Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast, Episode 613, Being a First-Time Parent.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast, Episode 613.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
We have a website at eslpod.com.
If you go there, you can improve your English even faster by downloading one of the 8-10 page learning guides that we provide for this episode.
It contains a complete transcript of everything I say, as well as lots of other good stuff.
Vocabulary, cultural notes, that sort of thing.
This episode is called Being a First-Time Parent.
It is a dialogue between Ricardo and Zuli.
They're going to be talking about being parents, having a baby for the first time.
Let's get started.
Hello.
Hi, Zuli.
How are you?
Oh, Ricardo, it's you.
I'm doing okay.
How are you?
I wanted to call and congratulate you on the birth of your new baby.
Thanks a lot.
Carla was born three weeks ago, and she was 8 pounds 3 ounces.
That's great.
How does it feel to be a first-time parent?
It's really overwhelming taking care of a newborn.
I'm learning everything from scratch.
Everything from how to breastfeed and bottle feed, to burping her, to putting her to bed, to using a car seat and a stroller.
You sound overwhelmed.
I remember when Adam, our first child, was born.
There were the feedings in the middle of the night and all of those diapers.
Exactly.
I'm exhausted all the time.
In fact, I find myself dozing off at all hours of the day.
I really sympathize with you, but these days will pass quickly and then you'll have such great memories.
Have you had much sleep?
Zully?
Zully?
Ricardo calls Zully on the telephone.
Zuli answers, hello.
Ricardo says, hi Zuli, how are you?
Zuli says, oh Ricardo, it's you, meaning she recognizes who is calling.
I'm doing okay, how are you?
Ricardo says, I wanted to call you. and congratulate you on the birth of your new baby.
Birth is when a new child is brought into the world, when a baby comes out of his or her mother's womb, comes out of her body and begins breathing on its own.
We call that birth.
This is the birth of Zulu's new baby.
Zulu says, thanks a lot.
Carla, the name of her baby, was born three weeks ago and she was eight pounds, three ounces.
It's common for parents to often tell someone about their baby and include how big it was, how much it weighed.
This baby weighed 8 pounds 3 ounces.
I weighed, I think, 9 pounds 4 ounces.
I was a big baby, mostly my head.
Ricardo says, that's great.
How does it feel to be a first-time parent?
First-time means, as you can guess, that it is the first event, the first occasion for this particular thing, in this case for being a parent.
So they are first-time parents.
It could mean that they are going to have more children in the future.
We don't know.
But definitely it means that this is their first baby.
Zuli says it's really overwhelming taking care of a newborn.
Something that is overwhelming, one word, is very strong.
Too strong, too powerful.
Something that makes you feel that you don't have control.
It may be something that confuses you.
If you go to Phoenix Arizona in the middle of summer and I do not recommend it you will be overwhelmed by the heat there.
It is very hot in Phoenix, Arizona in the summertime.
Zuley says that it is overwhelming taking care of a newborn.
Newborn N-E-W-B-O-R-N.
One word is is a baby that has been born very recently, usually within the past month or perhaps two months.
Zuli is saying that her child is a newborn.
She was born recently.
She says, I'm learning everything from scratch.
The expression from scratch S-C-R-A-T-C-H means from the very beginning, without any preparation or any knowledge, in this case.
The term is often used in cooking.
I'm going to make a cake from scratch. meaning I'm not going to use any prepared ingredients.
I'm not going to go to the store and buy a box that says lemon cake on it.
I'm going to get the lemons, get the flour, get the eggs, and so forth.
That is to make something from scratch.
You can use it for anything.
You could make a table from scratch, taking a bunch of wood and putting it together, I guess.
I don't mean I could do that, but you could do that.
And if you want to do that, you can give the table to me because I need a new table here in my room.
Anyway, Zooli is learning everything from scratch, from the very beginning.
By the way, scratch has other meanings in English, very different.
Those you can only find in our learning guide, and a dictionary, and on the web.
But most importantly, in our learning guide.
Zuli says she's learning everything from how to breastfeed and bottle feed, to burping her, to putting her to bed, to using a car seat and a stroller.
Well, these are all common words when talking about taking care of a baby.
Let's begin with my favorite.
Breastfeed.
B-R-E-A-S-T-F-E-E-D.
One word.
To breastfeed, as a verb, means that the mother feeds the young baby...
The end of the breast is called a nipple.
N-I-P-P-L-E.
We also use that same word when we have a bottle of milk that we are feeding the baby with.
That's the other way to feed the baby, to bottle feed the baby.
A bottle, of course, is a small, usually glass container.
Could be plastic, I guess.
In any case, these are the two ways of giving milk to a baby.
One is to breastfeed and one is to bottle feed.
Some people believe breastfeeding is better for the baby.
