Close your eyes tightly. This is in case the doctor takes it into his head to show you the placenta, which is a highly unattractive object that comes out close on the heels of the baby. In the old days, when people were decent, the placenta was disposed of quickly and quietly and was never talked about in polite society. But now people bandy it about openly in public, as if it were a prize-winning bass.

While the obstetrician is finishing up, the pediatrician will wrap your baby in a blanket and hand it to you so that you can marvel at the miracle of birth and everything. My only warning here is that you should not hold your baby too long, or you will become “bonded” to it and have to be tugged apart by burly hospital aides.

A common fear among new parents is that, as a result of a mix-up in the nursery, some kind of terrible mistake will be made, such as that they’ll wind up taking home Yasser Arafat’s baby. This fear is groundless. When a baby is born, a hospital person immediately puts a little plastic tag around its wrist with the words “NOT YASSER ARAFAT’S BABY” printed on it in indelible ink. So whichever baby you wind up with, you can be sure it isn’t his.

Maternity ward visitors are an excellent source of amusement, because they always feel obligated to say flattering things about newborn babies, which of course look like enormous fruit fly larvae. One fun trick is to show your visitors somebody else’s baby. “She definitely has your eyes!” your visitors will exclaim. For real entertainment, have the nurse bring you a live ferret, wrapped in a baby blanket. “She’s very alert!” your visitors will remark, as the ferret lacerates their fingers with needle-sharp teeth.

As long as possible. For one thing, as long as you’re in the hospital you can wear a bathrobe all day. This means you won’t have to face up to the fact that even after expelling the baby and all the baby-related fluids and solids, you still have hips the size of vending machines from all the Mallomars you ate back when you thought you were going to be pregnant forever.

For another thing, the hospital employs trained professional personnel to change the baby’s diapers, etc., so all you have to do is lounge around in your bathrobe looking serene and complaining about the food. If you go home, you’ll have to take care of the baby and confront the fact that you did not once clean behind any of the toilets during the last four months of your pregnancy because you couldn’t bend over.

The hospital personnel will try to make you leave after a couple of days, but all you have to do is waddle off to another room and plop down on the bed. There are so many comings and goings in a maternity ward that it will be several days before they catch on to you and try to make you leave again, at which time you can just waddle off to another room. You can probably keep this up until your baby starts to walk unassisted from the nursery to your room at feeding time.

A good way to pass the time while you’re in the hospital is to argue loudly with your husband about what to name the baby. You should get started on this as soon as possible, because both of you are likely to have strong views. For example, he may want to name the baby “John,” after a favorite uncle, while you may hate “John” because it reminds you of a former boyfriend, not to mention that the baby is a girl.

There are some names new parents should avoid altogether. You shouldn’t name a boy “Cyril” or “Percy,” because the other boys will want to punch him repeatedly in the mouth, and I can’t say as I blame them. And you shouldn’t give a girl’s name a cute spelling, such as “Cyndi,” because no matter how many postgraduate degrees she gets she will never advance any further than clerk-typist.

In recent years, it has become fashionable to give children extremely British-sounding names, such as “Jessica.” I think this is an excellent idea. Despite the fact that Great Britain has been unable to produce a car that can be driven all the way across a shopping mall parking lot without major engine failure, Americans think that anything British is really terrific. So I recommend you give your baby the most British name you can think up, such as “Queen Elizabeth” or “Big Ben” or “Crumpet Scone-Hayes.”

The hospital stay is a good time for you, as new parents, to share some quiet moments together listening to the woman on the other side of the curtain discuss her bowel movements with her mother via telephone. This is also a time for you to marvel at your baby’s incredibly small feet and hands and to reflect on the fact that this is a real human life, a life that you have created, just the two of you; a tiny, helpless life that you are completely responsible for. Makes you want to hop right on a plane for the Azores, doesn’t it? I mean, what do the two of you know about being responsible for a human life? The two of you can’t even consistently locate clean underwear, for God’s sake!

Mother Nature understands this. That is why she has constructed babies so that even the most profoundly incompetent person, even a person who takes astrology seriously and writes angry, semiliterate letters to the television station when it changes the time at which it broadcasts “Family Feud,” can raise babies successfully. All a newborn baby really needs is food, warmth, and love, pretty much like a hamster, only with fewer signs of intelligence.

So don’t worry; you’ll do fine. Some day, when your child has grown into a teenager and gotten drunk and crashed your new car into the lobby of the home for the aged during the annual Christmas party, you’ll look back on the hamster era and laugh about how worried you were.

In the next chapter, we’ll talk about how laughably easy it is to take care of a newborn baby, provided you don’t do anything else.

Finally will come the big day when the hospital authorities order the wife to leave, and the two of you take your new baby home. There is nothing quite like the moment when a young couple leaves the hospital, walking with that characteristic new-parent gait that indicates an obsessive fear of dropping the baby on its head. Finally! It’s just the three of you, on your own!

This independence will last until you get maybe eight feet from the hospital door, where you’ll be assaulted by grandmothers offering advice. The United States Constitution empowers grandmothers to stop any young person on the street with a baby and offer advice, and they take this responsibility very seriously. If they see your baby without a little woolen hat, they will advise you that your baby is too cold. If your baby has a hat, they will advise you that your baby is too warm. Always they will offer this advice in a tone of voice that makes it clear they do not expect your baby to survive the afternoon in the care of such incompetents as yourselves.

The best way to handle advice from random grandmothers is to tell them that you appreciate their concern, but that you feel it is your responsibility to make your own decisions about your child’s welfare. If that doesn’t work, try driving them off with sticks. Otherwise, they’ll follow you home and hang around under your windows.