nurse three babies. She was teaching them a whole new way of being with babies that they had never seen before.

The family’s steadfast conviction of what would help their babies kept the light on for the triplets. The family knew how important these days were to their babies. Would they come through with residual trauma, stress, or attachment issues?

Even though the NICU’s cramped and busy environment was not conducive to intimacy, the mother would create “love cocoon” moments by consciously working with her own energies and consciousness to create a higher dimensional state of being while she held and nursed her babies. She followed her intuitive heart wisdoms to connect with their greater consciousness, and bring in colors, memories, and visions of them coming home and being with their siblings, all together.

One day, one baby seemed like they were having a harder time. Mom softly held and talked to her baby and acknowledged those feelings, and then intuitively she felt it was important to say to the baby, “I’m not going to let you forget who you were. I’m going to help you remember who you are. I see you. I love you.” And the baby smiled and became more restful.

After the babies came home, the parents processed many of those huge experiences for themselves and helped the babies process their own as well. Being with it all was an integral part of their life that first year. They were authentically together in good times and challenging ones. The parents valued baby-sensitive craniosacral and chiropractic care for their babies. One of many magical synchronicities that happened that year was that, out of the blue, a chiropractor who specialized in working with babies moved into their neighborhood. They would come to the house to care for the whole family!

When the parents took the babies back for their sixmonth medical checkup, the pediatricians were amazed and said they had never seen babies born at 33 weeks doing so well and being so “with it.” We would call that being “conscious and present.”

At their first birthday, all three babies and their parents were thriving. The babies were joyful and present, and loved interacting with each other and everyone in the family. They were all still nursing, developing very well, and had no medical issues. They were happy and engaged, crying only a few minutes in a day. They were thriving.

When I asked their mother to describe them at one year of age, she wrote:

I would describe them as bright, highly aware, sensitive and responsive to their own emotions and those of others around them. They are deeply and intimately connected to one another and to the bigger world. And, they are wholly and authentically true to who they each are. They heal all of us.

Before going to publication, I asked the mother to read this article and her story to see if she would edit or change anything. Here is part of what she wrote,

I was struck, as I read, how each of those cliff-hanging moments (choice points—and difficult ones) where the conscious decision to expand overrode the less conscious decision to crumble… I feel enormously proud of and grateful for where we landed… I think that the key to the Luminous Baby phenomenology is that they call us into the More. We let go of that which doesn’t matter, and we open and expand into that which does. We are changed by their radiance.

Even in scary and challenging times, when things happened that were not what they wanted or hoped for, and even though their babies missed two months of their womb time and were separated during those first few weeks— even with all of this, their luminous babies were thriving! I thank this family for allowing me to share their story.

During difficult times we come face to face with challenges and what matters most. For parents with babies in the womb, may you find the light in the hardships, and may you find the grander love, connection, and healing of your transcendent true nature as you move with your luminous baby through your lives together. May you all be birthed into a world with more of the luminous love and light that you are.

Love, Wendy