Observations on Parenting

I have some advice for you new parents out there, which I feel somehow qualified to give since I have 4 kids now.

OK, stop laughing.

Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, my wife has done 99% of the child rearing while I was trying not to fall asleep in crowded conference rooms, or to gag at the foul stench from the person next to me on the train.

But, here goes. Take a deep breath, and let's begin:

- Beware advice from other people. 90% of the mistakes we made with our first baby were due to listening to other people's bad advice. If your most dearest friend suggests, for example, giving your 3 month old "a little Benadryl" to help them sleep, or that you should consider supplementing with "just a taste of sirloin", consider that advice as highly suspect. Dear Aunt Gertrude, who had her third child extracted in 1945 by a doctor using power tools, should be taken with a grain of salt when she recommends a handful of unsalted peanuts to "calm the colic".

Har Har. No, seriously, here's some tips 'n' tricks that just might work.

- If your newborn is crying and you don't know why - check the diaper. This seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how stupid you can get at 3:00 AM.

- If the diaper's clean and the belly is full, swaddle that baby really good and shush as loudly as you can in its ear. Don't be shy now. Do it loud, like an airplane taking off. This is especially effective for quieting hysterical babies. But be advised that this won't work if the diaper is full and the belly is empty.

- Colic may be helped by this stuff. Also, The Message Grapevine (MG) reports that a Lipton Tea Enema *gasp* may help your newborn expel pent-up gas. Some reports say that Lipton Tea administered up the old Eerie Canal will turn your bedroom into a wind tunnel. Howsomever, you may want to consult your doctor just to make sure this didn't come from someone's Aunt Gertrude.

- White noise will help anyone sleep. White noise is that whaa sound produced by fans, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, etc. Turn on a fan and keep that bad boy on all night long, and watch 'em snooze until morning. Note, however, that white noise has different effects on different people - it turns me into a zombie, whereas it took my wife a while to get used to it, and it still doesn't have quite the effect on her that it does on me (i.e. instant loss of consciousness). Also, our eldest daughter would fall asleep to white noise only to fully awaken 15 minutes later. Crying real loud. Ahh... memories.

- Speak up! This may be the most important tip of all. Don't let the first homeless person you see dig around in your baby's mouth "looking for teeth" just after emerging from a public restroom! So what if that's now how they raised their horde of urchins (*gasp* - the horror!)? Now it's your turn to do the raisin' - so you'd better speak up or you'll regret it later!

- And finally, how do you get babies to sleep through the night? "Impossible", you say? And maybe also "preposterous"?

To which I say, "Could be!" And also, "Maybe!"

"Little Igor" may be waking you up every 30 minutes and, well... nothing will work except calling in the backup (i.e. waking the in-laws). But this is worth a shot...

Your Aunts Gertrude and Beatrice have probably already told you to keep little Ingrid and baby Igor up as long as possible until they collapse from exhaustion, after which they will sleep and sleep and sleep for hours on end. Hmmm... consider that advice highly suspect. Been there, done that. Children's bodies do strange things when they get tired. Adults start nodding, but children get cranky, or start acting plain weird. So making them tired will actually make things worse.

You've got to put them to bed early. Like 6:30 or 7:00, instead of the usual 9:30 - 10:00 timeframe. And you folk that like to keep your babes up until after midnight... heh - you're building lots of character I wager.

Of course, this obviously doesn't work if you forgot to burp your lil' Tiger, or if they have colic du'jour. But if used wisely this could be a healthy foundation on which to build yadda yadda, blah blah, and whatmore. And stuff like that right there.

Disclaimer: Every kid is different. Some infants will see you walking down the hall with a fan in one hand and colic calm in the other and actually sit up, point at you, and laugh like a hyena. Like our elder daughter, Esther, who... well, that's a story for another time.

So there you go. And there you have it.

Of course, when using my most expert advice, you'll want to take a visit to your kitchen, take down the salt sprinkler, extract a grain of salt, and keep it handy.

Just in case.