Leaving the House with Baby: What Do I Really Need?
***** This is a guest post by Aldo Torner *****
Sometimes it is easy to identify new parents just by looking at what they are carrying. Simply size up the baby bag. As the oldest of six siblings, I remember watching my own mom’s baby bag evolution over the years. It seemed that shopping for just the right diaper bag – and it had to be HUGE – was only important during the early years. Once it came to baby number six, my mom had packing baby’s stuff down to an art, and everything she needed fit into her oversized purse – no diaper bag needed. Of course, the prospect of being out and about with the little one and not having something you need can be quite stress-inducing. So, what do you REALLY need when leaving the house with baby? Here is a brief rundown:
Baby food and drink
Bring baby’s bottle, in an insulated bottle pack to maintain its temperature. Even if you don’t plan on being gone during meal time, bring a bottle with purified water and a travel-sized packet of formula. If you are breast-feeding, of course, you can skip the bottle altogether. Additionally, bring a sandwich baggy or small plastic container with a snack. You don’t need the whole pantry; just some simple finger foods – crackers, for example – will do. Bring a sippy cup of water or juice to wash it down.
When baby gets soiled
Bring a travel-sized pack of baby wipes, a couple of diapers, and a simple change of clothing, like a onesie. Don’t forget clean socks. Either a disposable, or a very compact, changing pad could come in handy . . . but is not necessary, if you absolutely must pack as lightly as possible. Pack a couple of zip-lock bags to store dirty or wet clothing in until you get home.
Comfort
If baby has a favorite blanket, stuffed animal or chew toy, or uses a pacifier, bring those.
Entertainment
Don’t pack the playroom. Remember that baby will most likely be stimulated and entertained by being in a new environment. Pack a small rattler or travel toy. If you really want to conserve space in your diaper bag, opt for toys that attach directly to your baby carrier.
Taking baby out and about doesn’t have to be a nerve-wracking prospect. Just make sure you have these basics packed, and you will be prepared to handle most any situation. Also, remember that just like everything associated with parenting, leaving the house with baby may be scary in the beginning, but you will get better at it and more comfortable with it over time . . . and with a little (or a lot) of trial and error.
*****
About the Author:
Aldo Torno is a career counselor for several phlebotomy schools and plans to pursue a career in nursing within the next year or two. He was inspired to write this article after seeing many young mothers visit his schools while caring for their children. Some of them looked like they were about to move in permanently! Take a deep breath and don’t stress out when you take your baby in public. Be realistic and things will go much smoother than anticipated. Please visit http://www.associationphlebotomytraining.com/ if you’d like more information about phlebotomy as a career.
Related articles
- Diaper Changing Your Baby (enfamil.com)
- What to Take to Daycare/Sitter’s (madelynvittetoe.wordpress.com)
- Smart Money Advice for New (or Expecting) Parent (moneyning.com)
Parents Who Hid Child’s Gender for Five Years Now Face Backlash
When Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper had their son, Sasha Laxton, five years ago, they decided that rather than make a big splashy “It’s A Boy!” announcement, they’d keep the news to themselves. Instead, they only told a select number of relatives that little Sasha was a he; to everyone else the child was referred to as “the infant” and described without gendered pronouns. “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” Laxton told her local news outlet, Cambridge …
Image of the Week: The Small Hand That Kills by Skippyjon
This is just outstanding in so many ways. Enjoy.
You can see more images by skippyjon on Flickr.
Want to Win Image of the Week?
Send me the URL to your image, or email me the file as an attachment if you must. I’m on Facebook and Twitter and my email is mi@machiavelliid.com. Give me whatever info you like about you or your image. That’s it.
[No guarantees that I'll ever publish it, or that I'll repeat what you say about it word-for-word. But if I like your image or your thinking, it's in.]
How to make a shitload of cash without working too hard
This is how I see myself and my business in a few years’ time. Especially the chart.
Seriously though, how are you going to get from here to there?
