Opinion: They sure didn’t have all this cool stuff for kids when I was a mother
When I became a grandmother for the first time more than 16 years ago, I quickly learned how out of touch I was with modern parenting. In just one generation, much of my experience had become obsolete. I was both shocked and mortified. A little hurt, too.
Let me give you an example. A few days after my identical twin granddaughters came home from the hospital, I showed up with a basket of baby toiletries for mom and dad. I had dug deep into the foggy past to remember the items I most liked and thought myself practical and thoughtful, a godsend to the new parents.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Baby powder, which I had applied liberally on my children’s bottoms, isn’t a favored product these days. (So goodbye to talcum.) I also had to ditch the cologne, since perfumes are frowned upon. (Adios, my cherished Agustin Reyes’ Royal Violets eau de cologne.) And as for the rest of the products…well, few were considered “natural” or organic.
As I added more grandkids to my roster, I adapted to babies sleeping on their backs, to food-catching bibs, to bumper-less blanketfree cribs, and to elaborate gadgets that pump breast milk or prepare formula without too much effort from a sleep-deprived parent. All miracles, certainly.
Now, I’m here to tell you that the revolution in baby gear is never ending. Silicon Valley may wax eloquently about disruption, news media might cover artificial intelligence until the rest of us are sick of it, but the real sea-change, I think, is in an industry that doesn’t get much attention. Thanks to technology and old-fashioned ingenuity, parenting is something you can hack with the help of phone apps, redesigned devices and ubiquitous monitors.
Today’s parent is armed with data, tools and a can-do attitude that I envy. Every visit to a grandkid, especially the younger ones, results in the same scenario: Me calling The Hubby to say, “Do you know that they now have a [fill in the blank] to do [fill in the blank]. Why didn’t we think of inventing something like that?”
On my last trip to visit the 9-month-old grandgirl in Atlanta, I witnessed the latest marvel: an electric booger sucker. That’s my name for it, though it’s officially called a rechargeable “Nasal Aspirator for Baby.” It has three suction levels and eight light modes and, most important, of all, it does an amazing job of sucking out the snot from teeny-tiny nostrils.
I witnessed this wonder myself, not once but several times. Of course, the baby didn’t like it and using it required dad pinning the child’s head to his chest and the mom pressing a button while cooing to the angry baby — but the stressful situation was well worth it. So much mucus in those little nasal cavities! (In prehistoric times, my generation used a blue nasal bulb syringe that didn’t work very well.)
It’s not just snotsucking that has been transformed for the better. My two youngest sons have apps that keep track of their babies’ feeding schedules and diaper changes as well as sleep patterns. An added benefit: no need to stay close to the nursery to hear a wakeup cry.
Our favorite new baby and toddler gear, however, is a car seat that swivels. Instead of throwing out your back while placing the precious heir in the cushioned seat, my youngest son simply rotates the top part of this contraption to face the vehicle’s back door. Once the child is strapped in, he rotates him back into position, where a strategically placed mirror hangs from the backrest.
We’re so impressed with this invention that The Hubby plans to launch a campaign to include rotating seats in new automobiles, the perfect option for grownups who find car ingress and egress a challenge. It’ll be a bestseller among the AARP set.