Try not to expect too much of yourself when you first take your baby home from the hospital. However normal your delivery, you'll need some help and you're entitled to it!You certainly shouldn't have to cope on your own on Day 2!You'll need practical help from someone who'll run your household and take care of your physical needs, and you'll need emotional help from someone who'll pour tender loving care into YOU, while you pour it into the baby.Maybe the baby's father can be home for a couple of weeks and do all of that, while the three of you cement yourselves into a family. If he has to work, he still is the person to give you emotional support, but you'll need someone else for the practical part.Your mother or mother-in-law may be ideal, but not if you feel you'll have to treat her as a guest, or let her overwhelm you with advice on infant care. You need someone who'll wash the kitchen floor, while you learn your own way around your baby.Make sure you've also got back-up from a pediatrician you know you can reach, night or day, if you're suddenly anxious about the baby's well being.

Penelope Leach, Ph.D., is one of the world's most respected (and best-loved) developmental child psychologists. She is most widely known for her best-selling books on child development and parenting. They include Babyhood, Children First: What Society Must Do -- and Is Not Doing -- for Our Children Today, the classic Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age Five (now in a new edition for a new generation), and Your Growing Child: From Babyhood Through Adolescence.