Sears William - 25 things every new mother should know

We believe that babies have a lot to teach mothers.

We believe that babies have a lot to teach mothers. Listening to your baby and responding to his or her cues will lead you into a parenting style that will help both of you thrive. Biology and infant behavior will help you get started and build your confidence as you and your baby develop a two-way trusting relationship. But this is not an ideal world we live in, and there are forces youll meet along the way that can make you doubt your mothering intuition. We hope that this book will prepare you for some of those bumps in the road and will help you meet the challenges and changes ahead.

Mothering and fathering eight children has taught us a lot. We are very different persons from the ones we were before we had children, and most, if not all, of these differences are for the better. Although personal growth is sometimes hard, weve had a lot of fun along the way. Fun in your life with your baby is what will convince you and the baby that life is good.

Enjoy your baby!

Suddenlyfinallyyoure not pregnant anymore! Gone is the great big bulgethe bumps that were knees and elbows, the big round head your health-care provider located at each prenatal checkup, the bulk that made it hard to breathe, hard to sleep, hard to roll out of bed in the morning. The heartbeat youve been listening to for over six months; the little thumps; the long, rib-tickling sweeps across your abdomen; the powerful jabs that made you wonder what you had in thereall of this and more is gone from inside you.

No more worrying about the birth. No more heartburn, or backache. No more watching your stomach jump while you sit perfectly still. No more preoccupation with the awesome fact of your own private miracle. Pregnancys over, and its time to meet your baby.

So how do you feel at this enormous moment in your life, the beginning of your mothering career? Sweaty? Chilled? Totally in awe, shaken, and shaking? Covered with bloody birth stuff? Relieved that the contractions have ended? Numb (literally or figuratively) from the chest down? Elated? Confused? All of these?

Nothing I say could ever completely prepare you for that moment when you first say hello to your baby. Every mother is different, every birth is different. But one thing I can tell you: Having a baby is a powerful event. It doesnt matter whether your labor was short or long, whether the birth was vaginal or cesarean, who is with you, or where you are. The emotions are big, as befits a time of great and sudden change.

I hope that for you those first moments of being a mother include seeing and touching and holding your baby. A new baby fresh from the warm, wet womb belongs in the mothers armsa new sort of womb, and home for the next several months. So, too, do you, the new mother, need to physically experience the slippery little person with the squished-up face who moments before was still inside you. Oh, baby! My baby, exalts the new mother. Seeing, touching, smelling, examining make the baby real to you. It is your way of knowing that your baby is alive, and yours.