The Daddy Journals: The Road To Wellville

It’s 5:30 a.m. and we’re trying to perform an Emergency Boogerectomy on our baby daughter so she can sleep for another hour or so. It has been decided that I possess the steadier hand at this hour, so I do the honors. A boogerectomy involves a Q-Tip, a tissue, a rubber suction bulb and, sometimes, a flashlight. We never considered that early-morning booger removal would be part of parenting, but there’s a lot of things they just neglect to tell you.

The boogerectomy is essential, because babies can’t blow their noses well. There are many tasks they’re really not up to at five months, and breathing with a nose full of snot is one of them. As new parents, you quickly find out where you’re needed to lend a hand – or a hanky.

Though our kid is generally healthy, she did develop a cough recently, which troubled us no end. We were told to give her Bricanyl syrup for the phlegm, though it contains a stimulant similar to caffeine. This would explain why our baby started pumping her arms up and down immediately after receiving her first dose of Bricanyl, then launched into a complicated and lengthy monologue of babble that our adult ears just weren’t sharp enough to decipher. But it did stop her from coughing.

She was given other medications and vitamins to boost her resistance. But it was the Bricanyl that sent her into ecstatic fits whenever she saw the bottle. So we decided to ease up on the Bricanyl. We didn’t want baby’s first words to be "Starbucks."

Colic is another one of those conditions that trouble first-time parents. Unfortunately, there’s no medical fix for colic; it’s really just a word used to describe a grab-bag of symptoms, baby’s nonstop crying and unhappiness chiefly among them. Supposedly it’s caused by indigestion or gas, so burping is prescribed. The nice thing about baby burping is that it can arise spontaneously, even after you’ve been gently patting the child’s back for 15 minutes to no avail. Sometimes the baby will suddenly give forth while reaching over to grab a toy; other times it comes during her bath, while she’s getting her back scrubbed. Suddenly a loud emission reverberates off the bathroom tiles. The first time I heard it I was reminded of a tennis ball being roundly thwocked. We call this the Bonus Burp.

If you’re a new parent, you naturally want the healthiest baby humanly possible. Every potential activity is checked and rechecked for its effect on him or her. Unfortunately, you begin to pick up mixed signals from other parents and everyone else around you. Some tell you to use a water vaporizer to keep the lungs clear; others tell you to use an air ionizer. We now have the two competing gadgets on either side of our bed, one adding humidity to the air, the other one thinning it out at the same time. No wonder our baby’s respiratory system is confused.

My wife breastfeeds, but we also mix the feedings with bottled milk. This practice is looked upon with scorn by mothers who solely breastfeed, some of them well past the one-year mark. We hear of mothers who serenely breastfeed their children not only after they’ve started to develop teeth, but around the time they’re starting to grow chin stubble. The theory goes that breast milk continues to be produced by the mother as long as she continues feeding. But our own theory goes that when the child is old enough to ask for the breast in complete sentences, it might be time to move on to solids.

About this time, you also start becoming overly concerned about your child’s physical development. This worry is enhanced by periodic visits to your pediatrician, who tells you that your baby’s weight, length and head circumference are snugly within a certain percentile which sounds awfully low, no matter how many charts she produces. So you leave the office vowing to make your baby heavier, longer, larger-headed.

You, as a parent, also begin noticing other parents and their babies. This produces much worry and concern. You see some babies who are clearly less robust and lively than yours, and begin ruminating over their percentiles for a while, feeling nothing but sympathy and pity. Then some other mother produces a baby with a full moptop of hair at five months, when all your baby girl can manage is a comb-over. You start considering Rogaine treatments.

In truth, the sheer volume of baby books and theories out there can make you feel like you’ve unwittingly entered your baby in some kind of marathon race, and you’re the trainer. While someone like Dr. Spock may counsel patience and acceptance, saying there’s no set time for a baby to start crawling or talking, others say you must lay the groundwork, prepare your baby for this or that physical change. It makes you wonder how the hell parents got by for centuries before the baby-book industry was invented.

Actually, that’s where a lot of our comfort lies, as parents. We know there’s a lot of conflicting information out there, a lot of competing theories and people who think they know what’s best for your baby. You can either sift through all that information, then begin the perilous job of making up your own mind; or you can do something much simpler, as we have learned to do. You can check out your baby. Is she happy? Does she seem healthy? Is the physical hurdle this week something completely new to the human species, or something that babies and parents have successfully surmounted for thousands of years? In short, is she doing okay? One look at our baby’s smile – a smile that is learning to echo our smile – tells us yes, she is.