Thank you.
Big breath. Push right into it. Don't be afraid.
Two, three, four, five.
I remember a combination of fear and disbelief
because it finally sunk in that I was going to have a kid.
That's it. Two, three, four, five.
I didn't anticipate the pain.
Beautiful, beautiful.
Blow, blow, blow. Pop out your cheeks and blow.
All right.
Look at these little guys.
I was happy and relieved and it was all over.
What do you think?
Hi, I'm Jean Driscoll, a clinical nurse specialist in mental health.
I'd like to share with you the secrets of postpartum,
experiences that are not written in books,
things even your best friends won't talk about,
what it's really like to live with a new baby.
Many parents tell me they feel like they're in a state of shock after the birth.
They're not really sure how they're feeling about this big event in their lives
or about how they're going to handle this baby.
It's important for you to realize this
while you're still getting to know your baby in the hospital.
Let's look at these kids. Cute?
Did you think they were cute as soon as they were born?
Or did they kind of surprise you?
Surprised you with the fact that they now had a cone head?
Or maybe perhaps they had a little eggplant-like head, kind of squished eyes?
They really weren't making much sense,
but you were supposed to fall in love at birth, right?
That doesn't always happen, so it's important to know
that it takes some time to get to know this little person
a couple of days before they really even look like anybody you know.
I remember vividly my mother left two weeks after the baby came home with me
and I sat there and I looked at this kid
and I didn't have this great feeling of love towards the child.
And I felt so guilty, I felt so incompetent
that I wasn't just crazy about this child.
Rest assured that you will be crazy about the new baby,
even if it doesn't happen right away.
All these new experiences, learning to breastfeed the baby,
learning to bathe, dress, and care for the physical needs of your newborn,
are really the easy part.
The hardest part will be dealing with your feelings.
So you should go home. You don't need this place anymore.
You probably couldn't wait to get your baby home,
but were you prepared for all those mixed feelings when you got there?
All right, have you cried?
Have you done any of that good stuff?
About day three, mom's cry.
Dad comes in with the car seat all in the crates.
He doesn't know how to use it, but he bought it.
He knows he needs it.
He brings in the outfit that you told him to bring, size eight.
You haven't been size eight in your life,
but you figured 60 pounds, drip off, first day.
He now brings in the dynasty outfit that you're going to wear home,
the kids are going to wear home, covered with formula stains,
but it's been in the family for 50 years, so we'll use it.
We're all set to go.
He walks in. He fought with the guard.
He's got the flowers. He's all ready.
He's got a headache, and he says, you ready, hon?
And she says, oh, I think so.
And he kind of goes, are you all right?
I don't know.
And meanwhile, you probably called your mother, and you said, oh, mom.
And she says, what the hell are you crying for?
You have a healthy baby. You're still alive. Why are you crying?
And now no one's telling you it's okay to cry.
So who's going to cry here because people will think you're losing your mind, right?
I'm going to tell you, cry your heart out.
There's nothing better than crying.
What does it feel like if you cry 15 minutes of good,
shake the soul out of your body tears?
Don't you feel like dying? I mean, you just kind of sleep.
Well, if you've been worried for nine months, give or take,
plus you survived birth, which to me is the most creative,
assertive thing any woman can do in this world,
you now have to come to grips with the fact that maybe it didn't all go like you planned.
Maybe this crying has to do with the fact that your hormones are low.
Great, but that's not it. That's not all of it.
What's happened in three days?
All of a sudden you've gone from fantasy to reality.
You've said, hey, this is it, hon.
Peep, poop, and throw up. Are you having a good time?
And the father's kind of going, it's great.
He always comes in dressed. You're in your pajamas.
It's never equal.
You know, he sits there holding the baby in his little white shirt.
He doesn't know what to do.
Every time he goes to touch the kid, you give him orders how to do it.
So he picks up the baby.
No, hon, watch his head.
And all of us have the fear when he throws his head back,
it's going to cut off and roll down the floor.
You're sitting there holding the baby and you're critiquing him.
