I have heard a lot of bad advice over the years, but never more consistently than since I have been incubating a baby in my body. I'm sure most of the people mean well, but the more bad (like, really bad) advice I hear, the more I support removing warning labels from products and letting the epidemic of idiots just sort itself out.
Among the worst of the worst (so far) have been the following gems of infinite wisdom:
1. Sleep Now So You'll Be Well Rested Before Baby Is Born
Let me tell you something. Life as a pregnant woman can be broken down into two overarching categories: peeing, and thinking about needing to pee. I literally realize how much I have to pee while I am washing my hands in the restroom...after peeing 30 seconds earlier. This happens all day and all night. You know why? Because I have a PERSON sitting on top of my bladder. Which makes what little sleep I do get incredibly uncomfortable, which makes me toss and turn the whole time, which makes Ryan toss and turn.
This week, I have woken up for the day at 3am, 3:30am, 5am, and 2am. I'll be both impressed and depressed if we truly get less sleep once baby is here.
2. Baby Needs To Be Exposed To Germs IMMEDIATELY
I made the mistake of telling a few people that Cletus won't be making any big trips out of the house to crowded places until he has served between 8 and 12 weeks this side of my uterus, per my highly trained physicians and their separate, but uniform recommendations. When people hear of our plan to let our baby build an immune system before exposing him to the dirty hands and runny noses of strangers during cold and flu season, it's like I can see the expression 'helicopter parents' flash across their pupils.
What always happens next is a dissertation about how newborns need to be subjected to viruses and bacteria from the zero hour or they'll end up the next real life bubble boy. If that's your parenting style and your pediatrician signs off on that protocol, cool. If you haven't had a baby since before the surgeon general cautioned the general public about lighting tobacco on fire and breathing it into our lungs multiple times a day, then we're probably going to trust our doctors and our instincts on this one.
3. You Won't Bond With Your Baby Unless You Nurse
This one both makes me laugh and makes my blood boil at the same time. Mention one word about pumping, or God forbid FORMULA, and there will be a petition for state custody of your child. Like there's Bottle Fed Anonymous groups meeting in church basements with people swapping weekly stories about how the void in their life from not being breastfed has led them straight to shooting heroin. Dads don't feed their babies straight from the tap, regardless of whether it is Similac or Mom's milk in that bottle they are using, and they seem to generally like their kids so I'd say bonding is probably happening.
4. Don't Take The Medicine Your Doctors Prescribed
Oh, you saw a commercial saying that the medicine I take to keep myself and our baby alive has a 1% chance of causing a superficial birth defect? Well, I see commercials every day about a little blue pill for sexual efficiency that runs the risk of causing 'sudden loss of vision and hearing', but apparently 40 million Americans are cool with taking that chance. At least our priorities are straight.
5. If You Don't Provide a Pacifier, You'll Never Break Him Of Sucking His Thumb
Listen, I am all for different parenting styles and I am also open to the idea that our baby might not do what we have planned for him. For the record, we have pacifiers lined up and ready to go during hour #4 of a screaming marathon. When people have asked us about our plans to use a pacifier, we tell them 'We are going to try not to use one, but we'll see what happens.' The reaction we receive is as if we have just announced that we will only be feeding him twice a week - once on Monday, and again on Thursday, the same schedule we use for watering the plants.
The argument for pacifiers (which, AGAIN, we are cool with using if our baby needs one for a while) is always 'well you can take a pacifier away, but not a thumb!' Yes, this is true, but unless our kid is an idiot, we're pretty sure he'll find his thumbs anyway. I assure you, while we may screw him up in other ways, you have our undying pledge that we will not send him to college sucking on his thumb, completely crippled by the fact that it can't be taken away from him so he never learned to self soothe. Pinky promise.
