What to Do When You Have a Baby

"So here you are with your eggs in one basket.  What are you going to do about it?  Well, enjoy yourself!  Enjoy being thought important.  Enjoy letting other people look after the world while you are producing a new one of its members.  Enjoy being turned-in and almost in love with yourself, the baby is so nearly part of you.  Enjoy the way in which your man feels responsible for the welfare of you and your baby.  Enjoy finding out new things about yourself.  Enjoy having more right than you have ever had before to do just what you feel is good.  Enjoy all sorts of womanly feelings that you cannot even start to explain to a man.  Particularly, I know you will enjoy the signs that gradually appear that the baby is a person, and that you are recognized as a person by the baby.

Enjoy all this for your own sake, but the pleasure which you can get out of the messy business of infant care happens to be vitally important from the baby's point of view.  The baby does not want to be given the correct feed at the correct time so much as to be fed by someone who loves feeding her own baby.  The baby takes for granted all things like the softness of the clothes and having the bath water at the right temperature.  What cannot be taken for granted is the mother's pleasure that goes with the clothing and bathing of her own baby.  If you are there enjoying it all, it is like the sun coming out, for the baby."

-D.W. Winnicott, The Child, The Family And The Outside World (Classics in Child Development)