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

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

Big Mother is Watching You

As my child crests the two year mark, much of the gear I considered essential to his early days of life is collecting dust in the basement. The Rock n Play, once one of the first non-human things I would rescue in a fire (after the wedding album, but before the cat), is now wrapped in a garbage bag and wedged between a stack of broken suitcases and a combo TV/VCR. The car-seat canopy and Bjorn are packed away in a plastic bin, the Ergo has been lying on the floor of my station wagon for months, and even the BOB Revolution spends more time in the car port experimenting with new types of mold growth than treating a neighborhood arts festival like a monster truck rally. Yet one device has remained in consistent use since C was about 10 weeks old, shepherding us through growth spurts and illnesses and nap regressions like our own personal Eckhart Tolle of childhood sleep—our Motorola Digital Baby Monitor 3.5 Video MBP36.

Back in the days of yore when little Gen X’ers ran in packs through their cul-de-sacs, playing on trampolines, accepting candy from strangers, preparing their own genetically modified, high-fructose-corn-syrup-based dinners in the microwave and putting themselves to bed after Arsenio, parents didn’t have wireless video monitors with infrared screens and two-way microphones to assess whether their babies were asleep. At best they had primitive one-way walkie-talkies, which made up for what they lacked in features with impressive range, allowing parents to maintain a watchful ear over their offspring while getting uproariously drunk on their neighbor’s back deck. Nowadays, however, a parent without a video monitor might as well be family-bedding in a yurt in Montana five hundred miles from the nearest Trader Joe’s. At its heart, the video monitor is truly the foundation for modern parenting. After all, if you do not begin keeping tabs on how many times your infant rolls from back to front between midnight and 6AM now, how will you ever have the energy and lack of boundaries to secretly rewrite his college admissions essays for him when he’s eighteen?

Despite my own inclination to want to raise my children in an airbrushed version of the 1980s (yes to playing outdoors ‘til the sun goes down, no to neon Jams and trickle-down economics), I found that using a video monitor has helped me foster my son’s good sleeping habits and thus overall independence. My husband and I were never pushed to the necessary point of sleep-deprived delirium to implement a true Cry-It-Out method of sleep training, however we did start letting our son “fuss it out” beginning around 12 weeks of age, once we had established a consistent bedtime routine. Having the video monitor helped me determine whether he was truly red-faced crying like he’d been laid down to rest beside an active volcano or whether he was just rolling around squawking and griping like my great-uncle watching the 2008 Democratic presidential debates. The former required immediate intervention, a figurative hitting of the re-set button, whereas the latter meant that he was on track to be asleep within five minutes and it was time to unscrew the wine. As a frazzled first-time parent with the ability to spiral into a black hole of guilt for putting my beloved firstborn in his bouncer seat on the bathroom floor so I could pee lest he feel the slightest twinge of abandonment, the visual confirmation that fussing and whining was simply a part of his self-soothing mechanism provided tremendous comfort until the wine could take effect.

Additional features also contribute to the video monitor’s overall utility. Most of them now have night vision, so you can see whether your baby’s eyes are open or not, which is helpful when they begin to exhibit that adorable habit of “sleep-crying” at 90-minute intervals throughout the night at around 4 months of age (this is part of the dreadful 4-month sleep regression, and it too shall pass). The two-way microphone has been an invaluable contribution to scaring the crap out of my toddler every time he starts to climb out of his crib during naptime, even if it does guarantee that one day he’ll be telling his therapist about the omniscient, disembodied voice that ruled over his childhood and always seemed to have old episodes of Friday Night Lights playing in the background.

As all parents will learn, infant and toddler sleep is not a one-and-done kind of deal. Brag all you want about your six week-old sleeping 12 hours a night, but unless you have sold your soul to the Devil (and I wouldn’t blame you, and send me his email address if you have it), you are likely to encounter a few hiccups over the next few years, and by hiccups I mean that government mandated form of parental torture known as daylight savings time. Sleep habits evolve, regressions occur, new problems arise. Our parents’ generation may have gotten by just fine not knowing if that weird gurgling noise they heard coming from the baby’s room was the peaceful coo of their sleeping cherub or the onset of another round of rotavirus, but they were also allowed to drink martinis while breastfeeding and paid their teenage baby-sitters $1.50 an hour, so you know, we deserve our breaks where we can get them.

