What’s this?? Two hacks in quick succession? Yes, lucky readers (all 3 of you), I’m feeling particularly helpful (& opinionated) at the moment.
Hack #3: All You’ll Really Need For Your Infant Is Whatever You Have On Hand
(aka “Baby Gear Can’t Save You, but You’ll Survive Anyhow”)
Imagine my surprise when — between my first child and my last — several new mom friends recommended “must have” items that straight up did not exist when I created my baby registry just 6 years ago. Could technology really move so fast as to substantially improve one’s ability to weather the “4th trimester” in the span of just 6 years?
Two such items I used and liked:
- The Haakaa: a silicone breast pump that exists solely to catch the “let down” on the breast opposite the one you’re using to feed Baby (amazing and depressing to see how much would go to waste otherwise).
- The Spectra breast pump: as comfortable as any pump can be, I imagine, but infinitely quieter than the model I started using in 2015. (Breast pumps now covered by insurance! Thanks, Obama.)
Every other “must have,” however, didn’t inspire me to purchase.
Case in point: the Snoo. This is a ~$1500 bassinet. It has a number of features designed to help soothe Baby back to sleep during the night. Do you know how much I would have paid for something that claimed to help my baby sleep when I was a first time mom? Any. All of it. All the money.
But this brings me to my hack: whatever you have on-hand for your infant is what you’ll get used to, and that’s all that you’ll need. Which is to say: the volume of things baby stores claim you should register for… is a total racket. I just did a quick check of the Buy Buy Baby suggested checklist and only marked 50% of these items as things I actually used/needed for any of my 4 children. No judgment of any one item… though a fair amount of confusion about why a baby food maker is a separate product from a kitchen’s existing blender, or why anyone wants to keep a diaper pail in their room vs just regularly taking the stinky diapers to the outside bin, or why Mom and Dad need separate diaper bags (because the only way to worsen the process of monitoring diaper bag contents would be to have to do it twice). Just saying, by the numbers and for my own kids, half of these items were absolutely non-essential and we never missed having them.
Using the Snoo as our case study, I’ve seen a number of online forums praising it, showcasing the app with long sleep stretches for baby as of the 6-8 week mark. To feel like reliable sleep in >90 minute increments is around the corner — it’s a glorious thing, I know. But I’m pretty sure that a baby can sleep through the night — at least metabolically speaking — once they’re > 12 lbs. I would venture to say many (most?) babies start giving longer sleep stretches right around 6 – 8 weeks. I’ll definitely vouch for my own kids, who have all been able to sleep reliably long stretches by the 8 week mark in their $75 pack ‘n play/bassinet combo. So while the Snoo may be a great piece of tech, I can’t help but feel like it’s preying on new parents by taking partial credit for a mix of Baby’s biological development and the fact that parents are more willing to let a baby practice self-soothing (read: fuss for longer before hauling one’s exhausted body out of bed… again…) 1.5+ months into the sleep deprivation gig.
Just to be clear: I have no issue with people shelling out for high quality products for their babies if means allow… smoother strollers, prettier bouncers, certainly smart bassinets. If we were having our first today, with 6 extra years of earning power than when we were first expecting, we might be inclined to do the same. And goodness knows we feel justified in the places we splurged now that we’ve gotten 4 kids worth of mileage out of these things. But I can almost feel the cliche “back in my day we didn’t have these newfangled things and our kids turned out fine!” phrases coming out of my mouth before I have to laugh that “back in my day” practices were as recently as O’s infancy, 3 years ago.
The truth is that the transition to parenthood is incredibly challenging. The gear associated with this stage, however, has very little to do with that fact, so it’s not worth sweating about being properly stocked as new parents inevitably (and unavoidably) figure out so much on the fly and establish a system as they go using what they have on-hand.
A moment of humility: we had to use our pack ‘n play up north recently and left it there, borrowing our friends’ swanky Halo bassinet to keep at home for a few weeks. This thing swivels, vibrates, plays music, makes toast (maybe; we’ve never actually turned it on). It’s beautiful and worked great until C got heavy enough and fidgety enough that he started shifting his body weight into “corners” of the peanut-shaped contraption. He’d wake up prematurely, not yet hungry but actively irritated to be cramped against the mesh lining. In case you haven’t already picked up on this, I consider waking up to a hungry infant a worthy cause to forgo sleep, but almost anything else is unacceptable. The swanky bassinet had to go.
