Let’s Not Make this Any Harder than it Needs to Be

I am convinced that if rearing children were easy, the internet would crumble for lack of wholesome content.

And thank goodness, because at the first whimper from Moira “World’s Easiest Baby” McNeel, and I am sprinting to my laptop, or whatever screen I can get to, to figure out what’s wrong, how to fix it, and how to keep it from EVER happening again.

So, expert first time mom that I am, I think the world needs to benefit from my profound wisdom, gleaned mostly from the internet and hearsay.

Here’s the table of contents for my new book on parenting in the age of celebrity pediatricians, Web MD, media obsessions with obesity, internet mom-forums dedicated to gas and sleeping habits, and Amazon consumer reviews:

Title: Let’s Not Make this Harder than it Needs to Be

Chapter One: You are either pregnant, miscarrying, or you have cancer- why you should avoid the internet in your first trimester.

Chapter Two: Don’t worry about your weight, because you are doing a wonderful and important thing. But if you gain too much weight your child will have a low IQ and diabetes. – diet and exercise while pregnant.

Chapter Three: Childbirth is a wonderful, natural thing that could kill you. – the impossibility of preparing for labor.

Chapter Four: Everything that soothes your baby is setting you up for a lifetime of misery and sleep issues. It will also kill your baby. – learning to sleep for the first time, every night.

Chapter Five: She’s going to need to poop, sleep, or eat; either a little or a lot; sometime soon or in a few hours. – prepping babysitters, when you have no clue what your child is going to do next.

Chapter Six: Breastfeeding should get easier at about two weeks. If not two weeks, then three. Or four. Or six. – the misery of breastfeeding and how to survive it.

Chapter Seven: Every mattress is so soft that it will kill your baby, and so hard that she’ll never sleep comfortably – over hyped sleep merchandise.

Chapter Eight: Do not leave you baby unattended while in the bathtub, swing, carseat, cradle, while holding a blankie, chew toy, or pacifier- warning labels and how they will make you go nuts.

Chapter Nine: Babies are as tough as leather that could die in about a million different ways- how to handle conflicting advice.

Chapter Ten: They should get teeth and hair, sleep through the night, roll over, and laugh sometime before college. – ignoring development charts until your pediatrician comments on something.