the father, the son, the holy vacuum

Say you have this baby and he's screaming his head off something fierce. It's not the casual kind of screaming his head off. It's like he's really getting into it - using his lower body and everything. And let's further say that you've done all the standard things: feed, change, burp, asked him wtf was wrong, etc. But try as you might to not be a failure as a parent, you can't soothe him. Baby is angry; baby will not be silenced!

What do you do? House work! That is the only thing that will soothe the baby. Well, not any housework mind you, if you start watering the plans, he's sure not going to care. That's his prerogative. He can live how he wants to live. But, if you decide to do that special piece of housework he will reward you with silence and a calm look in his eye. You need to fire up the vacuum.

I read this book, "The Happiest Baby on the Block." The basic premise is that infants really should have a 4th trimester/quarter in utero, but if they did, baby's head would be too big to be born. So, the trade-off is that the baby gets born with it's super-huge brain (animal-wise), but mom and dad have to teach the baby how to soothe him or herself.

To achieve this, the book suggests swaddling, swinging, sucking and running the vacuum. Well, shushing. The sssshhhhh/white noise sound is reminiscent of the womb. Apparently, it's very loud in there what with the heartbeat and the kids and their rap music.

Now, since I don't have the magic milk, I have to use any gimic available to me. There are times when he's screaming, I turn on the vacuum and he looks like, "Hey, what's that? Mom? Cool. I'm just going to relax now." It's magic.

After a while, you're running the vacuum a lot and it just makes more sense to buy an mp3 off of Amazon with the same sound. And there you have it. The story of why there is a one-square foot area of my carpet upstairs on which you could perform surgery.