The Mother's Handbook.net » Babies

If I Were Writing iPhone Apps…

themother — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:00:13 +0000

While I generally love the slogan, “There’s an App for That!” I have to admit that sometimes it goes a tad too far. Like now–Geek Dad just profiled a new app for moms.

This app was obviously written by men. Men who had too much time on their hands. Men who were seriously having a little absent-father-guilt-complex.

The Milk Monitor iPhone app lets a woman keep track of her little tyke’s feeding habits. Simply push the button for right boob or left boob, pop the kid on, and the timer keeps track of how long the kid feeds. And which boob you used first. And how many times your kid poops. And piddles. And poops and piddles.

Because every mom needs to keep track of all of that stuff. She doesn’t have enough to worry about.

The developers note that you can even keep track of which side you last nursed from. This is how you really know it was built by men. Newsflash–you can TELL– by which side feels like it’s about to explode. No electronics required.

PLUS–you can tweet every single one of these miraculous little events! Share all of your child’s poopies with the whole world!

Maybe it’s just my age. In my day, as long as a kid gained weight appropriately, everyone was happy. No one knows how fast breast milk comes out. The boob makes as much as the kid drinks. Mom gets full, baby drinks, baby gains weight. DONE. And we did NOT share every dirty diaper with friends and family, let alone the world wide web.

I get the absent father guilt angst. I see the whole worry about your kids thing. But adding a new level of anal retentive lunacy on mom’s day isn’t helping.

However, we should not ignore the astonishing potential of the new technology. If we want apps that will get dads more involved in parenting, here are a few ideas:

Wake Up Dad:

This simple little app listens for the shrill cry of the baby in the middle of the night, amplifies it a thousand times, and pops it into the ear of the DAD. He gets up, before the frazzled mom, to coax HIS child back to sleep. The app keeps track of the number of times DAD gets up in the middle of the night, so he can get either rewards and kudos or a good stern cold shoulder.

Next Car:

This app helps dads weigh the respective pros and cons of each auto he is considering, from the two seater mid-life crisis car to the minivan, judged not by price or style but by how attached his parenting is (number of seat belts, number of carseat safe seats, number of tv screens, ease of removing smushed french fries and melted crayons). It then broadcasts dad’s choice to the WWW, and everyone on his email contact list (including a nice viral program that multiplies through the office email) making certain that dad chooses his next vehicle for the right reasons.

Father’s Phrase of the Day:

A take off on all those nifty little dictionary programs that send you cool words to enrich your vocabulary, this app proffers daily thoughtful comments that dad can deliver to his wife on arriving home. These planned, memorized phrases, like, “Honey, how do you stay so beautiful while taking such good care of my kids?” replace the usual inane stuff that men tend to blurt out on reaching their abode, such as, “Holy shit, did a hurricane come through here?” or “Why don’t you ever look put together like Mike’s wife?”

Tweet your Day:

Since a mom in the midst of her busy day simply doesn’t have time to apprise her hubby of everything that goes down, he is often left out of the loop on how fantastic his wife really is. Tweet your Day uses the iPhone’s internal GPS and a special pitch monitor set to mom’s voice to send minute-by-minute reports to Dad at the office. These can range from, “At the pediatrician,” to “Getting annoyed at the grocery store!” to the all important, “GET YOUR ASS HOME NOW, SHE’S LOSING IT!”

I hope you dad developers are taking notes. We don’t really need someone to keep track of our boobs. You guys, however, need help.

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Thou Shalt Steal the Pacifier

themother — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:00:37 +0000

No one is afraid of an itty, bitty baby, right?

I mean, they’re so cute and cuddly. And moms are MUCH bigger. So they win all arguments with said itty, bitty baby.

And if you can’t win an argument with a BABY, what are your odds of winning an argument with a TEENAGER?

And yet–anyone ever seen anything like this? Mom is in grocery store, her little one walking along beside her, pacifier in his or her mouth.

The operative word in the previous sentence, in case you missed it, is WALKING.

Neonatologists agree that tiny ones (as in babies (as in NEWBORNS)) have a physiologic need to suck. And not just at sleeping through the night, although they do totally suck at that, too.

And since mom is usually so sore that letting her precious one suck on her for more than the necessary amount of time to transfer nutrients is generally right out, the pacifier holds a firm place in the arsenal of the new mom.

[My first one actually threw up blood one night. My doctor brain was running through the differential diagnosis of vomiting blood in a newborn (none of them good), while screaming at hubby to call the pediatrician, when I happened to look down and realized that I was bleeding, too. The Engineer's visits were cut temporarily short.]

