PREPATING
FOR A NEW BABY
Escrito por: Albert Shamir Galvá de Jesús
Pregnancy
is a time of anticipation, excitement, preparation, and, for many new parents,
uncertainty. You dream of a baby who will be strong, healthy, and bright-and
you make plans to provide her with everything she needs to grow and thrive. You
probably also have fears and questions, especially if this is your first child,
or if there have been problems with this or a previous pregnancy. What if
something goes wrong during the course of your pregnancy, or what if labor and
delivery are difficult? What if being a parent isn’t everything you’ve always
dreamed it would be? Fortunately, most of these worries are needless. The nine
months of pregnancy will give you time to for the realities of parenthood.
Some
of these preparations should begin when you first learn you’re pregnant. The
best way to help your baby develop is to take good care of yourself, since medical
attention and god nutrition will directly benefit your baby’s health. Getting
plenty of rest and exercising moderately will help you feel better and ease the
physical stresses of pregnancy. Talk to your physician about prenatal vitamins
and avoiding smoking and alcohol.
As
pregnancy progresses you’re confronted with a long list of related decisions,
from planning for the delivery to decorating the nursery. You probably have
made many of these decisions already. Perhaps you’ve postponed some others
because your baby doesn’t yet seem “real” to you. However, the more actively
you prepare for your baby’s arrival, the more real that child will seem, and
the faster your pregnancy will appear to pass.
Eventually
it may seem as though your entire life revolves around this baby-to-be. This
increasing preoccupation is perfectly normal and healthy and may actually help
prepare you emotionally for the challenge of parenthood. After all, you’ll be
making decisions about your child for the next two decades-at least! Now is a
perfect time to start.
BIRTH
AND THE FIRST MOMENTS AFTER
iving
birth is one of the most extraordinary experiences of a woman’s life. Yet after
all the months of careful preparation and anticipation, the moment of birth is
almost never what you had expected. Labor may be easier or more physically
demanding than you had imagined. You may end up in a delivery room instead of
the birthing room you’d wanted, or you could have a Caesarean section instead
of a vaginal delivery. Your health, the condition of the fetus, and the policies
of the hospital will all help determine what actually happens. But fortunately,
despite what you may have thought when you were pregnant, these are not the
issues that will make your child’s birth a “success.” What counts is the baby,
here at last and healthy.
DELIVERY ROOM PROCEDURES
FOLLOWING A NORMAL VAGINAL BIRTH
As
your baby lies with you following a routine delivery, his umbilical cord will
still be attached to the placenta. For several minutes the cord may continue to
pulsate, supplying the baby with oxygen while he establishes his own breathing.
Once the pulsing stops, the cord will be clamped and cut. (Because there are no
nerves in the cord, the baby feels no pain during this procedure.) The clamp
will remain in place for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, or until the cord is
dry and no longer bleeds. The stump that remains after the clamp is removed
will fall off sometime between ten days and three weeks after birth.
Once
you’ve had a few moments to get acquainted with your baby, he will be dried to
keep him from getting too cold, and a doctor or nurse will examine him briefly
to make sure there are no obvious problems or abnormalities. One minute after
birth, and again at five minutes, he will be given Apgar scores (see page 30),
which measures his overall responsiveness. Then he will be wrapped in a blanket
and given back to you.
Depending
on the hospital’s routine, your baby may also be weighed, measured, and receive
medication before leaving the delivery room. All newborns are slightly low in
vitamin K, which is necessary for normal blood-clotting, so they are given an
injection of this vitamin to prevent excessive bleeding.
Because
bacteria in the birth canal can infect a baby’s eyes, your baby will be given
antibiotic eye drops or silver nitrate ointment, either immediately after
delivery or later, in the nursery, to prevent any infection.
There’s
at least one other important procedure to be done before either you or your
newborn leaves the delivery room: Both of you will receive matching labels
bearing your name and other identifying details. After you verify the accuracy
of these labels, one will be attached to your wrist and the other to your
baby’s. Each timed the child is taken from or returned to you while in the
hospitals also foot print newborns as an added preoccupation.
Child Care Books from the American Academy of Pediatrics 1998
PREPÁRESE PARA EL MINISTERIO CRISTIANO
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