baby

Unquestionably, parents have a great deal of adjusting to do with the birth of their child. But the newborn is forced to make a transition from the ideal environment of the uterus to the harsher and certainly more varied world outside the mother’s womb. Whether your baby was born vaginally or by cesarean, she went through an intense exhausting physical experience. She’ll need time to adjust to her new world. In fact, at birth, in response to the exhaustion of the birth process, most newborns enter into a six-hour sleeping period, from which it’s difficult to wake them.

Consider these other facts about newborns:

A newborn normally weighs between six and eight pounds (2.7 and 3.6 kg) and is eighteen to twenty-two inches (45 to55cm) long at birth. Typically, however, she’ll lose up to 10 percent of her weight in the days following birth, and then start to regain that weight by the end of her first week.

A baby spends her entire first nine months of existence passively receiving all of her nourishment through the umbilical cord.

Until birth, a newborn has never had to swallow to appease her hunger. In face, she’s never known what hunger is.

Before her birth, a newborn has never had to breathe, because she received all of her oxygen through her mother’s blood. At birth, although her heart may beat 120 times a minute, her circulation is still sluggish, and her breathing is shallow and irregular. She’ll also sneeze, gasp, hiccough, and cough. You may think these are cold symptoms, but it’s just the newborn’s way of clearing mucus from the respiratory system.

Having been perfectly insulated inside her mother’s body, a newborn has never known cold or heat.

Her skin has been constantly bathed in amniotic fluid, so she has never felt a rush of air or a sharp poke. At birth, however, her temperature drops rapidly in response to the outside air, and others must ensure that she stays warm.

While a newborn was in the womb, all outside sound was muffled for her by layers of fluid, blood and tissue, so she’s been ignorant of sharp, loud noises. Her sleeping and waking has been entirely her own, because she has had no need to distinguish day and night. And all the most constant, familiar movement she has known, as she has been lodged in the cradle of her mother’s body, has been the gentle rocking created by her mother’s daily movements.

It’s no wonder, then, that a newborn may take a few weeks to adjust. She’s just been born into a world in which she suddenly needs to eat, defecate and breathe, and is expected to sleep on schedule and be cuddled and held. In spite of all that babies go through to survive, the first year of life is a marvelous adventure. Babies do thrive and the love of their parents never ceases to grow.

baby