So eventually the father says, you know, dear, you're so good at it.
You should do it.
And he kind of leaves. Not fair.
Ladies don't ever create a job where you're the only one that can fill it.
What are you, nuts? Somebody else.
Daddies have to learn to daddy. Mommies have to learn to mommy.
But you collectively have to learn how to parent, which makes it hard.
Because he was raised one way, you were raised another.
Now you have to negotiate how you're going to raise this kid.
And thank God they don't come out needing all that yet.
So you can work it through until they're ready to require some limit setting with love,
which is about six to nine months from now.
Music
Suddenly you've gone from being a couple to being a family.
That baby has changed so many things in your life.
Most of the time the baby makes you feel happier than you've ever felt.
But sometimes mom just needs to cry.
What do you do, guys, when she starts to cry?
You realize she's going to cry for a while, okay?
What she needs is to just cry and not be told, don't cry.
People will say, you'll be fine, baby blows, it'll get over soon.
Well, it won't right away.
Because you've got to cry and mourn the loss of abstract parts of your life that are gone.
Part of it is the fact that maybe you didn't birth the way you planned.
All right, what about that perfect birth script?
You worked hard to develop it.
What happened when it blew up in your face?
That's reality, isn't it? Didn't you learn that when the sperm met the egg?
That you had control over nothing?
And when you go into labor, you find that control issue is lost again.
So moms have to mourn that loss.
If she's worked hard to become an independent professional woman who ran a corporation
and now can't even find her slippers, there's a dilemma.
Why do you think you have name tags on?
To remind yourself of your name in case you forget.
There's a certain part of postpartum that mothers will describe as feeling like their brains are in the bowl with the placenta.
And people say, oh, Jean, that's crude.
I hear it from other people. Don't you feel a little loose?
You know, you haven't slept in 14 days.
You probably can't figure out whether it's night or day, and your baby only believes that it's night all the time
because that's when he was awake when you were pregnant.
Didn't they sleep all day while you walked and rocked in about 11 o'clock news they did the aerobics?
They still do that here.
All right, why should they change?
They don't come out with little Timex watches on their arms and tell them what time it's ready to go.
So while your baby's turning night into day, you might find your own feelings are upside down.
You're certainly not disappointed in that baby, but you might feel disappointed in the birth itself, and that's perfectly normal.
You write the birth script, you have it all set.
You're going to squat in the corner, no episiotomy, you'll be home in 24 hours, right?
Isn't that the plan?
Then what happens?
That first labor contraction.
That's the day that you want to take all those friends that said to you, it's like menstrual cramps, no big deal, and kick them
because they didn't let you in on the realities.
This hurts.
So it depends on how you got here.
There are some women who come in, I don't want any drugs.
There are some women who come in, anything you got, give it to me.
They fall into that category.
I think the nice thing is that you have the options.
You know, nobody's telling you you have to do one thing or the other.
You have to know that you do the best you can do with what you've got.
So you get into labor, and maybe you're pant blowing real well, and then about six centimeters you say, I don't care, give me something.
I don't care.
And the father's going, honey, it's okay.
He's rubbing your arm, you know, kind of looking at you, and he's thinking he was the coach of the year, and she's thinking, don't touch me.
All of this is moving on, all right?
So now we have mom who perhaps needs an epidural.
Then you have the mom who perhaps through this ended up needing a cesarean for fetal distress or maternal distress,
and she may go into general anesthesia thinking no one's going to survive this.
So her fear is that she will die and the baby will die, which is part of the fear of pregnancy, I think.
We don't talk about it too much because who wants to tell their dreams?
They might think you're nuts, but everybody does have that dream.
They come out of the anesthesia, and the doctors or the nurses say to you, you have a little girl, you have a little boy, and the mother says, I don't care.
Give it to him.
Let him bond.
She says, I just want sleep and drugs.
So she goes to sleep for a day and a half, right?
And then what happens to the mother?
She wakes up and says, oh, crumb.
I didn't bond with the kid.
Now he's not going to know who I am.