C, 7 weeks old, slept much of the past week like this:
And just for the record, he clocked 9 hours last night.
Hack #2: Everything Is More Exciting With A Scenery Change
18 months after the pandemic began in earnest in Michigan and we are back to 2020 rituals in a lot of ways. O’s daycare class had a positive COVID case as of 6 days ago, so he’s home quarantining as a “close contact.” This means we are spending the holiday weekend keeping to ourselves and hoping we have a(nother) negative test before J and A would theoretically resume school/childcare on Tuesday.
All this to say, I am revisiting old tricks to fill the hours without… you know, interaction with the outside world. Enter this parenting hack: change out the scenery of normal events (& add snacks) to make them an exciting, half-day event in & of themselves.
3 example applications:
- Epic Walks. Grab a “snack pack” (a bag of assorted snacks that wouldn’t normally be found together – better still if you can have your kids assemble a pack themselves) & hit the road. Stroll, scoot, bike – just go, and set a meandering pace that incorporates a goal (mileage, a landmark, time before you turn back) or a game (I Spy, or Geocaching). Pro tip: make sure to bring a stroller in the event you need to lug your child’s bicycle back manually… see photo below.
- Picnic Meals. This does not have to be over-thought. Sure, a picnic can be Bento-box-style, Instagram-worthy meals on the side of a vista. OR it can be burgers enjoyed on your driveway, Lunchables consumed overlooking the neighborhood retention pond, or McDonald’s eaten from the comfort of your submarine — I’m sorry, your SUV’s trunk that turns into a submarine just for the duration of the meal.
*Drumroll for the fan favorite change of scenery:* - Drive Out Movies. This is, proudly, an event I invented after I realized the pandemic-friendly “drive in” movies started too late for my kids’ bedtimes. Our Drive Out Movie nights involve me downloading a movie to my phone, packing the boys bags of popcorn and treats, and watching the movie in the front seat of the car, parked in our own driveway. Could we watch the movie in our house on a much larger screen? Yes. Could we eat the snacks with much easier access to refills (& much less concern about crumbs) in our own living room? Yes. Could we be much more comfortably situated on a couch vs crammed with me in the driver’s seat and the two older boys sharing the passenger seat? Yes. But you better believe those Drive Out Movie nights are infinitely more memorable than regular movie nights due to novelty alone.
Chowing down and making bets on what color car would pass by next. 
We got more than a few comments from other trail walkers as we had both a tricycle and bicycle loaded on the stroller over O’s “rumble seat,” had J riding on D’s shoulders, and me carrying Scooch. 
It took >1 hour to walk .5 miles to the pond, and longer to get home. A great investment on a day otherwise in desperate need of not being cooped up at home again.
And finally, an update on parenting hack #1: still going strong.
You haven’t lived until you’ve changed a diaper while being swarmed by bees.
I regularly get comments about how the boys are “clones” of Dave. It’s not that I’m against that notion; after all, I like Dave well enough to marry him, so the idea that my sons take after him is definitely not a bad thing.
That said, I do feel as though I am grasping at straws sometimes to identify ways they are also like me. So far the list includes: O has my more adventurous dining palate, the 3 older boys have my blue eyes, and all 4 of us behave like small children with poor executive function when we’re frustrated by something inconsequential and inanimate.
However! We can add one more to the list today:
Around 6:15, J appeared next to my bed, and his proximity to my face woke me up in a quasi-startling fashion. Mind you: I have not slept a night through in many weeks now, so the idea of having my sleep interrupted by anyone other than the infant relying on me for sustenance is… pretty offensive. Fortunately for J, in my sleepy stupor, I was too tired to react other than to mutter some question about what he was doing.
J (softly): Mom, I just saw the most beautiful sunrise.
Me (shameless sucker for a sunrise): you did?
J: yeah, it was orange and yellow. It was so beautiful, Mom.
Normally this would be the moment where I’d jump out of bed and head outside to view it myself. But I repeat: it has been weeks of interrupted sleep. I did a quick mental calculation: I know the saying that “tomorrow is never promised” and therefore I should “seize the day” and behold the beauty of the sunrise. But if for some reason the apocalypse happens and there is, in fact, no sunrise tomorrow, the extra sleep in the wee hours of this morning will surely serve me better than a memorable vista.
