The New Mother's Survival Guide: A Primer for the First Year of Motherhood

By Elizabeth Wright

Practical, upbeat, humorous—yet realistic—help for new mothers

Elizabeth Wright became aware of the need for this book shortly after giving birth to her first child. Faced with the reality of having a baby in her home, she started frantically reading through the standard works on childraising. She was surprised to learn that while these books provide a wealth of information on a baby’s development and growth, they do precious little to help the new mother cope with her new life. “Obviously,” she writes, “the people who wrote these books had never been in the trenches—at home taking care of Baby. I needed to know what to do when my baby curled up like a pillbug in her car seat and screamed herself maroon. I needed a book written by a mother who had not yet achieved complete amnesia about childbirth and the first year of motherhood.”

The New Mother’s Survival Guide will be a beacon and a friend for all new mothers who are looking for valuable information based on real-life experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
• Release date: Sep 1, 1997
• ISBN: 9781620453452

Book preview

THE FIRST DAY

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CHAPTER 1

Yo Mama!

Congratulations! You have just made it through one of the most difficult days of your life, a day you will recall, relate, edit, and embellish for many years to come. You have probably accomplished the most miraculous feat you will ever undertake and thereby have entered into that most revered, responsible, committed, joyous, worried, and exhausted group of women on the face of the earth: mothers. Relax. From now on you can be the one at cocktail parties waving a martini in some poor pregnant woman’s face while describing the horrors of labor to her.

You are well; your baby is well; your husband is ... well, he’s still a little miffed about some of the things you said about his mother during labor. But it’s not your fault! It’s the fault of those Lamaze people. They were not completely honest when preparing you for the Big Day.

First, they convinced you during the four weeks when you were lying embarrassed yet trusting on the floor with other unenlightened couples that certain breathing techniques would allow you to fully enjoy the miracle of childbirth. So you practiced those breathing techniques day after day, week after week, alone and with your husband, in class and at home. But unless you’re one of those mythological women who have two-hour labors and push twice for delivery, you realized after three or four good, hard contractions that hee-hee-hee-hoo was not going to cut it.

Second, they advised you to look at the clock or to bring a cherished item such as your wedding photo to focus on, which is supposed to help calm you during labor. So you looked at the clock, and aside from discovering that the short hand doesn’t move, you finally understood the concept of relativity: that is, how long two minutes of a contraction can be and how fleeting are the thirty seconds in between. And about the wedding photo that now lies shattered under the bed: Is it really a good idea to give a cranky, violent woman in pain a picture of what and who got her into that situation to begin with?

Third, why, oh why, did they suggest that your coach rub your back and stomach in gentle circles during labor? At best this rubbing is extremely irritating. At worst it vaults you over the threshold of kindness and decency, forcing you to slap his hands away and shout at him to hee-hee-hee-hoo his way outta your face.

And last, the Lamaze people actually described labor as being kind of like bad menstrual cramps. You now know that these same people would describe getting your head run over by a forklift as kind of like a bad headache.

The hospital staff didn’t do much to improve your mood, either. The doctor kept saying that your contractions were not very efficient. He knew this from watching a little needle moving on graph paper—that device being connected to a monitor you had long ago shoved off your abdomen because it was so annoying and wedged beneath your sweating breasts.

And the nurses. Those calm, cheerful, nonsweating women who looked down at you as you were tensing every muscle in your body and pushing hard enough to rupture an aneurysm and said, Oh, come on, you can do better than that! Push. Really push!

The hospital staff knows, of course, that if you weren’t flat on your back with your feet in the air and IVs and monitors stuck everywhere, you would arise and kick every one of their butts. They also know that the moment your baby is born, your vows of revenge will vanish into thin air and you will be eternally grateful to them—which you are.

Your baby is perfect, and even though you know deep down that all newborn babies look alike—red—faced, dented, lumpy, and swollen—you also know your baby is the exception to this rule. She is beautiful. She has your husband’s nose, your mouth; her eyes are the shape of yours, the color of his. She has lovely little ears, ten fingers that are no longer than the top joint of your pinky, ten toes the size of perfect peas, feet curled in and unwrinkled, hands smooth and dimpled, and eyelids a pale, tender violet. You’d like nothing better than to hold her and look at her forever.

But this is not allowed. The hospital staff must assess her APGAR; they must weigh and measure her, put cold objects on her chest and in her ears, tap her knees, shine lights in her eyes, look down her throat, and clean her. They remove her from your arms, and she is gone just like that.

It’s just you and your husband again. So go ahead: apologize. Get it over with. Take back everything you said in that labor room. You didn’t mean a word of it. Now you need to focus on sharing the miracle you have just achieved and that you have worked at achieving for nine months together. It is wonderful to have someone to share this experience with—someone who was there from beginning (conception) to end (birth), who shared in the excitement and worries, the joys and fatigue, and who witnessed the birth of your baby: this baby that the two of you brought into the world together as equal partners. That’s it. Lay it on thick.