*As for specific video monitor brands, I don’t have any glowing recommendations. The 2013 version of the Motorola has crappy battery life and the power cord has become really loose at the point of connection with the receiver and thus falls out all the time and is impossible to reconnect in the dark, but it has survived over two years of being tossed about by a small child (and occasionally a grown adult who is exasperated by her infant son’s gift of six straight nights of “reverse cycling” to thank her for going back to work), so I should probably give it some credit. Let me know if you have an amazing video monitor you recommend, and then send it to me along with a second camera for the upcoming new addition and I promise to write a glowing review.

Written by: Kathleen

Without a video monitor, we never would have known that our child sleeps sitting up like an old man on the subway.

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 .   

Fur Babies v. First Babies

They’re the loves of your life and the apples of your eye. You post too many photos of them to Facebook and you spend way too much time talking about them at parties, boring your friends with lengthy descriptions of their adorable idiosyncrasies. You shell out thousands of dollars for toys and treats and day care, even though they often reward you by puking on your rug or chewing your shoes. They’re your pets, and nothing, especially not a baby, is ever going to displace them from the center of your universe. 

Except that once your first child is born, there will be a period of time during which you will hate your pets. Unaware of the changes to your life and theirs brought about by that giant naked mole-rat your keep fawning over, they will continue to demand your attention at a time when your ability to give one more ounce of yourself has been stripped raw. You will still love them, and you won’t do anything crazy like get rid of them—unless of course you are a narcissistic asshole with questionable parenting skills or they suddenly turn into Cujo—but you will most certainly resent their need for basic upkeep, and you will forget to feed them far more often than you’ll care to admit. 

Before the hate mail starts rolling in, please understand that I say this as a lifelong animal lover and complete nutcase about my pets. My parents rescued animals before it was cool and before there were leash laws—when I was born we had three dogs and at least five cats, one of whom was named Mr. Cat, because after a certain point you legitimately run out of options. When I adopted my first two cats after college in 2002, I devoted real time and brain-power to figuring out how, in the event of a terrorist attack and a city-wide evacuation, I was going to get from my office in downtown Boston to my apartment across the harbor to pick them up before escaping out of town. Over the past decade our two dogs, Whiskey and Oliver, between them have incurred every major medical malady known to veterinary science, destroyed no fewer than eight not-inexpensive rugs with their fecal matter, eaten one half of a Crate & Barrel couch, and made themselves canines non grata at all local dog parks and at least one day-camp facility, and yet for most of their lives I have publicly described them as my soul mates. 

All this to say, I get it. You love your pets like your babies…until you have an actual baby, when you discover that your pets require far more time and energy than you recognized back when they were the only creatures you were responsible for keeping alive. And they will announce their needs at the least opportune moments, like at 4am, when baby is on his sixth feeding of the night, and your precious Labrador starts dragging his ass across the rug in that “I’m going to blow at any moment” gesture that is completely your fault because you’ve recently switched his diet from boiled chicken and rice to whatever shit they sell at the Chevron down the street, so you race your doughy ass downstairs, trying not to pop your stitches or trip over your cat as he weaves between your legs in delight that someone finally wants to play during his peak energy hours, shove your dog out the back door, then proceed to watch as he spends the next twenty minutes in the corner of the yard sniffing his own three-day-old poop before setting off the neighbor’s motion-sensor floodlights and barking aggressively at his own shadow. 

In hindsight, I now know that it was not really their neediness that made me hate my once-beloved soul mates in those early postpartum weeks, it was my own guilt at my colossal negligence. For months I promised them nothing would change, hugging them close and whispering in their ears as I assembled nursery furniture and folded tiny rompers. They prepared me for motherhood like nothing else could, particularly the part that requires you to remove foreign objects from excrement, and yet after C was born I felt I had cast them aside, relegated to the emotional basement to live out their days feeding on scraps of affection and fading memories.