Instead, I unlocked my phone and mumbled a request for J to take a picture for me.
He came back shortly afterwards with 2 shots of the sunrise: one “through the shades” and one “through the window.”
He may walk like his dad, talk like his dad, and certainly have a penchant for mental math like his dad, but that uncontainable excitement and appreciation for a sunrise hours before it’s polite to rouse anyone else in the house?? That is all me.
Today is my due date. Back in late February, I announced my pregnancy to my team at work. I emailed one of my reports who was on paternity leave himself, stating the following:
“Based on my last 3, here’s what we’re expecting: Baby is due Aug 10, so it’ll arrive July 23. And we will wait to find out the sex, so he’ll be a boy.”
Fast forward to my uterus’ standard time of evicting its resident: 37 weeks & 2 days — July 22.
I went into the hospital to be monitored as I had some tenderness around my previous c-section incision. While on-site, I went into “spontaneous labor” anyway & managed a successful VBAC. Our son, C, was born shortly after midnight — July 23rd. 37 weeks & 3 days, splitting the difference between J & O (37w2d) & A (37w4d).
We have therefore had 2.5 weeks of “bonus time” with C and are so enjoying it. C is a fantastic eater, solid sleeper, and apparently impervious to the cacophony of his older brothers (a critical feature to family harmony — well done, evolution).
With a little bit of time to reflect, here are my observations on things that are the same, and things that are different with this, our 4th go-round:
THINGS THAT ARE THE SAME
- How massive a toddler looks next to a newborn. Diapering 2 year old A in size 6 after outfitting C in size N constantly has me thinking things like, “jeez, Scooch, shouldn’t you be out getting a job or something already?”
- I can’t imagine a more vigilant driver than that of a mom with an infant in her back seat. At any given moment while driving with him, I am on high alert and have mentally played out an absurd number of scenarios in which I might need to summon superhuman reaction times or strength to protect him (mind you: I have no doubt I would, in fact, summon these without issue if C was actually in danger). In no particular order of likelihood, I am ready for: a deer to race across the road, another car to run the upcoming 4-way stop sign, a need to retrieve our window hammer from the glove box and break out of our vehicle, a tornado to appear on an otherwise sunny day and force us to find cover, or a meteorite to crash into the highway just in front of our vehicle.
- Even when it’s the middle of the night and I’ve had grossly inadequate stretches of sleep for the past many days, to hear those little noises he makes, to hold him close as he squirms his weight against my chest, to share in the excitement and enthusiasm and support of a community of family and friends that welcomes a tiny life into our world… truly, this is a sweet time in life.
THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT
- I am always humbled and thankful for the new baby gifts sent our way (especially as many people have now celebrated generously 4x with us!), but this time our friends & family showed a definite bias towards food-related gifts. I have to commend the instincts here as A) we have no shortage of clothes and gear for baby boys in-house already, clearly, and B) the amount of dinners and desserts provided have saved us approximately 12 hours in the past 2.5 weeks alone and, in case it’s not obvious, time back is truly the most valuable gift of all. (Ideas for anyone looking: DoorDash or Uber Eats gift cards, Spoonful of Comfort dinners, a neighborhood Meal Train, Mrs. Prindables sweets, Milk Bar cookies gifted to the older boys from their neighborhood buddies, and more — yum).
- People seem to assume I know what I’m doing now. The hospital stay was by far the most zen we’ve had — despite this being our only delivery during a pandemic. The nurses’ advice on our departure was perfunctory, couched by “you know this even better than us at this point, but let’s go through the paperwork anyway.” Even C’s pediatrician check-ups were incredibly easy — just a touch of jaundice (per our usual) but otherwise the doctor let us forgo his 2 week check because his weight re-gain was going so well that he had far exceeded birth weight by the 1 week mark already. “Just give us a call if anything appears off — you know what to look for” they told me as we departed.
- And they appear to be correct (?!). I am torn between wanting to take credit after many years learning hard lessons, and not wanting to come anywhere near suggesting I’m somehow responsible for this healthy, easy baby making a pretty seamless transition into our world. Instead, I’ll just say this: through some combination of good luck, years of practice, and pretty fantastic teamwork between me and C, we have cashed in on a successful first few weeks by heading up north to enjoy time at the lake all together as a family — something we thought we might not be able to do at all this summer depending on the delivery and transition time.