And Mama, look at yourself. You are home free. You won’t have to repeat this ordeal for at least another ten months (heaven forbid). You can stop worrying that everything you eat and drink and do is having an adverse effect on an unknown fetus. You are line-, tube-, IV-, and monitor-free. You can breathe. You can lie on your stomach. You can see your pubic hair for the first time in months. The dark line up your abdomen and those little stretch marks look somewhat more pronounced with no baby inside, but they should disappear in no time.... And your stomach? Well, it’s soft; it’s actually kind of cute, and if it decreases by this much every day, you’ll be slightly concave by the time you leave the hospital.

Which you should be in no rush to do. Let those nurses fluff your pillows, change your bed, tuck your blanket around you, fill your water pitcher, arrange your flowers, help you to the bathroom, change your baby’s diapers. Let those doctors massage your stomach a bit and tell you how well you’re doing and give you pain pills (take the pain pills). Let those ladies in pink serve you mystery meals. These meals, whatever they are, are exceptionally balanced, with meat and vegetables and carbohydrates and stuff, and, sad to say, they are probably the best meals you will eat for the next couple of months.

Finally, after what seem like hours of medical hocus pocus the staff will bring your baby to you. Crying, of course, a little waa-aaah emerging from her tiny, quivering lips. You’ll know that mother-child bonding is already beginning to occur when your reaction to this is that your mouth immediately tugs into a frown, a knot rises in your throat, and tears spring to your own eyes.

Then the nurse will hand you the baby, red-faced and stuffed into a receiving blanket so tight and secure and complicated only a nurse could duplicate this feat. And as the baby ,struggles to free herself from said blanket like Houdini from a straitjacket, the nurse will attempt to escape.

Wait! you call to her. What am I supposed to do?

The nurse sighs in the doorway and turns to look at you and your husband. Both of you are looking wildly from the shrieking bundle to the proficient nurse for guidance.

You need to feed her, she says. Nurse her.

But I don’t have any milk, you say.

You have colostrum, she says and launches into some lecture about how good colostrum is for the baby, that it contains antibodies essential in protecting the baby from illness. Or something. You’re not listening. You’re panicking.

But, you ask, what if she doesn’t know what to do? She’s only a couple of hours old! How can she know what to do?

Instinct, the nurse says and again turns to leave.

But how can such a big nipple fit into such a tiny mouth? you want to know.

Just do it, the nurse says, and she leaves.

You look at your husband. He doesn’t know, either. So you try. And lo and behold, your nipple does fit in her mouth; she does know what to do! She sucks rhythmically, gently, and her hands unclench, her eyelids relax, her face pales. Within a few minutes her jaw trembles, her head falls back into the crook of your arm, and she sleeps, her mouth open in a tiny 0 like a Cheerio. Your and your husband’s mouths are hanging open in big O’s like bagels; you are amazed: She’s not only beautiful, she’s a genius to boot.

It’s hard to get any sleep at all on this first day of your baby’s life, not because you’re not exhausted, but because your hormones are doing The Wave and causing you to be pumped up beyond belief. But the baby’s sleeping, minute after minute, hour after hour. You cannot believe how long she is sleeping. You watch her, guard her, lest it was a dream and she disappears into thin air. Between you and your husband you check her a thousand times.

During your baby’s first nap, you should probably call all those relatives and friends who have been waiting to hear about the birth. And don’t worry that you’re getting all weepy when giving the good news. As a matter of fact, this is but a foreshadowing of things to come, and you need to get used to the fact that your body chemistry has been permanently realigned on this day so that you will cry at touching moments pretty much for the rest of your life. Accept the flowers and the few visitors who are able to slip in. Eat the meals brought in by the pink ladies and share them with your husband; you both are ravenous. Sit back in your fog of exhaustion and elation, and delight in your mutual accomplishment.

Because pretty soon they’re going to make your husband leave. It doesn’t seem right to separate the family like this. You’re a unit of three now and should be allowed to stay together. But the doctors want you all to sleep (heaven knows you’ve earned your rest), and there will be tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow for all of you to be together.

And no sooner has your husband gone and the nurse taken your baby to the nursery than you realize just how thoroughly drained you are. Long before your baby makes it to the nursery or your husband opens the front door to your home, you are out cold in that hospital bed. Sleeping a deep sleep devoid of dreams.

Until—What is that? Where are you? Who’s there? You’re up in a daze knocking into rolling carts and ice water pitchers. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and there’s a nurse handing you a baby warm and rosy with tears. Ah yes, it all rushes back—you have a baby! And the task at hand is to calm her, to comfort her, to feed her. And you proceed to do so.

This is such a welcome, private, secret time—just you and your less-than-one-day-old in the middle of the night in the hospital. There is only the