The New Father. Armin A. Brott
she may be able to move her head from side to side.
• She probably won’t eat much for the first 24 hours, but after that, she’ll want 7–8 feedings each day. In between all those meals, she’ll try to suck on anything that comes near her mouth.
• At around 40 breaths and 120 heartbeats/minute, her metabolism is zipping along about twice as fast as yours.
• Her intestines are moving even faster: she’ll urinate as many as 18 times and move those brand-new bowels 4–7 times every 24 hours.
• To help her recover from all that activity, she’ll spend 80–90 percent of her time asleep, taking as many as 8 naps a day. Some babies, though, sleep as few as 8 hours.
Intellectually
• Right from birth, your baby is capable of making a number of intellectual decisions.
• If she hears a sound, she can tell whether it’s coming from the right, the left, straight ahead, or even behind.
• She can distinguish between sweet and sour (preferring sweet, like most of us).
• She also has a highly developed sense of smell. Before the end of this week, she’ll be able to tell the difference between a pad sprinkled with her own mother’s milk and one from another nursing mother.
• Although her eyes may seem to work independently of each other, she likes looking at things, preferring simple patterns to complex ones and the borders of objects (such as your jaw or hairline) to the inner details (mouth and nose).
• She can’t, however, differentiate herself from the other objects in her world. If she grasps your hand, for example, her little brain doesn’t know whether she’s holding her own hand or yours—or, for that matter, that those things on the ends of her arms even belong to her.
Verbally
• At this point, most of the vocal sounds your baby produces will be cries or animal-like grunts, snorts, and squeaks.
Emotionally/Socially
• Although she’s alert and comfortable for only 30 or so minutes out of every 4 hours, your baby comes prewired to connect with you. Within a few hours (or days at most), she’ll follow your gaze and try to mimic your facial expressions. And she prefers looking at a drawing of a face to one with the features scrambled.
• When she hears a voice or other noise—especially your partner’s or yours (although it could also be a faucet dripping or a heavy metal band)—she may become quiet and try to focus.
• She’s capable of showing excitement and distress, and will probably quiet down when you pick her up. She’s also capable of expressing empathy for others (we’ll talk more about that in later chapters).
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH YOUR PARTNER
Physically
• Vaginal discharge (called lochia) that will gradually change from bloody to pink to brown to yellow over the next six weeks or so.
• Major discomfort if there is an episiotomy or C-section incision (the pain will disappear over the next six weeks).
• Constipation.
• Breast discomfort—starting on about the third day after the birth (when her breasts become engorged with milk), and as soon as she starts breastfeeding, her nipples will probably be sore for about two weeks.
• Gradual weight loss.
• Exhaustion—especially if her labor was long and difficult.
• Continued contractions, especially while breastfeeding, but disappearing gradually over the next several days.
• Hair loss. Most women stop losing hair while they’re pregnant, but when the pregnancy’s over, so are all those great-hair days.
Emotionally
• Relief that it’s finally over.
• Excitement, depression, or both (see pages 59, 62–63).
• Worry about how she’ll perform as a mother, and whether she’ll be able to breastfeed. But as her confidence builds over the next few weeks, those worries should disappear.
• A deep need to get to know the baby.
• Impatience at her lack of mobility.
• Decreased sex drive, assuming she had any left before the baby came.
WHAT YOU’RE GOING THROUGH
Congratulations, You’re a Dad!
Well, the pregnancy you and your partner have shared for the past nine months is over, and although it may not have hit you yet, you’ve got a family now, which means all sorts of new responsibilities, pressures, and expectations to live up to. For some new fathers, this seemingly basic epiphany comes early, before they leave the hospital. For others, reality may not sink in for a few days. But whenever it hits, you’ll always remember being there for the birth of your baby as one of the great moments of your life.
Right now, though, you may be feeling a little helpless and overwhelmed. But if you’re like most guys I’ve spoken with over the years, you’ll also experience at least some of the following feelings immediately after the birth:
• love
• excitement, almost like being intoxicated
• the desire to hold and touch and rock and kiss the baby
• an even stronger desire to simply stare dumbfounded at the baby
• accomplishment, pride, and disbelief
• virility and self-worth
• a powerful connection to your baby and partner
• the need to count toes and fingers to make sure everything’s where it’s supposed to be
• curiosity about whether the baby’s features are more like yours or your partner’s
Back in the 1970s, Dr. Martin Greenberg did a study of fathers who were present for their child’s delivery (which was relatively rare then). The men in his study had many of the above feelings, and Greenberg coined a term, engrossment, to describe “a father’s sense of absorption, preoccupation, and interest in his baby.”
What triggers engrossment in men? Exactly the same thing that prompts similar nurturing feelings in women: early contact with their infants. So take a deep breath and do what feels most natural to you—chances are it’ll be exactly the right thing.
The truth is—and there’s a lot of research to back me up on this—that from the instant their children are born, fathers are just as caring, interested, and involved with their infants as mothers are, and they hold, touch, kiss, rock, and coo at their new babies at least as frequently as mothers do.
Comparing How You Imagined the Birth Would Go with How It Went
Let’s face it: every expecting couple secretly (or not so secretly) hopes for a pain-free, twenty-minute labor, and very few people ever really plan for a horrible birth experience. Even in childbirth education classes, if the instructor talks at all about the unpleasant things that can happen, she usually refers to them as “contingencies”—a word that makes it seem as though everything is still under control.
If your partner’s labor and delivery went according to plan, chances are you’re delighted with the way things turned out, and you’re oohing and ahhing over your baby. But if there were any problems—induced labor, an emergency C-section, a threat to your partner’s or your baby’s life—your whole impression of the birth process may have changed. It’s not unusual in these cases to blame the baby for causing your partner so much physical pain and you so much psychological agony. It can happen easily, without