My plan involves working bloody hard (but,like I said,not too hard) and training the Animal to make money from blogging too. That way I can just put in a regular few hours a week working for other people, a few more working on my own side projects, and spend the rest playing ball and reading books with Mini-MI while the Animal plays househusband. In the park. With ice cream. Cos that’s how good it will be, if I get it right. Right?
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- Invisiblogger Jobs Board
Image credit: Snugg LePup
15 Safe Ways to Entertain a Baby (or Toddler) in the Car
We did a roughly 12 hour trip each way on our jaunt to Echternach, and Mini-MI suffered all the indignities of a long hot day in the car admirably. There were times when some of these ideas came in bloody handy, though.
BTW, when I say safe I mean it in a relative sense — nothing is truly safe when you’ve got a one-year-old with you.
- Books. Preferably soft ones, to prevent injury when they’re thrown at your head.
- Music. Mini-MI will be happily distracted for up to half an hour at a time if there’s something to listen to.
- Pulling faces. Doesn’t matter if you’re no good at it, they’ll show you how.
- Water games. On a hot day it’s particularly good – just drip a bit of water on the baby’s head or arm, let them do what they like. Give them the beaker and leave them to it if you can…
- Singing. Any kind will do, especially if you’ve got no other music.
- Hand signs. Vulcan, Gangsta, Rocker, Surfer – all genres welcome here. You copy them or they copy you; this is an easy one.
- Food. Let’s face it, this is one of the easiest distraction tactics in the world. Something that takes a while to eat is best.
- Hunt the Food. When your darling little one drops half-chewed snacks into the mysterious cavities of the upholstery & luggage, you’re gonna play this one anyway. Might as well play for laughs.
- “Look!” (like I Spy, but for younger infants the objective is just to point out the window at stuff. Mini-MI likes spotting bikers on the road.)
- The paper fan. Fold a paper sheet in zigzags, pinch one end and fan the other out, waft it at your offspring. Cooling and entertaining.
- “Where’s your…?” (like Look! but pointing at bits of your body)
- Drawing. Provided nobody gets stabbed with a crayon, this could occupy a whole 20 minutes before the upholstery’s at risk.
- Clapping hands. Mini-Mi absolutely loves the power trip of grabbing our hands and clapping them for us, or you could play pat-a-cake if you remember how.
- Winking and blinking. Younger kids typically haven’t figured out how to wink yet, but they’ll give it a damn good try.
- Sleep. Yes, OK, you can’t make this one happen. But it’s the longest period of quiet you’ll have, so make the most of it when you get it.
Related articles
- Gadgets that Create Road Trip Bliss (drivenct.com)
Cupcake decorating frenzy!
We made these cupcakes today. Frosted ones with jelly drops on top, fairy cakes with lemon curd and lime buttercream icing, blackcurrant jam filled ones with lids, and my experimental ones with frosting over lemon curd. Nom.
Shh… Even sleeping babies can hear you’re unhappy
You know those times when you’ve argued, wept, or otherwise stressed out while your baby was sleeping? Turns out if a baby can hear you, it still knows how you feel.
fMRI scans of sleeping babies aged from 3 to 7 months show activity in the middle temporal gyri, right lingual gyrus and medial frontal gyri when human voice sounds including crying, laughter and other neutral noises were played to them. Basically that’s the same as you’d expect to see in an adult listening to those sounds, awake.
What’s more intersting is that unhappy human voice sounds – crying etc – activate the insular cortex and gyrus rectus more strongly, again just like in fully conscious adults. So babies can hear us and interpret our mood from our voices even when they’re asleep.
Nobody’s really sure why this is. Maybe the babies are processing the sounds and learning as they sleep. Maybe they’ve already learned to recognise those sounds and associate them with maternal stress they experienced in the womb. Maybe they’re just evolved to be alert to any sign of danger while they sleep, and people arguing or crying around them could potentially do something dangerous.
Whatever the reason, I’m glad that science has finally supplied some evidence to back up all the anecdotes and old wives’ tales about not doing your freaking-out in the same room as your sleeping infant.