He's not going to like me, you know.
I think you have to step back, ladies, you know.
You're not going to be any good to anybody if you don't feel good.
That's survival.
You have to take the medication.
You have to be comfortable.
That kid doesn't wake up for a day and a half anyway.
He has to be sure he's used to being around, too, but these expectations of performance are what get us.
But Alice wanted to try as best she could to have a natural childbirth that first time, and it just wasn't happening.
And Monday morning, I woke up in tears because they were going to break my waters, and if nothing happened, it would be a C-section, and I did not want a C-section.
But what you did want was a healthy baby.
And as long as that was the result of the birth, that's the main thing.
Now it's time to get to know your baby.
Most people look at their baby for hours and just kind of say, who are you?
You know, when are your parents coming to take care of you because I'm too young.
And this whole thing is going on, but somehow in this myth of performance expectations, we think we should bond at birth, be the mother and father of the year.
Well, do you feel like mothers and fathers?
If this was your first kid, do you really?
What is it?
It's usually what we're thinking.
We're not too sure.
Those of us with other kids are saying, yeah, I feel like a mother.
I'm used to being called ma and da.
And the second, third time mother is not even concerned with the new baby as much as about the other ones at home.
Oh, God, they're going to come in and they're not going to like me.
Or they're crying that how could I love another baby as much as I love the one I already have?
And of course, poor dad, he leaves here, you know, drives home, can't even open his eyes.
The other child, two, three, four, now attaches to his leg and will never again get off.
So he comes in with the baby on tow after five meals at the fast food chains in the neighborhood.
And there they are.
And here's mommy.
Are you all right?
Do you want to kiss me?
Give me a kiss.
And the kid goes, no.
He's kind of sucking on his blanket or his pacifier, hanging onto daddy's leg.
And the mother's going, do you want to see the new baby?
No.
Do you want to play with the bed?
Yes.
Do you want a cold drink?
Yes.
And then she says to the father, couldn't you put something else on him?
Right away she's yelling at you because you didn't dress him right.
Then maybe she's saying, oh, he's hot.
He's hot.
You sure he's all right?
Part of this is the mom is grieving the fact that she's maybe not needed 24 hours a day,
that they can do all right without her.
Shock.
The other part of that is how do you love somebody that you just met?
If you have a two, three, four-year-old, you've grown to love them for two, three, four years.
You don't all of a sudden shift.
The nice thing about having more than one kid is that you realize you have an awfully big heart.
You can give a lot of love to a lot of people.
But try to think of the time in the hospital as special time with your new baby.
You have to take advantage of this time to get to know that baby because when you get home,
that time just isn't there.
And if you're entertaining people with all sorts of company,
I just think that it's in our culture, you have to, it's the only time that you're going to ever,
if you have siblings at home, it's the only time you ever have just for your, that new baby.
And you have to give it to them.
You've got to give them time and you've got to feed them.
If you've decided to breastfeed, you should realize that it'll take about four to six weeks
to feel like you really know what you're doing.
The key to successful breastfeeding is position.
You should cup the breast, aim the nipple toward the roof of the baby's mouth, and bring the baby to you.
Don't lean into the baby.
Most newborns aren't very hungry for the first two to three days,
but you should try to nurse them every two to three hours or on demand, whichever comes first.
Formula-fed babies won't need to be fed as often.
The main thing to remember is, if you feel good about feeding your baby,
then the baby will be fine, breast or bottle-fed.
But even if things don't go well at first, try not to let it get the best of you.
Remember, parent amnesia.
Already I'm idealizing those first, the birth and the first couple weeks home.
I'm forgetting the awful, awful parts.
But she didn't eat, and we went 12 hours without a wet diaper,
and she was getting dehydrated, and that kind of panic.
I was worried she could die.
That thought crosses your mind, and of course she wasn't going to, but I didn't know that.
It can be pretty awful, especially if everyone else tells you their baby is perfect.
First-time mothers, second-time mothers, what happened when you went to the park?
My baby sleeps through the night. Oh, so does mine.
