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of birth may be exactly that: a moment, a joyous, unforgettable moment, or an unpleasant experience we’d rather forget. Becoming a parent, however, can take a bit of getting used to. Even if your pregnancy was planned, the baby’s room is decorated and the cupboards are well stocked, don’t be surprised if life as a parent isn’t what you thought it would be. There is a word for it: ‘babyshock’.

JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN

      The first twenty-four hours

      WE CANNOT know what parenthood will be like until it happens. Yet many couples find that the first few months are much harder than they expected. After the elation and excitement of the birth, they are tired, stressed and bewildered. Although you are delighted that your baby is here, even those first twenty-four hours can be more difficult than you envisaged.

      Katharine found both her baby and the hospital experience overwhelming: ‘It was dreadful. Max wouldn’t settle and I had a catheter in which was uncomfortable, and the room was hot and stifling and the corridor outside was noisy. I was awake most of the night and so shattered the next day I couldn’t take in all the information that people kept popping in to tell me. The room was like Victoria Station. People were in and out and I didn’t know who half of them were: midwives, paediatrician, someone bringing a bunch of flowers from my mum and then other people looking for a vase to put them in …’

      COUPLES OFTEN find that with the demands of a new baby it can take a while to calm down, and discover just what it is that you do feel. Lynn found the first few days of motherhood a real eye-opener: ‘Looking back, I was very naive. I hadn’t a clue what new babies were like: the only babies I’d had much to do with before were older, about nine or ten months old, so I was used to seeing them sitting up and playing, smiling…eating biscuits, for Heaven’s sake. Just to have Adam so completely helpless, so dependent on me, was terrifying.’

      Olivia kept being surprised by her daughter: ‘I don’t think I had ever pictured her, physically. I don’t think you do. You picture them more as toddlers and what they’re going to look like when they’re people. For instance, I did think that all babies looked the same and I was amazed in hospital how they didn’t. For a start, mine was the most beautiful on the ward, of course! And Robert kept saying, “You know, even objectively, I’m sure she’s the most beautiful. There’s no doubt. And I’m not just saying this because I’m her father.” And I couldn’t convince him that everyone on the ward thought the same about their own baby. So that was nice, really, that she was so lovely’

CAESAREANS

      PARENTS WHOSE baby was delivered by caesarean often find that they have particular problems adjusting to the fact of the baby’s arrival. After all, at the last minute, the decisions were taken out of their hands.

      Eileen had a long labour and eventually needed an emergency caesarean: ‘After what seemed like hours they finally wheeled me in to the operating theatre and the anaesthetist said, “You ‘II feel a pressure round your neck now …” and that’s the last thing I can remember before coming round. And when I did come round, neither the baby nor Mick was there, so I thought, “Oh, I haven’t had the baby yet, then,” so when Mick did walk in, I said, “What are you doing here?” Mick said they’d taken the baby up to the Unit as he wasn’t breathing properly, and I said he should be with the baby, so he went, and then the nurse came in when I was awake a bit more and said, “What are you going to call him then?” and I got terrified because I thought it meant that we were going to have to baptise the baby straight away because he was so ill with his breathing and going to die. So I wailed, “Oh, call him Michael after his father.” She looked at me very oddly because I think they just wanted to know what to write on his cot tag up in the Unit.’

      Sometimes a caesarean can lessen the feeling of continuity, as it did for Sushma: ‘They brought him in about five o’clock for a feed. He was all washed then and wrapped in a white blanket, very clean, and so calm – big, dark eyes looking round. I felt like I was being introduced to a stranger, though, who had just dropped in. I was very glad to meet him and all of that, but I didn’t get the feeling that this was the little being I had laboured for so many hours to produce. I felt no connection between this baby in a blanket and the pregnancy I’d had. This baby was here, and I wasn’t pregnant any more, but they didn’t seem to coincide, somehow.’

      WHEN YOU’RE preparing for the birth, it may be a good idea to read up about caesareans. That way, if things do turn out not quite the way you planned during your labour, you will be better informed to make choices about the sort of caesarean birth you want.

TWINS OR MORE

      ONE IN EVERY 90 births in this country is of twins, triplets or more. If this is your situation, you may find many of the problems of adjusting to life as a family doubled (or tripled). In particular, the physical demands can be exhausting, as Dawn and her husband found out: ‘Sometimes we do despair. The sheer volume of work – washing, drying, bottles, nappies – and the effort involved in lifting three of them into the bath, out of the bath, into the highchair, out of the highchair, into the cot, out of the cot … And the noise! Just when you’ve got the last one off, the other two wake up and start shouting.’

      STATISTICS SHOW that unfortunately twins, triplets and other higher order births experience medical problems more frequently in the early months of life, and spend more time in special care.

      Colin, whose twins did need special care, used to envy parents who only had one: ‘I just seemed to lurch from worry to worry and they had so much more time. So it was useful to be reminded occasionally just how special the twins were. Although I envied parents who only had one, I would never have swapped the twins for just one, or had them one at a time.’

      MOST OF US, when we envisage ourselves with a child, envisage exactly that: a one-to-one relationship. Right from the start, therefore, if you’ve given birth to twins, you have to adjust the dream to the reality in a fairly major way.

      Jess felt she was giving neither of her children the attention they deserved: ‘Other parents might have time to show their babies a book, or take them for walks, but I hardly had time to smile at them. If one was being quiet, I’d rejoice, because it meant that I could change the other one’s nappy in peace. Most of the time, though, in those first few months, I felt as if I was listening to a constant grizzle, because – except when it came to feeding – whatever I was giving one, it meant I wasn’t giving it to the other.’

      PARENTING IN the way or to the standard you’d imagined may not be possible with twins or more, and individual attention may be at a premium, but twins have each other for companionship and, as they grow older, a guaranteed play partner, in ways that singletons can never know.

      Widening the circle can be more difficult, however: the efforts involved in getting out and socialising are multiplied more than seems fair when you have more than one. With her triplets, Dawn found it especially complicated: ‘Sometimes it can seem like too much trouble to put on three pairs of shoes and three coats just so you can wheel them all to the corner shop. But I know from experience that if I don’t go, and if I allow Peter to bring things back from work with him at the end of the day, like milk or a loaf of bread, then I might have no reason to go out, and if I don’t have a reason, I won’t go, and if I don’t go, I’ll just stay in and get more and more miserable. So it’s worth the effort.’

      HOWEVER, most parents of twins (or triplets) will confirm the old cliché: that even if the demands and problems are doubled (or tripled) so are the joys and delights.

       NEWBORN NICETIES

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