Finally, special shout outs to:
— My mom, who has been phenomenally helpful these past several weeks, spending nights, mornings, and many days on-site with us as the only person who keeps track of small but evidently important details like whether *I* have also eaten.
— Dave, who has invested in many ways to occupy and entertain all 3 older brothers at once now, including a bike trailer + seat combo that both delights the boys and makes his bike work outs at least 3x as challenging.
— The big brothers, who not only really, really love “Baby C,” but seem unfazed by my divided attention… O, in fact, assuring me just this morning that I am “the best mom in the uterus.”
The 2021 Olympics start later this week, and as a result, swimming is top-of-mind for me at the moment.
Growing up, I was reliably athletic, but not particularly standout in any one sport. I was a pretty solid runner, though sidelined by shin splints during a few of my track or cross-country seasons. Running skills translated into being a fairly good soccer player, but without the ball-handling skills to capitalize much on a decisive breakaway. I didn’t make the volleyball team, knocked over the pole all 3 attempts in my first meet trying high jump, and only tested 3 belts deep in martial arts before a sparring session left me wondering why I’d signed up to have someone knock the wind out of me.
But swimming… swimming was my jam. I didn’t start until 7th grade because one of my friends was joining the team, and initially I couldn’t make a single set, no matter how forgiving the intervals. But evidently I just had to be given a few thousand repetitions over the length of the pool, and something close to natural talent emerged. (I say “natural talent” referring in part to how my adolescent brain rationalized the benefits of my anatomy compared how gangly and unfeminine I felt with my big hands, wide feet, broad shoulders… and the way boys in class would tell me to put my “guns” away when I wore sleeveless shirts.)
Granted, I was still not an all-star. I made Varsity all 4 years of high school, but it wasn’t tough to score enough points when the team overall was only so-so. I qualified for the MHSAA “state meet” a couple of times, but only in relays. And if I’m being honest, I always looked like I was sandbagging at practice… I swam in the middle of the team talent and never led sets unless they were something competitive like drop-a-second 50s. To be fair, I wasn’t trying to low-ball my abilities, but the thousands of yards daily were simply not my fast-twitch forte, and I like to think it was more a matter of how I was clearly suited to turning on and mentally letting go during a race (I swam sprint freestyle and part of what I loved about my events was how little thinking there was; just muscle memory, power, and a vague resignation to oxygen deprivation).
But after years of 2x/day, 6 days/week practice, hours and hours (and hours and hours) watching the same floor tiles drift by with no other mental distractions available, finding no amount of soap can ever really remove the chlorine smell from your skin until the season was over, “Iron Lung” clubs, “Animal Kicking” clubs, “Hell Weeks,” glorious “tapers,” rushed locker room routines with 30 other girls in the 12 minutes allotted to get ready for 2nd period, sizing up the competition’s seed times before a race, post-practice Saturday team breakfasts, pre-meet Spaghetti team dinners, and that awful, knowing moment you spend mid-air en route to the shock of cold water to start the first set of practice, first thing in the morning… I developed a lasting love and respect for the sport and what it taught me.
Fast forward many years since being out of the competitive scene, and of all topics in life, including those I studied in college and obtained a degree in, those which I have since pursued solely out of passion and interest, even those for which I am employed and literally paid to have an informed opinion of… there are none that I feel as confidently expert in as swimming.
All this to say, I have 2 timely thoughts on my mind the past few days:
- On the topic of childbirth — during my labor with A, the doctor was coaching me through breathing and pushing. She asked me: “do you know how to swim?”
Me: yes.
Doc: okay, I want you to take a big breath like you’re going to swim. Now when I say push, you push and we will count to 10. Ready? Push!
Me: *pushing, exhaling*
Doc: no, no, no! Don’t exhale! Stop, stop.
Me (reminder: actively having a baby): you said to breathe like I’m going swimming.
Doc: yes, but don’t exhale!
Me (still having a baby): swimmers exhale.
Doc: no, they don’t.
Me (really, oddly coherent given that I’m within minutes of giving birth): yes they do, otherwise they’d have a buildup of CO2, but that’s neither here nor there. You do not want me to exhale then?
Doc (clearly more than a little surprised to be having this conversation): right. Okay. Let’s just have you push and hold your breath this time until we’re done counting to 10. Ready? - And this, perhaps the greatest relay leg in Olympics swimming history. Jason Lezak anchors for Team USA, comes back from a major deficit and presumptive loss (including at the 50 meter mark in his own leg), sets a world record with his split, and earns the team a gold by 8 hundredths of a second. I have probably watched this video 40x just by myself over the years because it is such a stunning race.
