Wine-ables

So I woke up on the couch at about 4:30 am this morning with a half eaten box of cheddar bunnies in my arms and a sip of red wine left in my glass. It was one of “those” kind of nights. I was on day 5 of being solo with the kids and maybe it was the lack of adult interaction that triggered me to drink an entire bottle of wine by myself or could have been because I had been puked on, pooped on and smothered in snot all day! Either way, there I was into glass #2 and I needed something to go with it. Since we don’t keep any snacks in the house for anyone over the age of 6 and, thanks to my latest clean eating craze, there was nothing in the cabinets that didn’t take more than 30 minutes and a blender to assemble, to the kids' snack drawer I went!! My wild Saturday night on the couch in my stretchy pants gave inspiration for today’s post.

Just because you no longer have time to put together a proper charcuterie board, you don’t have to lose the essence of class!  Fellow mother, and Certified Specialist of Wine, Elizabeth Slack worked with Parent Proof to expertly pair real life scenarios with your children’s snacks and the best wine. You’re welcome!!

Which Game of Thrones parent are you?

Daenerys Targaryen: POSITIVE PARENTING

If you are like Daenerys, you can look past your child's scaly skin and dragon breath and still see a future of wonderful possibilities. You strive to focus on how they can grow their abilities instead of dwelling on the things or people they have mistakenly set on fire. Positive parenting is about supporting children via guiding, mapping out, and brainstorming . . . with an eye on world domination. 

"Everyone who isn't us is an enemy"

Cersei Lannister: EXTREME ATTACHMENT PARENTING

While there can be healthy attachment parenting relationships, Cersei Lannister takes it to the extreme. In her approach, the parent is more attached to their children than the children are to their parent, and yearns for them to respond to the parent's emotional needs over their own. This unhealthy dynamic is often demonstrated when the parent keeps the child up past a reasonable bedtime or forces the child to serve as the parent's puppet regent on the Iron Throne. If you find yourself identifying with Cersei's parenting style in any way, place your baby in a box and leave him outside the nearest grocery store. We will all be safer for it. 

“You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your halls on a cold night.”

Tywin Lannister: DETACHMENT PARENTING

The opposite of attachment parenting, detachment parenting places sole focus on the parents' goals and achievements. Children are simply a means to carry on your family name until you can find a way to attain immortality. While your kids may spend their childhoods trying to win your love, you will pay the ultimate price in the form of therapy bills or being disemboweled by a cross-bow, so you may want to reconsider this approach before it's too late.

"Winter is coming."

Ned Stark: UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING

The King of the North was a model unconditional parent and showed his children and his bastard unyielding love and compassion. You believe your children can actually become people who can do good in the world and you are supportive of their interests no matter what they are and how they differ from your own. This approach can result in strong-willed and independent children, but it can also result in your beheading.

"I will not be a page in someone else's history book."

Stannis Baratheon: CONDITIONAL PARENTING

The conditional parent is all about loving his/her child when it's convenient and or makes them look like they have a soul. In short, this parenting style says "I love you, but if I even FEEL like I'm not going to get my promotion at work, I will END you as a sacrifice to whatever gods we're believing in this week." Advice for children of these parents--hide the matches.

"If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you'll be treated as a mad dog."

Roose Bolton: SLOW PARENTING

Slow parenting allows the child's talents to evolve over time and teaches them to approach life as a journey instead of a destination. "Slow" in this case refers to living in the moment as opposed to looking into the future or seeing things as results oriented. Children of these parents tend to be adventurous and free-spirited. Lord Bolton probably thought it was a sign of "creative thinking" when his bastard Ramsay killed the family raven at age 5 and painted the castle walls with its blood.  Slow-parented kids do not feel the pressure to bend to societal norms because their parents have allowed them to evolve into the special, sociopathic snowflakes they were always meant to be, fostering their homicidal tendencies and embracing their lack of empathy or concern for human life with unwavering support and love. 

Night's King: SPIRITUAL/HOLISTIC PARENTING

The spiritual/holistic parent is focused on appreciating that which IS and being connected to everything in the NOW. The Night's King believes in family, and he raises every frozen and deceased member of his clan and organizes them into a united front. His long, cold stares and a powerful work ethic motivated by a hunger for the flesh of the living inspires his spawn to march towards the unknown as a strong family unit. 

Written by: Alice

The Lazy Mom's Guide to VBAC

As Parent Proof’s tens of loyal readers may recall from my riveting birth story, my first child was born via emergency C-section due to extreme decelerations of his heart rate during a slow-to-progress labor. After I was stitched up and stapled shut and drugged out and returned to my postpartum room to groggily process the both prolonged and sudden arrival of my son, I had two successive thoughts: 1) What the F just happened? And, 2) I’m pretty sure I never want to do that again.

So began my journey to the birth of my second child via VBAC, which stands for “vaginal birth after Cesarian.” VBAC is one of the many topics that has swung on the pendulum of pregnancy advice from one extreme to the other and back again over the past three decades, and thus the mere mention of a VBAC gives total strangers the right to maintain very strong opinions about your uterus.

The primary controversy surrounding a VBAC is that it carries a small risk (about 1% according to the NIH) (and here is the actual NIH publication in case you are super thorough like that) that the uterus will tear along the previous C-section scar during labor or delivery, putting the mother at risk for serious blood loss and the baby at risk for heading out the wrong exit and suffering from oxygen deprivation and even death (risk of death is <0.5%). It all sounds pretty cataclysmic, thus raising the question as to why any woman would bother just for the sake of a vaginal birth that will probably result in a lifetime of peeing herself a little bit every time she sneezes. It turns out that a pregnant woman has at least a 1% chance of encountering any serious complication associated with childbirth. Having a baby is a dangerous business, but a catastrophic uterine tear that results in harm to the baby is one of the least likely selections in the grab-bag of scary shit that can go wrong. Major complications during a planned repeat C-section are also rare, and in my opinion, a woman should have a VBAC if she wants one, and she should have a repeat C-section if she wants one, and the Shrill Harpies of the Internet should keep the focus on their own vaginas and worry less about everyone else’s.

The NIH data on VBACs cited above is relatively new, and the medical profession is second only to the Republican party in the speed with which it adapts to updated scientific information, thus for those of us who want a VBAC, it can still be a bit of an uphill battle. I did my research and studied all of the advice Google had to offer, yet in the end I basically did everything wrong and managed to have a successful VBAC anyway. Just in case someone else out there is interested in having a VBAC but is also too lazy to be truly proactive about it, I thought I would share all of the ways you can screw things up and still end up pushing a baby out of your vagina like you’ve always dreamed.

 Tips for Having a VBAC that I Totally Ignored And Still Had a VBAC

• Find a Supportive Healthcare Provider: I was at my 6-week postpartum appointment after my C-section when I first mentioned to my OB that I might want to try for a VBAC if I ever got pregnant again. Her initial response was: “There’s no easy way to get a baby out. You either ruin your vagina or you ruin your belly, and you’ve already ruined your belly.” I’m surprised they don’t have that embroidered on a pillow in the waiting room. Given the internet’s absolute insistence that I find a pro-VBAC provider regardless of whether that person is a physician or a large animal vet, I should probably have spent the early weeks of my second pregnancy interviewing new doctors. However, I felt like my obsession with having a VBAC needed some counter-balance from someone whose primary interest was not so much in fulfilling my notions of maternal empowerment but rather in getting me and my child through humankind’s most arduous natural transition as safely as possible, so I stuck with my OB despite her penchant for describing childbirth like a scene from a George RR Martin series.

• Choose a VBAC-Friendly Hospital or Birth Center: The hospital where I delivered both babies (and where my brothers and I were born) has about a 33% C-section rate, so it probably wouldn’t fit ICAN’s criteria for “VBAC-friendly.” However, given my love for in-room food delivery and hydrocodone, there was no way I was having this baby at home, and the most popular midwife group in my area only has privileges at a local medical center known primarily for its willingness to overlook mandatory reporting for gun-shot wounds, so once again I decided to go with the devil I knew.

• Hire a Doula: Extreme pain makes me act like a rabid wolverine caught in a bear trap—there is no amount of money I could pay a stranger to put up with that.

• Have an Unmedicated Birth: I’m pretty sure I would be divorced and in prison if I had attempted an unmedicated birth. My doctor told me that she strongly preferred that I get the epidural in case I did have a uterine tear and needed to get to surgery immediately, and I was all, "don’t throw me in that briar patch, how soon can I get the needle?" My labors are long and my uterus has a flare for the dramatic—it likes to act like it’s going to expel the baby on the bathroom floor from the first contraction, while my cervix forgets to set its alarm and oversleeps the whole affair by 10 to 12 hours. By the time I get to 4 centimeters, I’m ready for a cocktail, as is everyone else on the L&D floor.

• Deliver by Your Due Date: This seemed like a no-brainer. My son was born 9 days early, surely all future babies would follow suit. But my daughter, due on December 25th, did not want to compete with Santa and Jesus for her entire childhood, nor did she feel that she should be in any big hurry just for a single extra tax deduction given the years of being a financial suck she has ahead of her, and so she took her time, arriving on January 4th, a mere 10 days past the VBAC deadline. But it turns out my super medical-model doctor wasn’t a complete head-case about a late-term baby, or maybe she was just moved by my strength and resolve and also by the fact that she was on vacation from Christmas to New Year’s. Whatever the reason, baby girl made her way into the world in her own time, in just the way she was always meant to.

In truth, while neither my OB practice nor hospital are public cheerleaders for VBACs, both ended up being supportive of my birth plan, which made a huge difference once labor had actually started, particularly at the point when I was attempting to book an OR by myself because I was tired of this “contraction” crap.

The only thing I did on my own that I believe made a difference this time around was read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin. I read it twice, once in the first trimester and once in the third, and I even took a few notes. Despite having zero interest in having an orgasmic natural birth on a farm, the book still helped me prepare for the pain of labor and develop a few techniques that allowed me to physically and emotionally relax more than I was able to during my first birth experience. Overall I felt more prepared and less anxious, and I believe that made a huge difference in my body’s ability to do what it needed to do.

In the end, having enjoyed both types of delivery, I can honestly say that my doctor was right: there’s no easy way to have a baby. The C-section was harder in some ways, the VBAC was harder in others, and each gave me a beautiful, healthy child to embarrass with his and her own unique birth story for many years to come. Now excuse me while I go grab a Poise pad before I sneeze.

Written by: Kathleen

Potty Training 2.0: It's just a bunch of sh*t

So it’s been a while since I first wrote about potty training. That’s mostly because we are still in the trenches and the trench is currently getting deeper and longer so forgive me while I waste your time complaining about my problems. I didn’t realize how much worse it could get. We are literally having arguments with an almost 3-year-old about how peeing on the couch is not okay. While I understand that arguing with a child is futile, it happens when you’re losing patience and you start to believe that you can rationalize with them. More and more I realize that toddlers are really just drunk frat boys, Chapter “Sigma Pi Pi”. They pee on your kitchen floor and act confused when you get upset, they insist that you reward them for any minor personal hygiene upkeep, they crap their pants at the most inconvenient times possible, and they are adamant that dark liquor must be mixed with coke on game day.  

