Ten Things We Did Not Know About Babies

We read a bunch of books, looked at many websites, and participated in multiple forums in order to prepare for parenthood. Now that we have become mommy & daddy, we have discovered that not everything can be conveyed about the experience of owning a child. Here are ten things that were completely unexpected (in no particular order):

1. Babies have awesome farts - Not sure if our girls are just especially gassy, but they let loose some really loud and funny-sounding farts. This amuses Ches to no end.
   
2. You will be peed on....a lot - I have seen this happen with boys on America's Funniest Home Videos. My dad told me that girls can do it too, just that it is harder to predict where the stream will land. I guess I was just naive, but I thought that this would happen only a few times in our diaper changing career. Little did we know that it would occur as a regular weekly event! Luckily, the washable mats catch it most of the time.
   
3. Babies have the technology to make poop missiles - As explained in the post about the visit to Babies R' Us, they launch these smelly loads ever so often. Ches witnessed the projectile stream fly over the diaper in waiting to make it all the way to the laundry basket, which is a good foot and a half away from the changing table. Impressive!
   
4. Burping sucks - Especially night burpings. Our doctor says to give up after 10 minutes of trying. But sometimes we can just feel the burp looming inside the girl, waiting to turn into a painful gas bubble in their intestines, so we continue well past the 10 minute mark. The girls especially hate the mid-meal burp. They get seriously pissed when you take the bottle/nipple away form them when they have not declared themselves finished. Do you know how hard it is to try to burp a crying baby? We do.
   
5. Hiccups sucks - Our girls are no strangers to hiccups. Not only did they get them everyday in the uterus, this trend has continued everyday of their sans-umbilical cord life. For the first month and a half, the girls had no problem when the hiccups would come. In fact, it was even quite adorable how their whole body would jump as their diaphragm spasmed. We thoroughly enjoyed the cute sound they would make when they left their mouths open. But then it all changed...now they hate the hiccups and will cry because they have no clue what is happening to them. So the cuteness we learned to associate with the first sound of hiccups has turned into a foreboding dread. It is only a matter of minutes before Alina & Avery will cry due to the stimulation of their phrenic nerve.
   
6. How badly you yearn for them to smile at you the first couple of months - and how amazing it is once they do - The first two months of a newborn's life can be quite challenging for the parents. The mother is dealing with recovery from the delivery and the father is trying to take care of the wife and new child. You are sleep deprived, malnourished, stressed, and living life in 2-3 hour cycles. All this for a being that cannot do anything on its own other than cry really loud and soil themselves. And then one day, you are looking at them when suddenly they make direct eye contact and smile. You smile back and your baby's smile grows even bigger, providing the proof that it was you that caused the grin instead of their internal gaseous functions.
   
7. Hands get rough and dry from all of the hand washing - I was not prepared for how many times we wash our hands any given day. If you are expecting a child, go to Sam's Club or Costco to buy the wholesale size of liquid hand soap that you can use to refill your current soap containers. You will save some serious money that way. At first, my hands had some raw, tough spots on them, but it only took 10 weeks for them to acclimate to their new state of cleanly dryness. Only 10 weeks...I guess I am partially to blame since I refused to use lotion, not wanting to get it on the girls.
   
8. Be prepared to be stopped whenever you go for people to admire your progeny - Everyone loves cute babies. I can only speak from our experience, but we have to add an additional 30 minutes for any trip. I mean any time we go to Wal Mart or the big grocery store up here. The longer you are out in public, the more time you should plan on being stopped. Invariably, we will be asked: Is it twins? Boy and a girl (people always think that the girl dressed in purple or green is actually a boy, despite the bows and frills)? What are their names? How old are they? After the questions, the personal story of a set of twins they know will doubtlessly follow.
   
9. It is freaking hard to try to keep a sleepy baby awake - We do not recommend trying to do this. Since it is vital to our sanity to keep the girls on the same schedules, we have spent many hours attempting this. Without a doubt, it will always end with frustrated parents and a crying, tired baby. Now, until they are a little older, we just let them sleep when they want and embrace the lack of down-time for us adults.
   
10. I never would have though we would need to put jock itch cream on our babies - Yes, the doctor has seriously prescribed Lotrimin for our baby girls. While their Michelin Man folds are adorable, they can also harbor living organisms, such as yeast. So our yeasty girls get jock itch cream for their neck and armpit folds.