occasionally having its bottom wiped and washed, needs the treatment of an all-over caustic degreaser like soap anyway! Using tiny amounts of olive oil, just as the ancient Greeks and Romans did, is a gentle and effective enough cleanser for a young baby. A few drops in the bath or on a soft cloth after wiping a soiled bottom helps avoid the rashes common to babies. As for "Baby Wipes", those pre-packaged disposable cloths impregnated with chlorides, citric acid, and a perfume which smells like flowers - give them a big miss. For all-over baby massages, I use a pure apricot oil, which is very mild in scent.
   Just prior to the introduction of solid foods, a baby's sense of smell will naturally heighten as they become more interested in the smells wafting from the kitchen, so around this time, let him be around the cooking and eating of meals to further awaken his sense of smell and attraction to your food. Once they are eating the solids, initially they will try everything they see others eating, but as they mature, you will notice (if you bring foods slowly up to their face on the spoon or in your fingers), as soon as they get a whiff of it, they will instantly make a decision about it, based on immediate aroma and any memory of that smell from a previous experience. If the food is too pungent, burnt, or off in any way, a baby will immediately turn up his nose. Therefore the first smells he has of your cooking should all be nice ones, therefore leading to positive memories of each substance you will later feed him.

Sense of Taste
   In survival terms, the human sense of taste is secondary, yet very closely related, to our sense of smell. Since a young baby has no need for any foods or liquids beyond his mother's milk, the development of taste remains quite narrow for some time. Even so, within this time, a baby's sensitivity to the variations of breast milk will be quite acute. Many subtle elements in breast milk change from meal to meal, day to day and month to month as the mother's and the child's bodies adapt to each other. Of course her own dietary inputs will be carried through in that milk (something which formula milk cannot emulate) in both nutrition and flavour - and this is all part of the child's taste development. It is common-sense that breastfed children of mothers who eat a well balanced and varied diet are most likely to grow up appreciating a wide range of foods and flavours themselves and have a better developed sense of taste than those fed the bland recipes of formula milk, tinned baby foods and popular junk food.

   Beyond 5 months or so, as other foods are gradually introduced, their sense of taste gradually broadens. If the subtle flavours of the mother's diet have already been introduced through breast milk, that child is very unlikely to have any food rejections, and will enthusiastically eat most things they are offered. Of course, certain exceptions to this will always be the case.
   On the whole, all my children have always had an enthusiastic love of varied foods, willing to give anything a go when first offered. The acceptance of spices was at first an issue for my 2 boys, since before I came to appreciate the Eastern or yogic styles of cooking, my diet and theirs had been based on the European style with only herbs, garlic and rich sauces. However, it only took them a little while to adjust to the wider range of spice and tastes. But because my 3 girls have all been gestated, breastfed and introduced to spices from the time of their first solids, they have never had any difficulty with them at all.
   Much more about the importance of introduc-ing solid foods is explained later in the section on "From Milk to Solids", page 359.

Sense of Sight
   From first moments, a baby's eyes must get a big shock after coming out of the inner darkness! Easing him into a softly lit room and protecting his eyes from straining in the first few days is very important. His first visual understandings will be about the difference between light and dark. Nothing he sees will make sense to him for some days. Biologically, he has an internal clock which is already attuned to the sun and moon's influences, partly by their gravitational and electromagnetic forces and partly by your own pre-natal lifestyle. So what he needs to be taught very early on is how his inner rhythms should harmonise with the outer cycles of light and dark, along with the activities of his family's life.
   It would seem obvious that any newborn animal's senses evolve according to their survival needs, so the things a child first sees, smells, hears, tastes and touches should all be consistent with the things he needs the most. During pregnancy, a woman's nipples darken considera-bly, obviously to make them more easily visible to her baby after birth. For the first few weeks a baby's vision barely extends further than 30 cms, since to feed, this is all the sight he needs. Within this field of vision, the major objects necessary to his survival are the mother's nipples and her face. This is the very first connection between his life needs and vision that he makes.