We thought we were off to a pretty average start with our daughter going long stretches without a diaper and showing that she could hold it. But then things took a turn. She would pee all over her chair during lunch or poop in her pants while watching a movie. Now I know that all the books say that this is normal and we should approach these situations calmly and try to defuse any stress, but it is really hard to find Zen when scrubbing feces out of your carpet. So our first plan of attack was to put a reward system in place. I have been adamant about not using food to get her to use the potty. I have an irrational fear that she will one day reward herself for making the JV basketball team with a whole box of Krispy Kremes when that is clearly a treat for someone who worked hard enough to get to Varsity. Anyway, I decided to go with stickers. I bought the really horrible ones that don’t actually stick to anything. They were working great for about a month until she lost interest and decided to resist all things potty. At this point daycare decided to get their skin in the game. They starting doing charts for the kids at school and mandatory potty breaks. Just when I thought we were off to the races, they have some teachers quit and shuffled classrooms. With those adjustments, we were told that they were going to be putting potty training in the class on hold. “Um what?” You don’t open someone up for surgery and then say you would like to take a break while they’re bleeding out!!!!!! After crying in front of the other kids and parents in the class, I pulled myself together and decided we would just forge ahead on our own because nothing makes you feel more like a parent than the constant reminder that you can fail at the simplest of tasks.   

I updated our reward system. We were now going to have a tracking chart with fun squares to color and potty prizes (dollar bin). I introduced the chart to D and the concept of prizes and she was immediately successful . . .for about a week. At this point I decide to throw all structure out the window and stop fighting her to use the potty. I put her in pull ups and offer it to her from time to time and she goes occasionally. Long car rides are the worst. “I need to go potty” “Okay honey, thanks for telling me. Can you hold it or do we need to stop?” “No you hold it.” “I can’t hold it. Do you need to go potty now.” “Yeah. Can you hold it?” “Wait what? Okay no. Let me find somewhere to stop.”—We make it into the nastiest gas station bathroom you’ve ever seen and I line the toilet with toilet paper and manage for her not to touch anything—“No I don’t want to sit on the potty!!” “But that’s how you GO potty.” “No, I not!” “You said you needed to go potty so lets just try.” “No I don’t need to go potty.” “Please just sit and try.” “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I DON’T NEED TO GO POTTY!!” “Okay fine, but we aren’t stopping again.”—load back in car, get on highway, 3 minutes later—“Mommy, I need to go potty.” Make it stop.  

So as it stands today, we just aren’t there yet. You can read this and feel better about your parenting abilities or know that you have a kindred spirit in the land of the forever diapers.  

Diapers: They're Full of Sh*t

Guest Post by Sarah Gatenby

As a parent, one of the truest truths is that you will be talking about poop. A lot. In fact, between the first post-partum poop (keep taking those stool softeners) and the 50 shades of baby’s first BM, your life is going to revolve around crap. It’s just how things go.

Before my child was born, I watched the movie “Babies,” a really awesome documentary that everyone should watch before having one of their own, and I was amazed by how the mom in Namibia wiped her baby’s butt with her leg and then her leg with a corn cob (or something other than Pampers Free and Natural wipes). And as I changed diaper after diaper after diaper with my own newborn, I often recalled with gratitude that at least I don’t have to wipe my baby’s butt with my leg and then my leg with a corncob. Well, I sometimes thought of that, and sometimes I just wished there was a magic wand that would get the poop off of everything, especially car seat covers.

This all brings us to the very important topic of diapers. You have almost as many diapering options as there are shades of newborn poop. At my house, we used mostly cloth diapers for the first 4 months, cloth at home and disposables at day care for months 5 and 6, and mostly disposables from month 6 to the present. Based on my experience with cloth-only, hybrid, and disposable-only, I offer my review of some of your poop-containment options:

1. Cloth Diapers: These are good for people who feel guilty about filling up landfills and like doing laundry. They are also awesome for compulsive nesters because you are supposed to wash the cotton ones a bunch of times before your baby is born to get them soft and fluffy and absorbent. Cloth diapers are a pricey initial investment, but can be reused for multiple children, and you can sell them when you’re done. (My husband thought that buying pre-used diapers was too gross, but I bet he won’t mind me selling ours). They also help assuage the guilt you might feel about birthing another pollution machine. If you live somewhere where water is scarce or don’t have your own washing machine, they might not be for you. Some people find that cloth diapers are bulky and they have to go a size up in clothing, but I didn’t experience that. There are several subtypes:

A.     Prefolds and covers - If you wore cloth diapers, you probably wore prefolds. The covers have come a long way since your mother’s era. The prefold soaks up the pee and poo, and the PUL (polyurethane laminate) cover attempts to keep it contained. Unlike the rubber covers of your hippie youth, PUL covers are thin, flexible, and waterproof, and they are relatively cheap. If you prefer spending lots of money and have servants who wash your clothes by hand, you can buy wool covers, which are sewn from unicorn hair that absorbs liquid by the gallon and is self-cleaning. The covers come in fun prints and colors. The diapers can be used for burp cloths, changing table pads, and cleaning up spills. If your kid doesn’t get crap on the cover, it can be used more than once before washing. Depending on the size of your baby, you may need pins or a “snappy” fastener to keep the prefold around his waist and legs. YouTube has a plethora of videos online with instructions on getting the most secure fit from a prefold + cover system.

B.     All In Ones (AIO) – With AIOs, the cover and the diaper are all attached. You might like these if you like never really getting anything quite 100% clean or dry. Sometimes the absorbent insert is snapped into the cover so the two can be washed separately. Inserts are often made of finicky material like hemp and bamboo that perpetually smells like ammonia. I didn’t like these much at all. And mine leaked. Maybe you’ll have better luck. They also tend to be pricey.

C.     Pocket diapers – These are just like they sound. There’s a pocket in the cover where you shove the absorbent insert. Pulling the poop-covered insert out of the pocket afterwards can be gross, but you’re probably going to wash your hands anyway, right? You can use prefolds or “doublers” as inserts, but most pocket diapers come with an insert or two. For nighttime, add an extra insert or doubler (I personally liked the thin, absorbent, but of course, costlier bamboo inserts). These are easy to use, easy to wash and come in even more cute prints. They start at around $5 dollars a diaper for a cheap diaper and can run up to close to $30 a dipe for fancy prints in a fancy name brand with several bamboo inserts. Yes, some diapers cost as much as an entire outfit from Target, but at least most cloth diapers grow with your baby.

Many people, myself included, use some combination of the above, depending on baby’s age and whether you spend most of the day at home, at day-care, or at the grocery store trying to remember if you need milk. Some diapers are “one-size” and have a series of snaps that allow you to use them on babies ranging from 10 to 20+ lbs, and others are sized for more specific weight-ranges. It can be intimidating to start off with cloth diapering, so read a few articles and join a message board or two before you max out your credit card on fleece covers on Etsy only to discover your kid is allergic to synthetics.

2. Disposable diapers: These are good for people who have kids in daycare, don’t have laundry facilities at home, dislike washing poop, or are passionate about filling up landfills with their kid’s shit. While we/I cloth-diapered for the first 6 months, once the kid started eating food and was in daycare, we switched to disposable diapers. They are easier to put on and take off. And there’s no laundry required. Again, there are several choices.

A.     Name Brand (Huggies, Luvs, Pampers) - Name brand diapers soak up more pee. That’s all there is to it. Whatever polymersilicadiapergoop they use is amazing. For nighttime dryness, I vote name brand. Shop the sales, find some coupons, or only use them at night to save some dough, but changing your kid (and the sheets) at 2am because you bought the grocery store brand again isn’t fun. I think Huggies smell weird when wet, but you might not. Pampers Ultra Overnight are excellent for heavy nighttime wetters.

B.     Store Brand  (Target, grocery store, big-box discount store) – Store brand diapers are usually cheaper. I find Target brand to work fine for daytime use with a non-newborn.

C.     Fancy Brand (Honest Co, Seventh Generation, Earth’s Best) - These are the diapers that are either eco-friendly or have cute prints or both. They run about 40 to 50 cents a pee/poop. I’m all for reducing use of petrochemicals and plastics, especially next to butts, balls, and vaginas, but remember, for something to biodegrade, it can’t be buried in a landfill…

3. Hybrid diapers: Can’t decide between doing tons of laundry and filling up the landfill? No worries! With a disposable insert and washable cover, these diapers allow you to do both! The best (and worst) of both types.

No matter the type of diaper you decide to go with, there will be a brand that works better for your kid and a brand that doesn’t work as well. These maxims should always hold true:

• Don’t stock up on one type of diaper, for that will be the type that makes your child’s butt break out like a acne-plagued teenager with chicken pox.
• Three pee-leaks in two days or less means you should go up a size. Don’t focus on the weight recommendations on the package as they are completely made up.
• When poop is in your child’s hair, it is probably also on their back and hands.
• Car seats give a baby the best angle for pooping.
• Car seats are not fully washable.

It’s nice to have so many options for catching our kids’ crap. Some parents even go diaperless and use “elimination communication,” but that’s a different post for a different writer. Whatever you choose or end up using after your first three choices don’t work for you, remember that WIC and SNAP benefits don’t cover diapers. Parents who are struggling to make ends meet often end up reusing disposable diapers or leaving their child in a wet or dirty diaper for longer than they’d like. When you have leftover diapers that are too small for your child or when you’re done using your cloth diapers, consider donating to your local diaper bank or food bank or pantry.

 If you have gotten bitten by the cloth diaper (or CD) bug, there are several websites that I liked to browse as I was getting ready for the baby.

• Kawaii Diapers - cheap and cute, but not so informative
• The Bump Cloth Diapering Board - generally less snarky and more helpful than other Bump boards
• Green Mountain Diapers -  great source for prefolds and they have helpful info about lots of different types of diapers. DO NOT read their laundry guide. It will make you cry.
• Kelly’s Closet - another good source for cloth diapering supplies and FAQs

The Art of War: Tips on Toddler Discipline

Hahahahahahaha! The secret to disciplining a toddler is kept in the same place as the cure for the common cold and that sock you're missing. I hope you didn’t open today’s blog post hoping to find the oracle of knowledge on how to create the perfect toddler. If this post does anything for you, it will let you know that you are not alone in this crazy, toddler-run world. Trying to build a foundation of respect and obedience with a child between the ages of 2 and 22 is like trying to understand why people support Donald Trump running for president—it will drive you to drink and possibly move to Canada.