And then you're sitting there going, my baby eats up every two hours.
And then you leave from the park and you say, hey, you know,
my baby Bearish had my kid core evaluated. He doesn't do what everybody else does.
Then you forgot to ask the second question. What's sleep through the night?
If your kid will go 11 to 4, you died and went to heaven.
That's it. That's sleep through the night. Are you excited?
Isn't that what you're waiting for?
I don't know too many kids who sleep 8 to 8, all right?
You have to change your whole expectations of fantasy,
and nobody wants to tell you that they're not doing so well either.
So we have to share some of that and we do better.
Back to the crying kid. We've tried to feed him.
If you're breastfeeding, you keep putting him on the breast.
If you're formula feeding, give him another 4 ounces.
The kid's puking and he's now rolling out of your house
because he gained so much weight in a week and a half.
What about pacifiers and thumbs? Oh, no, Jean.
I'm not having that plug hang out of my kids mouth in the mall.
If he sucks his thumb, he'll be 5 before he gets it out.
Well, about 3 to 5, all kids generally give up what feels good for them, all right?
I think you should step back and look at what grownups do.
We're worried about our kids sucking on something.
Do you ever watch parents?
Mustache, roll the hair, rub the ears.
These are normal security methods for everybody.
Why don't we let our kids do some of these things?
Pacifiers and thumbs are great if they're used after feeding
and they're not used as plugs.
What tends to happen is every time the baby goes,
somebody shoves something in their face.
Everybody kind of hangs on to that. It's a lot more fun.
But I would suggest you use it after feeding
because all babies need to suck until they're about 2 or 3.
It's called non-nutritive sucking.
It's pleasurable, it's relaxing, and it's comfortable.
The dilemma is in the beginning, babies don't know how to suck on anything.
So as soon as you put a pacifier in, they go,
and it goes about 5 feet from their mouth,
and you'll hear the mother say, he doesn't like it.
How do you know if he likes it? He hasn't tried it long enough.
Keep holding it in his mouth. He'll adjust.
Fingers, guys, you too. Wash your hands first.
Use that finger. They love to suck, and then they'll fall asleep.
Okay? What about the fact that they need to give it up at 3 to 4?
They will. Just don't get on their case.
If you start saying to the kid at 3 to 4,
if you give it out of your mouth, they'll put mustard on their finger.
Get that plug out of your mouth.
The problem is they look at you as if to say,
you know, I'm going to suck on this until I'm 55 years old.
And then you have a dilemma, all right?
You'll find out who wins.
Allowing your baby to suck helps keep her happy,
but sometimes nothing seems to work,
especially at certain times of the day.
Most of us with children call 4 to 8 arsenic hour.
That's when, if it wasn't for Fred Rogers and Sesame Street,
we would probably kill our children.
But those of you that are new in this job, let's tell you why, all right?
About when you have your first baby, they start to cry here.
They kind of go, they're cute, aren't they?
And they go, and you pick them up immediately,
because when babies cry, that's how they talk.
That's how they say, help, I'm bored, I'm lonely, I'm hungry.
I need somebody to pick me up.
My head's getting flat from being in the infant seat all day.
So you pick the baby up, and he goes...
and nestles in, right?
Why does he do that?
I think the baby's saying, oh, thank God, there's a heartbeat.
I had a heartbeat for nine months.
Somehow they expect me to live in a glass bassinet from the minute I'm born.
Then, unfortunately, if you're holding your baby,
someone might walk in and say,
if you keep picking that baby up every time he cries,
he's never going to learn to live on his own.
Oh, I do. You know, I don't want to spoil my baby.
I would like to know how you spoil a baby,
a baby who has no defenses of its very own,
who doesn't know trust, love, or anything yet,
and we're worried about him being independent.
If you can hug this kid and hold this kid on your hip
as long as this baby needs to be held, he'll be fine.
But if you don't do it now, you won't make up for it later.
So all I can say to you psychologically is teach your kids trust.
That means pick them up whenever you want to pick them up.
They're yours, all right?