The good news is they can handle it. This is what the last 10,000 years of evolution has prepared them for—undying loyalty for their family through good times and bad, feast and famine, colic and sleep training and everything beyond. So in moments of despair, when you’ve just screamed every four-letter word your hormone-addled brain can remember because your angel rescue bishon-poodle mix woke the baby up when she mistook a UPS delivery for the onset of the zombie apocalypse, take heart—as soon as your little one starts on solid foods, all will be forgiven. Your pets may never again be your number one priority (sorry guys, but in the event of an alien invasion, you’re on your own), but if my own childhood spent in an unlicensed animal shelter is any indication, someday soon they may become your child’s BFF, and you will find yourself falling in love with them all over again. Plus you’ll have someone else to help clean the litter, and that totally makes the kid worth it, too.

Written by: Kathleen

After several months of intense debate, the team finally agrees that the new guy can stay.

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  

Only Fools Rush In

After you give birth but before you leave the hospital with your sweet, squishy little cherub, they will make you watch a video about how shaking your baby is bad and you shouldn’t do it. Duh, you will think, what do I look like, one of those women on the Maury Povich show trying to figure out which of four possible meth dealers is her baby’s daddy? And then three weeks later as you stand alone in your kitchen after midnight, bouncing to the sound of the vent-hood fan while your tiny Beelzebub hisses and thrashes in your arms, you will think, Oh, I get it now.

In theory, newborn babies are pretty special—you have this sparkling, untarnished soul infused into a bag of cells that somehow over the course of 40-ish weeks divided and morphed into a perfect miniature person. You stare deep into the dark pools of their eyes and see physics and philosophy, evolution and creation, the yin and the yang of the universe, all swaddled in your arms and looking like a burrito with a hat. In reality, a human infant is a vacuum of continuous need that, if not addressed with punctuality and precision, will result in an eruption of screaming rage that will make you wish you were drowning in molten lava because then at least you would be allowed to close your eyes for a second.

Nobody prepares you for how difficult the first few weeks with your baby can be. Or, as in my case, your friend Alice tries to prepare you, but you kind of tune her out because you’re 37 weeks pregnant and you really miss wine. Not only do they not prepare you, but throughout your third trimester many people will deliberately mislead you with exclamations of “Enjoy every minute of it!” and “It goes by so fast!” When you’re finally on the other side and holding your newborn in your arms, you will remember their words and realize that either they are sadistic assholes or their memories are clouded by all of the sleep and personal hygiene they get to enjoy. Yes, you will love your new baby because millions of years of evolution will produce the proper hormones to make it so, but you won’t necessarily be in love with your baby, and there’s a decent chance you won’t really like him all that much. He’s the reason your life—and your body—are no longer your own, and yet you barely even know the guy, and he never says thank you or apologizes for pooping on your lap.

One night when our son was about two weeks old, my husband and I lay awake for a few minutes after one of the 47 late night feedings, and we started whispering back and forth our tentative admissions.

 “It’s not like what I expected.”

“Sometimes I really miss our old life.”

“Did we make a huge mistake having a baby?”

“I mean I love him, but if both of you were drowning, I’m pretty sure I’d save you.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell us it was going to be like this?”

“I think Alice tried to tell us at that party a few weeks ago—”

“Oh right. I just figured there was just something wrong with her.”

My revelation is not universally true, of course. Some parents—and some babies—are better suited for the newborn stage than others. If you find yourself reveling in a state of bliss for the fourth trimester, go ahead and enjoy every minute of it, but for the love of Satan please don’t post that shit to Facebook. If it isn’t love at first sight, if you find you are incapable of enjoying every or even any minutes of it, know that you are not alone.

