How Your Baby Knows You by Scent

Before they can see your face, your baby knows your smell

By Henrieta Haniskova, Former Nurse, Certified Clinical Aromatherapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

In short: Your baby starts learning your smell before they're born. Newborns find the breast by scent, and by two days old your baby can tell your smell from another woman's. You can pick out your own baby by smell too. After birth your own scent changes because of your hormones, and that's normal. Added fragrance can cover your natural scent, so First Touch is made with no added fragrance and no essential oils, only the light scent of cocoa butter.

Newborns can't see much yet. Hold your baby eight inches from your face and you're a blur of light and dark. Still, put them on your chest and they turn toward you, root, and settle.

They find you by your scent.

Your baby knows you by your smell, and whatever you put on your skin can become a gentle part of it or overwhelm it, depending on the type of scent.

Your baby learns your smell before they're born

It starts in the womb. Your baby swallows and breathes in amniotic fluid there, and the scent around your nipple shares some of the same chemistry. So your breast already smells familiar to them when they arrive.

After birth they meet that smell again, on your skin, your breath and your milk. It's the same scent, only now it's on the outside.

That's how a newborn who can't lift their own head finds you in a dark room. They find you with their nose, and your smell is the first thing in their new world that feels like home.

The breast has a scent trail built in

Smell is part of how feeding begins. Lay a newborn on your chest, give them a little time, and they'll inch toward your breast on their own. It's called the breast crawl, and scent is what guides them. Researchers have shown it in controlled studies since the 1990s. Your baby can follow that trail on their very first day.

And you can find your baby by smell too

It goes both ways. In studies, new mothers who had spent only a short time with their newborn picked out their own baby's worn clothing from a set of others, by smell alone.

Your smell helps your baby feel safe

Think about how a newborn settles when you pick them up. The stiff little body softens and the breathing slows. Their body is reading your warmth, your heartbeat, your touch and your smell all at once, and your baby relaxes. Your smell tells them someone is here.

Put a frantic baby down and the crying often goes on. Pick them back up against your skin and they often settle.

The change nobody warns you about

Someone told you about the bleeding, the stitches, and how sore the first days of nursing can be. Nobody told you that you might not smell like yourself anymore.

Your smell is stronger now, sharper, a bit animal, and different from the smell you've lived in all your life. After a shower it's back before your hair is dry. Switch your soap, your deodorant and your sheets, and it's still there.

No matter what I did, no matter how many showers I took, I couldn't get rid of the smell.

Everything I use isn't doing much for me.

And underneath it is a thought most women never say out loud: something is wrong with me. Some are so worried they ask their doctor to test them for an infection.

It made me extremely insecure.

It's normal, and it's expected. Women go through it all the time, and it rarely gets mentioned. It came without warning, so of course it felt like a fault.

The change comes from the hormonal shifts after birth, the same shifts behind the night sweats and the tender skin. It's your body doing what bodies do after birth, and it was always going to happen. For most women it's strongest in the first weeks and settles over the first few months. If you're breastfeeding, it tends to hang on longer and eases as feeding winds down.

Think about the timing. Your baby can't see you yet, feeding still has to be learned, and staying close is how they stay safe. That's exactly when your scent gets stronger. Nature seems to have designed this on purpose, for your baby's sense of safety and for their development. What feels like too much to you is just what your baby needs.

Researchers who studied four-month-old babies found their brains recognized faces more strongly when their mother's own scent was present. That boost fades over the following months, as their eyes take over the job.

The places where your scent is strongest, your chest, the crook of your neck and under your arm, are the same places your baby burrows into to settle. What you're trying to scrub off is the smell they're looking for.

Everyday fragrance can cover your scent

Perfume, scented lotion, a body wash that smells like a hotel lobby, the laundry detergent on the muslin that sits against your baby's cheek half the day. After months of pregnancy and weeks without sleep, a familiar scent can feel like getting a piece of yourself back. I understand that completely. There's a season for it, and it comes back.

But added scent can sit on top of yours, and yours is the one your baby is using to find you.

There's a second reason to go easy. Most synthetic fragrance carries compounds that can disrupt hormones, and the few inches between you and your baby are the last place you want them. There's more to say about that than fits here, so I wrote about what fragrance on a label really means, and why it matters most right now.

When your own smell feels like too much, it's natural to cover it with a stronger soap, a body spray or one of the new full-body deodorants. No one would blame you. It just means more fragrance on your skin in the weeks that call for less. For everyday washing, a plain castile soap does more by doing less.

That's one reason I made the products for this window with no added fragrance. First Touch Butter, Tender Skin Serum and the Honeysuckle and Oat Soak carry only the faint natural scent of the botanicals inside them. Always hormone safe, and nothing synthetic.

First Touch is the one I made for the very beginning, for newborn skin and for those first weeks when you're barely apart. It has no essential oils and no added fragrance, and it melts into the skin, soothing, with a faint note of cocoa.

I made it to do almost everything for both of you, out of one tin. For your baby: the diaper area, dry patches, cradle cap, and their whole body after a bath. For you: full-body care, the perineum in those tender early weeks, the dryness and burning that come from the drop in estrogen, and nipples cracked from the first feeds. Every ingredient is food grade, with no fillers, preservatives, synthetics or fragrance. That's what makes it safe on your nipples, where your baby feeds.

So what your baby comes to know in these first weeks is mostly you. The light cocoa scent of First Touch becomes part of it too, because it arrives with loving touch, and babies come to love what's linked with being held.

Touch comes first, then scent

Long before your baby can see or talk, they're taking in the world through touch and smell.

Touch comes first. It's how your baby learns they're held and safe and that someone is here. Smell comes right behind it, and it's how they learn who that someone is. I've written this whole piece about scent because it's the one people forget, but it always works alongside touch. Touch says you're safe, and scent says you're mine. Together they tell a newborn everything they need to know.

Right now your skin and your baby's are both brand new, and the scent between you matters more than most people realize. The window is short, and what it builds lasts.