They don't need to live in glass bassinets.
Carry them around the house.
We all have this hip for a reason.
You know, they kind of hang on.
They kind of hang on this way, too.
Wait until you open their legs up
and you kind of sit them on your hip
or you carry them in the snuglies.
That's important.
Don't you wish people would pick you up when you fell crappy?
Somehow when we get older, we have to ask.
You know, babies don't ask. They get it.
Which is rough for all of us,
because about three or four weeks from now,
this baby's behavior is interpreted very nicely by its mother.
She knows what he wants. She thinks she does.
The problem is two grown-ups living in the same house,
you used to talk about what you needed and wanted, right?
Well, guys, hang on.
Now that she can interpret his nonverbal behavior,
she expects you'll interpret hers.
The dilemma with that is nobody ever knows what everybody wants.
So about three to six weeks from now, you have the looks.
Daddy's going back to work.
Have a good day, honey.
We'll see you when you get home.
We'll be fine.
It all starts, you know?
So this is beginning, okay?
The first three days, the baby doesn't cry much.
But about five or six days, they start to let their presence be known.
What's the matter?
Occasionally, about three to six weeks,
most parents will look at their kid who's crying now for eight hours nonstop
and kind of say,
if you don't, shut up.
You're never having any more brothers and sisters as long as you live.
And you put the little baby in the swing or in the bassinet,
and then the mother just decompensates, falls on the floor, sucks her thumb,
and decides that the police and the social service group are outside
with telescopes ready to book her on child abuse.
Now you may have had the thought.
My concern is don't let it be the deed.
I don't know too many healthy parents who haven't thought about it more than once.
It usually shocks you, though, if you think you should never have those thoughts.
Thoughts don't hurt anybody.
It's deeds that do, all right?
Why are people having thoughts of child abuse about three to six weeks?
Well, if you haven't eaten, slept, or taken care of yourself,
it's real hard to cope with life when you're falling apart
and your brain cells are dripping out of your ear.
I just remember being very stiff and taking her and putting her down on the bed.
And I thought, did Peter see that?
Did he see me not be a good mother?
Did he see me just reject this child and put it on the bed harshly?
And I just felt terrible, but I couldn't cuddle and love this sweet baby.
I was screaming and I didn't want her.
I guess the biggest surprise for us was how difficult it really was to get anything done.
I'm sure that we'll get a little more experience to be able to do three tests at once, I'm sure.
But you just don't do that on the first baby.
And there are things that just sat on the kitchen table
because neither Jen nor I could have time to pick it up and move it to where it's supposed to be.
That really got frustrating for us.
Little things that we're just used to getting done just never got done.
And it took us a while for still adjusting to, as a matter of fact, Sarah's only five weeks old,
to realizing that the house just will not be quite as neat as it used to be.
You don't get blocks of time.
You don't get an hour or two hours to sit down and do your correspondence.
You grab three minutes, you write two lines, and you may not get back to that.
That day, you might wait until the next day to finish writing the note
because you had to put the laundry in or you had to, you know, you might do half the dishes, you might not.
And I think that's a hard, you know, our society is such, you know, you start something, you finish it.
And when you have a new baby, you can't always do that.
Taking care of your baby all day long is hard,
but even harder for many new mothers is deciding about going back to work.
Some women have to go back to the job for financial reasons.
Others go back because they want to, but it's never easy.
Melanie was three and a half months old when I went back to work,
and I felt like something was being ripped away from me.
I really had an anticipated feeling so totally attached to her,
and I just felt numb when I was in the office.
I just felt like I was missing something, that there was something that I could never recapture that was happening,
and I wasn't part of it.
Going back to work is a rough condition because you've got to worry about who's going to watch the kid,
and you have to worry about is he going to miss me when I'm gone?
And they do, but you know, we all survive.
The hard part is that no one told you you'd fall in love with your kid.
It was easy before you were pregnant to say, oh yeah, we'll have a live-in housekeeper,
or we'll put the kid in the daycare, and now all of a sudden you look at this baby and you say, I don't want to leave it.