The toddler years are made especially hard by the crucial milestones that must be achieved, putting pressure on all parties involved. Potty training is one of the messiest and most arduous of these. How do you explain to a 2 year old that it makes more sense to go to the bathroom than it does to continue playing, uninterrupted, until someone else literally cleans up your sh*t? Not a convincing agenda. In short, this is the only advice I can attempt to dole out while I am in the midst of trying to stay afloat myself:

• Pick Your Battles: This is easier said than done, but I have found that repeatedly screaming "no" or "stop it" just lands you talking to yourself all day and desensitizes your kid to those words. For example, I allow my toddler to eat a stolen apple in the grocery store in exchange for her sitting quietly in the buggy while we shop. In my defense, Whole Foods does allow your kid an apple while you shop . . . or at least mine has let us get away with it thus far. My guess about the long term effects of this behavior is that she will always get hungry upon entering the grocery store, so worst case is that I'm simply creating a very polite over-shopper.
• Be Consistent: I feel like I am living in the movie “Ground Hog Day,” except my mistakes are not erased at the end of each day but the lessons I have tried to bestow on my offspring are completely forgotten. Your kid has an uncanny ability to completely delete any of the guiding principles that you so carefully laid out for them the day before. Explaining why we don’t throw food at the table or put peanut butter in the dog’s hair feels like a total waste of energy.  After the 500th time asking my daughter not to put toys in the toilet, I had to ask myself, "are we teaching them or are they teaching us"? Did she really learn not to put peanut butter in the dog’s hair or did I simply learn to put the peanut butter on a higher shelf? Probably a bit of both. After 10,000 hours of this, one of us will be an expert at something.
• Don't Show Your Weakness: The moment your toddler sees you looking overwhelmed, they will rip your heart out with a spoon. Do your best to keep it together and save your break downs for your showers. The only thing worse than an irrational toddler meltdown is an adult joining them. Stock your wine cabinet and power through as best you can for the next 36-48 months. This too shall pass.
• Don't Get Divorced: Just as hard as it is trying to figure out whether the kid's behavior calls for a time out, a suspension of all activities, or a deep sigh with a look of disappointment, is making sure that you and the person currently assigned to co-parent (husband, wife, aunt, uncle, Whole Foods check-out lady, etc) are on the same page about which disciplinary action should be taken at any given time. This dance can get downright dirty and turn into a scene out of The Clockwork Orange. Before you decide that you would rather be a single parent, remember that your teammate is just trying to figure out how to survive as well.

In closing, I leave you with this quote: “Remember, the race is long and your toddler has more energy and a greater ability to act irrationally in almost every situation that will challenge and degrade your sanity at every turn.” In other words, we’re screwed.

Written by: Alice

Nesting Gone Wild

For every list available on the internet of essential baby gear items that you absolutely must have to survive early parenthood, there are parallel lists of items that you do not need. All of these lists include a wipe warmer, presumably because babies don’t really care if their hineys are cold, and also because wipe warmers frequently catch fire. But some lists are far more subjective—I recently came across one that insisted you do not need to buy a crib, because obviously junior will be sleeping beside you until he is two years old and ready for his own straw pallet in the barn. Like most aspects of parenting, learning what you do and do not need to make life a little easier occurs through trial and error. One person’s Sleep Sheep is another person’s Peepee Teepee, and who are any of us to judge the talismans another holds dear when trying to extend her baby’s wake-up time from 4:45am to 4:55am because those ten minutes actually are the difference between giving a passable presentation at her quarterly sales meeting and falling asleep at a red light with her eyes open and remaining that way until somebody calls the police because they assume she is dead.

That said, I do think there are some things that you can wait to buy until after your baby is born and you have an actual test subject to experiment on, or items for which you should retain the receipt or return for store credit if received as a gift. With the tremendous depth of experience provided by having had one child for well over two years, I offer the following list of items you should hold off on buying/unpackaging until your baby’s unique personality reveals itself and you discover he’s either an agreeable little angel with a textbook growth curve or a cantankerous malcontent with chronic diarrhea:

1) Newborn-Size Diapers/Clothes + Size-Up Clothes: I disagree with the recommendation that you should not buy ANY clothes in NB size, but don’t necessarily rip the tags off every single teensy-tiny three-piece newborn outfit you receive at your baby shower. I fully expected to follow family tradition and give birth to a 10-pound baby who could sit up on his own at two months supported purely by fat rolls, but my son was 7 lbs at birth, plus he dropped a few ounces during his colostrum fast and did not end up gaining weight like an off-season high school wrestler, so we needed some NB size clothes and diapers, but not a huge stockpile. He went on to experience seemingly random growth spurts and plateaus throughout his first two years, the former generally occurring within hours of me returning from the Carter’s outlet, thus buying clothes even 3 months ahead was risky. It’s nice to have a little stash of outfits in multiple sizes that you’ll use regardless of season, like cotton sleepers, but I would not recommend going nuts on Zulily’s summer smocking sale in November until you’re well into toddler sizes.

2) Adorable Bibs and Burp Cloths: Daddy’s Lil’ Linebacker, Mommy’s Perfect Gentleman, Property of Grandma, I Poop on Michigan (go Buckeyes)—there’s nothing cuter to compliment the perfect Babies R Us outfit than a pristine cotton bib, lined in gingham and embroidered with love. Except if your newborn actually requires a bib due to reflux, Baby’s First Christmas will be permanently stained with chunky yellow crust that smells like rotten milk, as will everything else both you and he are wearing, sitting on, and standing near, because those adorable bibs are worthless when it comes to actual absorbency. Before baby is born, buy a few packs of cheap terry cloth bibs, and if you discover you have birthed a tiny fire hydrant of stomach acid, I recommend Maxi Moo Moo bibs or something similar with a snap collar (Velcro doesn’t survive the multiple daily washes) and an interior plastic lining. Same goes for burp cloths—skip the 12 square-inches of organic pima cotton printed with duckies and lambies and hearts that won’t even protect your left pinky finger from the volcanic uprising created by two tablespoons of breastmilk and your newborn’s untested digestive system, and instead invest in a pile of cheap, dark colored towels from Wal-Mart, plus a commercial painter’s drop cloth and possibly a few sets of surgical scrubs to save your furniture and your nursing tops. (Even for non-refluxy babies, regular cotton burp cloths are pretty pointless, but cotton prefold cloth diapers, when properly prepped, are excellent alternatives).

3) Receiving Blankets: Blankets of all shapes and sizes and materials are handy and cute and make great backgrounds for your monthly Facebook photo updates, but you do not need to buy these yourself, because I swear that 90% of the gifts you receive after the baby arrives will be blankets. People love buying baby blankets—it’s like we all secretly long to be swaddled in pastel velvet. If you live in the South, people will go so far as to monogram them for you, meaning your firstborn will always be properly identified when blanketed with love and your second child will begin developing her inferiority complex from birth.

4) Special Swaddle Blankets: By these I mean the wide variety of blankets that are cut in certain shapes and offer a variety of fastening devices intended to make it easier for you to swaddle your irate little banshee at 4am rather than screaming at your spouse that only an inbred moron would take this long to locate the diagram in The Happiest Baby on the Block that you clearly bookmarked in your 34th week of pregnancy after you both spent an afternoon practicing the “five Ss” on your neighbor’s dachshund. There is nothing wrong with any one of these blankets, but your particular infant may only respond to a certain type of swaddle, such as one that allows him to suck on his hands, like this; or he may emerge from the womb like a mini Houdini capable of busting out of titanium Velcro and thus require snaps; or he may be like my kid and defy God and nature by despising the swaddle entirely, preferring instead the warm embrace of a sleep-sack dampened with his mother’s exhausted tears. Since any one of these swaddle-saviors runs from $15 to $40, it doesn’t hurt to put a few different kinds on your registry and let your wealthier friends buy them for you, but hold onto the receipts and check store return policies so you can trade them in for whichever type of straitjacket your genetic miracle ultimately prefers.

5) Breastfeeding/Pump Supplies & Accessories: Go ahead and order your breast pump through your insurance company well before your due date (if allowed, some insurance companies require you to wait), and keep in mind that many HSA or FSA accounts can be used for breastfeeding and pumping supplies, but don’t go hog wild and fill your hall linen closet with tubes of lanolin and self-adhesive breast pads like you intend to breastfeed through the zombie apocalypse. Many women with the most ambitious goals find that they are unable to breastfeed, or that it simply isn’t right for them or their baby, or that their baby finds sucking on a nipple smeared in lanolin about as delectable as you would find pouring petroleum jelly on your breakfast cereal. The same goes for milk freezer bags and pump wipes and sterilization kits—put down the Amazon app and go settle your nesting crazy by folding a few tiny hats or smelling another pile of freshly laundered onesies. All of these accessories can be valuable tools in your blissful journey through cracked nipples and overactive let-down, but they will still be there in the warehouse in Chattanooga, primed for same-day delivery, once the actual need arises.

6) Bottles & Nipples & Sippy Cups: It turns out that babies can be as picky about what type of bottle and nipple they prefer as your asshole brother-in-law is about craft beer. You think the set of BPA-free Dr. Brown’s 4-ounce bottles with the Level 1 even-flow nipple are the cat’s meow because that’s what all the experienced moms on your birth-month Facebook group recommended, but your 6 week-old gags and sputters when you try to feed him like you’ve secretly exchanged his Hops Valley Hoppity Hopster IPA for Miller Lite. Sometimes finding the right bottle and nipple takes a few tries. Same goes for sippy cups, so as brilliant as it might seem to have your child’s entire life through college paid for by your mom’s quilting circle via your shower registry, it’s best not to test the upper limits of Target’s return policy on 16 Munchkin Click-Locks once you discover that your toddler only does Nuby Super Spout.

7) Baby Swing/Mamaroo: Another good item to register for so other people pay for it, but again, save the receipt and check the limit on returns. Some parents swear by these contraptions, others find they are the first baby item to be sold over the neighborhood listserv. My son was born savvy enough to tell the difference between my loving, mind-numbingly exhausted embrace and a motorized negligence machine, thus I never used one, but I know plenty of people who worship at the altar of the baby swing for its soothing and sleep-giving powers. If I had a dollar for every baby swing that was ordered on Amazon Prime in a fit of desperation between the hours of midnight and 5am, I would probably be able to afford a Mamaroo.

Written by: Kathleen

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: Hiring an In-Home Childcare Provider

If Alice’s recent post about daycare made you consider trading in your biweekly paycheck and dental insurance for the glamorous, milk-stained life of a stay-at-home mom, first you may want to consider hiring a nanny for your childcare needs. The nanny option generally means that a single, consistent person whom you have personally selected comes to your home each morning and whisks your offspring away on creative adventures. Basically they are all just like Mary Poppins, but instead of a flying umbrella most of them drive Toyotas, and I think the British accent costs extra, at least in Manhattan.

When I first became pregnant with C, I fully intended to put him in daycare when I returned to work after my federally mandated 12 weeks of unpaid family leave. My employer subsidized two highly reputable daycare centers in the area, including one next door to my office building. They weren’t free by any means, but they were less expensive than others in our city, and they offered one of those educational approaches that has an Italian name and teaches your toddler how to fold his own laundry. Seems perfect, right?

