The Health of a Fetus Example Essay

In the warmth of daylight, as I held our brand-new first child, the night before seemed far away. It was the day after we brought Bess home from the hospital — her insurance-mandated 48-hour stay had expired all too quickly — and it was time for my wife and me to begin our new role as parents.The Health of a Fetus Example Essay

Bess was born two weeks early. In the hospital she was still fatigued by the ordeal of birth and easily calmed. A soothing caress, a few words in a deep voice or, more practically, her mother’s breast were all that were needed to settle her down to sleep. This is going to be simple, I thought, as I looked forward to being the father of the mythical easy baby.

But her first night home, when our new family was, at last, on its own, was an entirely different matter. Although placid and content all day, once midnight rang out, a high-pitched crying began that abated only briefly at unpredictable moments and would not cease completely until well after dawn had broken.

While I am subject to all of the foibles of new fatherhood, like the rest of this fortunate segment of the population, I am also a pediatrician and the author of a baby care advice book. The advice book, however, was written several years ago, while I was still a bachelor without children.

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Like countless pediatricians, child psychologists and child care experts before and since, I filled hundreds of pages with advice for parents on topics as diverse as breast-feeding and walking. What’s the best way to burp a baby? All you need do is turn to Page 68. How do you hold a newborn? The answer, my friend, can be found on Page 57. How do you bathe a baby? Now there’s an essay worth reading and committing to memory, Pages 24 to 27.

During those evenings when I wrote my baby care book, after a decade of practice as a pediatrician, all of my advice about the health and behavior of babies seemed to make perfect sense.The Health of a Fetus Example Essay

Alas, during the long hours of our baby’s first night when singing, frequent diaper changes, attempts at feeding and a host of new tricks my wife and I invented on the spur of the moment all failed to end Bess’s relentless caterwauling, the words that echoed in my mind were, What was I thinking when I wrote that stuff?

This is not an inadequacy of my book alone. A brief review of baby care books over the last century shows that we experts change our minds and opinions with a rapidity that would confuse even the most astute parent. In the early 20th century, pediatricians urged toilet training by six months of age and feeding schedules better suited for the trains at Grand Central than the average infant.

But rapid and often 180-degree changes in baby care are not confined to the past. Witness, for example, recent changes in how we put babies down, on their backs, to avoid sudden infant death syndrome or how we discipline toddlers, say, with ”time out” instead of paddles.