I was over at my buddy James’ place earlier today and while he and the wifey were tending to their newborn baby in the nursery I was reading over the maternal material provided by the hospital to the new parents. Most of the info in the parenting pamphlets was pretty boring (i.e. babies eat food, sleep and poop - not necessarily in that order or at different times), but I did find out some interesting facts about baby raising that I found both alarming and surprising. 

1) The proper term for a woman milking her breast into a container for future use is “expressing.”
A woman “expresses” her milk into a bottle. Express? Do they make faces while they milk or something? I brought this up to James and he said it was a total woman thing. They like words like that – it sounds more intimate. If it was something a man did it be called expel or extract or deposit, not express.  Interesting side note: NWA's 1988 Straight Outta Compton featured a song "Express Yourself" that was written about breast milk.

2) Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is the scariest syndrome known to babies.
For those of you who don’t know, in infants the only symptom of SIDS is sudden death – admittedly, it’s not a clever name for the syndrome. SIDS can happen from 1 month to year after birth. All of a sudden, for no reason your baby dies? WTF? A baby dying is always going to be sad, but a baby that appears to be healthy and full of life suddenly dying, is even more sad. I read a conspiracy theory the Coast to Coast AM website that it is the government of the future going back in time and killing future political agitators – regardless, it’s sad.

3) You must let babies cry sometimes.
If you pick a baby up every time it cries it will become whiny and needy for the rest of its life – and you don’t want an overly whiny and needy kid, kids are a pain in the ass as it is. My only concern about this suggestion is when to utilize it. Should parents just do it whenever? I think I might abuse this suggestion if I were a dad – like if I was in the middle of eating a big plate of ribs and the baby cries. I don’t want to get the paper towel and wipe up my face just so I can go change a diaper. I want to eat my damn ribs – sorry baby, you are just going to have to cry, I gots to finish my rib platter.

4) It is important to fight in front of the baby.
Alright, the pamphlets from the hospital didn’t say that, but it’s my suggestion for child rearing. If you don’t fight with your significant other in front of the baby, how will it ever learn? Do you want your child to learn how to fight from watching television? It is the responsibility of the parents to teach their kids how to make back-handed mean-spirited comments that demean one another into an endless cycle of negativity and self loathing – at least in my opinion.

The rest of the pamphlets were pretty mundane. Feed the baby this and wipe the baby’s ass that, babies are not toys, blah blah blah. Whatever. I tend to agree with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of parenting: go ahead and let them brake their arm, then they will learn not to climb up trees.