Except my child was born in August, and where I live, daycare centers of decent repute only enroll new babies in June. That left me with a 7-month gap in childcare that my dogs seemed ill-equipped to fill. My parents and in-laws are of that “we will work until we die both for professional fulfillment and to pay off your college loans” generation, and so we were left with one option: hire a temporary nanny.

Our temporary nanny turned into one of the best additions to our family and our lives that we could have imagined, and so after six months, when C received his acceptance letter to daycare, we decided to make the financially irresponsible but emotionally justified decision to have him remain in his nanny’s care. I have never regretted it for a second, even though it means I haven’t had my teeth cleaned in two years and we have to order our dogs’ immunizations on the internet from a shady sounding company in Arkansas called Dawg-Shotz 4 Less.

I have found that both a pro and a con of having a nanny is that you bring another person into your life, and suddenly all future childcare decisions become about more than schedules and finances, it’s about a relationship, both yours and your child’s. Our nanny is a valuable part of my ability to do my own job well, and she is a person that my child loves dearly. Yet she is also an independent adult with her own needs. If a better job opportunity comes along, she has to consider it, despite her love for my child. All of this to say that as with any familial relationship, there will be bumps in the road, and much like with family, those bumps are often only resolvable with money.

Whether you choose nanny, daycare, or staying home, keep in mind that none of these decisions is permanent. What works for you and your baby in the first year may change as he grows older and your relationship to work and family change. We started with a full-time nanny, went to having her part-time and me being home/working part-time, now have a part-time nanny/part-time preschool hybrid, and with a baby on the way we will soon go to full-time nanny plus preschool plus maybe a sous chef and a wet nurse, just to keep things interesting.

Pros of Having a Nanny:

• One-to-One Ratio: The one-on-one attention of a nanny can be a source of comfort in those early weeks of returning to work, and as your child grows it’s nice to know that he has the undivided attention of a single person holding a block in his face and saying, “Green, the block is green,” over and over until you get home from work and take over.
•  She Comes to Your House: Other than the personal attention your kid receives, the biggest advantage to having a nanny is that she comes to you, thus relieving you of the responsibility of dressing your child in a weather-appropriate outfit every single day or packing bottles and food or generally being responsible for getting a second human being clean and presentable for the outside world.
• Duties Not Otherwise Assigned: Some nannies (and expectations should be stated clearly during the interview) will do other housework in addition to raising your child. While I made it clear to our nanny that housekeeping was not part of her job, she can’t help but empty/load the dishwasher and sweep up the mountains of pet hair that we allow to accumulate all over our house in an effort to build our child’s immune system. Other household duties up for negotiation include laundry, grocery shopping, meal prep, and pet care.
• Coverage for Sick Kids: Most daycares require you to keep your fevered or puking kid home while symptomatic and for 24 hours following. We all know that parents attempt to violate this rule constantly, but most will still end up using some of their own sick time to take care of sick kids at home.
• Fewer Illnesses: This one is kind of a myth, unless you keep your toddler in a hermetically sealed bubble in your laundry room at all times. Kids are cesspools of germs and illness regardless of where they spend their days. My child can catch a cold from his cousins over FaceTime—no childcare arrangement is safe. However, I do believe having a nanny forestalled the worst of the infant plagues until later in his first year, and he’s never had an ear infection, which I think qualifies him for some kind of write-up in the NEJM.
• Third Parent: This may actually be the best part of having a nanny, when you have a good one. This crazy endless acid trip they call parenting is hard, and having a third adult involved in the process, especially one with more experience than you who your kid actually listens to, is a tremendous bonus. I am pretty sure that without the help of our nanny, C would still only sleep in my arms. In some ways it’s like having your own mother there to guide you, but without all the tension and resentment and memories of that time she pretended to leave you alone at the park because you were throwing a tantrum but seriously, you were only six years old and you just wanted to swing for five more minutes, what kind of mother does that??

Cons of Hiring a Nanny:

• Cost: For a single child in most regions of the country, hour-for-hour a nanny is going to cost more than even the best daycare (for two or more kids, the cost differential changes as daycare rates double whereas a nanny’s hourly rate increases in smaller increments). In my area the hourly rate ranges anywhere from $12 to $20 an hour, and I know that in Manhattan a qualified nanny can cost around $150,000 a year plus dental. You also have to consider taxes, social security, and health insurance, depending on your nanny’s preferences and your own political aspirations.
• Sick Days/Vacation Time: Most daycare centers are open 50 to 52 weeks a year, and closings are scheduled far in advance. A nanny will probably need some time off, both scheduled and unscheduled, for vacation and sick leave. Vacation time can typically be planned in advance and you can sometimes schedule your own family vacations to coincide, but when a nanny gets sick, you’re on call. If you haven’t done so already, make sure you and your spouse decide ahead of time whose career is more important, because that’s not a fight you want to be having at 6:30am on a Tuesday when your nanny texts to tell you she has pink eye.
• Hiring & Retention: We first met our prospective nanny when C was about 6 weeks old, and given that she came highly recommended from a trusted source, I am pretty sure our interview went something like this:

Me: “Can you make him stop crying?"

Nanny: “Um…

Me: “You’re hired."

However, the process of hiring and retaining someone you trust and who meets your family’s evolving needs can be arduous. You may interview 27 candidates and finally find the nanny of your dreams, only to have her quit after two weeks because she decides she’s afraid of your pet turtle. Or you may think you have found The One, until you discover that her idea of doing laundry is burying it in the back yard for six weeks then soaking it in vodka and hanging it from your neighbor’s swing set. Human beings are weird and fickle and finding the right one to help raise your child is not—and probably should not be—easy.

As I said, my interview and hiring process was deceptively simple, in part because our nanny came as a referral from a trusted friend whose ideas about parenting and childhood are similar to my own. However, reflecting back on what has been important to our successful relationship over the past two years, I can recommend a few things to consider during the hiring process.

Things to Consider While Hiring a Nanny:

•  Hours/Flexibility: If you are expected to be at work by 9am, your nanny probably can’t arrive at your house at 8:45 and facilitate a seamless departure. She needs time to settle in and drink your last cup of coffee, your baby will need time for the transition (especially in the toddler years, trust me), and you will need time to change out of your husband’s sweat pants and into your more work-appropriate Lululemons. The same goes for the end of the day. Can you rush out of the office at 5pm like clockwork every single day, or are you dependent on a boss who likes to dick around on Facebook all afternoon then suddenly gets the urge to schedule conference calls at 4:45? Some nannies have more flexibility than others, so assess your own employment situation and set your expectations accordingly.
•  Age: Do you prefer a twentysomething college grad with a degree in child development who has a great deal of energy and academic knowledge yet lacks the confidence to undermine your own parenting philosophies? Or do you prefer a grandmother of twelve who believes a little brandy can aid in sleep training and will never, ever figure out how to use your Apple TV? 
•  Philosophy: Attachment Parenting? Cry-It-Out? Free Range Organic? If you feel strongly about certain areas of parenting, it’s important that your nanny respect that. On the flip side, if you hire someone you trust, her experience and knowledge may influence your own approach. Your own philosophies and beliefs are important, but try to keep in mind that this is a bit of a partnership and be flexible and open-minded where you can.
• References: Ideally, you can get recommendations for nannies from people you trust—friends, colleagues, friends’ nannies, etc. If you use an online service or other source, call her references. Not only to determine whether she is more of a Julie Andrews than a Rebecca De Mornay, but to determine whether her past employers have similar attitudes about childcare to your own. Even if you’re a first-time parent of a newborn with zero experience with kids, you can usually tell over the phone if you’re decently compatible with another person. If all else fails, ask about their favorite television shows. Fans of Orange is the New Black? Excellent, can’t wait for Season 4. On a TV strike since TLC pulled 19 Kids and Counting? Move along, quiverful-of-crazy.

Suggestions for Starting Out with a New Nanny:

• Trial Days: Plan to have either you or your partner home for the first few days with a new nanny. Try to stay out of the way as much as possible, but be available to answer questions and observe behavior. A nanny that asks a lot of questions the first few days is a good sign because it means she wants to do things right. If possible, staying home for more than one day is ideal—as my mother pointed out to me when our nanny first started, anyone can fake it for a day or two, but it’s hard to fake the energy and confidence required to take care of young kids for an entire week. I’ve been a mom for two years now and I still haven’t managed to make it to a Friday without losing my shit at least twice. That’s one of the many reasons I’m paying someone else to do it, just like my own mother did before me.
• Daily Log: Ask your nanny to log your baby’s daily naps, poops, and food intake, as well as anything else you may want to know (health stuff, activities, etc). This will help make your evenings and weekends smoother, and give you and your nanny a chance to discuss routines, behavior changes, etc. We used this simple sheet to cover the basics: Baby's Log.
• Chill Out: Here’s the thing—no single person is going to fulfill your every heart’s desire for a nanny, because no single person is going to do everything exactly the way you would do it while also exhibiting superior house-keeping skills. Our nanny is a creative thinker, but the downside of that quality is that she’s a little scatter-brained. We’ve lost a few sippy cups and indoor-playground punch cards over the years. Pick your battles and your deal-breakers carefully, and accept that just as you are not perfect, no one else is, either. Your child’s health and safety are non-negotiable, but whether or not his outfit coordinates with his socks probably is.

Ideally, choosing a nanny means you will end up with a competent caregiver who will form a unique and loving relationship with your child, and you really can’t put a price on that peace of mind… except in Manhattan, because that place is just ridiculous.  

Written by: Kathleen

Tiny Tot Academy or Harvard?

“Um, excuse me, you want me to give you how much money to watch my child?” If you are just starting to explore the world of daycare, prepare yourself—quality daycare can cost significantly more than a small Japanese sedan. Prices vary from city to city, but if you are in a metropolitan area, you can bet that you are going to be paying a tiny fortune to have your little one lie on the floor and roll around in other children’s snot for 9 hours a day. Do your research and examine your budget before you lose the rubber! The daycare business is a $45 billion industry and growing. Many of the costs associated with sending your child to daycare can be attributed to the regulations enforced by each state, which can be very costly to the daycare facility. In addition, demand for licensed daycare centers will affect the availability, flexibility, and cost of the centers in your area. Despite the increase in cost and demand for daycare nationwide, the pay-scale for caretakers stays relatively low, so do be kind to those sweet people who watch your most important excrement. They are underpaid and underappreciated. Your money is not necessarily going to provide them with perks like retirement plans or healthcare, it’s going towards making sure that all the toddlers in Massachusetts brush their teeth after each cheddar bunny they consume with GMO-free toothpaste—which is actually a nice service to provide considering that I don’t always get two brushes out of my toddler on any given day. #motheroftheyear  

Budget is not the only consideration when beginning the daycare journey. Depending on where you live, a good daycare center can be harder to get into than the Ivy League. If you are reading this and you are a human who still has the ability to procreate, stop what you are doing and ENROLL IN A DAYCARE RIGHT NOW! If it turns out you do not want kids, you can sell your slot to the highest bidder down the road, but just in case your Mirena falls out, you should secure your place on the waitlist now. I can’t tell you how many parents I have spoken to that were shocked that they couldn’t just enroll their little one the day before they returned to work.  I was four months pregnant when I started registering my first baby for various daycare wait-lists, and I didn’t get accepted into one until two months after she was born. Start doing research as soon as that little line appears on the stick and get yourself on several wait-lists as early as possible.  