Source: New Scientist
Image credit: ECohen
Baby TV: Won’t somebody please think of the children?
Baby TV, at first glance, seemed like a great idea. 24 hour broadcasting, no advertising, just developmental programming for the under-3s.
A couple of the shows I watched were OK (with the volume really low, at least – all that singing is hard to take at times). There were some nice short animations that I found quite appealing. And I figured the lack of advertising would make Mini-MI a bit less likely to start demanding happy meals and branded character merchandise.
Then I started picking up on the odd thing here and there that set my teeth right on edge. My most jaw-dropping OMG-they-didn’t moment thus far came from Learn with Baby (2006), in which the twee but slightly breathy voice-over lady enthuses, “There are many different shapes of eyes: slanted… big… and small!”
That’s wrong wrong wrong on so many levels. Except the ones where it’s not even wrong, just bollocks. I mean, for a start, none of those are shapes. Slanted is an orientation, big and small are sizes. All of them are relative measures referring to the rendering or presentation of a shape, hence not to do with the shape itself. It downright pisses me off that they’re leading ickle babies up the geometric garden path.
And did they get Prince Philip to script this? It might as well say, “There are big and small versions of normal eyes, then there are some weird people with slanted ones.” I should sue them for the injuries sustained in dropping my jaw to the fucking floor.
They’re lucky I’m British and accustomed to hearing that shit from our noble prince consort, so I just switched to a different channel.
Image credit: Stannered
Machiavelli Id does Echternach
Just spent a week in a medieval tower built into the old town walls of Echternach (northeast-ish Luxembourg, right on the German border) with the Animal, Mini-MI and her grandma.
Gods, I’d forgotten how peaceful it is. Lovely walks, amazing food (steak de cheval, fresh asparagus, a fresh apple juice with lime at Apple A Day in Luxembourg city) and an all-encompassing sense of calm and order. Everything was… nice. Really just nice. Pleasant. Open wi-fi was a scarce commodity, yet I was surprisingly non-twitchy. I answered my emails on 2 occasions, but did no work. I had time to read a whole book on the way there, and most of another on the way home. I went to bed before midnight. Bliss.
Of course we had hiccups and arguments. Mini-MI fell out of her stroller and smacked her head on the cobblestones; we lost her bedtime bear for a whole 2 days; we failed miserably in our attempts to stop smoking; the bells of the basilica drove us nuts during the night. But we also walked a gorge through the forest without seeing another human being, and sat talking at night on top of the old defense walls that branch out of the tower like it was our own little castle (btw Luxembourg has some impressive castles).
Notes for parent travellers:
- Don’t take a young child to a 4 storey tower for your holidays. Just don’t, it’s silly. We kept her in her playpen on the upper floor most of the time, but we had to carry her up and down the spiral staircase for every shower or trip or change of clothes and it was a bloody pain in the arse. Wait til they’re walking, eh.
- DFDS Seaways line from Dover to Dunkerque has compact & bijou ferries that are surprisingly easy to get around with a buggy.
- Our 1 year old liked eating our steak and stuff so much, she’s turned into a food snob now.
I’m too knackered to attempt further description right now, so here’s a cheesy video instead:
The boobie blues
I thought about including “before” & “after” photos with this post, but I can’t quite face it at the moment… maybe another day.
When I went back to full-time work a few months ago, we started giving Mini-MI milk from a bottle more and more. At first I expressed milk in the evening for her to drink the next day, but it took much more effort and time than simply feeding her from the breast – up to an hour to express a feed she would drink in minutes. (Don’t be put off, though – it’s still a bloody good idea & lots of other women can express their milk quickly & easily. I’m just not one of them.)
When I’d used the breast pump sporadically to provide for the occasional day out, I hadn’t minded the hassle, but it was too much to do after work every day. After a few weeks, I stopped expressing and Mini-MI was given formula feeds while I worked. She carried on breastfeeding in the mornings and evenings, waking once in the night for a top-up feed.
