Rule number one is love your baby. If you understand what love really means, and act accordingly, you will be a good parent. Rule number two is to recognize that every baby is different. You can "over prepare" and read every book ever written on baby-rearing; there's nothing wrong with that, but since every baby is different, you run the risk of "analysis paralysis" when it comes time to make decisions.
My view is that taking care of our offspring is deeply embedded in our genetics: which trait would nature select, the one that instills good child-rearing instincts, or the one that doesn't? Humans have been successfully raising kids for a really long time... primitive man pulled it off in a much less forgiving environment than ours, so it can't be that hard.
We have two tiny people, a toddler and a 10-month old. The other day, my wife, toddler and I were eating, and the baby was amusing herself rolling around on the floor. My wife said, "Are we bad parents for just leaving her on the floor like that while we eat?" I said, "I don't think so. She's fed, her diaper is clean, she's not in any danger, and she's clearly very happy right now. What could we do differently that would make us better parents?"
There is one book I would recommend, however, and that's Dr Karp's The Happiest Baby on the Block. There is a video version you can get (via Netflix if you opt for the DVD service), but I found the book much more meaningful. You might get lucky and not need the book's information. That was true for our first, a wonderfully easy baby. She rarely fussed, and learned to sleep through the night early on.
However, our second put us in the hurt locker for the first six months of her life. She didn't sleep at all during the day, and from about 5:00pm to midnight she was in all-out screaming mode. She was inconsolable unless we did all five of Karp's "Five S's". One of those S's is "swinging", or in our case, bouncing. It's exhausting to constantly bounce and shush a baby, particularly when you're already grossly sleep-deprived. We'd bounce and shush her (swaddled tightly on her side, with her pacifier) until her eyes closed and she seemed to be sleeping... then we'd ever so gently and quietly try to sit down, and within minutes she'd wake up and start screaming again. So we were forced to stand and bounce until she finally wore herself out. We did find that a dustbuster and/or the vent for our stove range were loud enough for her that we didn't have to shush. My wife also found a free white noise app for her phone that worked reasonably well.
We watched the Happiest Baby video before reading the book, and thought the shushing looked ridiculous. You literally put your mouth right up to the baby's ear and go "SHHHHHH" loudly and constantly. But after struggling in vain to console her for days, we were willing to try anything. Reading the book made me feel better about this, as he explained that (in theory) that's what the baby hears in the womb, and a baby's ears aren't developed enough to be damaged---it's loud to you but not to the baby.
Lots of people said their baby's wouldn't fall asleep unless they took them for a drive in the car... ours went straight to air-raid siren screaming the minute she was put in the car seat, and didn't let up until she was taken out of the seat, and all 5 S's were applied.
Hopefully you won't have colic and reflux issues like our second. As terrible as it sounds to say this, while we were going through it, there were many times I regretted having a second. I told my wife, if our first had been like that, I would have been reluctant to have a second. But now that she's outgrown all that, she's a completely new baby, delightfully quick to smile and laugh, and I can't imagine not having her!
I don't know how my wife made it through those days by herself while I was at work. She had the never-sleeping-always-needed-to-be-held baby, and our two-year old. The baby was a hard adjustment for the toddler, as she went from having 100% of mom's attention to probably less than 20%, so she started acting out all the time. Double-whammy.
Two kids isn't twice the work, it at times feels like 10x the work, and on a good day is still at least 2.1x the work.
Going back to the "every baby is different" rule. I don't know what it is, but I've observed that some people have such strong opinions on baby-raising that they border on religious fanaticism. Like with breast-feeding. It's just not possible for some people, and look out if that happens to be you, as the zealots will make you feel like the scum of the earth and "you're just not trying hard enough". With our first, my wife was in tears every time she tried to nurse... and lest you think she's a wimp, she delivered both babies without any meds and not a single tear or even whimper. Our baby had latching problems and my wife wasn't producing enough milk. She kept trying, until the lactation consultant told her to stop because her nipples were infected. But she kept pumping for weeks (eight times/day, in accordance with the baby's feedings), hoping she'd eventually have enough milk. But a whole day's pumping usually only resulted in a total of about an ounce.
We learned to keep our mouths shut when doing things against the grain, such as... letting our first sleep on her stomach. She slept like a champ, as long as she was on her stomach. On her back, she fussed and simply didn't sleep. We felt so bad and were so worried, we bought this fancy AngelCare motion-detecting monitor. My hunch is that preference for sleeping position is inherited, as even to this day, she sleeps on her stomach, positioned exactly like I do when I sleep!
Sorry, I started rambling there. Kids are a life-changing experience, I can't imagine any parent disagreeing with that statement. But it changes your life in a way that is impossible to convey with words; you can't predict it and you won't know it until you experience it, much like love.
Good luck and contrats!