Nonetheless, there comes a time when the physiologic need to suck is replaced by the habit of having something to suck ON. Hence the two year old toddling next to her mom with a binky in her mouth.

Dentists HATE pacifiers. I’m sure the Dental Maven could weigh in and explain exactly what pacifiers do to the developing mouth. Orthodontists LOVE them, because they pay for college for their kids and their summer homes in St. Croix.

Pediatricians have known the association between prolonged pacifier use and ear infections for a while.

Now a new voice has weighed in. A study hit the airwaves this week which shows that prolonged pacifier use (or just sucking, in general–fingers, thumbs) increases the risk of speech abnormalities.

Gosh, there’s a surprise.

[Interestingly, the study seems to have found that breastfeeding helps reduce the risk of speech impediments. Not that you could tell from my three out of four who spent thousands of my dollars in speech therapy--but at least two of those were central nervous system abnormalities, not related to their mouths.]

In light of all the evidence mounting up that pacifiers are BAD, why are there still kids in malls walking with binkies in their mouths?

Because there are still lots of moms who are afraid of upsetting their itty, bitty kids, that’s why.

Can’t wait till those kids are teenagers. I mean, if you can’t take a pacifier from a baby…

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Not So Intelligent Design

themother — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:00:39 +0000

Or, perhaps, God is a man after all. That’s the only other explanation. Which might actually be the same explanation.

I, personally, could have done a much better job. And I’m not even omniscient (shh-don’t tell the kids).

Consider the following points:

While babies heads got bigger, the space you have to push them out of did not (actually, it got smaller–the upright posture curls the spine into the pelvic outlet). That meant not only that lots of things could and do go wrong during childbirth, but that babies had to be born earlier, and therefore helpless, which meant mommies got to carry them around–in arms that were too full already. Spines which were never designed to stand upward are stretched forward during pregnancy and laterally by babies sitting on one hip and enormous diaper bags on the other. Women who survive all this end up looking like old, gnarly trees by the time we’re forty.

Gheezsh.

So, here’s how I would have designed it:

Like marsupials, women get a pouch. The baby is born much earlier, is deposited in pouch (which of course has teats, just like the marsupials). Now you can carry the baby around all day and still have the use of your arms. Baby is loved, cradled and fed, just like all the baby-wearing literature says, and without the hefty price tag.

Or the C-sections.

While pregnant, two extra arms grow out of the side of the rib cage, like the Hindu goddesses. Each kid grows you another pair of arms. One pair sloughs off when each kid goes to high school.

The maternal spine is supported by a suspension bridge design, to balance out the forces. Extra suspensions hold up the gravid uterus and the baby pouch.

Now, I ask you, which is more intelligent?

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How Not to Become a Zombie

themother — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:00:29 +0000

underbiteman, Flickr

Becoming a zombie is easy.

Go out, get pregnant (If you need specifics on how to accomplish this, email me. We need to talk).

Once the baby is born, BOOM. You’ll be a zombie.

AVOIDING becoming a zombie, on the other hand, requires a plan. Or a shovel.

Not a week goes by in the mommy blogosphere without somebody posting a rant or a complaint or a self-help article on getting babies to sleep.

Really. It’s not that hard.

In retrospect.

In keeping with my marital mandate to make you all aware of my first foibles, I must reveal that I was a zombie for nearly the first YEAR of the Engineer’s life.

I kept waiting for that “sleeping like a baby” thing. It’s a lie. The phrase should be “sleeping like a teenager.”

Around day 345, a pediatrician friend imparted THE SECRET.

Damn, I wish I had known that earlier.

So, here it is. THE SECRET.

Babies aren’t as fragile as you think they are. They will NOT die in agony if they cry for a few minutes. Or even an hour.

And their memory circuits aren’t wired yet. So they CAN’T be affected by it for the rest of their lives. They will NOT be sitting on some psychiatrist’s couch in 20 years whining about how mom ignored them for 20 minutes on the Tuesday before they were seven months old.

NOR will they be convinced that you are an evil bitch who doesn’t care about them. They won’t remember in the morning. I promise. They’ll be okay. Really.

I know, there are all sorts of books out there about gentle parenting. About not letting your child cry. About keeping that warm, cuddly, momma loves baby thing going forever.

Don’t get me wrong. I do love my kids. I even loved them when they were keeping me up at night. ALL night.

But I didn’t LIKE them very much.

And a stressed-out, exhausted mom is NOT the best mom she can be.

So feel free to try the sure-fire, no-crying-required methods.

Then stop back here, and I’ll tell you how to fix it.

