Dawn of a New Day

May 23, 2018

There’s a new baby in the clan. The two worst things a new mom has to cope with are:

Not enough sleep

Too much advice

So I’ll just get all the advice-giving out of my system here, and if the mom happens to read it, well…

Every time I finally got my baby down for a nap and started to relax, it was as though she could sense that I was relaxing, and woke up. (Seriously.)

A year after I no longer needed the advice, someone told me about the T-shirt trick: Wear a T-shirt for a few hours; don’t wash it; and when you put the baby down, put the shirt in the bed with her. The smell will make her think you’re nearby and she’ll relax. I never got a chance to test it, but many people have said it works like a charm.

Forget trying to get the kid to sleep on its back. With its stomach exposed it feels too vulnerable, so it won’t relax and it won’t sleep. I bought into it for a while, but my baby kept rolling herself over. I figured if she was strong enough to do that, she wasn’t going to leave her head in one place long enough to smother. Besides, putting kids on their backs can not only lead to deformed heads, it delays their developmental milestones. Relax. Put the baby on her stomach.

People kept trying to shove a pacifier into my kid’s mouth, and I kept taking it out. Two or three years later, these folks were complaining about how hard it was to break their kids of the pacifier habit. I just smiled.

Now here’s one that surprised me: I pooh-poohed the idea of a wipes-warmer; but frankly, in the dead of winter, there’s nothing fun about being a kid and having one of those cold wipes swipe your bottom. So now I actually buy them for people.

When it came time to start her on solid foods, I took her shirt off at mealtimes. I figured it was easier to wipe her down than it was to get orange food out of her clothes.

Toy companies try to get you to buy toys in primary colors. Forget it; given the choice, the kid will almost always choose something in a non-primary color. If you don’t believe, me try it.

Plastic containers are your best friends, toy-wise. I won’t go into all the benefits of exploring, and the eye-hand coordination practice; but open the cupboard and let the kid have at it. If you can stand the clatter of the pots and pans, knock yourself out. Containers and cardboard boxes are kids’ best friends.

Watch your kid play. She’ll be able to count at an early age—not saying “One, two, three”, but knowing how much of something she has. If you don’t believe it, give her three items that look similar, then at some point hide one. She’ll notice it’s missing; she can count. People never give kids enough credit. You can learn as much from them as they will from you.

That’s enough to go on with. Since I’ve only had one kid, I’m not pretending I have all the answers. Anybody else can jump in with advice, even if it conflicts with mine.

My goal is to keep from overwhelming the new mom.  I do hope some of this helps.