Baby Love

I talked with our friend Elizabeth today for the first time since she had her daughter. You could hear her beam. Awesome. Welcome to the club! Prepare to be humbled, by how much love your heart can hold, how much power a 7 lb. being can wield, and how much equipment is required in this endeavor.

Pregnant with our first, I was truly touched by how many folks came forward with clothes, car seats, strollers, toys, etc. to borrow and then pass on. Honestly, I don't know how we would have managed to buy everything that seemed so essential... later on I figured out how grateful they were to move stuff out of their house, even if just on a loan.

The "shoulds" have more of a stranglehold on parenting than you notice, until you're under the crushing burden of others' expectations, generally which run contrary to your own intuition. Retail geniuses know this, and exploit it handily. Add that to the demographics of more educated and wealthy individuals waiting longer to have babies, and it's a toxic mix. Guilt is more of the cherry on top.

Case in point: how to carry a baby. Sounds deceptively simple, but let's break it down to baby-wearing, car seats, and strollers. The amount of information you are supposed to sort through with your sleep-deprived remaining brain cells is staggering. What's safest? What's most convenient? What will best encourage bonding/attachment parenting/brain development etc.?
The question conspicuously absent, what kind of stuff does our family actually need?

If I could do it all over again (and I can't. Well technically, I could. But at least my husband stopped marking furniture.) I would spend money on a decent, more or less all-purpose stroller. I had an umbrella stroller, a small folding one, the frame for the baby bucket, the jogging stroller that always pulled to the left, and the off-brand Burley. Later, I added a front/back tandem stroller that had the turning radius of the Queen Mary. All of these were cheap/used/borrowed - I looked askance at the high end strollers - $500? Seriously? But if I would have bought smarter, I would have bought less. And hopefully a better design would have been a sanity saver. Or at least would have postponed my carpal tunnel surgery...

It's not that long since I've had kids; they are 4 and 7. But just the options for carrying your baby have increased exponentially just in a few years. And they call it "baby wearing" now, which makes them sound like accessories. At least in the Twin Cities, they have groups that meet so you can try all the different configurations of slings and swaddling and snugglies, oh my. Let's not forget that all the research and smart consuming in the world doesn't matter if the baby doesn't like that organically grown, vegetable dyed, fair labor, 17 foot long unbelievably complicated and precisely knotted baby sling.

Too many parenting decisions get played out in the marketplace and exploited accordingly. Notice all the retro toys lately? Those are designed for the mid-30s parents just having kids now. Toilet locks, furniture tiedowns, and padding on each possible surface - it all adds up to quite a bit of expense. And all the safety gadgets in the world aren't a substitute for being in the exact right place at the right time. Which means it's not if your child will get hurt, but how, when and who can you blame? Each child with have their own tendencies towards scaling furniture, walking way too early, dissembling electronics - so again, it is all individual but as a demographic new parents are encouraged to buy multiples of the best of every possible gadget for every imaginable need.

For the record, I also wished I would have spent money on an easy-to-clean high chair. Preferably of sturd-but-cushy foam that could be put in the dishwasher and reassembled later by the toddler themself.

Some caveats:
Many of the used baby items out there aren't up to date with safety standards - so check for recalls etc. before you buy.

I wouldn't accept a car seat from someone if I didn't know how old it was, whether it had been in an accident, and if it had the proper documentation on installation. Even then, it's a good idea to do a safety check at the cops or fire station.

Baby gates are marvelous - you can never have too many. And there's no point in buying them new. Plan on having different types - sometimes having a step-thru gate makes sense (like at the top of the stairs), other times the plain other ones aren't too bad to hurtle. We even had one that we cut a cat door into... now our friends have it and their cat is too fat to go through it but he still tries anyways.

Pass the stuff on as soon as you're done, even if you're going to borrow it back in a couple of years. It's like kharma, sort of.

Bassinettes and moses baskets are largely useless but decorative. Ditto the themed nursery with all the padding that is potentially hazardous and curtains in pastel colors that the baby can't perceive for a while.

A glider rocker is a worthwhile investment. You spend an awful lot of time in it... Place it near a window and preferably some alternating art/world maps/factoids to help give you a break from staring at your beautiful nursing child. It makes for less neck pain and brain drain.

Get a breast pump that's hands-free. It will come in handy, when you return to work and are late to your next client and have to pump in your car whilst driving 70 and talking on the cell phone. (Sadly, this is a true story.)

I cushioned my whole living room and dining room's worth of craftsman furniture with cheap pipe insulation foam tubes, although the adhesive was pretty tough to get off later.

I'm sure that there are more helpful factoids but pregnancy and childbirth shrunk my brain.
Time to make dinner.