In a few easy steps: How to NOT become a zombie (this is known as the Ferber method, or at least my rendition of the Ferber method).

1) When a child is about 6 months old, he no longer requires nighttime feedings. It’s time to start.

2) Get in the habit, even earlier than that, of putting your child down drowsy, but awake. DON’T let him fall asleep at the breast (or bottle).

3) Pat him on the back and then tiptoe out of the room. Let him comfort himself to sleep. It’s a good habit that will last him for the rest of his life.

4) Keep bedtime rituals to a minimum. You don’t want to have to go through a 20 minute ritual at three in the morning.

5) STEAL THE PACIFIERS. Neonates have a physiologic need to suck. As they get older, it becomes a HABIT. And when they roll over and can’t find their binky, that’s when the waterworks start.

6) If he wakes up and you don’t want to feed him (or he’s past 6 months, and you want him to start sleeping through the night), let him cry for a few minutes to see if he’ll go back to sleep on his own. If not, tip-toe in, pat him on the back for reassurance, and LEAVE. Let him cry for a while longer, repeat.

Gradually increase the time the kid cries before you walk in. I promise, you only have to go through a few nights of this hell. He’ll eventually realize that crying is a lot of work, and he’ll learn to go back to sleep instead.

Okay, it’s not as dramatic as a shovel. But it’s a real life-saver. And you’re far more likely to actually USE this one.

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Circumcision, Anyone?

themother — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:55:46 +0000

Michaelangelo's David (Photo by David Gaya)

There are a few dilemmas that affect the parents of boys a bit more often than the parents of girls.

That’s because there actually ARE differences between little boys and little girls.

I know. You’re shocked, right?

For instance, do you let them grow their hair out, just because they loved Lord of the Rings and everybody in LoTR wore their hair long, and all the girls were madly in love with either Aragorn or Legolas?

Or the eternal question of ear piercing. Not so much if, as one side or two, and does it matter which side?

And every parent of a brand new boy is faced with the circumcision question. Every dad of every brand new boy is absolutely convinced that he knows the answer. Moms are occasionally not so convinced.

[I didn't have a choice in the matter. I married a Jew. I was, however, appalled. There's an old Jewish custom wherein the women at the brit get the mom drunk, so she doesn't notice the horrors being perpetrated on her young son. One of those few customs that I really, truly appreciated.

And I made sure that the mohel was a pediatrician, capable of giving a dorsal penile block.]

So you probably already know where I stand on this issue.

First, a little history.

The Torah requires circumcision of all Jewish infants. Anthropologists and historians chalk it up to a blood sacrifice, perhaps as a more humane concept than, say, infanticide, which was a prevailing ritual at the time in other cultures. The Jews weren’t the only religious group that had begun circumcision as a ritual event–it was fairly common among all the Semitic peoples, especially in Egypt.

[The oldest image of any surgical procedure is on the wall of a tomb from Sakkara, Egypt, dating from the 6th dynasty (2345-2183 BCE). It depicts a circumcision.]

Early Christians, with their Hellenistic bent (the Greeks found circumcision distasteful, since it left men completely naked), threw out the circumcision requirement with the dietary laws. Islam readopted the circumcision, although it is only mandatory in some sects.

But in America, circumcision was reinvented in the early 1900s as part of the great prudery movement that overtook the continent. It was widely believed that circumcision decreased sexual desire (by exposure of the most sensitive part and therefore desensitization), and decreased pubescent masturbation.

The great Dr. John Kellogg (yes, he of the corn flake–and the graham cracker!) was one of the biggest prudes advocates of circumcision. He also believed in painful aversion therapy for masturbators. And built really cool contraptions known as anti-masturbation harnesses.

And so the great American circumcision movement was born. By the 1930s, half of all men were circumcised. In the 1970s, virtually all.

Except for religious reasons, circumcision is RARELY performed outside of the US and English-speaking regions of Canada. It is the single most commonly performed unnecessary surgery in the world.

And anytime one reads the words “unnecessary” and “surgery” in the same sentence, it should cause massive cortical activation.

Proponents claim that circumcision decreases the transmission of STDs. Which is true. Recent results show that HPV, HSV-2 and AIDS transmission is decreased by circumcision, by rates of 30-50%. This is probably related to giving the viruses a convenient hiding place, although some studies have suggested that there are specialized cells on the inside of the foreskin that tend to harbor disease.

But is a decrease in transmission of venereal diseases that he hopefully won’t even get really enough reason to circumcise your child? Maybe we could just staple a condom on (because, regardless of what the Pope says, they really do decrease the transmission of STDs. Duh).

