babies

9 posts

Blue Ivy Probably The Least Happy About Kate and Will’s Happy News

(William brushing the dirt off? Lulz) Oh, sure she is. There’s got to be some way to inject some Americanism into the news that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting a little monarch, right? There’s probably no better way than to submit that America’s little bundles of baby pseudo-monarchy are probably giving this whole Royal Baby nonsense the empirical side eye that it rightly deserves, yes? Yes. Continue reading

The Baby-Raising Advice Assault

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Any new parent can tell you that the village certainly seems to think so. When you have children, people come out of the woodwork to offer you unsolicited and often, unhelpful advice.

It starts when you are pregnant. The first thing I remember is someone telling me to spend the money on a high-end digital thermometer. That’s actually not bad advice as babies are squirmy especially when they are sick. Those thermometers are fast and are certainly better than the mercury thermometers that were around when I was a child. They took forever and were next to impossible to read. Continue reading

Should Your Baby be Diaper Free?

One of the questions I constantly ask myself, as a parent, is “How can I make my job harder?”

One of the least appealing traits of babies is their perpetual incontinence. Yes, they are very cute and cuddly but there’s no getting around the fact that they pee and poop everywhere without consideration. They all do it, even the perfect-looking ones. Baby excrement is a problem that affects everyone. Continue reading

Potty Training Boot Camp

everybody poopsLast week, my niece was in town with her newborn son. I spent several hours holding him because I have a long-standing weakness for infants. It was so nice to spend some quiet time with the newest member of our family. Since I was enjoying myself, several people asked if I wanted another baby. I have just enough time to squeeze one more in if I hurry.

The answer is “No”. The truth is that I am weary of monitoring small butts. Every baby is a minimum two year commitment to diapers. Honestly, it’s probably more like three years and that doesn’t include nighttime wetting. My daughter, who I will call Bean, is 2.5 and I am finally seeing the light at the end of the diaper tunnel. I can’t go back. I won’t go back. I can’t bear the thought of an endless pile of diapers on the horizon. Continue reading

Babies Don’t Need As Much Oxygen As You Think Argues Teen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82fzOnq9h9Y

It’s just like getting the fetus to run a marathon while in the womb, it gets a great workout and learns to live on less oxygen.  It’s exactly like practicing for a marathon at high altitudes.  You just need to accept this scientific breakthrough from a reality show “star” on the UK version of Teen Mom, BBC3’s Misbehaving Mums To Be.  SF GateComment.

New Moms at Risk for Depression

I read an article a while back in which pediatricians recommended depression screenings for new moms. After you have a baby, your OBGYN may ask you some questions about post-partum depression. However, in this article, Canadian doctors recommended that pediatricians screen for depression in new moms.

This is a good idea because as you moms know, you are at the pediatrician every 5 minutes, it seems, especially with your first baby. There are all these developmental milestones and issues to worry about and vaccines and lectures and that constant weighing. New babies must constantly be weighed to make sure they are gaining weight, but not too much weight. You probably also visit the pediatrician a lot because as a new mom, you are terrified every time the baby coughs, sneezes, spits up, sleeps through a feeding, poops something weird or does anything new. It’s so stressful because you’re new to the game and convinced that you are doing something wrong. My mom called the pediatrician the first time my brother sneezed. She was in a panic only a new first-time mom can appreciate.

If you don’t have children, you might wonder why a new mom might be depressed. You might be especially confused if the baby was planned. Isn’t this what the mother wanted? Why on earth would the mother of a healthy baby be depressed? Sure, the baby looks more like a hairless rat than a Gerber baby, but she must have known that babies don’t start out very good looking.
Well, for starters, newborns provide feedback vigorously. Sometimes, they scream all the damn time. It’s very easy to anger a newborn. Here are some of the things that anger newborns:

  • Feedings
  • Lack of feeding
  • Gas
  • Noise
  • Quiet
  • Swaddling
  • Rocking
  • Lack of rocking
  • Not being held by Mom
  • Being held by Mom
  • Clothing
  • Nudity
  • Dirty diaper
  • Clean diaper
  • You are breathing too loud
  • Fluctuations in the Dow
  • Changes in atmospheric pressure
  • Changes in formula
  • Changes in the mother’s diet if breastfeeding
  • Changes in the return policy at Target

There are some things about being a new mom that no one can really prepare you for. One is the sensation of a healing episiotomy scar. It’s a feeling like no other. Another is a healing c-section scar which has the added bonus of the judgment you may receive for not having a natural birth. Then there’s the fact that it’s next to impossible to get a shower because your baby, who you thought would be a super-cute baby but looks more like crib larvae, will not stop screaming or pooping.