Here are some things to consider when choosing a daycare:  

Location: Is it convenient to work and/or home? Can your back up childcare provider (spouse, grandparent, baby-sitter) also get there easily in an emergency? Some people assume being close to the office is most important, but consider who will be doing drop-off and pick-up most often, and how far the place is from the other parent’s office should the primary parent be sick or traveling.  

Physical Structure: Does it meet your standards for cleanliness, safety, etc? Is the playground area fenced in and the equipment safe? Are visitors asked to remove their shoes in the infant areas? Does the daycare double as a doggy day-camp on the weekends? Your baby will get sick every third week at even the very best daycare, but there is a difference between coming home with an ear infection and coming home with fleas. 

Philosophy: Do you feel like the staff is and will be helpful and responsive to your needs? Ask about their policies on cry-it-out, cloth diapers, tummy time, potty training, etc, to make sure they are reasonably up to date on the nuances of modern parenting and know what the F you are talking about. Their hands may be tied on some issues by state regulations (for example, in Tennessee daycare is not allowed to let an infant cry for any amount of time before falling asleep), but test their willingness to accommodate where they can. 

Expense: Can you afford it? There are plenty of good daycares whose costs are more in line with a community college than Dartmouth. Don’t get completely snowed by the Ivy League promises to teach your 3-month-old political science—all your infant really needs is to be fed, changed, and loved. Be sure to investigate the “hidden fees” like monthly supply fees, butt-wiping fees, etc.  

Parent Expectations: What do they require from you? This varies greatly from one facility to the next. For example, at one daycare, I had to provide 5 pack-n-play sheets at the beginning of every week. I’m sure some of the fancier, 1% daycares require organic cotton sheet sets from Pottery Barn and coordinated Jack and Janie back-up outfits. 

Communication with Parents: What information will the caregivers track? They typically have a daily sheet that the teachers send home filled with lies about how your 5-month old learned about the migration of butterflies, however, they also include useful information like the number of naps and duration, how they ate, and how many times they pooped. This information will be crucial to help you determine how your evening is going to go and reassures you that all the basic needs of your little angel are being met.  

References: What do the other parents in your friend group or community think of each daycare option? Go with recommendations and/or see if you can talk to other parents about their experience with the daycare. Sit in the parking lot during drop off in the morning and judge the parents—do they seem happy to be leaving their precious offspring or are they being escorted by someone from social services? Just don’t sit long enough to be put on the kiddie creeper list for that area.  

Trust your gut: Do you like the overall feel and vibe of the daycare? Do the kids appear clean and happy? Is the care-giver-to-child ratio appropriate? And don’t be afraid to change course if it isn’t working out after the first few weeks—this is your child, your most important life project, and he or she should have the very best care that $12 an hour with benefits can provide!

For those of you trying to decide whether or not daycare is the right choice for you, it is typically less expensive than a full-time nanny and I have found that the social atmosphere and structure it provides can be really beneficial. Not to mention the fact that all of the people there have helped raise hundreds of children and are great resources for the advice and guidance you really need. Without them, my 2-year-old would probably still be using a bottle and wearing onesies!!

Written by: Alice

New Baby Etiquette for friends, family and the lady at the grocery store

So I know everyone wants to beat down the door to be the first to see a new baby and decide for themselves whether or not the father is really who the mother says he is, however, I urge you to approach this momentous time in someone else’s life (yes someone else’s) with the poise of Emily Post. There is always that one friend or relative who oversteps boundaries when it comes to a newborn, and while those lines are different for every parent, I encourage everyone to err on the side of being too polite and caring (I know, I know, this doesn’t sound like me at all:)) 

Do’s (with permission) 

• Go over to the parents’ house while they are still in the hospital and stock their refrigerator.  
  • This can be a huge help to new parents who are in a daze and unlikely to take good care of their nutritional needs.   
• Once you are given the green light for a postpartum visit:  
  • Make it short. New mommies are getting into a groove and sometimes that means going topless to let their nipples breath. That is not something you need to interrupt.  
  • Touch base an hour or two before you arrive to see if there’s anything you can pick up for them: giant maxi pads, stool softeners, bourbon, etc.  
  • Take food.  Even if it’s not mealtime, you can bet that the new parents will always welcome food and/or booze depending on the couple. 
• Text or email instead of calling. 
  • There’s nothing worse than just lying down for a nap while the baby naps, when your phone won’t stop ringing with people wanting to hear all about the new babe. Be kind. Message before and schedule a time to chat.   
• Offer to give the new parents a few hours away after they've had a week or two to settle in.  
  • It’s so easy to get stuck in the cycle of baby as new parents. Help them break it up by offering to come over for an hour or two while they go out to grab a coffee or glass of wine alone and decide whether or not they still like each other.  

Don’ts 

• Don’t show up to the hospital right after mommy has delivered the placenta 
  • Unless you were given specific instructions to attend the cord cutting, then a hospital visit should not be on your list 
• Don’t give unsolicited advice or opinions to the new parents, even if you are super savvy and have a blog;), bite your tongue until you are asked for your opinion and be sure to give gently.
  • Examples of what NOT to say (taken from real life experiences):  
  • We never had to use a pacifier.” 
  • “Let me show you how to quiet a fussy baby” 
  • “Do you really think it’s a good idea to use a rock-and-play? I heard they cause brain damage.” 
  • “Strange, our baby slept through the night from the very beginning” 
  • “Can’t you just give her water? Why are you breastfeeding so much?” 
  • “Do you want some tips on how to lose your baby weight?” 
  • “You need to just sleep when the baby sleeps”---this is one of the most annoying because it’s not that a mother doesn’t try but if she wants to eventually wash off the aftermath of childbirth, then she will not be able to close her eyes every time baby does.  
• Don’t show up at the house unannounced. No really. You’re not welcome without a blessing from the new parents.   
• Don’t bring your little germ aka your child over to visit a newborn, specifically a firstborn. 
  • Even if you practice the very best in hygiene, kids are gross. No need to risk getting mommy or infant sick .   

The Birds and the Bees Revisited

The moment you go from actively not trying to get pregnant to actively trying to get pregnant, your sex life changes. Often it’s not a single moment but a month or more of inactively not trying, the birth control equivalent of slowly stepping into a freezing cold swimming pool rather than closing your eyes and jumping. You pull the goalie then forget to invite the other team to play. Or the other team is so freaked out they don’t even try to score. Or they do try to score but don’t, and then you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with the other team, if they’re too old or too stressed out or smoked too much pot in college. That’s when you go from dipping your toes in the water to doing a running cannonball off the diving board—Geronimo, kids, it’s time to get busy.

Unfortunately, despite what the Lifetime Movie Network and your high school guidance counselor want you to believe, making a baby is not as easy as a six-pack of Zima and a rec room couch. I went to a progressive school that prided itself on a liberal and comprehensive sex education curriculum. I remember writing anonymous questions about boobs and periods in fifth grade, a particularly horrific slide show about STDs in seventh grade, and a series of heated arguments throughout high school about whether legalizing prostitution would empower or oppress women. At the age of 32, when my husband and I decided to close our eyes and jump into the baby-making pool, I could argue the constitutionality of abortion, gay marriage, and pornography. I knew how HIV was transmitted on a molecular level. I could recite statistics on the risks associated with advanced maternal age as they related to miscarriage, infertility, and chromosomal abnormalities. But I didn’t truly understand that I could only get pregnant on four, maybe five days of the month, and probably fewer, because I was a maternal dinosaur and my husband smoked a lot of pot in college.

That’s the annoying truth of it. While it seems like every teenager on reality TV can get pregnant 26 days a month, and you swear your best friend occasionally gets knocked up in the shower, you and your old “career oriented” eggs have only a 12- to 24-hour window to get fertilized after ovulation. Your husband’s boys may be able to survive longer, depending on whether your fallopian tubes resemble a mahogany-paneled man-cave with a built-in beer tap and 60-inch plasma television or a women’s studies class at Smith, but at most you have five days during which sex leads to baby. Five days is the best-case scenario, and let’s be honest ladies, at our age, we have to aim for the bull’s eye just to hit the target.

So if you’re done testing the water and you’re ready to dive in, don’t waste your energy shaving your legs the first day after your period ends. Start spritzing your fancy Versace perfume a few days before you think you’ll ovulate, and save date-night at your favorite martini bar for the day before. And if that night happens to coincide with a major sporting event or highly anticipated episode of The Walking Dead, you might as well throw on your yoga pants, open a bottle of pinot, and wait ‘til next month.

Written by: Kathleen

PS: If you've been doing cannonballs for several months and are starting to get antsy, or if you're just trying to be more precise in your baby-making so you don't end up with, say, a Christmas due date, I highly recommend www.fertilityfriend.com and the accompanying app for more comprehensive information and tools to maximize your chances of getting pregnant regardless of who dies in the next episode of Game of Thrones.

Potty Training Part I: Preparation

WTF? Can’t I just wait until D realizes that diapers make her skinny jeans bunch and decides to make the leap on her own? Admittedly, I am not looking forward to this messy endeavor. I know in the end life will be easier and less expensive, but as a lazy parent it all just feels like a lot of effort for something that would ultimately work itself out via public humiliation. I know, I know, I’m not even in the middle of it yet and I’m already complaining. I try to keep my expectations low for myself so that I’ll be pleasantly surprised that I got my kid out of diapers before she takes the SATs.

 Like most of you, I have been over-reading on the subject to determine my approach and am now completely overwhelmed. Do I do a 3-day boot camp or wait until she shows “signs” that’s she’s ready? Do I create a Pavlov type set-up? Do I simply sit back and wait until daycare tells me that we should start reinforcing at home? Do I download an app and just pass D the phone? In the 19th century they used to clothe boys and girls in dresses full time and just allow them to have accidents until they figured out how to control themselves, resulting in most children being “house broken” by 18 months. Since the average life span was 50 years, this left a lot more time for more important things, like inventing electricity and abolishing slavery. Think of the set-backs if Abraham Lincoln had still been in diapers at the age of 3. Wall-to-wall carpeting changed that method very quickly, along with the fact that women entered the workforce and couldn’t sit at home all day with a pooper scooper. The advent of the disposable diaper made it even easier to put off potty training until 2-3 years, and then we became super focused on child-led training, meaning we have become very passive-aggressive in our own approach and highly judgmental of other parents for not moving quickly enough.