As far as HPV, you’re not protecting him so much as you’re protecting his sexual partners (HPV is the virus that causes cervical cancer). And I know, you REALLY don’t want to think about that when he’s a newborn. But that’s the only REAL medical rationale.

The official American Medical Association position: “Virtually all current policy statements from specialty societies and medical organizations do not recommend routine neonatal circumcision, and support the provision of accurate and unbiased information to parents to inform their choice.”

You have been provided with accurate and unbiased (mostly) information. Go forth and choose wisely.

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I Taught my Baby to Spell in Utero!

themother — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:53:15 +0000

The Houston Chronicle published this bit on Tuesday:

“Paige Vasseur of Valencia, California, never gazed at an alphabet mobile above her crib, but the contestant for the national spelling bee this week had an earlier lexical advantage. The womb. Her mother, Maria, not only sang her the ABCs in utero, but began reading to her newborn daughter the day she came home from the hospital.”

But why stop with the ABCs? Why not pipe in Tolstoy on tape, so she can be a literary critic? Or read sections of Wikipedia?

I tried it, with the Engineer (the reading part, not Tolstoy. Wikipedia didn’t exist then, so that was right out). In the late 1980s, the movement was huge. Sing to your child, read to him in utero, play music. It was sure to boost both language development and IQ.

And while I will be the first to tell you that the Engineer is brilliant, he was followed by three more to whom I simply didn’t have time to read in utero. And they turned out pretty dang smart, too.

Although only the Engineer managed to become a local spelling bee champ. As anecdotal evidence goes, that’s pretty convincing…

But here’s the scary part–do a Google search on “learning in utero.” Count how many commercial programs are being hyped to raise your child’s IQ before he’s even born.

Reading to your child is NEVER a bad idea. But if you are about to plunk down money, I’d suggest you check out the science.

The whole thing started with a landmark study in 1984 (now, THAT was a great year) by a guy named DeCasper at the University of North Carolina. He got 16 pregnant volunteers to read “The Cat in the Hat” to their babies daily. After birth, he devised a nifty experiment that encouraged the babies to suck on a nipple to get different taped tracks. He was able to show that babies preferentially chose their mother reading “The Cat in the Hat.”

And, Viola! A new industry was born. People were writing books and selling systems (including tapes!). They still are.

No question, the baby CAN hear in utero. Sound does pass through the abdominal wall and into the amniotic sac. And the sound the baby hears the most is mom’s voice. But that doesn’t mean he hears WORDS.

Babies’ ears are full of fluid. And while water transmits sound really, really well, eardrums don’t work really, really well when they’re surrounded by water. Ask any mom of a kid with ear infections.

What babies are hearing is tone and timber and rhythm. Which explains how a baby recognizes mom’s voice. And the numerous studies which show a preference for mom’s native language. But it sort of rules out the whole teach-em-while they’re (really) young theory.

That didn’t stop me from hoping that the Engineer would internalize any of the bazillions of conversations I had about the coagulation cascade while I was preggers. Or that the Grouch would be born with a grand understanding of hematologic malignancies. But alas…

I congratulate Ms. (and Mrs.) Vasseur. All those years of POST-natal parental reading have clearly paid off.

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The Blankie

themother — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:00:26 +0000

Breibeest, flickr

Blankies are the loveys of every tiny tot.

And the bane of every mother’s existence.

They can’t live without them, so they get carted around, everywhere. Which means: 1) they get lost, engendering a half-day search through the house, the neighborhood, the last fifty places graced with your presence, only to find it under a pile of stuff in his own room, and 2) they get torn up, loved to pieces, threadbare.

While I was pregnant with my oldest son, I was spending a lot of time studying for boards. My favorite study mechanism was to knit–it kept me sat down, and it kept me from pigging out, since my hands were busy.

A study had just come out recently (and remember, this was 20+ years ago) that suggested that babies were better at seeing contrast. So, if you wanted them to be hyperstimulated by their environment, it should be mostly black and white. I, being the hep mommy that I was, knitted my new baby a lovely blankie, made of black and white squares with little designs on them. It was gorgeous.

What it wasn’t, was fit for a toddler’s consumption. While it managed to survive washing after washing, when it started getting dragged around the house, it gave up the ghost. Little pieces of cotton yarn polluted my home. Blankie had to go.

The Engineer had a fit.

So I vowed, with the next one, that I would start with just plain old store bought blankies. The kind that could be replaced, without notice.

Not happening. Despite his carefully chosen assortment of several identical blankies, the Grouch picked the comforter as his lovey. And when it fell apart I stitched it back together, until the only thing left of the poor blankie was darning and love.

