The good news is that since many of you started praying for my baby boy Liam, he’s gone onto a new drug, and the seizures have dropped noticeably. (These are “infant spasms,” and they’re majorly bad news. They cause brain damage. The doc is cautiously hopeful since Liam doesn’t seem to be losing ground yet.) [...]

About 3 weeks ago I started noticing my baby boy having spasms. We took him to the doctor. He has “infant spasms.” The prognosis is that we must get them under control or he’s in terrible trouble. This stuff causes mental retardation or death. First drug didn’t work. He’s just started the second. If you’re [...]

Today I’ve got baby boy to myself, since Marisa is doing volunteer work with a club. She’s out around 9 to 3. She left me in bed with a kiss and a baby. After a while trying to squeeze out a few more ounces of sleep, I got up and made plans. I would clean [...]

There are schools of thought on how to deal with the demanding nature of a baby: the way he must have it now now now, and if he isn’t sure what “it” is, he can scream all the more! Power struggle. This one comes from a couple I knew in grad school. Their daughter of [...]

When my wife wanted me to go with her to the breastfeeding class at the hospital, I was more than dubious. “It doesn’t matter how much I learn,” I protested. “I’m never going to be any good at it!” I went anyway. I can’t remember what we covered. (It is going to be so hard [...]

He’s discovered his lungs. When he whimpers and cries over and over while Marisa is feeding him, taking the nipple out of his mouth so he can complain how hungry he is, crying in the car seat, crying when he’s being held, and, yes, screaming bloody murder when I’m changing him, because he wanted food [...]

Someone asked us to write up the things that new parents really needed, and things that were useless. I already did the cloth-diapers spiel, and will leave breastfeeding till later. So here’s the rest. Some things are obvious: diaper bag; diapers; baby wipes bassinet. We put rolled-up towels in the sides to make him feel [...]

(I hope this will be of interest to new fathers. The rest already decided!) We keep meeting new parents who say, decisively, absolutely no cloth diapers; we’ve got enough to worry about. They’re probably thinking about safety pins and leaky rubber pants. But diapering is really easy now, so if you think it’s messy and [...]

This Sunday Times article caused a sort of stir. It shows what radically different world views there are. This is a truism, but in this case, it’s a frightening one. Writer Minette Marrin argues that the quality of life of a Down’s adult, and the effect on society, is awful enough that abortion is a [...]

I notice that wherever I go, people will tell me I’m an inferior parent by virtue of being male. It’s a buried assumption, not a stated position, or they’d never say it. I think. The old man who says for Liam (nobody can let a baby say nothing, even me), “I want mamma!” as I’m [...]