You and Your New Baby. Anna McGrail

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       CHAPTER oneYou and your newborn

      THE MOMENT of birth may be exactly that: a moment, a joyous, unforgettable moment, or an unpleasant experience we’d rather forget. Becoming a parent, however, can take a bit of getting used to. Even if your pregnancy was planned, the baby’s room is decorated and the cupboards are well stocked, don’t be surprised if life as a parent isn’t what you thought it would be. There is a word for it: ‘babyshock’.

JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN

      The first twenty-four hours

      WE CANNOT know what parenthood will be like until it happens. Yet many couples find that the first few months are much harder than they expected. After the elation and excitement of the birth, they are tired, stressed and bewildered. Although you are delighted that your baby is here, even those first twenty-four hours can be more difficult than you envisaged.

      Katharine found both her baby and the hospital experience overwhelming: ‘It was dreadful. Max wouldn’t settle and I had a catheter in which was uncomfortable, and the room was hot and stifling and the corridor outside was noisy. I was awake most of the night and so shattered the next day I couldn’t take in all the information that people kept popping in to tell me. The room was like Victoria Station. People were in and out and I didn’t know who half of them were: midwives, paediatrician, someone bringing a bunch of flowers from my mum and then other people looking for a vase to put them in …’

      COUPLES OFTEN find that with the demands of a new baby it can take a while to calm down, and discover just what it is that you do feel. Lynn found the first few days of motherhood a real eye-opener: ‘Looking back, I was very naive. I hadn’t a clue what new babies were like: the only babies I’d had much to do with before were older, about nine or ten months old, so I was used to seeing them sitting up and playing, smiling…eating biscuits, for Heaven’s sake. Just to have Adam so completely helpless, so dependent on me, was terrifying.’

      Olivia kept being surprised by her daughter: ‘I don’t think I had ever pictured her, physically. I don’t think you do. You picture them more as toddlers and what they’re going to look like when they’re people. For instance, I did think that all babies looked the same and I was amazed in hospital how they didn’t. For a start, mine was the most beautiful on the ward, of course! And Robert kept saying, “You know, even objectively, I’m sure she’s the most beautiful. There’s no doubt. And I’m not just saying this because I’m her father.” And I couldn’t convince him that everyone on the ward thought the same about their own baby. So that was nice, really, that she was so lovely’

CAESAREANS

      PARENTS WHOSE baby was delivered by caesarean often find that they have particular problems adjusting to the fact of the baby’s arrival. After all, at the last minute, the decisions were taken out of their hands.

      Eileen had a long labour and eventually needed an emergency caesarean: ‘After what seemed like hours they finally wheeled me in to the operating theatre and the anaesthetist said, “You ‘II feel a pressure round your neck now …” and that’s the last thing I can remember before coming round. And when I did come round, neither the baby nor Mick was there, so I thought, “Oh, I haven’t had the baby yet, then,” so when Mick did walk in, I said, “What are you doing here?” Mick said they’d taken the baby up to the Unit as he wasn’t breathing properly, and I said he should be with the baby, so he went, and then the nurse came in when I was awake a bit more and said, “What are you going to call him then?” and I got terrified because I thought it meant that we were going to have to baptise the baby straight away because he was so ill with his breathing and going to die. So I wailed, “Oh, call him Michael after his father.” She looked at me very oddly because I think they just wanted to know what to write on his cot tag up in the Unit.’