Crybaby

Recent Google searches on my home computer:

“gassy baby cure”

“best baby bottle gassy”

“gastroesophogeal reflux”

“GER remedy”

“what to do baby crying in evening”

“baby crying in evening A LOT”

“colic symptoms”

“causes of colic”

“colic relief”

“how long til colic goes away”

“compare discount airline ticket one-way Paraguay”

When I was a baby, we didn’t have no fancy Bumbo seats. We sat in a cold metal bucket AND WE LIKED IT.

I’ve been researching a Big Serious Blog Topic for the past week, but I just wanted to take a break from that for a minute to comment on something here. Also to settle bets on whether I’ll ever blog again. Anyhow:

Have you all heard about this?

Bumbo recalls baby seats after reports of head injuries.

I don’t own one of these seats, but I’ve heard rave reviews from other moms. The seat essentially allows a little baby to “sit up”, even when they’re not otherwise capable of doing so yet.

The product had a sensible warning on the back, for the benefit of those special consumers who regularly use their hair dryers in the bathtub: WARNING: Never use on a raised surface. Never use as a car seat or bath seat. Designed for floor level use only. Never leave your baby unattended as the seat is not designed to be totally restrictive and may not prevent release of your baby in the event of vigorous movement.

But now the seat is being recalled so the manufacturer can tack on one sentence to the beginning of the warning. It now says WARNING: Prevent falls; Never use on any elevated surface. Never use on a raised surface…[etc.]

Okay, maybe I’m missing something here, but is this really necessary? I’m all for good safety labels, but the old one seems fairly clear cut, does it not? Don’t put your baby in a Bumbo on the kitchen counter while you cook dinner because Young Flopsy might fall out. Simple as that. But apparently there are a good number of parents who are okay with baby BASE jumping, because there have been 28 reports of injuries to children who have fallen out of the Bumbo.

Curious, I picked up the phone this morning and called Dan Keeney, a public relations liaison for Bumbo. He said that not all of the reported injuries were from falling off table tops, but most—including three skull fracture incidents—were.

And what about the injuries that happened to kids who weren’t on table tops? From reading the Bumbo parenting forum, it looks like some babies will arch their backs and fall right over the back of the seat. Older babies can plant their feet on the floor and push off, causing the entire seat to fall over backwards. Obviously that could hurt a baby, even when the Bumbo is on the floor. Which seems like all the more reason not to put the baby on a table while sitting in a Bumbo. Or not to put the baby in a Bumbo at all, but I digress.

It appears that one of the women whose child suffered a skull fracture commented on the Bumbo parenting forum. She said: I have read some comments and I want to add that I am very responsible parent. I did put my 3 month on table in seat while seated next to him. I was drawing with my 3 year old and he arched and fell. A skull fracture later I have learned my lesson. It is easier than you think to have a false security about a product such as this. I was right next to him and could do nothing. I think more parents need to be warned about this.

Look, I sympathize with anyone whose child has been injured, but it says right there on the warning label not to leave babies unattended in a Bumbo because they could fall right out. That doesn’t just mean being right next to the baby—it means paying attention and being ready to act, too.

“We’ve promoted this as an extra set of hands,” said Keeney. “But we would never want the parent to be in a position where they can’t reach out and grab the baby if they wiggled out of the Bumbo seat.”

If the company wanted to make a serious effort to improve the safety of the Bumbo, they could redesign it to have a much wider base (sort of like a no-tip dog bowl) and a higher back. But even then, babies could still probably slide out the front through one of the leg slots. Which is why you keep a close eye on them at all times when using a novelty product like this.

You want to argue that the Bumbo is more dangerous than swaddling your baby in bubble wrap, fine. You’ve got a good case. Just don’t say the manufacturers (not to speak of common sense) didn’t warn you.

There’s no place like home

Well. Just got back from LA last night, and if I ever see another Delta airlines Biscotti cookie, I will likely barf. But perhaps this is just a bad association with all the way fun tornados, thunderstorms and other vengeful weather phenomena we encountered on the way back.

