Chapter One
Loving the Baby You Gave Birth To
I just can't get over how much babies cry. I really had no idea what I was
getting into. To tell you the truth, I thought it would be more like getting a
cat.
—Anne Lamott in Operating Instructions
Oh My God, We Have a Baby!
No event in an adult's life equals both the joy and the terror of becoming a
parent for the first time. Fortunately, it's the joy that carries on. But in the
beginning, insecurity and fear often take over. Alan, for example, a
thirty-three-year-old graphic designer, vividly remembers the day he picked up
his wife, Susan, from the hospital. Coincidentally, it was their fourth
anniversary. Susan, a writer, age twenty-seven, had had a fairly easy labor and
birth, and their beautiful blue-eyed baby, Aaron, nursed easily and rarely
cried. By day two, Mum and Dad were eager to leave the hubbub of the hospital to
start life as a family.
"I whistled as I walked down the hall toward her room," Alan recalls.
"Everything seemed perfect. Aaron had nursed right before I got there, and now
... read full excerpt from Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with Your Baby ebook