But as the weeks went on, she started to sleep longer and longer – we were filling her up during the day with solid food and bottles of milk much larger than the amount she would have taken from the breast in one sitting. There was no hunger to wake her in the night or make her cry in the mornings. Now she takes her last bottle at around 10 p.m. and usually sleeps until around 7 the next morning, playing and babbling quietly in her cot when she wakes. Compared to the deathly sleep deprivation of the first few months, this is bliss.
My milk dried up, little by little, as Mini-MI adjusted to the new diet. Pretty soon she only turned to the breast for a quick drink, or for comfort. After a few gulps she would either fall asleep, or repeatedly clamp her teething gums down on my nipple and pull her head back sharply, giggling at me and grinning. Now she’s started drinking from those little hard-spouted beakers, too, splashing herself in the face with her drink and laughing like a little mentalist.
I just have one problem: WTF happened to my tits? When they’re empty, they look it. Seriously. It’s like someone stole my breasts and left a pair of socks stapled to my chest in their place.
As someone whose career used to depend in part on the state of my boobage, I find this somewhat unsettling. I’d intended to return to modelling after Mini-MI was born, but now I find myself body-shy and less than confident about getting naked for photos.
Machiavelli Id (with breasts) by Mike Crawley
When I was pregnant (even though I didn’t know it yet), I had a shoot with Foto2XH for a project all about breasts. Every model contributed a bit of text describing her thoughts/feelings about her breasts, to accompany her topless image. I remember explaining how mine developed early and quickly, attracting unwanted attention and pissing me (a tomboy) right off with the hassle of bras and ill-fitting pre-teen clothes. How I’d hidden them away, then overreacted and had them on semi-permanent exhibition for a while, before finding balance in the force with nice bras and easy necklines. (I mean easy like simple, not easy like “easy access” or “hello, I’m a slut”. Although those are both good points in their own right.)
Understand, it’s not the change in breast size that bothers me – I’ve considered breast reduction surgery in the past, getting as far as my 3rd consultation before deciding against it. I didn’t expect to go right back to my pre-baby 34FF, and I was pretty happy about the idea of having a smaller bosom that might actually fit into clothes without me having to buy a size up just to make my shirt buttons close.
It’s the “empty skin bags” look that I find so depressing. I went out to get myself some new bras, but discovered that my breasts don’t kind of perch within the cups anymore – now, they languish despondently at the bottom, leaving my décolletage a flat no-man’s-land instead of a welcoming curve. In the end, I bought some of those stretchy, soft sports bras. I’d always envied my flatter-chested friends their freedom to wear such simple undies. They’re lovely and easy and comfortable, but now I’m finally able to wear them I just wish I still had the boobs to warrant my usual underwired-and-triple-cantilevered lingerie.
Some of my friends assure me that my breasts will return to something a bit more like their former glory; others say theirs never came back and mine might not either. One advised me cheerfully that “they’ll come back when you get fat” and then made me a nice soothing cup of tea.
We’ll see.
P.S. If you’ve had a baby (or breast surgery), I’d like to hear about it. What changed about your breasts? What problems and what upsides did you find? Did they change back again later on? Leave me a comment and let me know…
Crash Test Mummy
Should anyone want a way to get to the baby-related stuff without passing through the unlikely wastelands of my modelling career, sex life and other unmentionables that I mention from time to time: you can now go straight there by clicking the “Crash Test Baby” link in the nice short menu at the top right of the page. Or just bookmark it, it’d probaby be easier.
I’m bound to swear and talk about NSFW subjects sooner or later, no matter what category you visit, but I promise there’ll be no naked pics in the Crash Test Mummy category so visually at least it’s officially Safe For Work. Yes, me. Really.
Oh gods, I’m a mommyblog
It’s come to my attention that my blog now has (a) lots of mentions of Mini-MI, and (b) absolutely bugger all modelling going on because I’m too busy writing and raising a baby to get my shit together and scrub up for a shoot. Can this state of affairs continue?