Nobody could watch my baby but a certified board pediatrician.
So who's going to babysit then?
So all of these things go on in your life.
I can understand people who don't want to stay home and they shouldn't stay home,
but if you are going to make that decision, they're real.
You have days of, God, you know, this is what I went to graduate school for,
and here I am changing duty diapers, and she's got diarrhea, you know, so it's eight times a morning.
It's real, very, very difficult, and I'm still trying to find women to give me that support,
but what I ask for my husband is, okay, you walk in the door, we'll talk about the baby for five minutes,
then let's go watch the news or talk about the Wall Street Journal.
I need that outside stimulation so that I feel that I'm not losing touch with the outside world.
About three to six weeks, what do we do?
Well, daddy's coming home.
He's coming home from work.
Oh, my little Walton family, I've worked so hard, you know, I've been figuratively sucked on all day,
and I can't wait to go home and sit down and read the paper.
Well, here's the mother whose kids started to cry for 14 hours the minute he left this morning.
Your daddy will be home soon.
I can't wait till daddy comes home.
And then daddy walks in the door and mommy says, here, you wanted a kid, you got it.
I'm leaving.
Now she leaves.
Where does she go?
Find a store that's open seven days a week because you need to go seven days a week.
You find a store that you can walk around and you never have to buy anything.
The only dilemma is if you're a nursing mother,
usually that's when you realize you now let down the thought of a baby.
So you're sitting in front of a card aisle and all of a sudden somebody's baby goes,
and you go, and run home dripping wet.
So you come home to the daddy who's standing at the door.
He says, hi, hon.
Do you ever notice it's honey and dear when we're not too happy with each other?
How are you?
Fine.
She's like a new lady.
It's like Jekyll and Hyde.
You know, first time in three weeks, one hour by herself without anybody sucking on her.
So now she says, I'm fine.
How was your day?
He said, fine.
You know, dear, I'm so glad we had a baby.
God, it's made our lives so rich and full.
I really think that, you know, tomorrow I'm going to play golf.
Now, if you don't know about the game of golf, it takes 18 hours to play 18 holes of golf.
So if your friend has never played the sport and is now buying the clubs,
I highly recommend you veto the action.
If he's never run before, he may decide he has to jog.
You'll also find that fathers tend to stay out a little bit about three to six weeks.
And you know what happens?
Your father becomes postpartum.
I don't think we've gone to bed at the same time.
Since she was born?
Since she was born.
What a doubt that you have.
It's just impossible.
Unless we both want to get three hours of sleep for 24.
Just because I have to get up at 6 or 6.30 to go to work with Janet.
And I can sleep a little bit later to 7.30 or maybe to 8.
But that's because she's been up until 2.
And I'm not going to wait up until 2 just so we can actually get in bed at the same time.
That's crazy.
Have you ever heard of a swing-o-matic?
That might be the only way you two talk to each other for the next three months.
When can you put a baby in the swing-o-matic?
Tomorrow's not soon enough.
How does it go though?
It goes by weight.
I would tell you as one who put a five pound nine ounce baby in a swing-o-matic,
wound it up and watched my daughter swing 99 miles an hour.
But it's important that you put something in first.
I constantly live with the fear that she's never going to be okay.
Thank God she's all right.
Talk about neurotic guilt at birth, right?
What happens with the swing is put in a book, put in a quilt.
You've probably got 55 quilts, right?
35 different colors.
You use a different one every day.
Put them in and wind them up, all right?
They kind of go, ah, when you start.
And then you put the little plug in or the little plumb.
And they're, ah, ah, ah.
Now, after a little while, the baby kind of goes,
and he falls asleep.
Now, what are the rules of the swing-o-matic?
Don't touch that kid.
If you touch that baby, you pick him up,
clunk his head on the top of the swing-o-matic.
He thinks he slept for a week and a half,
and you're in the same place you were when you put him in.
The other dilemma people say, but what about if he poops, Gene?
Well, stretch suits.
Poops right in the toes.
