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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Advice-22

Dear Mr. Baby:

According to the advice we're getting, we're very much on track, not at all.

It's best, after four months, to let you cry in your crib until you exhaust yourself in order to facilitate getting you on a schedule.  We must not have a limit for crying at bedtime or you will be taught nothing more than to be a big crybaby.  You cannot, because of your level of neurological development, establish bad habits yet, so it is very important to never let you cry for more than an hour, and you should be carried everywhere to keep you from crying.  When you give up crying, it's because you have stopped trying to communicate with me, to the detriment of your communicative development, the speed of which is indicative of nothing, and is also a barometer of your general well-being.  In fact, it's actually bad parenting masquerading as tender affection to rock, sway, or console you to sleep, because it impedes your learning to fall asleep unassisted and will sow the seeds of terrible sleeping habits, and you will be a sullen teenager who dresses in black and fights the establishment.  Furthermore, you will ruin your vocal chords if you cry hysterically, which is simply a sign of being overtired, and I must make sure to allow you to go to sleep at that point by not interfering because there is no case of a baby anywhere who injured himself merely by crying.  Naturally, this is neglect. 

You can't be spoiled right now, it's a myth.  So, if I console you, I will be teaching you terrible habits about manipulation, and you will live at home until you are thirty.  At this time, you should be sleeping in another room, to avoid developing problems with separation anxiety, which will set in soon.  Additionally, you should be in the family bed until you are ten to build your self-esteem and reduce anxiety.  Family beds will increase your chances of SIDS and asphyxiation, so you should never sleep in our bed.  You need to hear my heartbeat and you need stationary sleep, so I should carry you and place you on a flat surface to sleep.   Sleeping in a stroller, car seat, or wrap is unhealthy for reasons not fully disclosed, but very scientific and containing many cryptic acronyms.  Acronyms are indicative of truth.  On that note, you should always be carried around, because it reduces crying as evidenced by studies of African mothers.  In short, you should go to bed by six, and whenever you appear tired, and you should develop your own sleep schedule.

Confused?  It's because you're only four months old and your favorite word is phbleble.  Stay with me.

I should never leave a bottle in your crib for you or you could choke, and you should be left with a bottle of water, much like a gerbil, so that you know something is there but cease to awaken for night feedings.  In fact, you should never be given a bottle.  It's a good idea to start you on bottles now because your father should help you with feedings, and eventually you will need them for day care, which you should never go to because it is full of germs and bad people, and it would be doing you a disservice to avoid because you must socialize. I should never ever give you any water or anything but breast milk for six months, and because you have colic you should have some tea.  All of these things could potentially lead to death.  Additionally, the doctor said we could start you on solid foods.  No babies in the developing world are weaned until they are three, four, and seven, and breastfeeding past the age of one is psychologically unsound, especially in France, where they rub wine on babies' lips to quiet them, which will cause North American women to be morally vacuous and generally rotten people.

You should sleep through the night and wake up twice to feed.  You should eat before you go to bed to get you through the night but you should never eat before sleeping because of your incoming teeth, which will dissolve.  Baby teeth do not come in immediately precisely because babies nurse to sleep.  You should eat every three hours.  Regarding feedings, I should feed you whenever you want to avoid dehydration and failure to thrive.  I should make sure you get on a schedule, which is evil and Western and something that no one ever had before clocks were invented and should never be done if it can be avoided, because Western things are no good for you until you are about twenty.  Plastic, for example, even if carefully concocted to react with absolutely nothing in the known universe, is terrible, and we should try to get a pacifier so you don't suck on your thumb (for the sake of your teeth), and nursing for comfort is a highly effective soothing method.  But you should never nurse to go to sleep (again, for the sake of your teeth). The main thing that will save us is swaddling, which will give you a sense of security and destroy your posture, as evidenced by Russians, who are terrible ballerinas.       

This is just the eating and sleeping.  Don't even get me started on your pre-pre-pre-pre-educational needs, which we are dangerously behind on.

So I think, or at least what I get from all this, is that you should be wrapped up in a hemp sack-cloth and hung by a window with organic sunscreen on, and we should drop some rice mush in there once in a while and speak Mandarin to you so that you have perfect pitch.

9 comments:

  1. I think you are saying you know better than all that shit, but what do I know? Nothing. My kids haven't survived to adulthood yet. Nothing and everything I say is right. I drive a minivan and therefore am unqualified to talk about anything but raising kids who say 'please' and 'thank you,' but who were known to smear walls with their feces while toddlers.

    Love your blog, and you love your baby. That's all that really matters, right?
    xo

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  2. Thanks Lisa! I'm glad it can be entertaining in the end.

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  3. This is the best summary of the scientifically-backed baby-rearing recommendations I've seen yet. Have you submitted it for publication in the Journal of Pediatrics yet? ;)

    We are soon to welcome our constantly pooping, plastic averting, pacifier needing, breast feeding, father fed, cry to sleep, attachment parented, family bed sleeping on M,W,F, and crib with/out bumper sleeping on T,TH,S child. We love your blog; it's helping us prepare for the fun, joy and insanity.

    Peace.

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  4. Thanks Timothy. My good news is that around five months the baby becomes implausibly and almost unbearably cute. So cute, in fact, I almost feel bad trashing him in my blog. But I don't feel bad trashing all the advice (or givers-of), because that hasn't become cute at all, just exponentially annoying. Good luck, congratulations, and thanks for reading!

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  5. Thank you so much for this! I'm forwarding it to my pediatrician. She'll get a kick out of it!

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  6. OMG. i am in love with this. you are a genius.

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  7. This post--I don't even know what to say--it is beyond awesome. I burst into laughter multiple times, but not too loud...wouldn't want to wake the baby. So glad to come across this blog after reading your piece in The Sun. Thank you for being so real!
    Shannon

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  8. I really wish I had read this over a year ago when I had my first. I was feeling these exact same things, but felt so guilty for not finding "perfection." You expressed it so eloquently. It is humorous, too!

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  9. What my husband and I do: http://jamiecallowayhanauer.com/2013/04/12/sleep-training/

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