People with children over the age of 12 will tell you that the day their babies were born was the best day of their lives, but I think that is only true in memory. In truth, the day your first child is born is the most transformative day of your life. You can’t be expected to recover from that with a two-night stay in the hospital and a bottle of Percocet. You can’t be expected to recover from that at all. You will adapt, and soon you will fall so deeply in love that you will actually feel your heart splitting apart and reforming to accommodate the feeling. And in ten years or so you will be that ass-hat at the water cooler telling some swollen pregnant lady to enjoy every minute of it, because it really does go by so fast.

Written by: Kathleen

Boob vs. Bottle

There is no more explosive topic among the warring mommy factions than the issue of breast versus bottle. C-sections, circumcision, co-sleeping—those are like your church youth group’s annual talent show, and breastfeeding is the Grammys, complete with a Kanye-West-type character stealing the mic and telling you how you’re doing it all wrong. Breastfeeding proponents will point to various sources of correlational data to support their claim that “Breast is Best,” and they are correct that most health advocates encourage exclusive breastfeeding for as long as possible in the first year. Those same health advocates also assert that a 1200-calorie diet of kale and quinoa is “best” for adults, yet I imagine a few of us supplement with red wine and bacon from time to time.

I breastfed my son for 11 months, and I also supplemented with formula starting around five months, when he began sleeping 10 hours at night and my supply took a dip. I spent a few days wallowing in guilt and frustration, but when the choice came down to supplementing or waking myself up twice a night to pump, I traded in the fenugreek for an evening martini and bought a can of formula.

As someone who both breastfed and formula fed and survived the wrath of La Leche League to tell the tale, below are some of the advantages I found to each method of feeding your child. In the end, if you find yourself despairing over poor supply or bad latch, just remember that our grandparents’ generation fed their babies Coca-cola and rice pudding straight from the bottle, and our parents turned out just fine.*

 * Except for the diabetes and heart disease.

Advantages to Breastfeeding:

1)      Opportunity to sleep for at least 60 minutes at a time for the first several weeks of your newborn’s life, plus the potential confidence boost if you manage to not murder your spouse when you overhear him telling the neighbors that he’s tired from “taking the night shift” because he got up once around midnight to see if you needed an extra pillow under your Boppy.

2)      Ability to get your infant to stop crying on an airplane, as long as you’re OK fielding the judgy eyes of the flight attendant when you ask for a double-mimosa to “help with let-down.”

3)      Excuse to take two to three breaks from work each day to sit alone in a utility closet attached to your breast pump while playing Candy Crush and trying not to notice how few ounces your left boob is producing.

4)      Total and complete de-sexualization of your breasts to the point that soon you will no longer require a nursing cover in public nor will you let your husband put his mouth anywhere near them ever again.

5)      Moderate sense of superiority because you secretly believe you’re a more selfless mother than your friends who don’t breastfeed, even though you also secretly envy them because they can enjoy a date night with their husband without fourteen days of advanced planning to ensure they have pumped enough milk for the baby’s normal bottles and the extra bottles your mother gives him every time she baby-sits because she secretly thinks you’re starving your baby by not giving him formula.

Advantages to Formula Feeding:

1)      Experience getting scolded by up to three different lactation consultants before you’ve even left the hospital, causing you to both weep uncontrollably and throw a bottle of Similac in the night nurse’s face.

2)      Ability to feed your infant in public anytime, anywhere, without having to wear a special bra or fumble with a blanket, as long as the public place sells distilled water and has an accessible outlet for your portable bottle warmer because Junior will only take his formula if it’s been heated to a perfect 92.6 degrees.

3)      Advanced discovery that your baby is allergic to both cow’s milk and soy and thus can only ingest a special kind of formula made from rose petals and bluebird tears that costs $450 a can and is not eligible for Amazon Prime.

4)      Opportunity to share feedings with your spouse, thereby giving you some much needed alone time to cry in the shower while questioning your femininity and your value as a mother.

5)      Sense of satisfaction in knowing that you are providing your child with nutritious sustenance in the manner that works best for your body, your baby, and your family, while also secretly relishing the fact that chances are good your baby will sleep through the night a full six weeks before those bionic breastfed babies do.

Written by: Kathleen