It sits there, just wrap it up and keep it hot.
The thing that baby hates is cold poop.
If the poop is hot, he's happy.
It's part of his body.
Okay, moving along now.
What happens with the swing-o-matic on?
You eat your dinner.
You look at each other.
Hi, hon.
Hi.
How you doing?
Fine.
You begin to chew your food,
face to the rhythm of the swing-o-matic,
and then you finally say, I'm losing my mind.
And he says, me too.
But prior to that point, have you talked to each other?
I doubt it.
Have you kissed?
Oh, my God, no.
If we kiss, he might want to do something more.
Oh, God.
Have you noticed, guys, you go in here to hug her?
And she goes, oh, sore nipples.
Don't touch them.
Part of that has to do with the fact that she's scared to death.
If you kiss, you're going to want to do something else.
And she's also feeling a lot of this sense of abandonment.
Not even that.
That's kind of a strong word.
It's that, God, before this kid, we used to talk.
We used to hug.
Now, as soon as he walks in, the baby cries.
He's peeing.
He's pooping.
We never get to talk to each other anymore.
In about three to six weeks, this gets worse.
I don't think we've really talked to each other
other than about her.
A lot of talk about her.
But I think you just have to have a lot of faith in each other
that, yes, eventually things will get back a little bit
to the way they were before she overtook your whole life.
You just have to put a lot of things on hold
until she gains her weight
and all those things you're so worried about.
So I think it's something that really needs to be worked on
and maybe even consciously setting a time aside
that Friday nights, that's what ours is.
It's our sacred time.
We accept no invitations.
We go nowhere.
It's our time.
Hopefully the baby goes down for the night
and we have a bottle of wine.
And it's just, you know, unwrapping with the week.
Sex.
Now, I know we shouldn't talk about sex after children
because you're never going to do it again.
It's important to know also that, you know,
birth control is a key issue after babies.
What happens with sex is nobody talks about it.
We're so aware.
So three to six weeks from now,
the stay-free maxi-pad box is empty.
The father figures, well, we'll make the moves tonight.
What else should I do?
So he kind of goes, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee.
And the mother goes, oh, God.
If we do this, it's going to take a half hour.
The baby's going to have an hour and a half.
And then on the other side of her brains,
she says, you know, really, he's been so good.
He vacuumed, dusty, cleaned, he cooked.
I really should do this.
Well, what does sex for payment for services rendered mean?
Have you talked to each other?
Have you kissed?
How do you make love to somebody's mother?
This is a whole different ballgame.
You know, her body doesn't feel like her own.
She doesn't feel very sexy.
She has these maripage marks of motherhood.
Breasts belong to someone else.
She's dripping from practically every orifice of her body.
And you say to her, honey, you look so good.
And she says, you're lying through your teeth.
So what happens is we have this whole conflict here.
You know, you do look great, ladies.
I can't tell you.
There's something in your eyes that says you are the most
wonderful person in the whole wide world.
You created life, and you're here to talk about it.
Remember that.
Don't ever second-class that.
Remember the first job you ever had?
Weren't the first three months the hardest?
Did you feel like you knew what you were doing,
or were you initiated by fire?
Well, welcome to parenthood.
It's a challenging new job in your life,
and it, too, will take some time to get used to.
You'll never be perfect parents.
In fact, there'll be days that you're not even sure
you'll like this job.
These thoughts don't make you a bad person, though.
In fact, I think they help you get used to it.
In fact, I think they help you realize that you're a normal,
healthy human being who's striving to do the best
they possibly can.
You're going to need to share some of these thoughts,
feelings, and concerns, for it's important.
No one can do it alone.
Remember that the greatest gift that you'll give your son
or daughter will be the gift of their self-esteem.
You want them to feel like they're the best damn kid
in the whole wide world.
But unless you're good to yourself first,
you won't be as emotionally available to these children.
So on that note, be good to yourself.
Remember, as you embark on this bittersweet experience
of postpartum, you were there first.
MUSIC
Ah, see.
They put a little bit of it.
MUSIC