Let’s be clear on this point: I’m not about to turn the site pink or start thinking I’m Dooce. And I’m a bit less kerr-azy than The Blogess, so the title of Kookiest Mum Online isn’t up for grabs either. But I like being able to share my chaotic parenting skillz (would you take a book called Chaotic Parenting down off the shelf?) and occasional outbursts of maternal pride with you. So the baby stuff is in. Feel free to go & look at Barbies instead if you prefer your girls non-reproductive.
That said, I’m buying a new camera soon. Then I can set up my own shoots, and the Animal can push the trigger for me. So far I’ve been thinking of maybe doing a set in our nice new shower, and there must be something I can do with the Kinect… oh, and I’ve still got my LoveHoney Real Top Model prizes to show off, if they fit after all this time.
Any other ideas?
Image courtesy of Gabi Menashe via FlickrOur baby’s backwards…
Mini-MI’s been learning to crawl (sort of) this winter. She’s great at lifting her upper body off the ground, looking around, reaching out to things… then she’d put her head down on the floor and do a breaststroke-swimming leg thing that gave her zero propulsion on account of her legs being mostly in the air.
If laid on her back, she can arch up and crab-walk with just her head and feet on the ground. It’s a bit like that scene that was cut from The Exorcist, but with (usually) less vomit. Placed in her cot for a nap, she rolls onto her side and tips her head back until it’s almost at a right angle to her spine so that she’s looking up at the head of the bed. When I look in on her after she’s fallen asleep, she’s usually on her belly with her face pressed into her favourite book or her bedtime bear. Then when she wakes up she’ll turn around until she’s lying across the width of the cot instead of its length, and flail around gurgling to herself until someone comes to get her.
My baby’s certainly very mobile; she just doesn’t crawl. She pushes herself backwards with her arms, belly sliding across the floor, rather than moving forwards using her legs. She likes to use her padded plastic changing mat as a kind of body board, lying partly on top of it with her legs dangling over the edge.
The Animal reckons she’ll be walking before she really figures out crawling. I won’t be surprised if he’s right. Then again, a quick google tells me that most babies start crawling or other forms of autonomous distance-covering any time between about 6 months and 10 months old, so I won’t be surprised if she’s crawling forwards right now when I walk back into the room.
Child development is a fascinating subject. 50% of that is because it’s so individual and unpredictable; the other 50% is because it’s genuinely laugh-out-loud funny to watch. As I’m writing, sitting now on the sofa in front of Mini-MI, I’ve been watching her lean over in her Bumbo, grab her changing mat and pull it closer next to the chair, then pelvic-thrust herself out of the seat and roll sideways onto the mat. She may not be crawling, but her escapology skills and her sense of self-preservation are coming along just fine.
Related Articles
- Babies on the Edge (scientificamerican.com)
- Perspective on the Bumbo Seat (brighthub.com)
Mom kills baby for interrupting FarmVille
Image by marketingfacts via Flickr
Jacksonville mom shakes baby for interrupting FarmVille, pleads guilty to murder.
This was the headline that made me choke on my morning tea. A 22-year-old mother shook her baby and possibly banged its head, because she was angry at it for crying while she played that stupid farming game. “This makes me quite upset” is understating the case more than a little.
I know it has nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with psychological maturity and individual circumstances like standards of living and education, but it makes me wonder: have other game crazes been as pervasive and soul-consuming as Farmville (or social games in general)? Check out this compilation of “social gaming addiction” headlines. Shouldn’t having a baby be more fun than any game? Did people once shake their babies to death for interrupting them at whist or skittles? No, even if only because you have to play these games with real people who would see you doing it and slap some sense into you.
Everyone needs at least intermittent contact with the big Out There. They don’t even have to go out; if they’ve already lost their sight, skin pigmentation and social skills from loitering in the long dark teatime of the internet, they could just invite someone round for cake. Might sound a bit Marie Antoinette, but it is that simple. You need people for social. You don’t always need media.
