Saturday, November 19, 2005
What I Learned on Paternity Leave
* My job doesn't really need me. I had a big writing assignment due the first day I didn't show up, and I just emailed and said, hey, sorry, I'm not coming in, and the world was fine. I guess I should be glad I have a job that I can leave suddenly at any point. But it also makes me feel a little unneeded. My salary certainly seems a little more excessive than it already felt.
* Heating a refrigerated bottle of formula to the appropriate temperature in a pan of boiling water is a precise endeavor. You have to wait about 3 or 4 minutes, till the bubbles start coming up pretty fast, but then you have to pull it out immediately. If you get it to a full, rolling boil, you've gone too far and the formula will be too hot.
* When they tell you that baby poop doesn't stink until the baby starts eating solid foods, they are lying through their teeth.
* Baby medicine is exactly like fashion. There are trends and fads that come and go. The doctors themselves even admit this. When I asked how we should care for the baby's umbilical cord stump, the hospital nurse told me, "Well, these days, less is more. Just leave it alone." (Emphasis added.) A few weeks earlier, when we saw a 10-year-old baby care video at the hospital tour, it told us that we should wash it with rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball daily. Example 2: We asked the pediatrician whether it was safe to give our baby a pacifier in her first week of life (she likes sucking on things a whole lot). His response, and I quote, was: "Oh yes. Pacifiers are in again." Just as if he were to say, "Bell-bottoms are in again." Ten years from now, doctors will tell parents that pacifiers are death traps.
* I'm convinced that the high infant mortality rates in the olden days are attributable to the lack of baby formula technology. There's this myth surrounding breastfeeding (which, by the way, is VERY "in" right now) that makes us believe that it's easy. It's not. Without going into too much graphic detail, let me just say that the more I've dealt with my child's experience with it, the more I've read about the topic, and the more I've talked to other recent parents about it, the more I am convinced that it is a universally difficult endeavor. Ellie probably would have starved by now if it weren't for her supplemental diet of formula.
* There are two ways to burp a child. You can either pat her back, or you can rub it. Each of these ways triggers a completely different burp. It's like there's air that can only be burped out through patting, and air that can only be burped out through rubbing. Crazy.
* My baby is cuter than your baby.
* Heating a refrigerated bottle of formula to the appropriate temperature in a pan of boiling water is a precise endeavor. You have to wait about 3 or 4 minutes, till the bubbles start coming up pretty fast, but then you have to pull it out immediately. If you get it to a full, rolling boil, you've gone too far and the formula will be too hot.
* When they tell you that baby poop doesn't stink until the baby starts eating solid foods, they are lying through their teeth.
* Baby medicine is exactly like fashion. There are trends and fads that come and go. The doctors themselves even admit this. When I asked how we should care for the baby's umbilical cord stump, the hospital nurse told me, "Well, these days, less is more. Just leave it alone." (Emphasis added.) A few weeks earlier, when we saw a 10-year-old baby care video at the hospital tour, it told us that we should wash it with rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball daily. Example 2: We asked the pediatrician whether it was safe to give our baby a pacifier in her first week of life (she likes sucking on things a whole lot). His response, and I quote, was: "Oh yes. Pacifiers are in again." Just as if he were to say, "Bell-bottoms are in again." Ten years from now, doctors will tell parents that pacifiers are death traps.
* I'm convinced that the high infant mortality rates in the olden days are attributable to the lack of baby formula technology. There's this myth surrounding breastfeeding (which, by the way, is VERY "in" right now) that makes us believe that it's easy. It's not. Without going into too much graphic detail, let me just say that the more I've dealt with my child's experience with it, the more I've read about the topic, and the more I've talked to other recent parents about it, the more I am convinced that it is a universally difficult endeavor. Ellie probably would have starved by now if it weren't for her supplemental diet of formula.
* There are two ways to burp a child. You can either pat her back, or you can rub it. Each of these ways triggers a completely different burp. It's like there's air that can only be burped out through patting, and air that can only be burped out through rubbing. Crazy.
* My baby is cuter than your baby.
Comments:
You only think the poop stinks now...wait until the solids start then you'll rethink what poop smells like
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