The Grouch being the Grouch, the eventual loss of his companion of so many years threw him for yet another loop in his serially traumatic childhood.

For the Goth, I started, again, with identical blankies. And made the crib comforter TOO BIG to be hauled around. Did it work? Nope. The Goth adopted a quilt from the living room.

So, what did I do with the fourth?

Stretch started out the same way as his brothers–a series of identical crib blankets, four for ten bucks at Target. And the way too big comforter, with an ice skating penguin quilted in flannel (BTW–this is the quilt that ruined the Grouch’s fine motor skills and got me in trouble with his kindergarten teacher).

But Stretch was unimpressed by the size, and fell in love with the ice skating penguin.

It was a sturdy quilt, but it didn’t survive Stretch’s childhood unscathed. Judicious darning kept it going until his 8th year. Then it was simply irreparable. Little holes popped up and little pieces of stuffing popped out. And Stretched loved it just the same.

I took him to the fabric store, and we bought some cool red flame polar fleece and made a brand new blankie–which he loves, and which he hauls around the house.

But underneath the pillow, he keeps his wadded up scrap of flannel, stuffing and holes.

In my next life, I’m going to make the kids’ comforters out of Kevlar.

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Baby’s First Words….Umh…

themother — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:17:14 +0000

Designed to tug at the heartstrings of every new parent, the first words out of a baby’s mouth (and I mean words, not screeches) are eagerly anticipated by the entire household.

Somewhere around a year, the new child learns that he can attach sounds to items.

Moms and dads lean close, and wait to hear that magic word, “Lawnmower.”

Well, it sounded a little more like “mawmhrr,” but it was quite clear that our lovely new son had attached himself to the noisy contraption that keeps a yard trim and neat, not his loving parents. “Mama” and “Dada” eventually showed up, but it was too late. The moment had passed.

(In retrospect, this should have been a wake-up call. The Engineer’s personality has never wavered. We should have just called MIT, right then, and asked for an installment plan.)

The Engineer was actually a little early on the language thing. Having two inexperienced, clueless parents, and no older sibs to run interference, he was talking up a blue streak to our household appliances by 15 months.

When the Grouch was born, we really weren’t all that concerned about language development. Given our experience with his brother, we figured he’d attach himself to the fireplace, anyway, so what was the point?

But by 15 months, he had two words, “applejuice” and “I DO!”

Alarm bells started ringing.

We had his hearing tested. Not easy, in a bright kid. He figured out the sequence and was ANTICIPATING, not reacting.

They tried to do Evoked Potentials, where they put the kid out and watch brainwave patterns. Unh-unh. The Grouch thought it was way too much fun to play with the oxygen meter thingy on his finger. Three doses of chloral hydrate later, the anesthesiologist gave up.

So we brought him home. I knew his hearing was okay, anyway, because he could follow complex commands, especially if there was a cookie in it for him in the end. I did mention he was smart, right?

A consultation by a language development specialist confirmed–the kid had primary speech aphasia.

In other words, he didn’t process language properly. A permanent brain fart.

Being the medical types we are, hubby and I DID NOT FREAK OUT. NO REALLY. WE DIDN’T.

We did almost end up divorced, since hubby was CONVINCED that there couldn’t really be ANYTHING wrong with his darling son, and I was equally convinced that the kid was going into therapy RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

Luckily, permanent brain farts in babies are rarely permanent. Babies have nice, flexible, gooey brains, just waiting to be wired up by external means.

In the meantime, the Grouch spoke sign language.

The Grouch walked around, flapping his hands uncontrollably. He had language, damn it, and he was going to use it. He learned the signs we taught him, and then started making up new ones.

If you think it’s tough to decipher what a toddler is SAYING, try figuring out what he’s SIGNING, especially if he’s making it up as he goes along.

The Engineer became the Grouch’s translator, and even he was occasionally so frustrated that he would answer, “Nothing. He’s just flapping.”

Three years and thousands of dollars worth of speech therapy later, the Grouch was pronounced cured.

Then the Goth reached 15 months, didn’t speak a word, and we went through it all again.

This morning, the Goth and the Grouch were sitting at the kitchen table when I got up. They were screaming at each other over perceived slights and inapparent insults.

And I was musing over the days when the Engineer only spoke to gardening equipment, and the Goth and the Grouch only spoke in nice, SILENT hand gestures.

If I had put all that money I spent on speech therapy in the stock market instead, I’d probably have enough to go to Starbucks and buy a latte. And sit in nice, comfortable SILENCE.

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