The New Father. Armin A. Brott
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you need to decide what to do with it. In this country most people never even see it, and those who do just leave it at the hospital (where it will either be destroyed or, more likely, sold to a cosmetics company—honest). But in many other cultures, the placenta is considered to have a permanent, almost magical bond with the child it nourished in the womb, and disposal is handled with a great deal more reverence. Some have special rituals and believe that if the placenta isn’t properly buried, the child—or the parents, or even the entire village—will suffer some terrible consequences.
In rural Peru, for example, the father is required to go to a far-off location and bury the placenta deep enough so that no animals or people will accidentally discover it. Otherwise, it might become “jealous” of the attention paid to the baby and take revenge by causing an epidemic.
In some South American Indian cultures, they believe that a child’s life can be influenced by objects that are buried with its placenta. Boys’ placentas are frequently buried with a shovel or a pick, and girls’ are buried with a loom or a hoe. In the Philippines, some bury the placenta with books as a way of ensuring intelligence.
But placentas are not always buried. In ancient Egypt, pharaohs’ placentas were wrapped in special containers to keep them from harm. Traditional Vietnamese medicine uses placentas to combat sterility and senility, and in India, touching a placenta is supposed to help a childless woman conceive a healthy baby of her own. And in China, some believe that breastfeeding mothers can improve the quality of their milk by drinking a broth made of boiled placenta.
This sort of placenta usage isn’t limited to non-Western cultures. Even today, in France and other countries, placentas are found in a variety of products, including cosmetics and medicines. And some people even believe that eating some of the placenta (called placentophagy) may help a new mom increase her milk supply and reduce her pain and the risk of developing postpartum depression. There’s no solid scientific proof behind any of that. But one thing is for sure, if your partner chooses to do this, she should stick to her own. Yumm.
Whatever you and your partner decide to do, it’s probably best to keep it a secret—at least from the hospital staff. Some states try to regulate what you can do with a placenta and may even prohibit you from taking it home (although if you really want to, you can probably find a sympathetic nurse who will pack it in a Tupperware container for you). My oldest’s placenta stayed at the hospital, but we stored the younger ones’ in the freezer for a year before burying them and planting trees on top.
Newborn Screenings
If you thought the testing was over with the Apgar test, think again. Even the healthiest-looking babies sometimes have invisible disorders that, if undetected, could stunt their physical and intellectual growth, lead to permanent brain or organ damage, and even cause death. Caught early, most of these disorders can be controlled or even cured. For that reason, your baby will be tested for a number of conditions before you’re allowed to take her home.
There are three types of tests: blood, hearing, and heart.
BLOOD TESTS
In the U.S., about 19,000 babies have a treatable condition that could be picked up by a screening test. Several organizations have pushed for a Recommended Universal Screening Panel (RUSP) that would require routine testing for more than fifty conditions. But for now, each state sets its own standards and depending on where you live, the actual number of required tests ranges from four to more than forty. (Babysfirsttest.org has a complete listing of the screenings required by your state at www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-screening/states.) The good news is that all of those tests can be done from the same sample, a few drops of blood taken from your baby’s heel immediately after the birth.
HEARING TESTS
About 1 in 1,000 healthy babies and 2 in 100 in intensive care units have hearing loss. If the loss is caught during newborn screenings, babies can be fitted with hearing aids that can help prevent speech and language problems. If it’s not caught early, it might not be evident until age two or three and will be far harder to deal with. The tests are safe, quick, and painless; in fact, babies usually sleep right through them.
HEART TESTS
About 9 in 1,000 babies are born with some kind of congenital heart disease. Doctors use a non-invasive test called pulse oximetry to check your baby’s heart rate and the levels of oxygen in her blood. The goal is to flag a group of heart conditions called Critical Congenital Heart Disease (CCHD), which can include abnormal heart rhythms and potentially dangerous structural problems. Caught early, many CCHDs can be treated and babies can lead relatively normal lives.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
“Most people make babies out to be very complicated,” says comedian Dave Barry, “but the truth is they have only three moods: Mood One: Just about to cry. Mood Two: Crying. Mood Three: Just finished crying. Your job, as a parent, is to keep the baby in Mood Three as much as possible.” With just a few days of fatherhood under your belt, you may be inclined to go along with Barry’s summary. But the real truth is that babies’ moods are a bit more subtle.
Babies actually have six clearly defined behavioral states that are apparent within just a few minutes after their birth. In my first few weeks of fatherhood, I found that learning about these six states—which were explained to me by Dr. Marshall Klaus, coauthor of The Amazing Newborn—was absolutely critical to my getting to know my babies. Here’s a summary of the six states, based on Dr. Klaus’s book.
QUIET ALERT
Within the first hour of life, most healthy infants have a period of quiet alertness that lasts an average of forty minutes, and during her first week, she’ll spend about 10 percent of any twenty-four-hour period in this state. Babies in quiet alert mode rarely move—all their energy is channeled into seeing, hearing, and absorbing information about their new world. They can (and do) follow objects with their eyes and may even imitate your facial expressions. That’s when it’ll first hit you that there’s a real person inside that tiny body.
ACTIVE ALERT
In the active alert state, the baby will make small sounds and move her arms, head, body, face, and eyes frequently and actively. Her movements usually come in short bursts—a few seconds of thrashing around every minute or two. Some researchers say these movements are designed to give parents subtle clues about what the baby wants and needs. Others say they’re just interesting to watch, and therefore promote parent-infant interaction. Either way, the active alert state is a great time to do physical things with your baby—we’ll talk about what, exactly, that means in the “You and Your Baby” sections throughout the rest of this book.
CRYING
Crying is a perfectly natural—and for some, all-too-frequent—state (for more on this, see pages 66–70). Your infant’s eyes may be open or closed, her face red, and her arms and legs moving vigorously. (Don’t be surprised if you don’t see any tears: newborns’ tear ducts often don’t function for the first week or two after delivery. When the tears finally do kick in, though, they’ll break your heart.)
Often just picking her up and walking around with her will stop the crying. Interestingly, researchers used to think that babies were soothed by being held or rocked in the upright position. It turns out, though, that what makes them stop crying is not being upright, but the movement that gets them there.
Keep in mind, too, that crying is not a bad thing—it not only allows the baby to communicate but is also a good workout. So if your efforts to calm aren’t immediately successful (and the baby isn’t hungry or stewing in a dirty diaper), don’t worry; chances are she’ll settle down by herself in a few minutes.
DROWSINESS
Drowsiness is a transition state that occurs as the baby is waking up or falling asleep. There may still be some movement, but the eyes will often look dull or unfocused. Leave her alone to drift off to sleep or move into