Other reasons for depression include being trapped in the house, not being able to finish a sentence because you are so unbelievably exhausted, sheer tiredness the likes of which you have never known, and the feeling of betrayal you get when you realize you still need to wear maternity clothes. That put together with the hormone cocktail a new mother receives could spiral anyone into a depression. I know that I, personally, spent 45 minutes in the bathroom crying because someone sent my son a windup toy that play “Hush Little Baby” and it was just the saddest song I had ever heard. Hormones can play mind tricks on you.

I think all new moms should be alerted to how real the possibility of this depression can be because it can be difficult. Even moms who don’t struggle with depression aren’t likely caught up in the state of bliss the media leads you to expect. The first six weeks of motherhood can be brutal. You’re sort of removed from real life and it can make it difficult to see things clearly.

I also, selfishly, wanted to post this because I am dying to hear post-partum stories from other Crasstalkers. I know there are some good ones out there. I’ll even help by embarrassing myself some more:

  • I burst into tears at Thanksgiving dinner and asked my husband if he would ever want to have sex with me again (the baby was 2 weeks old). I’m pretty sure my mother overheard me.
  • I nearly tackled a woman who asked me when I was due. I was holding the baby. I knew I wasn’t losing the weight very quickly but she didn’t have to rub it in.

 

Top image here.

Lessons in Competitive Parenting: Digital Life

Life takes dedication. As we all know, second best is really the first worst. To succeed in our uber-competitive world, where only the strongest survive to get into a decent preschool, it is never too soon to set the standards that others will follow. Thus begins our lessons in competitive parenting.

If you are expecting, or expecting to be expecting some day, you are lucky to gestate in the modern era. Thanks to social media, today’s expectant parents no longer have to suffer through months of anxiety and anticipation in silence. You can gain immediate validation and affirmation online, any time, for your literal navel gazing. Here are some guidelines for making social media work for you during your pregnancy.

Facebook is a must. If you are not currently on Facebook, or quit in disgust when all of your friends posted preggo updates all day, every day, now is the time to activate your account and enact your revenge! Be sure to friend everyone you know, however tangentially. And your professional colleagues want in on this, too. Trust me, everyone wants to share in your joy by watching your burgeoning belly expand, almost in real time. (Hey! There’s an idea…time-lapsed pregnancy videos!)

Be sure to post pictures of your belly each week. If you want to be cool yet servicey, give a nod to Dylan by holding a hand-numbered sign showing your gestational week in each shot.

People will notice if you skip a week, so do not let them down! Added bonus: shortly after each picture posts, your ego and hormones can be boosted with strings of compliments like, “You look great, Mama!” or “Even preggo, you are adorbs!” or “Love the new outtie! Your bellybutton looks so cute poking through your shirt!

While uploading pictures, be sure to update your status. Today, people enjoy sharing their medical records! You’ll get plenty of quality medical advice about how to deal with swollen ankles and constipation from your friends and family and that girl from junior high who got a hot dog stuck in her hoo-hoo.

Don’t hesitate to crowd-source Facebook for product recommendations. Mobilize the armies of mommies online, poised at the ready to share their experiences with the least smothering sling or the crib painted with acceptable levels of lead paint. Uber-parents must get the best of everything and have it all before the baby arrives. Yes, people used to let their babies sleep in dresser drawers, but they also used to change their own oil and talk on phones with cords. This is now!

Start a blog. A blog is imperative. A pregnancy blog is the perfect place to expand in long form on your daily trials and tribulations while waiting anxiously for your uterus to explode. Really, you should have created one before you got pregnant to chart your attempts at conception, but it isn’t too late to start now. Use it to coordinate your multi-state, multi-event baby showers, guest lists, and gift registries. And while there are no limits to what you write about, keep in mind that most pregnancy blogs take one of two thematic approaches:

OMG! What is happening to my body and my life?!, or
I am so blessed to have the perfect family, spouse, job, house, life, and soon-to-be baby.

Twitter is perfect for pre-borns. Just because they aren’t free of the womb, babies should not be restricted from tweeting. Do sign up for a Twitter account in the baby’s name or come up with something really cute and creative, like BabyDouche. That way, your baby can tweet delightful missives from the womb: “Gross! I may need therapy. It was kind of dark and mostly muffled, but I’m pretty sure I felt ‘it.’” If you tweet as yourself, you should give a daily pregnancy update, two or three on sonogram days. Remember: moderation is out! There is no such thing as over-sharing.

Email is not totally over yet. It may be a dying art, but there is some value in securing an email account for your pending spawn ASAP. If your top choice of name is not available at Gmail, you can tweak the spelling of the child’s name or use another middle initial to get the right email address. Your child will have to live with this email address for life – it is important to lock it down now.

YouTube. Make a channel for your pregnancy videos. While you can’t upload actual birth videos, you can start making a digital scrapbook of clips of You! Being Pregnant! If you’re lucky, you’ll go viral with a hilarious video of your water breaking during your prenatal tap dancing class. Shuffle-toe-tap-swoosh!

Our lives will be lived out loud and online! Dive in, pre-parents! What could possibly go wrong?