Baby’s weight: 5½ to 9¾ pounds (average for girls);
5½ to 10 pounds (average for boys)
Baby’s length: 18 to 21½ inches
YOUR BABY
A birth weight of between 5½ and 10 pounds is considered to be normal for full-term babies, with 7½ pounds the average. Most newborns are between 19 and 21 inches long, and their head circumference is about 13⅔ inches. Your baby could be lighter or heavier, shorter or longer, and still be perfectly healthy.
Your baby will finally arrive from her warm, dark, quiet, and all-embracing liquid world into a cold and glaring place. She will experience gravity for the first time. Her body, head, arms, and legs are likely to feel awkward and heavy to her in comparison to the ease and grace of her movements inside her own little water world. There, she could do somersaults and tiptoe up the side of the womb; now she must learn to live in a loud and drafty world where everything she does will be directly affected by weight.
It will take this year and lots of practice to get her muscles to cooperate in holding up her head, turning over, and learning how to coordinate her vision with object grabbing. She’ll crawl and finally graduate into being a true biped. And, for a long time, as her brain and body skills mature, she’ll be totally dependent upon your care to survive.
Once the active period of awareness passes for your baby, she is likely to fall into a deep sleep and be hard to rouse. She may not be interested in nursing, and fluids in your breast will begin to build up, causing them to swell and harden, called engorgement. Taking a warm shower or applying warm washcloth compresses and expressing some of your milk by gently squeezing your areola may help to let some of the excess go so you’re more comfortable until your baby latches on and starts nursing. (A nurse or the hospital’s lactation consultant can help you.)
YOU
You’ve just been through the most intense physical experience anyone could survive. If you didn’t have an epidural or pain medications during delivery, you may be amazed to discover how alert and energized you are, even a little manic, during the first hours after birth—even though you’ve probably been awake for at least 24 hours. The rush of endorphins gives you a feeling a lot like a runner’s high after a marathon.
While you’re still awake, tell the staff if you want to be awakened to breastfeed; if you want the baby in the room with you as soon as possible; or if you just want to be left alone to sleep as long as you need to (stuff in your earplugs). We recommend taking advantage of the skills of the hospital staff, who’ve met a thousand babies if they’ve met one, and have a long, guilt-free nap. And don’t worry: No one will hesitate to wake you up if they need to.
Reflexes
Your baby will be born with over 75 innate reflexes. They’re both intriguing and puzzling. Whether grasping, head righting, or back arching—most of these reflexes seem ultimately to be related to preserving your baby’s life and helping him to maintain his equilibrium when you hold and carry him.
“Instead of rubbing, jostling, and passing the baby around like he’s a football in play, why can’t doctors and nurses be more gentle and give the baby time to adjust to the shock of being born? We decided to have our last baby at home, and he quickly became serene and peaceful like a deeply wise little man.”
Usually, the reflexes can be elicited if your full-term baby is alert, but his responses may be weak or absent if he’s extremely premature, groggy from your pain medications, or drowsy and sleeping. Knowing about your baby’s natural reflexes in advance can help to keep you from setting them off accidentally as you lift, lower, or dress your baby. Some of the reflexes will fade during the first year, while others, like blinking and pupil changes, will remain throughout life. Reflexes are listed in the following table by the body part they affect.