For all the new parents who...

For all the new parents who wondered why babies don’t come with instruction manuals, Lanie Carter has written a how-to parent book. A mother of four children and more than 40 foster babies, she found motherhood to be second nature. Carter, 64, is affectionately called the “professional grandmother” at Scripps Memorial Hospital because she has consoled and guided the new parents of more than 20,000 babies in her job as new family counselor. Author of “The Miracle Year,” released in April, the La Jolla resident was interviewed by Times Staff writer G. Jeanette Avent and photographed by Marc Yves Regis.

Before I became a professional grandmother, I had never worked outside the home. I went right from college to marriage and four little ones.

My husband, Bill, and I were also foster parents. When my husband decided we had enough children of our own, we decided as a family to take in these newborn foster babies. So we had close to 40 foster babies, one at a time over a 10-year period. We kept them for anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months depending on when they were adopted.

After my husband, Bill, passed away, I still loved babies but after 27 years of marriage, there were just too many reminders for me to stay at home. It was a very difficult time for me and I had a friend who was a pediatrician and he suggested that I work in the office for a couple of days a week just to get me out of the house.

I worked at his pediatric office with three doctors for four years. I started doing classes on things expectant parents needed to buy and the common-sense types of things that a grandmother would tell them if a grandmother were there. That’s how I started the program.

I felt there was a need for parents to be able to call somebody who was not a doctor but who was knowledgeable and non-threatening. I wrote the proposal for the program at Scripps in 1977 because I felt hospitals in general were delivering babies and sending parents home and that was it. There was really no teaching going on.

Everybody who is expecting a child wants to do their best for their child but they just don’t know how. Many of the new parents didn’t have any idea what kind of clothing to buy for a baby, how to find a pediatrician, or what books were current, so my first class was called “Getting Ready for Baby.” It’s one I still do and it packs the hospital auditorium twice a month with more than 100 people each time.

We just talk about the changes in the family and what happens to a couple when they become a family. As much as you look forward to it and it’s wonderful, it’s a lot of work. It changes your relationship, usually for the better if you’re prepared, but for the worse if you’re not. It takes a lot of energy, especially if the mother is going back to work.

In my day, you didn’t have to prepare families because children were absorbed into the extended family. The baby was born and the grandmother was down the street and the sister was close and the neighbors all had children, so you just didn’t have to think about it. But with Mom and Dad going back to work, there are questions about day care for a 6- to 8-week-old infant, and questions about who’s going to do the marketing and who’s going to get up in the middle of the night with the baby. You’ve got to prepare emotionally--and for the practical part, too.

The first thing I get them to do in my class is to guess how many diapers they’ll change in the two years before the baby is potty trained. They’re astonished when I tell them that between the two of them, they’ll be changing about 6,000 diapers.

From the beginning, new parents loved the classes and the fact that I had a 24-hour warm-line. I call it a warm-line because a hot line is for emergencies and a warm-line is just for information. It’s a line that nurtures. It’s for mothers and dads crying out for someone who can soothe them and make them feel they are adequate parents. It’s very hard with the first newborn without the extended family.

At Scripps, the average age for a first-time mother is between 31 and 32. We have now seen many, many first-time mothers in their late 30s and early 40s. These are mothers who are establishing careers first. In 1978, I’d say maybe 30% to 40% of the mothers were out in the work force, but now we’re up to around 70%. That probably is the biggest change since I started the program. It’s really a whole new society and it’s harder to have children today. There’s just too many other things that are happening in their lives.

I think there is more and more emphasis being put on trying to re-establish a good strong family unit in our society. But you’ve got to strengthen the family before it becomes a family. You’ve got to get couples to understand the importance of being a family and the work it takes to stay a family and what it means to a child to be able to grow up in a stable family. I just hope that what I do really makes a difference.