Anyhow, I had an amazing experience going on Jeopardy, saw the sights around town, ate great food, and generally had about the most fun you could have without the benefit of Cheez-Whiz and Scotch tape. All of which I will write about in exhaustive detail later, when I’m less…well, exhausted.

But I have to say, the best part of the whole trip was coming out of Bluegrass Airport last night and seeing our car. My husband holding my hand at every red light on the way home, cracking dumb jokes and telling me how much he had missed me. Feeding my daughter a bottle and smelling her milk-scented hair as she burrowed into my arms like a comma. Laying nose to nose with the Sprog at (his very, very late) bedtime, discussing all the gory details of the dead shark I found on Topanga Beach.

Better than any gameshow prize money, hands down.

Parenting is triage

I begin to suspect that I can do this whole “mothering two children” thing. Don’t laugh: I have had my doubts.

It’s not just the things that were hard with the first baby: the sleep deprivation, the never-ending laundry, the feeling that your life is one long punchline to a Farrelly Brothers gross-out joke. (that’ll be relevant again in a minute).

No, it’s the new stuff that threw me for a loop. I never realized how much planning you have to do with two kids—every minute of my day with them, I’m thinking ahead five hours, creating strategies, considering contingency plans, making allowances for worst case scenarios. I feel like Napoleon plotting the French invasion of Russia (though I suspect he would have made a terrible stay-at-home dad based on his planning in that military campaign, as most of his troops died of starvation. Note to Napoleon: you never, ever leave the house without Cheez-its or something. You simply cannot count on there being a McDonald’s nearby. Or Russian crops to pillage or whatever.)

Er, anyway. And then there’s the granddaddy of all fears: that I wouldn’t love my new baby as much as I love my older son. How could I possibly shoehorn in that much love for another child?

Of course, I can and do love her just as much as the Sprog, but there was still one more problem: dividing up my love and attention so that neither of my children feel left out. What would I do, I wondered, if both of them were crying at the same time and wanted me? How would I choose?

Fortunately, the first big test of this conundrum was so, er, explosive that I haven’t worried much about it since.

The second night we were back from the hospital, my husband went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. “Oh, go ahead—we’ll be fine!” I gaily assured him.

Little did I know. Oh, how woefully little.

I wanna rock and roll all night

If I ever meet the cheerful moron who first said, “Oh, just sleep when the baby sleeps!”, I will bludgeon that person with my Boppy pillow. Because when it’s your second baby, there is no sleep. There is only pain.

By day, my newborn daughter is a somnolent lump who has to be awakened with malice aforethought if we want her to sleep at all during the night. We call this Operation Aggravation, and it entails a lot of tickling, patting cheeks, taking her outfit off so she’ll get cold, and talking loudly to her. After about half an hour of this, we can sometimes, sometimes, convince her to join the land of the living.

And even when we do manage to wake her up, she looks like a frat boy after a three day bender, drooling all over her onesie and blearily regarding us from the corner of one bloodshot eye. Then a trumpet blast from her diaper area as her eyes roll back into her head and she’s asleep again. My preschool-aged son thinks this is hilarious, but it’s all rather inconvenient. So there is no sleep for me during the day, since in a perverse twist, one of her most wakeful daytime periods tends to be right in the middle of my son’s naptime.

Of course, she’s saving it all up for nighttime. Somewhere around 11 p.m. she morphs from a dimpled ball of dough into an attention-starved howler monkey, and heaven help you if you put her down while she’s awake.

We turn out the light to go to sleep, but it’s never long before we hear ominous rumblings from the bassinet—chortles, moans, garbled babbling—I swear, it sounds like something from The Exorcist. And after the little noises turn into full-fledged screaming, she obligingly sucks down her milk, and then stares at me. Wide awake. Silently taunting me.

If she doesn’t get her days and nights flipped back soon, I’m pretty sure I’m going to flip. On the other hand, maybe I can get some sleep in my nice padded room.