Appendix 4: The Basics of Preemies and Multiple Births
Appendix 5: Postpartum Depression Scale
Appendix 6: In Utero Growth Chart: Average Size
INTRODUCTION Hey, You! Having a Baby?
Stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and your body rockets into sensory over-load. Your eyes widen, your jaw drops, and your neurons spit out more adjectives than a novice novelist. Majestic, awe inspiring, glorious, astonishing, so my-oh-my beautiful that you want to fall to your knees and bow to the deity that created this masterpiece.
Then you freak out.
That, in essence, is pregnancy: On one hand, it’s the most breathtaking thing you’ve ever experienced. On the other, it’s a looooong way to the bottom of the canyon, just as it is a looooong way from conception to birth—so you can’t help but have some anxiety about taking a wrong step along the way. There’s no doubt that pregnancy evokes a similar diversity of emotional and physiological responses as do such natural wonders: laughing, crying, screaming, dry mouth, dry skin, dry heaves (and that’s just the first day). What we’re here to do is help you manage both extremes of the emotional spectrum, so you can appreciate such a miraculous process and conquer the anxiety and tension through a very powerful weapon: knowledge.
Whether this is your first pregnancy or your fourth, or you’re trying so hard that you’re spending more time on your bed than a throw pillow, you probably think you know a thing or two about being pregnant. Either you’ve gone through it before or you’ve had friends, sisters, and sixteen trillion baby bloggers to give you the inside-the-womb scoop.
However, we’d ask that you hold on one diaper-changing minute. We’re here to bust myths, challenge your brain, and prepare your body for the greatest journey that any human can ever take—from the moment two cells become one to the second that your little squirt makes its first appearance outside the comforting shell of your belly.
To whet your appetite, we’d bet a case of Gerber bananas that you didn’t know things like:
• The whole notion of nature versus nurture is as wrong as a three-legged crib. That’s because a cutting-edge field called epigenetics has shown us that you have control over how the genes of your baby will express themselves.
• What happens during these 280 days on the inside actually teaches your child about how his body should act on the outside. He’s actually forecasting his future—and that teaches him how healthy or unhealthy he will be years down the road.
• While most people assume that a mom’s biological cocoon supports the child unconditionally, the truth is that your body is actually engaged in a very delicate dance to balance the often competing needs of mom and child.
• There’s a biological reason why your areolas are dark, why your feet swell, and why one minute you gag at the thought of eating a cracker and the next minute you can’t wait to get your hands on a salsa-smothered cantaloupe.
The good news is that we’re here to help by teaching you crazy-cool things about your body and giving you the tools to maximize your experience and get the result you want: a healthy and happy baby.
Now, if you’re like most women, we’re guessing that you’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about what’s in store. You’ve probably spent all-nighters scouring pregnancy websites and parked yourself in cushy bookstore chairs with thigh-high stacks of mom-to-be manuals. Maybe you haven’t been this nervous since your sixth-grade oral report on rain forests, or maybe you haven’t been this obsessed with something since McDreamy made his prime-time debut a few years back. You’re probably poring over baby names, wondering why you crave pretzels dipped in marinara sauce, and debating about whether the nursery walls should have the hue of sunshine, cotton candy, or pomegranate juice.
Nope, there’s nothing quite like this internal conflict that is pregnancy. One moment, you’re thrilled, elated, and impatient for your baby’s first smile, babble, and soothe-your-soul hug. The next, you feel anxious about a million unknowns—about what’s going on inside your belly, about whether your little one is growing properly, about how you’re going to function on zippo sleep. Since this happens to just about everyone, it must, in fact, be strangely ideal. The truth is that vigilance has great benefits. You’re supposed to pay close attention. Our goal is to ensure that you focus on the right clues.
As you struggle to maintain your equilibrium, we want you to relax and take time to enjoy the beauty of the process. The most important thing to keep in mind is that most pregnancies turn out absolutely fine. Absolutely fine. Women’s bodies are designed to carry children safely and efficiently. That doesn’t mean everything will be smooth sailing on this journey, but it does mean that the odds are greatly in your favor. If you can learn how to maximize your chances that nature runs the course it’s supposed to, you will increase those odds even further. This book will help show you how.
Introducing Your New Dance Partner
So let’s start by rethinking our perception about conception (and beyond). Back in sex-ed class, most of us were taught a pretty simple recipe for how pregnancy works:
Ingredients
1 egg, mature
100 million sperm, very, very excited
Instructions
Preheat oven. Mix ingredients romantically. Cook bun for forty weeks.
Sprinkle with love and serve to the world.
The bun-in-the-oven image has served us well over the years, underscoring the belief that mom is protector and baby is protected, that mom is cook and baby is concoction, that mom is in control and baby is not. But there’s a fundamental problem with this analogy when it comes to the true biology of pregnancy (besides the fact that nobody bakes buns anymore): Baby has a heck of a lot more say about the whole process than a cinnamon raisin roll does.
In fact, pregnancy is more like dancing than cooking. You and your baby have a dynamic, choreographed relationship—one in which you lead and the baby follows. Your subtle movements and directions help show your baby how to grow and develop. After all, it takes two to tango, or in pregnancy terms, it’s uter-us, not uter-I.
But your baby isn’t always the most cooperative partner. Sometimes he’ll want to take the lead, sometimes he’ll send you signals about which way he wants you to move, sometimes he’ll improvise, sometimes he’ll do flips, and sometimes he’ll step on your feet and get everything all tangled up. Part of the reason he’ll