Becoming a New Parent is an amazing experience.   It’s life-changing, stunning, exhilarating, mind-blowing, earth-shattering – pick your favorite superlative and insert it here. It can also be terrifying, confusing, overwhelming, and incredibly stressful.   It’s the best of times and the wildest of times, sometimes all at once.

Since you didn’t ask, this advice column is written for you, the prospective New Parent or recent inductee to our community.  I am certain it will help make your transition to Parenthood a successful one.   Without further introduction, here are some of my Pearls of Wisdom for the New Parent.

1.   Be Wary Of Those Experts.  I came across this article a while ago in The New York Times: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/sleep-training-at-8-weeks-do-you-have-the-guts/?_r=0.  In short, the article appears to suggest that letting babies “cry it out” is an effective way to sleep-train. You know what’s fascinating about this? The fact that just five years ago, when I first became a Parent, the article I read on this topic – very likely in The New York Times – suggested that crying it out makes the baby feel abandoned and neglected. Go figure. It makes me think of all us babies in 1970’s and 80s, sleeping on our tummies safe from our spit-up, or traveling in car seats so sleek and minimalist it seemed like they weren’t even there. What’s that? They weren’t there for some of us? Like, we didn’t have them?  Right. The point is, while you shouldn’t ignore current guidelines (in other words, definitely use a car-seat), don’t drive yourself crazy, and don’t be surprised if all those experts change their minds, or come up with new sets of best practices.

2.   Google Alert!   One of the defining aspects of our generation of Parenting is the sheer volume of information available to us at the swipe of our thumbs or the click of a mouse. Unsure about a particular topic, like [insert particularly nerve-wracking topic]? Just Google it! Bingo?

Now look, I have the technological sophistication of a Commodore 64, so take this with a grain of salt. But doing research on Google makes me feel like I am falling with Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. For any given topic, there are literally thousands upon thousands of viewpoints, all of which, in one way or another, conflict with each other. What brand of baby bottle results in the lowest induction of gas?   What is in disposable diapers that makes them so absorbent and is it harmful to my child? When should the baby start rolling over and sitting up and crawling and walking? Should the baby sleep on an organic crib mattress? Does all the baby food and the milk have to be organic? Heck, while I am at it, how do I wash off years and years of pesticide exposure because I am certain that nothing I ate or drank as a kid was even close to organic?

As any Parent knows, I am only at the tip of the iceberg here.

Again, like in Point 1, I am not saying never Google things. What I’m saying is don’t let it drive you nuts. Do your best. Because if there is one thing that is certain in Parenting, it is this: someone is out there saying you are screwing the whole thing up.

3.   Go Easy on the War on Germs. At some point, the baby will be exposed to the World, and, as we all know, the World is full of germs. If you’re somewhat prone to neurosis, like I am, everything from park benches to restaurant high chairs to airplane seats seem like they are covered in the most potent strands of viral-bacterial mutations. With our first baby, my wife and I would effectively play the role of Haz-Mat workers for the Environmental Protection Agency, clearing out the applicable area and attacking it with a torrent of anti-bacterial wipes and hand sanitizer. You know what happened every time we did that? He would touch (with hands or with mouth) the one thing we didn’t sterilize, like a seat buckle or something. Here’s a fact for you: small children have an innate ability to find these things. That, friends, is just Science.

So what is the Parent to do? I think that some strategic wipe-downs are prudent, and that having some hand sanitizer around is an overall good practice. But consider this. Whenever any of my kids have gotten sick, I have never once thought, “Ah, it must have been that seat buckle I didn’t wipe down!” Because by the time they get sick, you’ve long since forgotten you ever visited the place with the seat buckle. And, in Parenting, if you’ve forgotten whether something happened, it might as well have not happened at all.

The topic of forgetfulness brings me to my next point.

4.   You Are Going To Forget Lots Of Stuff. Many Mothers out there use the gender-skewed term “Mommy Brain” to describe the phenomenon of increased forgetfulness after first becoming a Parent.  I, for one, find that totally insulting. I will go Diaper Bag-to-Diaper Bag with any Mother out there who wants to have a contest as to who can forget the most stuff. In fact, I can’t even have that contest because I forgot the Diaper Bag (uh, you think I can borrow a diaper, Mom who I just challenged to a Forgetting Contest?).

Anyway, the point is, you are going to get calls and texts you forget to return and appointments and meet-ups you forget you ever scheduled. You are going to show up at the grocery store without your wallet, or to the library without your library card.   You will show up at work having forgotten to shave in a shirt stained with apple sauce and socks you probably wore yesterday. Most people understand, assuming they know your predicament. Fellow Parents are particularly likely to get it.   Those that don’t?  You’ll find that, after the birth of your child, your level of caring about such things plummets sharply, so much so that, very quickly, you’ll begin to not even notice.

5.   They Will Hit Their Heads And Be Fine. Research shows that small kids are designed to break their falls with their heads. As with the topics addressed in Point 3 above, this is just Science. The first time around, you will think, oh my gosh, did they get a Concussion? But run of the mill flops rarely result in that. Remember, they are less than two feet tall for a reason. Our second hit his head hundreds of times when he was a toddler. He’s a little salty every now and then, and can exhibit some fairly extreme shifts in mood, but I am sure that has nothing to do with his head-hitting past.

6.   Breastfeeding.   Yes, I do realize I am hardly qualified to give advice on this topic. But I will do so anyway. If your partner is breastfeeding your baby, do not refer to or otherwise indicate that the breastmilk is somehow “free.” How might this come up? Let’s say your partner has to leave the house for a while, and leaves you with a few bottles of milk. Let’s say, further, that you, oh I don’t know, take it out of the refrigerator, thinking baby wants some when she really doesn’t, and forget to put it back, thus letting it go sour. Or let’s say you are freezing and storing the breastmilk, and when you went to close the freezer after that trip for Ben and Jerry’s, the door didn’t quite shut all the way, putting at risk the freezing-ness of the milk. The possibilities here are endless, really, but I think you get the main point: you, the non-breastfeeding party, are placed in charge of the breastmilk, and you found a way to botch it.

Rarely am I as definitive as I am going to be with this piece of advice. If (more likely, when) the botch is discovered by your breastfeeding partner, do not, and I repeat, do not, say something along the lines of “Oh, what’s the big deal, it’s not like we paid for it”, or “Can’t you just go plug yourself into that thing over there and make some more?”

I am not going to get into a compehensive explanation as to why these statements are really bad. This is an Advice Column, and I don’t want the advice here to get lost in the scientific details. Let’s keep it simple. Breastfeeding is neither free nor easy, and you really need to avoid any implication to the contrary. If you ignore all the other pieces of advice in this column, don’t ignore this one.

So, there you have it, readers. I actually felt your confidence levels rising as you read through this posting. See what happens when you don’t ask for advice? Exactly. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by email at oldemailaddress@doesn’tworkanymore.com.