YOUR BABY
Most babies this age spend most of their time sleeping. There may be rare and fleeting moments of wakefulness when your baby’s not feeding but just gazing around at the world and the things going on around her.
Your baby’s arms and legs will mostly stay in the tightly tucked “fetal position” for now, but once in a while you may notice that sometimes her fist relaxes and opens and her legs and arms loosen up a bit. If you place your baby facedown, she may make primitive crawling motions, and she may be able to momentarily raise her head, although her head control is still very shaky.
Tip
Nature erases birth memories rather quickly. Write down everything you remember about your baby’s birth (the physical, emotional, and spiritual details) while you can still remember them. The details will quickly get fuzzy.
When you place your baby on her back, her head will rotate to one side and the arm on the same side that she’s facing will stretch out at shoulder level into something that looks like a fencing position. If you gently turn your baby’s head to the opposite side and hold it there, the arm in the direction that her head is facing will straighten and the opposite arm will flex. This is called the tonic neck reflex, and it’s another one of those mysterious reflexes that don’t appear to serve any practical purpose for the baby. (For more on baby reflexes, see “Your Newborn’s Built-in Reflexes” on Quick notes about labor in this chapter.)
If you’re Jewish, your baby will be circumcised during a bris ceremony on day eight.
YOU
Both you and your baby will continue to recover from birth. You still may experience feeling dizzy, woozy, weak, beaten up, sore, sweaty, and dirty.
One of the most difficult moments of the first year comes when your partner returns to work and all of your doting friends and relatives go back to business as usual. When it’s just you and your baby at home, getting into a routine every day can be tough. You’re able to do just about anything BUT be out of sight or hearing range of the baby. Everyone says to sleep when the baby does, but that means nothing gets done.
You may find it hard to remember what day it is, since they all seem the same. Instead of the drama of work crises, your challenge is figuring out why the baby’s crying, how to take a shower, check your e-mail, and dial the telephone with one hand.
More soothing strategies
Some babies are born self-soothers and arrive with the ability to raise their fingers or fists to their mouths for sucking when they feel upset or hungry. Other babies need outside help from their parents to settle down. Simply picking up your baby and putting her to your shoulder may help her to stop crying. Applying the ancient art of swaddling sometimes helps, too. (For directions about how to swaddle a baby, see in 3. Your Baby Maintenance Guide.) Other ways to deal with baby fussiness include the following:
• Heart-like sounds. Monotonous, repetitive sounds like those that imitate the beating of your heart and the gurgling noise of your digestive system when you were pregnant make a baby feel she’s home again.
• Womb noises. Imitation womb sounds, like the noise of the bubbles from an aquarium, white noise from an FM station that’s gone off the air, the sound of a vacuum cleaner or air purifier with a fan, the droning sound of a car engine when you take your baby for a drive, and the whirring and whishing of a clothes dryer may do the trick. Pre-recorded soothing sounds are also available commercially. There’s a stuffed teddy bear with a heartbeat, and CDs that combine swooshing and heartbeat rhythms with gentle lullabies. Recording your baby’s own cries and playing them back can also work. Interestingly, babies will be aroused to cry at the sound of other babies’ crying, but will stop crying to listen to their own.
• Repetitive vocalizations. Rhythmical groans, like “unhh . . . unhh . . . unhh,” or repeating simple sounds, such as “shusssh . . . shusssh,” or “bahhhh . . . bahhh,” may do the trick for your swaddled baby.
• Sitting. Try positioning your baby in a semireclined bouncer seat on the floor in front of a lamp or the patio door after a meal to let her simply rest from the stimulation and stare off until she dozes.
Whatever gets the two of you through the night!
Washing baby clothes
The best laundry detergents to use for baby clothes are those that rinse clean. Liquid detergents work better than powders that can sometimes leave a dusty residue behind.
Babies have very sensitive skins, and may react to the perfumes and dyes in some detergents. We suggest that you use fragrance-free or hypersensitive detergents and avoid fabric softeners. Their fragrance can be irritating to babies’ sensitive skin and noses, and they can leave a residue on knit fabrics that affect their absorbency.
Pure cotton garments should be washed in hot water and then rinsed a second time. Oxygen products can help to lift milk stains, as can soaking all-cotton garments in ¼ cup of liquid that you use in the dishwasher (not dishwashing detergent for the sink) dissolved in boiling water in a nonreactive container.
Then, wash the clothes normally in the machine, adding one cup of vinegar to the final rinse, followed by a second full-cycle wash without any detergent or other add-ins.
“Eating, sucking, pooping, sleeping, and crying: That’s what my baby does. Nursing, rocking, jiggling, popping in pacifiers: That’s what I do. My world feels very narrow right now.”
Combination polyester-cotton or all-polyester garments should be soaked in the machine in all-color bleach products, or you can use oxygen products to remove stains with an extra rinse cycle at the end.
Coping with “baby blues”
Historically, the medical establishment has taken the baby blues lightly. The condition affects about 50 percent (or more) of American women. It’s so common it’s not even considered a disorder. But behind the cute-sounding name is a hormonal roller coaster that can have you crying for no apparent reason and fill you with feelings of despair and hopelessness, anxiety, irritation, and restlessness.
Sleep deprivation, a lack of support, isolation at home, medical complications (in either you or the baby), feelings of shame about not being thrilled to be a mom, and/or having a colicky baby can make things worse.
No matter what anyone tells you, it’s not just “all in your head.” Your hormones are shifting radically. Part of what you’re experiencing is basically a case of withdrawal from progesterone. The worst of the physical hormonal effects will ease by day 10, and you should start to feel better.
In the meantime, it is completely normal to:
• Feel alone.
• Feel tired all the time.
• Say to yourself, “What have I done?”
• Think that your partner is a total disaster and wonder what you ever saw in him.
• Think you’re a bad mother because the baby’s crying is driving you crazy.
• Worry that you won’t or don’t love the baby enough.
• Feel that you’re an incompetent mother.
• Worry that no one will ever find you physically attractive again.
• Decide that you’ve lost yourself permanently and will never have leisure time again.
• Burst into tears for seemingly no reason.
DadNotes: Dads Get Baby Blues, Too
It’s not just new moms who get depressed. Fathers undergo huge lifestyle shifts as well. It’s normal for dads to feel like a big clumsy oaf around a tiny newborn or to feel flummoxed when the baby (or its mother) starts crying.
Just because you’re not feeding the child from your own nipple doesn’t mean your parental contribution isn’t as important as your partner’s. Everyone in a family does and should have their own talents and weaknesses, and the baby needs the best of both of you.
Involved dads are healthier, live longer, and give rise to better adjusted and more successful children. So don’t let feeling ham-handed keep you from getting all of the benefits of being a dad. Get in there and engage with your baby!