In any case, Zuli is learning to do both.
She's also learning to burp her baby.
The verb to burp Here means that you take the baby.
So I'm told meaning I don't do this, but you again could take the baby and you very gently, very softly hit the back of the baby after the baby has drunken milk to help the baby push air out of the stomach into his or her mouth.
This usually produces what we would call spit up, S-P-I-T-U-P.
This is something that mothers or fathers will do for their baby after they have been fed with milk.
That's one of the things Zulie is learning how to do.
She's also learning how to put the baby to bed.
To put someone to bed is a phrasal verb meaning to get a baby or a child ready to sleep.
Try to calm him or her until he or she falls asleep.
Sometimes mothers and fathers will move the child back and forth very slowly, gently.
They may sing a song.
We call those songs that you sing to a baby to put them to sleep a lullaby.
L-U-L-L-A-B-Y.
A common lullaby in English is called Lullaby and Goodnight using music from the classical composer Brahms.
Lullaby and Goodnight.
I don't know the rest of the words.
When my mother sang it to me, that's all I needed, and I fell asleep.
Sorry.
Zooli is also learning to use a car seat.
In the United States.
It is the law.
In most states you are required to place your baby in a special I guess we could call it a chair that goes inside the car.
It is to keep them safe in an accident.
So Zooli is learning how to use a car seat and a stroller.
A stroller, S-T-R-O-L-L-E-R, is also called a baby carriage.
Basically, it's... like a small chair that has wheels on it that you can push in front of you.
So if you want to take a walk, you could put the baby in the stroller.
When I was growing up, strollers were very small.
Nowadays, at least here in the United States, you see some parents that have strollers that are like
The size of a small car.
They're huge.
And they put all these things that they think they need for the baby.
It's kind of amazing.
But anyway, getting back to our story.
Zuli is learning to use a car seat and a stroller.
Ricardo says, you sound overwhelmed.
I remember when Adam, our first child, was born.
There were feedings in the middle of the night, and all those diapers.
Feeding, F-E-E-D-I-N-G, a noun, comes from the verb to feed, which means to give food to someone.
In this case, to give the baby milk either from a bottle or, we would say nursing, which is another term referring to breastfeeding.
So there are feedings in the middle of the night.
Young babies wake up in the middle of the night and want to eat.
You could tell them just to wait until morning, but they probably won't be too happy and you probably won't sleep because they'll be crying, you see.
He also talks about all of the diapers they needed for their little child.
A diaper...
D-I-A-P-E-R is a small piece of cloth or more commonly in the US now paper and plastic that is wrapped around the baby's bottom in order to hold in, to catch really their urine, what we would informally call their pee P-E-E.
That comes out the front end.
Out the back end comes what we technically call their feces, F-E-C-E-S.
But for a baby, informally, we would say poop, P-O-O-P, poop.
Isn't this fun?
Zully says, exactly.
She agrees with Ricardo.
I'm exhausted all the time.
To be exhausted means to be extremely tired, typically from doing a lot of physical work.
Zully says, I find myself, meaning sometimes...
At all hours of the day means any time during the day, at different times during the day.
To doze off. usually something that you weren't planning to do.
You just sort of accidentally, if you will, fall asleep because you are so tired.
We might also use the verb to nap, N-A-P.
Zuli says that she finds herself dozing off at all hours of the day.
Ricardo says, I really sympathize with you.
I really understand your problem or your difficult situation.
I feel sad for you.
But, he says, these days, these early days, will pass quickly.
They will not seem like they took very much time.
And then you'll have such great memories.
Memories are the things that you remember.
Ricardo then asks Zuli, have you had much sleep?
And Zuli is sleeping.
She goes, Ricardo says, Zuli, Zuli, trying to wake her up.
I hope you didn't doze off during this episode.
Now we'll listen to the dialogue at a normal rate of speech.
Hello.
Hi, Zuly.
How are you?
Oh, Ricardo, it's you.
I'm doing okay.
How are you?
I wanted to call and congratulate you on the birth of your new baby.
Thanks a lot.
Carla was born three weeks ago, and she was 8 pounds 3 ounces.
That's great.
How does it feel to be a first-time parent?
It's really overwhelming taking care of a newborn.
I'm learning everything from scratch everything from how to breastfeed and bottle feed to burping her, to putting her to bed, to using a car seat and a stroller.
You sound overwhelmed.
I remember when Adam, our first child, was born.
There were the feedings in the middle of the night, and all of those diapers.
Exactly.
I'm exhausted all the time.
In fact, I find myself dozing off at all hours of the day.
I really sympathize with you, but these days will pass quickly and then you'll have such great memories.
Have you had much sleep?
Zooli?
Zooli?
All our scripts here at ESL Podcast are written from scratch by our very own Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2010 by the Center for Educational Development.
