by THP Admin ·
Friday, November 1, 2024
It still may take a village to raise a child, but today’s paraphernalia to do so makes it a bit easier, or at least it gives that illusion. My 4½-month-old great-grandson, Roman, came from Texas to visit for a week. (His parents came too.) I was mostly enthralled with this little person himself, but I was also amazed at the modern equipment that accompanied him.
I felt a twinge of nervousness the first time I gave Roman a bottle, but it all came back to me. I remembered to hold him over my shoulder several times to burp him. Then his mom told me I didn’t have to do that because the bottle has an insert that prevents air from getting into it, and thence to the baby. In the old days, part of the experience of giving a bottle was then trying to protect yourself from what might come up with the burp.
Later, I got to wash a couple of the bottles. No need to sterilize them in boiling water and cringe at the clink of the glass bottles knocking into one another. These plastic bottles, with inserts removed, get sanitized with hot tap water, special detergent, and a battery-operated bottle brush. So much easier, except when the switch got stuck and I stood with the whirring brush in my hand, drops of water flying around, madly trying to unstick the button.
Bath time is a delight. Instead of holding a squalling, squirmy, soapy baby in one hand while trying to rinse it with the other, the baby sits in a sloped seat that goes into the bathtub and the washer has both hands free to do the job. Gone is the worry of cutting flesh when trimming those fast-growing little nails. Now a special electric clipper safely shaves the nail tip in an instant.
I watched Roman and his mom get ready for a walk. Instead of needing someone else to help put the baby in a complicated carrier, she, by herself, settled him in a front pouch and easily crisscrossed straps around her to secure him. Another time, she put him in his car seat, gave a pull, and the seat rose up from its collapsed wheels to become a stroller. And over her shoulder, an attractive leather tote replaced the bulky, quilted, plastic-lined diaper bag of yore.
Roman’s Nana B had spent weeks preparing for his arrival, securing great finds from Nextdoor. A cloth recliner had several settings: vibrate, music, the sound of waves. She had found a little armchair that inflates like an air mattress. We called it Roman’s business chair because when he rested his elbow on the arm, he looked like a little executive.
Most of the onesies still have endless snaps down the legs, but one had a zipper, which seems like a sensible fashion statement. A new twist on the black-and-white board books is adding cultural awareness for babies. In “Welcome to the World” baby says “bonjour” to the flowers and “hola” to the birds. But the favorite read-aloud was “Go, Dog. Go!” and a greeting among us became, “Do you like my hat?” Even though the answer was a flat “No.”
Going to bed is hard for babies. But instead of repeating “Shhhh” until you’re almost breathless, now you can turn on the Baby Shusher machine—a tennis-sized ball that hangs on the crib. Google says it mimics the sound inside the mother’s womb. (How could it know that?) One night Roman was very uncomfortable with a stuffy nose. Nana B went to CVS at midnight and returned with a Snotsucker, made in Sweden, and a package of Boogie Wipes, made with the softening properties of saline, “invented by busy moms,” according to Google. If such things had existed in the old days, I’m sure their brand names would have been euphemisms.
A useful innovation is an upgraded teething toy that Google tells me is a ChooKaChoo. Made of soft rubber, it’s not just a ring but a sort of person with rounded head and the suggestion of eyes and a nose. Hard rubber knobs, sprouting from its head and sticking out for arms, make it look a bit like an alien but are easy for the baby to put in its mouth. The genius part is that it slips over the baby’s hand so no one has to constantly fetch the dropped toy. Roman has two of these, which his parents named Clyde and Wanda. Wanda has the long eyelashes.
Throughout the week he was here, Roman was constantly surrounded by adoring family. The cousins, who do not want to be “second” or “once removed,” competed to get Roman to laugh and to make that one last push to roll over onto his stomach. The aunts—no “great” for them, evoking images of spinsters in house dresses, hair in buns—debated whom Roman looked like and what his hair color would be. Uncles stood with arms crossed, smiling, and grandpa calmly read Roman a story in the midst of it all.
The newfangled stroller and bottle washer and inflatable armchair are all great, but the best of all Roman’s equipment is the love of his family.
Carlene Phillips, author of “A Common History: The Story of Harvard’s Identity,” is a regular feature writer who pauses from time to time to reflect on the humor in the everyday.