Suffice it to say, I am very much looking forward to watching the Olympics coverage coming up — and hey, maybe even some events live despite the Tokyo time difference due to my own impending up-all-night schedule! (What can I say? I’m a sucker for some silver lining.)
If Baby arrives in the same 2-day gestational window as its brothers, then our family will be back to even numbers between Thursday and Saturday of this week.
The boys seem mostly aware of the impending change. When prompted, they confirm that they are excited. They understand that if they wake up in the morning and GiGi (my mom) is here, it’s because Mom and Dad went to see the doctor during the night because the baby is coming. And, when it came up just yesterday that A is the “littlest bro,” J corrected Dave: “no, the new baby is the littlest bro now.”
“Well, technically the baby may be a girl; we still don’t know,” Dave said.
J, without missing a beat: “girls can be ‘bros’ too, Dad.”
(In our house, “bro” is indeed an abbreviation for “brother,” but clearly more often is used as a compliment – someone who is a good friend, shares their toys readily, takes care of another bro in need. Really, we should all aspire to the status of ‘bro.’)
We spent the weekend ensuring we were caught up on laundry, hair cuts, and my mom even took me out for a manicure to carry me through the end of the pregnancy and first week or two of Baby’s life (so even if I’ve not showered in days, I’ll look kempt… at least from the cuticles down). We stocked up on convenience foods like Lunchables, hot dogs, and pre-cut fruit. I took O to a park for the rare 1:1 play date with a friend from daycare – an event in & of itself for him to be the sole child in the car, to say nothing of the focused attention and lack of competition required to dictate the terms of a given activity compared to when his brothers are around. We played at the pool, ate meals on the patio, made crafts, played games, and kept the big boys up past bedtime for a bonfire and s’mores in our backyard (their first but definitely not their last this season as they thoroughly enjoyed that the treat itself is the objective).
As for me nearing “go-time,” I did some working out, took some naps, got to bed early, and was only occasionally self-conscious about the number of involuntary noises I make while doing things around the house like picking up objects from the floor, leaning over to buckle the boys’ sandals, or, you know, rolling over during the night. Most importantly, I am still feeling great and had my latest check-up today with Baby looking good and in the proper exit position.
With my first 3, I went into labor during the wee hours of the night, so I admit it’s a bit anxiety-inducing to fall asleep the past week+ lest I wake up shortly thereafter in active labor… but then again, each morning I’m finding the predominant feeling is a little less relief of a full night’s sleep and a little more disappointment that the baby’s not already in my arms. Soon enough…
Unfortunately for both Dave & I, neither of us seem to have:
- A sense of interior decorating style
- Informed opinions about art
- Anything resembling a sense of urgency to “finish” a space
As a result, we have a high percentage of walls in our home that have remained bare, even years after first moving in.
I listened to an NPR Life Kit podcast a few weeks ago titled “Why Surrounding Yourself With Art Matters — And How To Do It.” The takeaways were not groundbreaking. Basically, art is that which inspires you, and if you love it, you should prioritize having it in your home. I’ve been observing my dad pick up an eclectic art collection in the recent past, in fact, and envy the conviction with which he pursues it and the obvious joy it brings him. But then, I’m not willing to hunt to develop my preference for art, I’m not looking to spend money to fill a space just for the sake of filling it, and I find that if I wait long enough to become accustomed to said space being unoccupied… it doesn’t register in my mind as void at all.
All this in mind, it was notable when, after strolling separately through the Ann Arbor Art Fair this weekend, both Dave & I had mentally flagged a tent of oil paintings that we admired enough to want to revisit together. When we did return, we jointly decided on a large-scale oil painting that’s reminiscent to us of the sandy dunes and shores along Lake Michigan’s coastline — contentment in the form of a geographic location for us.
It’ll take a few weeks to get hung in its permanent home, and then, as the sticker shock of one-of-a-kind art begins to wear off, I’m certain we’ll truly enjoy it and its origin story in our family’s home for many years to come.
Plus, on the upside of being exceedingly slow to put up household decorations, you can be sure that once we do invest and hang something, it could be decades before we find ourselves inclined to move it.