 As with all of the other fun, milestone tasks that we have to tackle, I’ll probably take a chapter from each of these books and combine them for a custom potty training combo. Needless to say, my daughter seems to think her potty is a fancy new place to store lost things. I think we’re on the slow boat to a diaper-less future. When you see my 3 year old still sporting pampers, do your best to hold your judgment and instead offer to take her home with you for the weekend for housebreaking. Stay tuned, more on potty training to come . . .

Written by: Alice

Up in the Air Part I: Air Travel with Infants

Long before my son was even a maturing follicle in my ovary, mine and my husband’s two best friends decided to get married. She was my freshman roommate in college, he was my husband’s brother-from-another-mother, they met as best man/bridesmaid at our wedding—it was a chick flick story just waiting for Kate Hudson to sign on to the project. They planned a destination wedding in Aruba with events spanning over four days, and nothing was going to stop me and my husband from standing beside them...not even two lines on a pee stick. Despite the realization that our due date was two months before the wedding, we were undeterred. After all, our baby would be seven whole weeks old by then, practically a teenager, and we were going to be totally chill parents who embraced adventure and the unexpected.

The terror did not set in until after C was born and it dawned on us that in just a few weeks’ time, we were scheduled to leave the country with a baby who frequently became over-stimulated by sitting on our front porch. Our anxiety about the trip soon eclipsed the potential for any actual disaster. Whereas at one time in our lives we'd decided on a Thursday to go to Costa Rica for the weekend, for this trip we had color-coded folders with printed tickets, maps, and itineraries prepared weeks in advance. And while for our three-week trip to India we had both stuffed our backpacks about an hour before our flight to JFK, this time we had my mom come baby-sit six days before our departure so we could devote an entire afternoon to packing. Our suitcase had its own carry-on, and we still ran out of diapers by day three. But we survived, and not only that, it was probably the best and most triumphant five days we’d had as parents yet.

In the end, I am grateful that we chose to travel with C at such an early age. We were forced out of our comfort zone, and we learned that our baby was not as dainty and ill-equipped for civilized life as we thought. After Aruba, no lunch out with friends or jaunt to Babies R Us felt daunting. Since that first journey, we have flown with him many times, sometimes even in coach, and I can honestly say that it only gets harder as babies get older, so take advantage of your maternity leave and baby’s day-night confusion and go explore the world. Just don’t forget the Xanax.

A Non-Comprehensive Guide to International Air Travel with an Infant

Suggested Packing List:

•  Diapers—To determine how many diapers you will need for your trip, take your baby’s average daily consumption of diapers and then triple it. Put those diapers in your carry-on bag, then stuff another 500 or so in your checked luggage. They sell diapers almost anywhere in the world except on an airplane, and that’s where you will inevitably realize that the change in cabin pressure during take-off has caused your infant to blow an entire week’s worth of poop all over his Florence Eisemann travel outfit. As soon as you experience the triumph and relief of your first successful mid-air diaper-and-outfit change, he’ll do it again.
•  Soothers—If your baby takes a pacifier, bring 10 of them. We brought two on that initial trip with C, and the first one disappeared before we were even off the Park-n-Ride bus. The value of the second binky suddenly went from $1.29 to $10 million. I highly recommend those Booginhead pacifier clips to protect your investment.
• Clothes—Pack twice as many outfits as you think you will need for both you and baby. The warm Caribbean breeze may have alleviated some of C’s colic symptoms, but the piña coladas did nothing for his reflux.
• Extra T-shirts—There’s nothing like nursing your baby to sleep during take-off, feeling your lungs exhale for the first time in weeks as you realize you’ve finally made it to this point you’ve been dreading and it’s really not so bad, and then wondering what that warm sensation spreading across your stomach could be. Spoiler alert, it’s pee, and you don’t want to be wearing it when the bride and groom greet you at the resort lobby with an umbrella drink and a camera.
•   Ridiculousness—By this I mean that you should pack anything that makes you feel less anxious about your travels. For example, at seven weeks of age, C would only sleep in the Fisher Price Rock ‘n Play—sleeping flat in a crib made him scream like he was being devoured by dingoes. So we bought a less expensive version of the RNP from Bright Start, checked it in its box with our luggage, and then after our five-night stay, we left it behind in the hotel room. Wasteful, perhaps, but it alleviated our fears about sleep, and I’m sure there was a newly postpartum mom in Aruba who didn’t mind our self-indulgence one bit.

Tips for Air Travel:

• Car Seats Check for Free—No matter whether you are a Double Black Diamond Medallion flier with 40 billion airline points or you just jumped off the turnip truck from Mayberry, you do not have to pay to check your car seat with any major US carrier. As for international carriers, I don’t know, do your own research.
• Formula/Breast Milk/Baby Food is Allowed Through Security—Liquids that are intended for infant-sustenance are not subject to the normal 3-ounce limit. However, you do have to pull them out of your carry-on and they may be subject to some weird science experiment conducted by a TSA agent who has not necessarily passed AP Chemistry.
•  Embrace the Bjorn (or Ergo or Boba, etc)—If you transport your baby through the airport in a car seat or stroller, you will have to remove him from all contraptions to pass through security. This will result in your baby waking up and being pissed at you for bringing him to a place with florescent lighting, and in all of the other passengers hating you because you still don’t really know how to collapse your snap-n-go stroller while removing 6 bottles of pumped breast milk from your cooler bag and taking off your shoes. You do not have to remove your sleeping infant from a baby carrier—you simply walk through the less-invasive metal detector, submit to having your palms swiped to test for explosive residue on your hands, and then spend the remainder of your trip suppressing the horror you feel about the fate of a species that would potentially use its own offspring as a suicide bomb. * On about 50% of my airline flights, the flight attendant has made me remove C from the Ergo during take-off and landing. It’s FAA regulation because I guess if the mother died during these points in the flight, it would be irritating to have to cut the kid out of the carrier. At least that’s how one especially friendly Delta employee explained it to me moments before taxi. Anyway, you’ve been warned.
•  Nurse/Bottle-feed During Take-Off and Landing, Or Don’t—Everyone and her mother and her mother’s dog-sitter and the flight attendants all told me to nurse C during take-off and landing to ensure his ears popped with the change in cabin pressure. However, with its dim lighting and roaring engines, a Boeing 737 is like a sensory-deprivation chamber for newborns, and C fell asleep the minute the safety video began reminding us of how to use a seat-belt. I always follow the adage to never wake a sleeping baby, but if your tiny traveler wakes up screaming as you crest 10,000 feet because he feels like his brains are exploding out of his ears, stick a boob in his mouth and send thanks to God that infants don’t form long-term memories.
• Nursing In-Flight—If you're new to breastfeeding, practice doing it in public before your trip. Babies R Us has nursing rooms and that's a good place to start, but you may want to dive right in and whip out your boob in line at Starbucks. My flying-with-infant outfit of choice was always a nursing tank and a button-up shirt for easy access, along with a scarf for added privacy and style points. You may also want a nursing cover or blanket for breastfeeding in the airport terminals, which can get crowded. Shortly after our first airplane trip, there was a lot of chatter on the interwebs about an employee of a major airline supposedly telling a woman she was not allowed to nurse on the plane without a cover. I nursed C without a cover on about a dozen domestic flights in his first year and never once got the stink-eye from a flight attendant or fellow passenger. I may just be especially charming or have especially uninteresting boobs, but I honestly believe that if you don’t make a deal of it, no one else will, either.
•    Diaper Changes—Some airplanes have changing shelves in the lavatories, some don’t. I recommend perfecting the lap-change before your flight. Pack your diaper bag so that your changing pad, diaper, wipes, and a bag are all bound together with a rubber band and accessible with one hand should your spouse enjoy a pre-flight cocktail and promptly fall asleep. Flight attendants are not allowed to handle dirty diapers, so be sure to bring a plethora of plastic grocery bags. I use those rolls of dog-poop bags because they are nearly impossible to tear-off and open with one hand while also keeping an infant from rolling off my lap, and I like a good challenge to keep me sharp. (If your infant is large or your lap is small, try to book an aisle seat so you can change diapers by laying the baby in the seat while you kneel on the floor).
• The Crying Doesn’t Bother Anyone as Much as it Bothers You—My mother gave me this piece of sage advice before that first flight, and like most things that don’t have to do with children's health or safety, she was right. C cried a couple of times on our four-hour flight, and each time I cringed and shushed him with frantic bouncing motions that probably convinced him we were dropping from the sky in a ball of fire. After landing, six or seven nearby passengers made a point to stop and tell us how well-behaved our baby was, and to share their own first-flight experiences with their kids. Turns out that if a baby’s cries do not have a direct impact on a person’s mammary glands, it’s really not any worse than watching an in-flight movie starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

Notes on International Travel:

•  Passport—Yes, your baby needs one. You can have them expedited if you’re adopting internationally or you’re like us and insane enough to purposefully leave the country with a child under three months of age. Also, don’t bother making an appointment with the post office to have your baby’s photo taken, because the camera is broken and you’ll have to take your shrieking three-week-old across the street in the rain to have a professional passport photographer capture the memory.
• Plane Ticket—For international travel only, you have to pay a fee for your infant-in-arms that is about 10% of the market fare for your ticket. Not the actual cost of your ticket, which in our case was $0 because my husband is a Flying Grand Potentate on Delta and used miles, but the amount the ticket would have cost had he purchased it like the Mayberry people do. Yes, airline logic is only slightly less baffling than the need for hand-explosive-residue testers for women carrying their infant children.
•  Car Seat—Because we were not planning to take a stroller to Aruba (C was actually Gorilla-glued to the Bjorn for his first eight weeks of life), and because we only had to be in a car for two total rides during our time on the island, we opted not to bring our car seat with us. One less thing when you already need two pack mules and a Nepalese sherpa to get your luggage to the taxi stand, right? Instead, clever world travelers that we were, we decided to reserve a car in advance to drive us to and from the airport in Aruba, and we asked that they include an infant car seat, a request they happily obliged. However, we quickly learned that not every country follows the US Department of Transportation infant-safety guidelines, and I spent a harrowing 45 minutes trying to secure my tiny baby in the shoebox-and-duct-tape contraption that the Dutch call a car seat before finally clutching him to my chest and putting my faith in my mom-arms to hold on tight. Car seats are a pain in the ass to lug across international borders, but vehicle-related accidents are the number one cause of injury and death in children during travel, so hire an extra sherpa and bring yours along.

If You’re Traveling Alone with Your Infant…

I first flew alone with C when he was six months old, but I think that most of the above still applies to solo travel with an infant, with some additions.

