You listen to advice from your parents, parents-in-law, doctors or friends.  Often the information is contradictory, leaving you more confused than before – choose one person you trust and stick to their advice.  Trust yourself as well – draw on your own experience as a child.

Books and other people also tells you that you should feel instant love for your child but for many parents this doesn’t happen overnight.  It takes time for this love to grow.  It also seems that everyone expects us to know how to parent, how to feed the squealing and squirming baby and a whole lof of other things.

For the new parent parenting is a new experience – you can’t expect to know everthing.  Don’t feel disappointed in yourself or frightened by your feelings and your baby.  Ask for help and give yourself time to adjust.  Many families are very supportive, especially if it's the first child.  In this case the grandparents on both sides play a very important role.

You may also feel that your partner is unable to care for the baby.  You feel he will drop it or damage it in some way.  Just as you need to learn, so does he.  Give him an opportunity to learn so that he can become involved in parenting and not feel like an outsider.

Becoming a parent may change your relationship with your partner.  You may feel that the baby takes up all your time and energy,  you may feel exhausted by continuous interrupted sleep, overwhelmed by the demands and wrapped up in your new baby.  While you are so enthralled with your baby,  it may be hurtful and confusing to realize that your partner may not be, and that he seems to be withdrawining from you.  He may however be feeling excluded and pushed out by your involvement with your baby.  Share your feelings, spend time together and build your parenting team.

For the new parent who has given up work and involvement outside the home, being at home may be boring, unchallenging, limiting and lonely.  You may need more from your spouse but you push him away excluding him from family life.  Both of you are left unhappy.

After the birth of your baby, your sexual relationship may change.  You may feel differently about yourself.  You are now a mother and sex allowed, it may feel as if a third person, the baby, is in your relationship.  Intercourse may be painful, you may be too exhausted, you may fear getting pregnant again, you may not like your changed body and your breasts may be painful and full of milk.  All these things may be difficult for both of you.  Usually families have rules and regulations on how they handle these problems.

Here are some guidelines that will help you adjust to the new arrival and help you to build your parenting partnership:

• Discuss your ideas, your needs and what you want with your partner, listen to each other and arrive at joint decisions.
• Make sure your relationship is stable and strong.  Plan beforehand how you are going to keep your relationship alive and growing. 
• Spend time together, give yourself a break from parenting, allow yourselfs time out to play and enjoy your sexual relationship.  Parenting is just one of the several roles you envisage to share for life.  Some of these roles are:  husband and wife, in the legal, social, emotional or religious sense; financial/economic partners, sexual partners, friends, lovers.  These roles need not to be put aside.  Parenting can take a much shorter time of your lives than each of them.
• Discuss the changes in your life style.  The baby will not automatically fit in with you – you will have to make changes to accommodate the baby.
• Discuss how it feels to lose your freedom and independence, career, the home you previously had for just the two of you, the added financial responsibility.
• Discuss the number of children you plan to have, whether you are disappointed about the sex of your baby.
• Talk about how you will bring up your children;  how will you discipline them:  which schools will they attend; what religion will they adapt and what you expect from them.
• Talk about your own feelings about being a new parent, your new roles and how you will share them, what do you expect from each other?

The best gift you can give your children is united parents, committed to each other, committed to the relationship or marriage and committed to your children. .