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    I remember feeling almost completely overwhelmed when we brought our firstborn son, Joshua, home from the hospital. We placed our new baby in the car seat for the first time, praying that we were buckling him in correctly. I drove home from the hospital at a snail’s pace—miraculous, for me. My wife was in the back seat, just to keep an eye on things. So far, so good.
    When the little guy entered our house, his tiny face suddenly corrugated into annoyance. He started screaming. We changed his diaper. Still he screamed. My wife fed him. He took one or two gulps, then resumed screaming, tried to wiggle out of my wife’s arms, tried to get away. This didn’t happen in the hospital. Were we doing something wrong? I held him. My wife held him. Eventually, he calmed down. Then he seemed to go to sleep. We were so relieved.“We can do this”, we kept telling ourselves. It was late, and we decided to follow his lead. No sooner did our heads hit the pillow than Joshua started crying again. My wife got up, fed him, then handed Josh to me. I burped
him, changed him, laid him back down. He was calm and settled, and we went back to bed. I didn’t even get to feel the warmth of the sheet before the crying and screaming resumed. My wife was exhausted, recovering from a 21-hour labor, in no shape to help. I got up, held the baby, then set him back into his crib. He calmed down. Success! I crept back to bed. I got only as far as the pillow before the crying began again. I tucked my head under the blankets, hoping it would stop. It didn’t. What was I supposed to do?
    This bewildering routine, and my reactions to them, recurred day after day. I had deep feelings for my son—always will—but I wondered at the time what ever made me decide to have a baby. I had no idea that something so wonderful was also going to be so hard. I learned a difficult but important lesson: Once a kid comes into the world, the calculus of daily living coughs up new equations. I am good at math, but I was no good at this. I had no idea how to solve these problems.
    For most first-time moms and dads, the first shock is the overwhelmingly relentless nature of this new social contract. The baby takes. The parent gives. End of story. What startles many couples is the excruciating toll it can take on their quality of life—especially their marriages. The baby cries, the baby sleeps, the baby vomits, gets held, needs changing, must be fed, all before 4 a.m. Then you have to go to work. Or your spouse does. This is repeated day after day after ad nauseam day. Parents want just one square inch of silence, one small second to themselves, and they routinely get neither. You can’t even go to the bathroom when you want. You’re sleep-deprived, you’ve lost friends, your household chores just tripled, your sex life is nonexistent, and you barely have the energy to ask about each other’s day.
    Is it any surprise that a couple’s relationship suffers?
    It’s rarely talked about, but it’s a fact: Couples hostile interactions sharply increase in baby’s first year. Sometimes the baby brings a hormone-soaked honeymoon period. (One couple I know constantly
quoted Tagore to each other: “Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man!”) Even then, things quickly deteriorate. The hostility can be so severe that, in some marriages, having a baby is actually a risk factor for divorce.
    Why do I bring this up in a book about baby brain development? Because it’s serious for the baby’s brain. We learned in the Pregnancy chapter how exquisitely sensitive a baby in the womb is to outside stimuli. Once baby leaves his comfortable, watery incubator, his brain becomes even more vulnerable. Sustained exposure to hostility can erode a baby’s IQ and ability to handle stress, sometimes dramatically. An infant’s need for caregiver stability is so strong, he will rewir e his developing nervous system depending upon the