Weaning
Now that Mini-MI is six months old, the stores of iron and other nutrients she built up in the womb are almost depleted and she needs more than she gets from my milk. It’s time she was weaned.
The World Health Organisation and the Department of Health recommend that babies be fed exclusively on breastmilk until 26 weeks (six months), and certainly shouldn’t be given any solid food in the first 17 weeks of life. The health visitor extolled to me the virtues of baby-led weaning, skipping the purees and going straight from breastmilk to finger foods at six months. Meanwhile the Animal has been giving her tastes of anything she showed an interest in since she was about three months old, and was very keen to start feeding her pureed solids as early as possible. He believed solid food would help her sleep through the night, and took any signs of distress within an hour or so after a feed as proof that she was hungry.
I had assumed (perhaps somewhat optimistically) that I would know Mini-MI was ready to eat solid food when she succeeded in picking some up off my plate, getting it in her mouth, and chewing it (gumming it, anyway). We wobbled along a line of uneasy compromise for a couple of months, occasionally spoon-feeding her with fruit purees or baby “cereal” (actually made from rice) while I read ingredients lists and rejected anything that seemed particularly likely to upset Mini-MI’s immature digestive system (gluten, meat, too much sugar or cow’s milk). She was a colicky baby, though the whole concept of colic offends my scientific sensibilities as it’s a condition defined purely by its signs with no understanding of its causes or processes, and I don’t want to be responsible for giving her a bellyache. Plus some food allergies can be caused by feeding an infant certain foods before its digestion has matured.
Someone should really let Cow & Gate know about that. I received a direct mail package from them when Mini-MI was about three months old, with a free sample sachet of one of their baby cereals. The pamphlet on weaning they enclosed with the free sample was atrociously unethical. I mean so much so that I actually sat there saying “Cunts!” aloud over and over as I read through it. It piled on the pressure, telling me that my baby would be getting hungry soon and that I should watch out for the telltale signs… which, as it turns out, are things that Mini-MI does all the time and (to my knowledge) most babies her age and younger do:
- Baby chewing its hands? It’s hungry, give it solids.
- Baby ever unsettled after a feed, or wake up during the night? It’s hungry, give it solids.
- Baby able to hold its own head up, or sit up with or without support? It’s hungry, give it solids. (I swear I’m not making this up. Cow & Gate say that by not falling over when I prop her up in a sitting position, my baby is telling me she’s ready for solid food.)
- Baby look like it’s interested in what you’re doing when you eat? It’s HUNGRY, give it SOLIDS. Dear gods, woman, your child is about to STARVE unless you give her some Cow & Gate!
Cow & Gate say that their smooth pureed foods are suitable for babies from four months of age. It’s written in large font on the front of every jar. The tiny print on the back concedes that the DoH say otherwise. Not all the baby food manufacturers are so disingenuous; some are labelled “from 4-6 months onward”, or place more emphasis on speaking to your medical care provider before weaning.
Of course, the recommendations have changed over time. The nice lady who sold me my home insurance declared that in her day, babies were weaned at three months old and it never did them any harm. I forced myself not to ask why it wasn’t her day anymore, and agreed that the human race on the whole appeared to have survived early weaning. My mum, watching Mini-MI munch on a rice cake, commented that it seemed much easier to wait until babies can feed themselves.
So far, weaning has been pretty easy for us. Mini-MI will eat almost anything she’s offered, though she was a bit uncertain the first time we gave her some coarsely mashed carrot. She loves to gum on rice cakes and pieces of toast. Last week at her great-grandma’s house she had a big strip of chicken breast to chew, and earlier today we had to get her to cough out a huge piece of baby biscuit that she’d managed to break off and choke on. Twice.
It can be a bit nerve-wracking at times to watch her tackle a piece of solid food, knowing that she can’t control the muscles with which she moves the food around her mouth and swallows. Each time she chokes on something, while I tip her forward and pat her on the back until the food falls from her mouth, I consider what I would do if she carried on choking. Time to sign up for an infant first aid course, maybe, though first aid courses always make me feel even less confident about administering first aid (because they remind me just how much there is to know, and how many things can go wrong).
