Apr 20 2009
Bringing Home Baby
“Congratulations, it’s a _____”! You are now a new parent and you, like many other new parents, spend the next couple of days holding your baby, counting fingers and toes, greeting visitors who come to see the new baby, and can’t wait to take your new precious bundle of joy home. Isn’t it funny? We spend nine months being anxious and excited to give birth, and then once we go into labor we begin to feel scared about whether or not we will be good parents.
While we are in the hospital we have doctors and nurses coming in every couple of hours to check on us and see if we need anything. We don’t even have to get up out of bed except to go to the bathroom if we don’t want to. We have visitors coming in showering us with gifts and we have a doting spouse who jumps with every command. It becomes a different story once we are discharged from the hospital and get to go home. We were pampered and treated like a queen in the hospital but when we get home everything goes back to normal again.
The new baby needs to be fed every couple of hours around the clock; there are wet or dirty diapers that need to be changed frequently; and sometimes the new baby seems to cry for no apparent reason other than to make noise. Your spouse has to go back to work and your friends and family have to continue on with their lives, which means that you are left trying to adjust to the requirements of this new little life as well as try to get yourself back into a normal routine. For some, this is not a difficult task and it seems to come rather naturally, but for some, it seems overwhelming and impossible.
I want to encourage you to lean on your family and close friends for support as often as you need. Don’t try to be superwoman and do it all yourself. It is easy to throw 100% of yourself into caring for the needs of this precious new baby, but you also need to recognize that you need to take care of yourself also. If your baby is sleeping, you sleep. When your spouse is home, let him take care of the baby so that you can take a nice relaxing bath or shower. Try to find some time throughout the day that you focus all of your concentration on you.
Keep in mind that this overwhelming phase will soon be over and you will be able to get back into a more normal routine of daily living. There will be a few weeks of adjustment but after that things will normalize and you will be able to sit back and enjoy life with your new baby.
