THIS SITE IS NOT A GUIDE TO RAISING YOUR BABY. You shouldn’t use any site as a guide unless it’s been approved by an entire nation’s medical association worth of doctors, and even then only the larger nations with more advanced healthcare. A single “expert” won’t cut it. Unless it’s Dr Spock, who has a pretty good record in advice for babies and everything else. But every other “expert” who turned up on the Enterprise accidentally compressed spacetime into an incredible adventure, or unleashed brand new plagues on everyone involved. Your baby will do both of those all by themselves.
The internet and libraries are filled with definitive expert guides on how to raise children. Most make Sturgeon’s law* look like the quality control in a pacemaker factory. 99% of all online advice is some asshole using your child as an expendable prop to convince themselves they haven’t already ruined their own. (Narrator: they have). Or trying to inflict the same damage on so many other kids that their own offspring becomes the new normal, and has an advantage because they’ve had more practice dealing with such parental debilitations.
*90% of everything is shit. Volumetrically true for the first few months of having a baby.
What people want is a definitive Baby FAQ. It doesn’t seem too much to expect. There are online guides to 100% completing expert mode in every video game ever made. It’s a bit worrying that the survival of the species is a lower priority than unlocking the Pepsi logos in Call of the Knights of Anime Part XIV: Wearing Bottle Caps As Armor. It’s because that game is the opposite of having children. Which is why the writers have so much time and energy.
I don’t have a complete list of Frequently Asked Questions, but I can answer the most important question right now:
Q. Whose turn is it?
A: Get on with it.
Arguing about turns is an idiotic cliche invented by sitcoms, and if we lived according to TV tropes we wouldn’t have babies because we’d still be sleeping in separate beds. A fate you invite if your first response to a screaming child is adding to the noise by badgering your spouse.
This answer alone will improve 100% of all baby-raising arrangements. Often in the early AM. As the wise Spock said, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.” Especially when those many are your partner and baby. So boldly go change that nappy to let your lover sleep.
Parent PLUS PLUS 