Adapting to Your New Life-Form

Excerpted from
Planet Parenthood : The Funny, Helpful, Absolutely Essential Survivor's Guide to a Strange New World
By Julie Tilsner

What's life with a colicky baby like? "It's the ninth level of Hell," said my friend Mark, not smiling. Take the whole ball of wax, the entire body of reasons behind why life with a new baby is so exhausting in every sense of the word-and triple it. Colic is your very worst fears about parenthood come true. There is little to be joyous about when an inconsolable infant greets you at the door every night and makes you feel even more inept as a parent. "Oh, what have we done?" is-the refrain you'll most often moan as you walk the floor at 4 A.M.

Everyone promises your ordeal will be over by the three-month mark, or if not, then certainly by six months. Something about baby's digestive system maturing, or his nervous system ... whatever. You don't give a hoot as long as he stops screaming. In the meantime, your survival depends on practicing aggressive domestic triage. You must relieve the other parent when his or her shift is up and you must not be late, lest that parent succumb to temptation and leave the baby on a church doorstep somewhere. When your shift is over you should leave the house and sit on a quiet park bench until your sense of hearing returns and you can breathe calmly again. Forget about sleeping for now. Consider investing in some professional-quality earplugs.

Repeat this often: that which does not kill you makes you stronger. Tape it onto your refrigerator if need be. And remember that once you've survived colic, if you're still married by then, the teenage years will pale in comparison. When your teenage son comes home with two nipple rings and his tongue pierced, you can laugh and put it into perspective. He's joined a thrash metal band, he says? At least he'll be doing his screaming somewhere else.

As a bonus, medical science promises that babies with colic often turn into children and young adults with driving, focused personalities. Maybe they tell you this to keep you from selling the baby to the carnival passing through, but it may have some truth to it. My friend Mark's firstborn son screamed every single day from 5 to 11 P.M. and then started up again at 3 A.M. He and his wife would take shifts for dinner. Mark would come home from work and relieve Tracy, pale and shaking by then, so she could go into a dark back room and eat a plate of food in relative quiet. A few hours later she'd take over so he could eat dinner. They did this every night for six months. But their now three-year-old is indeed supersmart, articulate, focused, and seemingly well on his way to being a Fortune 500 chief executive. Will he ever pay them back for what he put them through so early in his life? Probably not. But you can bet revenge will be sweet when he has his first baby in twenty or thirty years, and they can head for the door as soon as the crying starts.

The First Outing

The first venture outside is a major milestone in your development as a parent because it involves Herculean feats of strength, courage, and determination, and packing skills.

There's an old wives' tale that says a newborn shouldn't go outside until after six weeks of age. To most new parents in the first week, that sounds like perfectly reasonable advice. Why would you want to take your trail little child outside, where he might catch a germ, or be rained upon, or even be-God forbid-dropped?! Never mind the tiny detail about how much you ache whenever you stand up. At this juncture, you'd be happy to sit on a pillow in your rocking chair where it's safe for all eternity.

But sooner or later, you'll have to do it. Part of becoming a citizen of Planer Parenthood is growing the chutzpah necessary to take the kid out of the house and into his first experiences with the outside world. That's the world out beyond the backyard, I mean.

First, you'll need a compelling reason to leave the house. Let's say you've run out of cranberry juice, which you're either drinking by the gallon because you're breast feeding and continuously thirsty or because it's the only drink you can stomach after labor. Anyway, you've run completely out, and since your mate is off working and Grandma went home already, it's up to you to run down to the corner market and get some more.

By now you will have forgotten how easy certain preparenthood tasks like this were. You will not be dashing off somewhere at the spur of the moment ever again-at least not for the next ten years or so. You cannot simply slap hand to forehead because you forgot tomato sauce and run right back out to get it. If you forget the tomato sauce now, you'll just have to make do with bread and water for dinner.

But I digress. You need cranberry juice, yes? Ok. First things first. You'll need to look at the clock and decide if it's worth packing up the baby and all the gear and getting yourself emotionally ready to step outside before 5:30-when your partner comes home and you can just send him out instead. It's a very real consideration, especially if you've never ventured outside by yourself avec bebe before. But say it's noon, and you have a good five or so hours to work with. The second thing you'll have to do is pack baby's bag.

Now, hopefully somebody gave you a good, sturdy diaper bag for a baby present. If not, find your old student backpack or the biggest tote bag in your closet. Hopefully somebody with a little experience gave you a quick seminar in what to put into it.