Things I've Learned So Far

Babies, man. Intense.

• Baby socks – great in theory and worse than useless in practice.
• 5 hours of sleep (non-consecutive) is just about enough, 6 is better, 8 (again, non-consecutive) feels like a gift.
• That old chestnut about babies being cute because they have to be? So true.
• Procuring a birth certificate for my daughter has proved incredibly difficult, maybe owing to the home birth thing. And I only requested the short-form!
• Leaving the house with the baby – great in theory, exceedingly difficult in practice at this point.
• Zippers > snaps. Related: To hell with snaps.
• They really do outgrow clothes in a matter of days. Related: Newborn clothing sizes are totally meaningless from brand to brand.
• The lack of high-quality infant day care seems to be a market failure — families are willing to pay the cost of a mortgage per month for this service, yet slots are few and far between and waiting lists can be years long. Why aren’t more entrepreneurs entering this market?
• Related: Our quest to find daycare for August has been horrible and depressing. This morning we toured an amazing new daycare, with open slots, and were ready to enroll right then and there, but at the last second the director changed her mind on the age range of children she decided to accept. Anyone want to be a cut-rate nanny in scenic Portland, Oregon?
• All that crap about “babies not needing a lot of stuff” is such garbage. I’m glad we had all the stuff we did, and glad Amazon was on hand in those first few weeks so I could quickly order things we didn’t know we needed (bottle warmer, more bottles, a bouncer, and a million other things). Lots of baby stuff makes raising a baby easier.

She’s a month old on Monday, and it definitely gets better. But I’m still waiting for it to get a little…better-er, at least in terms of sleep.