•  Ship Ahead—Look into using Amazon’s extraordinary same-day or next-day shipping options to send a case of diapers, wipes, and sundry ridiculousness to your destination in advance to avoid having to become your own sherpa.
• Check Your Luggage—Yes, it’s expensive, but you try going pee in an airport bathroom stall with a baby, a diaper bag, and a roll-aboard and then tell me it’s not worth the $50. However, if you are seriously opposed to giving in to the airline usuary...
•  Use Your Stroller as a Luggage Cart—Put your baby in a carrier and use a stroller to cart your diaper bag and suitcase. Just keep in mind that everyone in the security line already hates you.
•  Ask for Help—You probably will not have to ask. Every time I enter an airport alone with C, I am flooded with offers of assistance, mostly from business traveler-dads who miss their kids, but I’ve even had grandmothers offer to pull my suitcase from the baggage carousel. On my last solo flight with C I sat next to a famous scholar’s very auspicious wife, and she spent the entire flight entertaining my child with her tray-table. Smile shyly and apologize often and people will go out of their way to be kind. 

Websites that Would Be More Helpful if They Weren’t Run by the Government or Government-Subsidized Entities:

•  US Passports for Minors 
• FAA Guidelines on Child Safety Seats
• TSA Guidelines on Traveling with Children
•  CDC Infant Travel Health & Safety (this one will scare the shit out of you and make you consider exchanging your international tickets for a Disney cruise) 

 US Airline Rules and Recommendations for Traveling with Children

• Delta
• Southwest
•  United
• American 

Coming soon...Up in the Air Part II: Air Travel with a Toddler, or Why God Invented Mini-Vans.

Written by: Kathleen  

Are You Raising an Asshole?

If you haven’t gotten there yet, you will: that moment when you realize that you may have given birth to Rosemary’s baby. The first time your precious offspring starts acting like Kanye West, humiliating you in public, interrupting others and  wearing Gucci, you know you have trouble brewing. Now some of you might say it is offensive to call a young child an A-hole, but I think we all know that there is really no other term to describe their behavior. If they were adults, you would most certainly call them something you can’t say in front of your grandmother.

Here are a few clues that you might be raising an asshole. If your child has ever:

• thrown a sizeable hard toy at your head
• screamed “I hate you” at you in a public place
• asked you “mommy, do you still have a baby in your tummy?”
• squeezed an entire tube of toothpaste out on your counter
•  painted your walls with her poop
• shown up with a twin—while technically I know the child didn’t choose this, we all know it’s rude to bring a guest if the invitation didn’t specifically say plus one
• woken up two hours early when you decide to have a few extra drinks the night before
•  used your bedspread as a blank canvas for finger painting
•  stiff bodied herself so you can’t get her in her car seat in front of a crowd of parents at school (tip: tickle her stomach so she’s forced to sandwich)
•  grabbed items off the grocery store shelves as you cart by so that they break on the floor
•  ran from you in public forcing you to look like you are abducting her

If you have experienced one or more of these things, or something worse, you are, in fact, raising an asshole. You are not alone. We have all either dealt with or are still dealing with the bi-polar antics of a youngster. The best we can all do is hope that the problem can correct itself once they become teenagers and we have the opportunity to be even bigger assholes back to them. Stay strong! Also, I can’t leave you without mentioning that we are not raising the very first generation of assholes and we should all take the time to call the people who dealt with our former A-hole selves and thank them for not kicking us at out of the house at 4 years old.

DISCLAIMER: For those “mature” parents, I am sure there is much worse coming down the pipe as our kids get older. Not there yet. Stay tuned. 

Written by: Alice

Always let your little a-hole know you have the upper hand...

C-Sections: The Aftermath

Even though you are not having a C-section, if someone you know ends up having one, it might be useful to know what to expect in the aftermath. Full disclosure—I had a relatively easy recovery, so you may want to consult some medically trained expert-type people, or at least someone who has had more than one baby, for further details.

Your Blood Pressure: In the minutes immediately following surgery, your blood pressure may plummet. There are medical reasons for this that are perfectly normal and that I am too lazy to Google. You won’t necessarily know that this is happening—what you will feel is an intense, overwhelming desire to close your eyes and sleep. I thought this desire to pass out cold meant I didn’t love my baby and I was going to be a terrible mother. I have the capacity to generate a great deal of self-loathing in a short period of time. Turns out my BP was 80/40, and it remained that way for about an hour. I wish I’d known about the blood pressure drop and saved myself another year of therapy.

The Not Moving: You just had the baby you’ve been dreaming about for 40 weeks, and you can’t get out of bed to pick him up. You’re supposed to be a mother, a bastion of softness and cuddles, but you’re attached to machines and wires and there may be a tube up your hoo-ha to help you pee. This part is demoralizing, but it doesn’t last forever. The machines will recede, you will be walking upright in a few days, and in the meantime, your spouse will get pretty good at changing tiny diapers and scraping meconium off his wedding ring. 

The Gas: Of all the competing types of pain and discomfort in my newly postpartum body, the post-op gas pain was by far the worst. I felt like I had acid pooling in my shoulders and a fire-breathing dragon nestled in my spine. The gas relievers were about as effective as a sling shot in a nuclear war. Thankfully it only lasted about 48 hours. I have never been more excited to fart in public than I was on the second day after surgery.

Fifty Shades of Pain: In addition to gas pain, there is also the shrinking uterus pain, and the holy-shit-I’ve-been-cut-open pain, as well as a host of miscellaneous pains, like the “my insides have been temporarily removed and then replaced just slightly out of order” pain, or the “a human child tried to push its head through my lady bits but then got stuck in my pelvic bone for sixteen hours” pain. Your pain will be unique, but Hydrocodone is generic, so make sure you demand it at regular intervals and keep taking it at home. Your plan for a natural childbirth is already road-kill on the highway of reality; this is not the time to just say no.

There Will Be Blood: Because I am not especially good at science or basic logic, I briefly thought the one upside to having a C-section would be not dealing with the dreaded “lochia,” which is Latin for “pretty sure you’ll be wearing a maxi pad until your child is in second grade.” Of course I was wrong—the doctors are not considerate enough to scoop out all the blood and goop while you’re open on the table. Your baby may not have exited the old fashioned way, but everything else will.

Your First Post-Op BM: Much like it prepared for labor, your body may spend days or even weeks preparing for its first bowel movement after delivery. Eventually the need will become undeniable, so hand the baby to your spouse, grab a magazine and some Gatorade, and settle in for the long-haul. It could take hours, and you will feel like you are giving birth to a bag of rocks. There will be praying, cursing, and hysterical crying. You will do things that would shock your younger self, and you will never speak of those things to anyone again. When it’s all over, you will experience a wave of euphoria followed by intense exhaustion. Congratulations, it’s a poop.

The Scar: At first, the incision site may resemble something you’ve seen in those chain-emails your mom used to forward about co-eds going to Cancun for spring break and waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a kidney missing. Worry not—like your memory of childbirth, your scar will fade, eventually becoming a thin white line that your future teenager will barely be able to see when you demand she look at it after she calls you the b-word in front of her friends.

Written by: Kathleen

Babies come out where?

Walk into any group of moms of children under age five and say the words “C-section” and you’ll be greeted with the same averted eyes and awkward smirks as the parents whose babies have flat heads because they spent too much time in the Mamaroo while mommy fed her Pinterest habit. Telling a group of semi-strangers you have hemorrhoids is far more acceptable than telling them you had a C-section, even though, statistically speaking, one third of them probably had one, too. C-sections are the third rail of birth stories—the nice moms will express sorrow for your loss, the asshole moms will tell you why your lack of feminist fervor and maternal fortitude means your child will likely grow into an asthmatic sex offender with a severe peanut allergy.

I think the most adamant anti-“sectioners” have this image of a woman at 36-weeks pregnant, a martini in one hand and her epidural in the other, growing impatient that her 45 minutes of labor will make her late for the ballet. Even the more sympathetic naysayers, those who grasp the concept of the emergency C-section, seem to harbor the belief that if you were just empowered enough to ask the right questions and build a proper argument to present to your doctor, you could reverse the course of medical intervention and have a vaginal birth like mother nature intended.

If you are currently pregnant with your first child, you are probably in the sympathetic-naysayer camp. You know that sometimes C-sections are medically necessary, and you know that you yourself will not be having one. Your birth plan may be longer than your doctoral thesis, complete with hyperlinked references and a video clip from The Business of Being Born, or it may be jotted down in pencil on the back of a cocktail napkin, but it probably makes pretty clear your desire to push your baby out the ole’ lady canal. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with a C-section—your sister had one and yes, your nephew has a mild allergy to truffle oil and he gets a little wheezy during ragweed season, but so far he shows no signs of being aroused by corpses—it’s just that you plan to do things naturally, and you’re pretty sure you have an above-average tolerance for pain.

I pretty much felt the same way until my own labor experience, which did not involve theater tickets or arguing briefs before my medical team. I was in early labor for 48 hours and active labor for nine hours before I received an epidural. My contractions were perfect, my baby had been at zero station for weeks, but my cervix wouldn’t budge. It may have obliged us eventually, there is no way to know, but after my water broke there was nothing to keep the umbilical cord afloat, and it slowly began wrapping around my son like a boa constrictor. With every contraction, the snake squeezed tighter, and his heart rate began to indicate distress. My doctor explained the situation to me in a way that fit my particular view on nature and biology: My baby was communicating with my body, telling it that he couldn’t come out that way and it needed to keep the door shut. With his heart rate decelerating rapidly, she presented the surgical option. It was my decision, and I didn’t hesitate. You won’t hesitate when your child’s health is in danger—you won’t in that first moment, and you never will again. When your baby is telling you what he needs, no force on Earth will stop you from giving it to him. There's a voice inside of you that says: “My life is no longer my own. I will do anything for you. I will die for you.” You forget about your birth plan because you know that it was never about you.

Despite my compelling tale of maternal strength and love, you probably still don’t want a C-section, and you are probably pretty sure you would’ve made it a few more hours without the epidural and ultimately had the blissful vaginal delivery of your dreams. I don’t blame you—I still second-guess myself, too. I don’t regret consenting to the C-section, but I do wish I hadn’t needed one, and I am currently working on the argument I will present to my doctor in favor of a VBAC the next time around. Just know that if your labor hits a detour or other unexpected bumps in the road, despite the statistics and the data and the regretful sighs of the other Gymboree moms, you will make the right decision for you and your child in the moment based on the information you have. You are a mom now, and that’s what moms do.

Labored by: Kathleen

Born in the Wild

The decision to go “natural”, aka drug free, was an easy one for me and involved very little political ideals or hemp products. My mother had all three of us at home, so I felt secure in the knowledge that my DNA would allow me to channel my inner wild animal and pop a baby out a la carte! That said, I will admit that while I had publicly made up my mind, I was privately giving myself permission to scream “uncle” mid-contraction.

I went into labor 10 days before my due date. I am not really clear on the rules around how long people say they labored. Do you claim the time the doctor says labor technically started, the moment when you actually realized you were in labor, or the time when you start to feel like your body is splitting in half? For me: Doctor’s Time: 5 hours; My Time: 2 hours; Body Splitting Time: 30 minutes.

