THIS IS THE BOOK that I wish I had when my first baby<br >was born in 1968. I was then barely twenty years old and<br >had no experience with babies. My mother was 5，000<br >miles away， and my sailor husband， who had been over-<br >seas for the last six months of my pregnancy， returned<br >home just a week before our baby s birth.<br > I was so naive that when someone mentioned adding<br >rice cereal to a bottle of formula， I wondered to myself<br >how the little grains of rice fit through the nipple openings，<br >and breathed a sigh of relief that I was breast-feeding. The<br >day I took my son home from the hospital I worried at<br >length about how to remove his pullover T-shirt without<br >injuring his head. His routine bath was a daily ordeal that I<br >postponed for the slightest excuse.<br > Having read that a newborn slept up to eighteen hours a<br >day， I planned to resume my heavy course load at the<br >university a week after delivery， fully expecting to have<br >ample time to maintain my schedule. Instead， I seemed to<br >spend eighteen hours each day just looking after one small<br >baby， every aspect of whose care was foreign to me. My<br >only reassurance was voiced by a matronly neighbor who<br >promised， "The first one lives through anything." Miracu-<br >lously， he did.<br > Over the next seven years， I finished college， graduated<br >from medical school， completed a pediatric residency， and<br >gave birth to four more children. Most pediatricians have<br >their own first child well into their medical training， and<br >thus can t really identify with the concerns of typical new<br >parents. <br >