Milk, madness, and misinformation

What I've learned in 6 months as a father

Putting a baby to sleep is like giving a woman an orgasm.

First you try things, the things that usually work, rocking, shaking, bouncing - and all the while you're listening to the tone and body language and breath.

Eventually something starts to work - and then you do that. Exactly that. No speeding up or slowing down. No changes in angle or direction. Your muscles might be dying. Your arm cramping, but you keep doing the thing until they pass that doorway.

And then a little beyond - just to make sure.


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Breastfed babies stop pooping at some point. This is normal. Previously they were pooping several times a day. Then they just stop. Three or four days go by with no poop. You're worried. Nobody talks about this. It's normal.

The baby's digestive tract has gotten so good at processing milk that it doesn't have very much to excrete. A more normal pooping schedule will return with solid foods.

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In the early 1960s following the introduction of the disposable diaper in 1961 - Pampers funded a bunch of scientific studies on how traumatizing potty training is - doubling the use of their product. This research has never been replicated, but has become deeply entrenched in the Western mind.

Babies, in fact, have an instinct, albeit inconsistent, to not soil themselves. This is where the whole "the baby pees every time I try and change his diaper" comes from.

As soon as my baby was born - following the "EC" method - we started making a sound whenever he peed or pooped. At about two months - something clicked and making the sound summons the excretion.

He's not "potty trained" - but at 6 months it's been two weeks since I've had to deal with a poopy diaper - and this guy is eating solid foods and back to pooping

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Baby clothes are designed by inebriated sleep deprived interns. There is no rhyme or reason to their making. The only way they prosper is preying on sleep deprived parents, drunk on love.

Fitted newborn clothes are dumb. Why do you need your baby to have arms and legs that fit, when oversized clothes are just as cute and so much easier to put on?

So many unnecessary buttons and zippers. So much to take off and put on through every diaper change. Why put them in clothes at all?

But like birth interventions at a hospital - modernity breeds itself. Modern baby carriers with all their clips and clasps require the baby to have differentiated legs. Car seats need differentiated legs. The little legs are separated from you now, and get cold. It all points towards baby clothes.

But baby clothes are mostly cotton - chilling if they get wet - and they will get wet. Now you have to change them more often. Now you need more baby clothes. None of them are warm. There's no consistent sizing - so half of what you get will be the wrong size. . .

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Babies build up the milk supply by sucking. People always talk about breasts responding to nursing by upping the supply - but baby spends a lot of time with their mouth on the n****e not nursing, just kinda mouthing it. This is actually what builds most of the supply.

Baby is also transferring their saliva to Mama so she can make antibodies for baby's immune system. This is normal.

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In the late 1800s a group of white scientists started publishing papers about how the use of cradleboards caused hip dysplasia in infants - and recommended that the practice be banned.

The practice was banned - and was used as one more argument for kidnapping native kids and sending them to the death camp boarding schools that only closed in the 1980s - a few in the 1990s.

My son was 3 months old when I actually thought about what I had been taught about cradleboards, did some research, and realized that it was all racist poppycock. They assume you're keeping your baby in the cradleboard all day every day.

I immediately cut out some plywood, drilled holes in it, and lashed my bundled baby to a board. A few modifications later and it became our morning routine. That baby slept better in the cradleboard than anything. At 5 months we phased it out when he could sit up. I only wish I'd started sooner.

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In the post birth cascade of chemicals coursing through a woman's bloodstream - are some that are designed to make sure she doesn't get pregnant again - by making her hate her man.

This is furthered by constant sleep deprivation, learning a wildly complicated skill, and having a small creature who emits a sound genetically programmed to make her do anything to stop the small being from emiting said sound.

Everything from snide remarks to violent outbursts are normal at this stage.

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Western parenting science as a discipline is largely non-existent - and where it exists wildly biased. The discipline as a whole is about 100 years old - with most of that in the last 70 years.

If you think about other sciences that young - take food science for instance - they're a mess of contradictions.

But when we turn instead to other cultures, we're often losing or missing cultural context that makes those ways of parenting work. Yes the !kung san don't put their babies down. But that makes sense when you have a lot of snakes.

But I enjoy the little fact gleaned from anthropology. Cultures where it's consistently warmer than 50 degrees - have their baby naked on Mama's body most of the time. Cultures where it's colder than 50 degrees have baby swaddled in a pack, board, or basket.

Parenting - like everything - varies from place to place.

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It's surprisingly easy to be labeled a good father. The bar seems to be somewhere between not leaving and loving your children and if you actually help with the baby you get brownie points.

Babies are not men's domain. My approach with children has always been to assume and allow a little more competence than they actually have - children love and appreciate that I don't baby them.

This is awkward with a baby

Still I find myself doing it - and I find my son responding to it. We mutually understand that I am offering an opportunity to grow while being right there in case he's not up to the task. He gets to say when it's too much.

Men who care for their babies change. Testosterone drops, Oxytocin and prolactin rise, and of course the brain rewires - becoming more playful, more risk-tolerant, more about exploration than soothing.

This difference from the mother's approach - is normal.

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