Another thing that occasionally makes me feel a bit weird is the thought that Mini-MI, this tiny adorable creature who until recently needed me for everything, is already growing up. My breasts are no longer her source of sustenance and comfort. I’m out at work most days, and I miss her like crazy. When I come home to see her sweet sleeping face as she lies content in her daddy’s arms, though, I forget all of that immediately and rush to bask in her glorious warmth and baby scent, because nothing else really matters.
Drinking a little bit when you’re pregnant is OK (but you’re not supposed to know that)
Image via Wikipedia
BBC News – Light drinking no risk to baby, say researchers.
Let me summarise this story in 3 quotes:
‘Drinking one or two units of alcohol a week during pregnancy does not raise the risk of developmental problems in the child, a study has suggested.’
This was a study of more than 11,000 five year olds, which is a decent sized sample and a reasonably long time to wait for any developmental problems to present themselves.
‘In fact, the children born to light drinkers appeared slightly less likely to suffer behavioural problems, and scored higher on cognitive tests, compared with women who stopped [drinking alcohol] during pregnancy.’
So light drinking might even be good for your unborn offspring.
‘The Department of Health said that its advice would remain unchanged to avoid confusion among pregnant women.’
Yes, because we’re so easily confused aren’t we. What they mean is “to avoid pramfaced chav trollops thinking they can neck a whole 3 litre bottle of Frosty Jacks.”
I had a drink every once in a while when I was pregnant. I didn’t worry about that because I always made sure it was only in very small & dilute quantities and I was never even remotely tipsy. I’ve also had the occasional drink since Mini-MI was born, even though I’m breastfeeding, because my NCT breastfeeding counsellor assures me that you can have a couple of drinks before the alcohol starts to come through in your breast milk.
There are more important things to worry about – poverty, neglect, abuse, lack of education. Stop tailoring advice to the dumbest common denominator. The women who drink shitloads during pregnancy are going to do so regardless of whether you advise abstinence or moderation. But there are plenty of women who avoid alcohol entirely during their pregnancies even though a small drink might help harmlessly reduce their stress levels, and there are more who had that small drink but felt unnecessarily guilty for it. The best advice isn’t always the same thing as the simplest advice. Sort it out.
Mini-MI’s hit list
At 5 months of age, her ears untarnished by the icky sounds of Bieber et al., I consider Mini-MI to be the ultimate arbiter of musical taste. Here’s her current Top 10…
1= The Buggles: Video Killed The Radio Star.
Always raises a smile & gets her joining in with the “Oh-a-oh” bits.
2= Tight Fit: The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
Waily-waily silliness. She loves it.
3= Syd Barrett: Golden Hair.
The perfect lullaby in my opinion, and Mini-MI appears to agree with me.
4= Men Without Hats: Safety Dance.
Mini-MI used to do that with her arms whenever I lowered her into her carrycot. She crossed one leg in front of the other at the same time though, so it was more like “Michael Flatley: Lord of the Safety Dance”. The Matrix-style flying Crane was her other usual startle…
5= Bobby McFerrin: Don’t Worry Be Happy
Jaunty doo-wopping harmonies & whistling? Mini-MI likes.
6= Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues
Not sure if she likes the song or just enjoys watching Dylan flip signs in the video.
7= Tom Petty: I Won’t Back Down
Makes Mini-MI cackle with glee. She tries to sing along and everything.
8= Thin Lizzy: The Boys Are Back In Town.
Sometimes sends her off to sleep, for reasons unknown to us lesser mortals.
9= that song about the Captain of the HMS Pinafore
This always makes me think of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes :D but Mini-MI seems to like the tune too (for her own reasons – she’s never seen that episode of The Simpsons).
10= Cyndi Lauper: Time After Time.
Sappy as hell but seems to calm her down. At least it isn’t “True Colours”, because I can’t remember the words to that one.
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