Baby Trend Flex-Loc Seat Base in Silver

Eight years ago, when the first edition of this book was published, we told you that the two trends in childbirth were moving in opposing directions. They still are. One trend is the growing number of hospitals providing homelike accommodations, including Jacuzzis and microwaves, plus the more than 140 out-of-hospital birth centers (with more than 40 in the works), which numbered in the dozens only a few years ago. The other trend is high-tech childbirth. We've had routine IVs, labor induction, and cesareans for years. Now there's a growing emphasis on tests and procedures of all kinds. It starts early in many parts of the country, with pregnant women of all ages being encouraged to undergo prenatal testing. It continues with the use of the electronic fetal monitor (EFM) during labor for 75 percent of women (and before labor for some), as well as the ubiquitous ultrasound offered routinely in at least three ...

Regardless of whether labor is long or short, whether it is hard or easy whether a baby is born vaginally or by cesarean, most parents recall the first hours and days after birth as crystal-clear images surrounded by haze. It is in this haze that you first take in your baby and make a giant leap from pregnancy to parenting. Despite all the anticipatory parenting done before conception and during pregnancy, despite weeks of feeling movement within and fantasizing about your baby, despite months of having strange dreams, worrisome thoughts, and musings about what kind of parent you will be, the first time you hold your baby in your arms and call yourself mother or father, mama or papa, mommy or daddy, an awareness floods over you that life will never be the same again. Another human being is now dependent upon you for survival. More than anything else, you want to be the best parent possible. Your awareness of your baby's dependency and your desire to be a good parent will together ...