How Do You Care For a Newborn?

It’s as if I’ve drawn a blank.  The crib and changing table are staring me in the face right now. But all I can think of when I look back at them is that I have completely forgotten how to take care of a baby. I really have no idea.  Three years have passed since my daughter was in the infant to one year-old stage. How did I take care of her? How did I feed her round the clock at night like all the books say you’re supposed to do? I don’t remember nursing her at 12AM then 2AM then 4AM then 6AM. But I must have because here she is.  How do you handle a baby? How do you change its little diaper?  What happens in the first 24 hours at the hospital?  These and millions of other questions are weighing on me like a ton of bricks. My memory bank has been depleted in the baby department. I look at the very young Hasidim Jewish mothers on the subway, all with strollers with babies in them. Some of the mothers barely look over 18 years old. They are jabbering amongst themselves, so confident in their mothering and obvious know-how, that they haven’t a care in the world of the enormous responsibility they possess laying in those strollers.  I see all kinds of young mothers in my neighborhood, going about their daily lives, with baby in tow.  All carefree and in charge. Why do I feel like I am going to need two nannies, a mentor, and a nurse all for my one baby? I’ll tell you why…I don’t know what I’m doing.  All information and experience I once knew has left me as high and dry as the Sahara Desert.  I’m freaking out! You know that saying, “A mother instinctively knows what to do the second the baby is put in her arms.” Oh really? Well, that saying certainly does not apply to me.  There is no way that knowledge is going to enter my brain in the moment after birth.  I have to attain it somehow. Brains don’t just instantaneously absorb things.  What if I’m clueless and no knowledge has been obtained when I get home from the hospital? Oh no. I’m still flabbergasted as to how I did the infancy stage with my daughter. Does anyone else feel this way? Four years is too long. It’s like studying for a science test, yet taking the test four years later. It’s impossible!! No on can do it.  You can’t retain knowledge for four years then regurgitate it back in an instant.  Motherly instinct? Nonsense. I'm not going to get it or have it. I am going to have to plead with the nurses to come home with me and stay with me until baby can walk and talk.  Preferably until baby can talk. Goodness gracious.  I will ask my mom to come live with me. I will be the only 46 year-old second time new mother who ever lived who needs her mother to help her.  This is an embarrassing notion. Forget it. Scrap that idea.  I have to suck it up and hope my brain is permeated with baby care skill through osmosis or divine intervention.  Maybe I can fake my way through and baby won't notice.  Talk about a scary situation.  If that motherly instinct fails me, I'll just refer to my books. I've always been a pretty good student.  Baby Care 101...here I come.