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So my wife and I took baby Jack on his first outing over Labor Day weekend: a barbeque pool party. It went surprisingly well (he slept 2 hours straight, even with people poking and fussing over him), freeing his parents up to chat with others. Here’s what I noticed though, as this party was full of other new parents or parents-to-be: When we were all young and single, one of the most often dropped questions at such a party would have been, “So… what do you do?” Now, curiously, we’re all asking, “So… when are you due?”
Other topics of conversation included whether to go with cloth or disposable diapers (anyone care to chime in on that debate?), and my recent favorite: the Moro Reflex, otherwise known as the “startle reflex.” This is what newborns do with the arms when they hold them out as if they’re falling. Baby Jack does it quite often and it always freaks me out a little.
The Moro Reflex was first described in the early 1900s by an Austrian pediatrician named Ernst Moro. He discovered that it’s leftover behavior from when we used to be primates, clinging to our mother’s fur as she went foraging for food. Obviously if you felt like you were falling, you’d hold on tighter, right? Moro believed this leftover reflex was the only unlearned fear in newborns.
As an adult, I can tell you that I still fear falling. Sometimes when I’m about to drop off into slumber, I’ll wake myself up with a start, thinking I’m actually falling.
Comments (14)
Comment
cloth vs. disposable: Then there’s a fad among the new parent set - no diapers at all! These parents have determined that infants as young as 4 months (!) can indicate beforehand the need to “go” and parents (mostly stay at home, natch) pick up the child and hold them over the toilet. Problems they have are finding daycare that will go along with this plan and finding underwear small enough. Saw this on CNN.com about a week ago.
posted by KJ on 9-5-2007 at 6:59 am
Regarding that falling dream when you’re nodding off to sleep:
That’s caused by your bodies outlying neural senses shutting down before your brain. All of a sudden, your brain stops receiving feedback from your hands and feet and panics, because it feels like freefall. This phenomenon is caused by sleep deprivation.
posted by Jack on 9-5-2007 at 7:28 am
i have a boy that just turned one. the cloth diaper seems like a good idea at first, but they don’t absorb as much and you have to wash them. as in, put them in your washing machine or sik and rinsing out/scrubbing the contenets. when your baby is tiny, that’s not so bad, but when that baby turns into a toddler and is pooping out the pureed vegetable baby food they eat a few times a day, trust me, you don’t want the smell of rotten vegetable poo in your sink or your washing machine.
posted by lindsay m on 9-5-2007 at 9:35 am
Try gDiapers (Google them)
The outer shell is a breathable and decorative cotton that is re-used. The inside is a absorbent flushable, biodegradable, compostable liner.
Less diaper-rash, no land fill, no nasty laundry, no nasty diaper pail. (Just make sure you get flushable wipes for clean-up.)
posted by n2y2 on 9-5-2007 at 9:45 am
n2y2 - have you used these gDiapers, or do you know of anyone that has? They look like a fabulous idea, but I’m disconcerted by the lack of a picture of the actual diaper on that website. Admittedly, I didn’t look at any other sites besides the official one, but I’m at work and all that searching takes away from my comment-posting, er, work time.
posted by caitlen on 9-5-2007 at 10:29 am
My youngest had just passed beyond diapers when I first heard of these. I almost wished that she would relapse just so I could try them, but then I remembered that I hate to change diapers. All of my friends who have kids that small are too entrenched with the diaper cartel to switch.
I first heard about them on a radio show. Several parents called in to say how much they loved them. The starter kit is reasonably priced - I would definitely try it if I still had the need. Perhaps I should start giving the starter kit as baby shower gifts?
posted by n2y2 on 9-5-2007 at 10:47 am
Diapers:
We’re expecting in January and are going to try the gDiapers as our primary diaper. We’d ordered some from the site already and then luckily we had a little test subject for one day - our newborn niece who was visiting. I can definitely say that they held all the, uh, refuse really well, fit great, and the flushables thing is awesome (especially for me, the dad, who would otherwise wind up taking out the garbage every day). We’re still going to keep disposables and cloth ones around for emergencies and such, but as of right now we’re going to be a gDiaper family.
posted by SpaceMonkeyX on 9-5-2007 at 11:47 am
Just to provide an opposing viewpoint to Lindsay M, we found it much easier to use cloth diapers later (our son was small and didn’t fit in them until later). Our son is now one, and we really like the cloth diapers we use. We started out with a diaper service, but they were expensive and more labor intensive. We eventually ended up using Fuzzi Bunz and *really* like them. We use a dry pail and wash them every 2-3 days, when there are solids we rinse with a spray attachment (google “mini-shower diaper”) we got for the toilet (although most solids fall right out of the diaper). It’s a great system for us, but there are lots of great alternatives out there.
posted by Ben on 9-5-2007 at 12:02 pm
I use cloth diapers for the spawn and am suitably pleased with them.
Granted, I don’t have any real first hand knowledge to compare it to.
posted by tinfoil on 9-5-2007 at 12:36 pm
We’re on our second ‘diaperless’ child - google “elimination communication”. It’s great - we only cloth-diaper our three-month old at night or when we are out, and she uses the toilet all day at home. She and her sister were both signaling their needs by 4 weeks. The diaper load is sparse enough we can launder on our own, no problem. And the babies love it!
posted by Heath on 9-5-2007 at 1:34 pm
I used cloth diapers for my daughter almost 17 years ago — just bought the jumbo pack of two dozen, almost-square flannel fabric ones and plastic pants. While it didn’t encourage her to toilet train any quicker, she didn’t fill up landfills with matter not intended for a garbage dump (ie. feces). When it came time to empty out the poo, I’d just dunk the thing in the toilet, shake, hang on tight and flush. And I cannot stress to you how important the “hang on tight” part of that process is … !
posted by Beth on 9-5-2007 at 2:09 pm
More on the baby reflexes:
If you hold a baby with its feet touching the floor, it will attempt to take a step.
If you rub the baby’s cheek, it will turn its head (to nurse).
Babies can hold up their own body weight for several seconds (the baby will grasp your thumbs and hang, like an adult attempting to do chin-ups). This is a remnant of early primate babies holding onto their mothers.
There are several others, but I can’t seem to remember them. Also, many of the reflexes are only present for a short time and will dissapear as part of normal development.
posted by Amy on 9-5-2007 at 8:52 pm
A relative laughed when she read about gDiapers. She said they had those when my uncle was a baby, he wore them. My uncle was born in 1945.
posted by Tdave on 9-6-2007 at 12:45 am
Embarassing: My brother is 26 and we still call him Baby Jack.
posted by Jackie on 9-6-2007 at 10:47 am