Madonna & Child

So, Madonna, you thought your fans were demanding!

All they did was jump and scream at the top of their lungs while you danced around center stage in your underwear.

Now, guess what? It’s Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon who’ll scream at the top of her lungs and dance around in her underwear.

And you, Madonna, as her mother, will jump.

You thought perhaps you were in control of your life? You thought you were this major intergalactic celebrity? You thought that if you sang, danced or dyed your hair, the world would swoon?

Just wait.

As of 4:01 p.m. Monday, when little Lourdes made her debut at Good Samaritan Hospital, your life changed inalterably. And no matter how many books you read, no matter how much you thought you knew about motherhood, get ready to feel like every other new mother:

“Inadequate and unable to cope,” declared Arlene Eisenberg, mother of three and co-author of the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” series (Workman Books). “Right now, Madonna probably feels more confidence than most of us do. But if she really does take over child care on her own for at least part of the time, all her self-confidence will drain away.”

Get ready to feel like you stepped onstage and forgot every single line or lyric you ever learned.

First-time motherhood is humbling in large part because there’s no way to prepare for it, said Stephanie Marsten, a mother, stepmother and psychologist who not long ago moved her practice from Pacific Palisades to Santa Fe, N.M.

“It’s especially difficult for women who have careers and a strong identification with their work,” Marsten contended. “It’s about getting your priorities really straight. And that can be really difficult”--especially when you have the premiere of “Evita” coming up on Dec. 14.

They’ll be propping you up at news conferences if you suffer from sleep deprivation, the No. 1, most astonishing, nobody-could-have-warned-you surprise feature of having a new baby.

You may have been tired after all those late-night concerts and other nocturnal frolics. Just wait till you finally put your well-coiffed head down on your Porthault pillowcase and little Lourdes--displaying lungs that dwarf the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir--calls out for the tiny-tot version of “room service.”

Just wait until the day--probably just a few weeks from now--you decide it’s really easy to balance work and motherhood; when you say (foolishly), wow, this is really easy, I can be a mother for a few hours a day and a successful working woman the rest of the time.

“Well, that is a widespread fantasy,” said Boston psychologist Tom Cottle, “that motherhood is a job, and that you can do it for an hour or two a day. What no one really knows until it happens is that the instant you become a parent, the second the baby is born, it’s a 24-hour-a-day job. It’s a commitment, and a very profound change in your head and your heart that lasts forever and ever.”

Get ready for fascinating new body geography: lumps and bumps in remarkable new locations--no matter how fabulous your pre-Lourdes shape was. Your once wasp-like waistline, for example--newly expanded to fill your entire living room.

So, get ready to take up hiking, suggested fitness goddess Kathy Smith. The paparazzi will be too out of shape to follow you up the trails.

“Buy a frontpack to put the baby in, so the baby rests on your chest and belly,” Smith advised. “Not only are you bonding, you’re also out there working. The baby adds resistance. It’s like carrying a weight up the hill.”

Get ready for know-it-all authorities--present company excepted--who try to tell you everything about raising a baby.

“Child-rearing experts will come out of the woodwork,” said Santa Monica pediatrician and author Dr. Jay Gordon, the medical correspondent on the ABC “Home” show. Unless you can stay focused on Lourdes’ needs, people will try to convince you to get on with your own life.

“Follow your own instincts,” Gordon recommended, “rather than listening to the experts who tell you what to do.”

Uh oh. TV diva Jane Seymour followed her own instincts after her twins were born in 1995 and her husband began referring to her as “DQ.”

“Not ‘Dr. Quinn,’ ” said Seymour, who stars in a television series by that name. “Dairy Queen.”

Get ready for the judgment day.

For first-time mothers, that’s every day. Take a stroll in the great wide world and arbiters of child-rearing excellence will appear out of nowhere. More than likely, they will gaze in disapproval at Lourdes’ Rolls-Royce perambulator, her Cartier baby rattle, her Prada baby clothes and her Manolo Blahnik baby booties, and inform you that your kid is way past overindulged. These naysayers may even venture this same opinion if they see you cuddling little Lourdes once too often.

“That’s one of the most common things that mothers are warned about, not to spoil your baby,” said Mary Lofton, a spokeswoman for La Leche League International in Schaumburg, Ill. “Our philosophy is in the other direction. Madonna should expect to hold her baby a lot. It’s good for your baby, and it’s good for you.”

Get ready to become an equipment junkie. As a rock star and movie queen, it’s scary to imagine what you might think a Jolly Jump-Up actually is. But soon you’ll be critiquing competing brands. You’ll be staying up nights, reading Baby Emporium catalogs. You’ll find you need not one, but two electric diaper-warmers.

Get ready to have your pre-Lourdes agenda completely rearranged. Get ready to blather for hours about baby food. Get ready to carry a camera with you everywhere, because you don’t want to miss one moment of your daughter’s life. Get ready to collapse into bed with exhaustion you have never before experienced--fatigue that seems curious when all you have done all day is hang out with a puppy-sized, nonverbal creature who hasn’t yet learned to roll over or ask to borrow the car.

Get ready to panic beyond description the first time Lourdes has a tummy ache or head cold. Get ready to sneak into the nursery, just to watch her sleeping.

Get ready to melt when her cries cease as you comfort her, and to metamorphose into Jell-O the first time she smiles at you.

Get ready to worry about electrical outlets, staircases and crib slats: dangers you have never before considered because until this moment, nothing--and no one--was ever this important to you.