My water broke while I was at work. Since I was 10 days early and it was just a little trickle, I figured that this was the stage in pregnancy when you start peeing yourself. I was feeling a bit off all day so I had planned to leave a little early anyway. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to call my doctor and check in in case it wasn’t just pee. They had me come in to the office and discovered that I had in fact broken my water. They immediately moved forward with normal protocol telling me that I needed to check into the hospital and get hooked up to pitocin. I explained that I was not using pitocin or an epidural. My doctor warned me that it could be up to 24 hours for me to deliver if I didn’t use pitocin. I told her I had nowhere to be and that wasn’t a problem for me. One thing you have to prepare yourself for if you opt for a drug-free delivery is that the hospital is full of pushers. Around every corner there is a nurse saying, “just try a little, it will make you feel better.” I chose to treat the nursing staff like drug dealers and would yell out “drug free is the way to be!” It scared them enough to back off and was super amusing for me. Once my husband got to the hospital, the nurse had us walk the halls with an enormous towel, because if the rest of my water broke by the vending machine I would be ever-so worried that someone might slip. When we hiked back to the room and sat on the bed for some quick monitor action, the rest of my waters came out. For those of you who haven’t experienced your waters breaking on your own, I liken it to the lack of control my grandmother must feel when she soaks her Depends while playing bridge. It flows right out of you and you can’t do anything to stop it or slow it down. Once that wonderful, buoyant universe was depleted, I felt nothing but baby! That’s when the painful contractions started. Since pain is gauged due to the dramatic tendencies of the person, I’ll just say it hurt a 7, with 10 being the pain I felt when Sonny Bono died. I tried to focus on the purpose of the pain and the fact that in 6-10 years that purpose will do my dishes. Once the baby was out, the release of pressure was a huge relief. Your body is so pumped with natural adrenaline that acute pain isn’t really present. Your body is wound up really tightly. My legs had tremors for an hour after delivery. The recovery from a drug free birth is relatively quick and the percentage of women that get tears, etc, is lower because your body can feel what is happening and properly prepare—aka stretch. There is no missing out on the days of aftermath or the next 20 years of exhaustion no matter how your little one came into the world. Pick the path that is right for you and reserve the right to change your mind. Also know that the only thing that is 100% certain about childbirth is that nothing will go exactly as you planned. In the words of one maladjusted ice princess, “Let It Go, Let It Go!”

 Suggested Natural Birth Playlist

“I’m Coming Out” Pink

“Burning Ring of Fire” Johnny Cash

“Push It” Salt-N-Peppa

“Hit Me Baby One More Time” Britney Spears

“Come As You Are” Nirvana

“Sunday Bloody Sunday” U2

“My Humps” Black Eyed Peas

“Drop It Like It’s Hot” Snoop Dogg

“Who’s Gonna Raise these Babies” Shovels and Rope

 Written by: Alice

The Art of a Meltdown

MELTDOWN [melt doun]: Describes what happens when a person freaks out, cracks, loses control of herself. Life - reality at large- becomes overwhelming. She just can't deal with it all. The person may act out, withdraw, become emotional, run, etc...

If you are lucky enough to have experienced one of these special moments with your child, then you either powered through with flying colors, gave in and bought your kid that life-sized inflatable elephant, OR you are currently trying to figure out how to transfer custody to your least favorite sibling. Whatever the means of coping, you deserve a pat on the back. For those of you who have not yet ventured into the world of floor tantrums, get ready! You may be wondering if your toddler screaming in the car seat because he is tired or your baby getting extra fussy around mealtime qualifies as a meltdown. They DO NOT!!! There is so much more to this special developmental milestone. Note, there are some “child specialists” that would suggest that there are ways to avoid tantrums all together. I’m calling B.S. on these claims. These “experts” have clearly never tried to go grocery shopping with a 2 year-old who has just discovered how good it feels to smash a bag of bread with her butt.

RECIPE FOR A MELTDOWN

2 parts child age 18 months to 18 years

1 part terrorist

1 part mother-in-law

1 part genetic crazy code (this varies depending on the parents’ crazy tendency)

optional: Public setting

SURVIVAL STRATEGY

Step 1: Do not look it (it=your offspring) directly in the eye.

Step 2: If in public, determine the fastest exit strategy—leave behind shopping carts, luggage, and loved ones if necessary.

Step 3: Once in the car or padded room, let the meltdown run its course.

Step 4: THE MOST CRUCIAL STEP: WE DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS!!! You cannot, I repeat cannot do anything about the irrational way that your child is behaving. Once she is in the throws of a full meltdown, she has lost her ability to comprehend what anyone else is saying or doing.

Step 5: Minimize the casualties by clearing the area of any pets, other children, and sharp objects.

Step 6: Ignore and wait…

Step 7: …and wait.

Step 8: Once your little terrorist rejoins the human world, return to regularly scheduled programming.   

COMING SOON: "How to handle Daddy Meltdowns"

Written by: Alice 

Dining with Monsters

We have all sat next to the table of children who are turning the restaurant into a Greek wedding and uttered the words, “If my kid acts like that, we just won’t go out.” That’s some pre-baby nonsense. You’ll go out. Even if for no better reason than to avoid defrosting another one of the mysterious post-baby meals delivered to you by the neighbor you barely know and who probably only brought it over so that she could check out the size of the linen closet in your bathroom. Here are a few tips to dining with a carry-on.

Get your training wheels under you while your little one can still be contained and toted. This means pulling back your un-showered hair and putting on a pair of pants that conceal your net underwear. Eating out with a young baby is, and should be, fairly uneventful, as most are content in their carrier and can snooze the whole time, especially if aided by a Carseat Canopy or similar apparatus. Bonus!! Since your little one doesn’t yet have a defined bedtime, then you can actually meet friends out after 6:00 pm, allowing you to believe that your social life will only moderately be affected by your new offspring.

NOTE: Avoid super hip restaurants boasting the latest trendlet of seating you on a staircase to dine, thus providing no space to prop baby and offering no coverage if you need to - GASP - breastfeed in public.

MAY THE PLATE SMASHING BEGIN!

Taking toddlers out to eat is not for the weak. If you respect a nice night out without the distraction of a screaming kid at the next table over, then choose a restaurant that you would never go to for such an escape. I suggest chain restaurants as they have low standards, crappy food, and disreputable clientele likely not to judge. Your foodie community will thank you AND you will still be able to show your face at your favorite “date night” spot. Plan to get there when the doors open for dinner service. The upsides to the early hour: the geriatric diners will find your toddler’s fifth jog around their table endearing, a light crowd equals timely food service and attention, and being early will give you ample time to get back in the car before a pending bedtime meltdown ensues. This is the stage when you will likely lose or sideline those friends who do not have children. Fear not, they’ll come back around when you have a built in D.D. in 16 years.

Supplies for Dining Out:

·      An assortment of entertainment: coloring books, small toy cars, etc;

·      A sippy cup, because the cup with the straw and lid provides only the illusion of security;

·      Toddler utensils;

·      Full body bib;

·      Wipes

Have a ‘tap out’ understanding with your partner so that you each take a turn occupying the little one. I have a particularly curious and active toddler, so if I am to get a sip of my wine at dinner, I need to be able to pass off duty to someone else. On the upside, it now takes me only 27 seconds to down a glass of Chardonnay.  

NOTE: Trick of the trade—after your little one inevitably leaves a mess that would rival the aftermath of a Chris Brown concert, ask the server if you can borrow a broom. If she is even halfway competent, she will refuse and appreciate you for asking, ensuring that you can return to the restaurant and be confident that no one is spitting in your food.

Written by: Alice

Pump It Up

Is that your nipple in a vacuum? The first thing to think about when considering which breast pump to get is that they all suck: both metaphorically and literally.  There isn’t a woman in the world that will tell you she loved pumping. It’s a means to an end and a necessary evil, unless you plan to go the formula or attachment parenting routes.

My device of pain: the Medela Freestyle Pump. Don’t let the name fool you, there is nothing freeing about this pump. However, it does offer the efficiency of dual pumping, making it easier to open a bottle of wine while your nipples are being abused. A bonus to this particular pump is the compact “engine” that can be clipped onto your stretchy pants, allowing you to do housework, complete spreadsheets, sit in a restroom stall, and walk on the treadmill while expelling the liquid gold for your little one. If you are like me and will need to pump between board meetings and chats around the water cooler, then this model will definitely pay for itself. You can pump in a public restroom or in your office with ease. Further, if you are a stay-at-home mom who is looking to increase supply or readying your stash for going back to work, you can strap this baby on while ordering your significant other around.

Tips for Pumping at Work:

·      Take a cooler or freezer bag. I really liked the Playtex Freeze To-Go Tote. Just throw it in the freezer in the evenings and it is ready to go, and you can leave it at your desk during the day. This helps you avoid having to use the staff refrigerator and screaming at Bill for thinking he was funny for using your breast milk in his coffee. #thestruggleisreal

·      If your employer isn’t progressive enough to provide a pump space and you don’t have a private office, finding a space to relax can be a challenge. When I got a new job and lost the privacy of my own office, I pumped in a chair in a public women’s restroom with my nursing cover. It made for an interesting first day of work as I introduced myself to colleagues and even the board chair in the restroom and then sat silently while I listened to them pee. 

·      If you are working 40+ hours a week and pumping at least 3 times a day then you will likely experience a decrease in production. No matter how hard that pump pulls your nipple, it can not match your little one’s natural sucker—and your body knows it! Fear not, there are great formulas out there that you can use to supplement AND this does not mean that your child is more or less likely to throw your cat out of a window one day. It is a natural side effect to the demand on your body. NOTE: Avoid using bigger bottles for pumping unless you have the production of a dairy cow otherwise it will just make you feel like a failure.

Tips for Milk Storage:

·      If you are stockpiling, then the freezer bags are ideal.  Freeze in varying amounts as baby’s needs will change, and you don’t want to have to defrost an 8-ounce bag when you really only need 6 ounces, thus forcing your husband to drink a “mommy Russian”. *Frozen breast milk, much like raw meat, should ideally be consumed within 24 hours of defrost.

·      For daily storage, Medela offers ample solutions, including lids with dials to indicate the date of pump. These are helpful for working moms who are trying to stay one day ahead: Friday’s pump = Monday’s bottles. Get bottles in various sizes to accommodate for increasing needs.

When/How to Start Pumping:

·      Going back to work post-baby:

o   I suggest you start the practice of pumping 2 weeks postpartum.

o   Pump right after you’ve fed the baby. This will tell your body to increase supply and help to build your stash right away. This also works whether you are doing timed or demand-based feedings.

o   Use some of this stash to start introducing the bottle after the first month so that your babe will be well versed in bottle feeding by the time you are forced, after a quick 3-month maternity leave, to drop her off at daycare.

·      Staying at home with baby:

o   You can start as early as you want, but you likely won’t feel any real pressure to build a stash right away.

o   Do some intermittent pumping after the first month. This will allow you to build up a modest amount that can be pulled out of the freezer in the event that you get the flu or want to go see a movie.

o   For the more social mommy who wants to resume date nights and regular doctor’s visits, I suggest routinely pumping post-feedings starting after the first month. 

Written by: Alice