I'm learning what not to do with a baby.

As I've expressed before - I am not by nature a kid/baby person, despite my intense longing for a baby of my own. I have a lot to learn, and at times I have moments of panic about our current baby making ventures where I think, "Crap! What are we doing? Can we do this? OMG!!!" But for the most part I feel ready and I am eager to learn. (Side note: in ordering some Christmas gifts from Gap.com I couldn't resist ordering the cutest onesie for our stash. It's navy blue with a bottle on it and says "just add milk" across the front).

This past week we spent with my cousin A, who has a 4 month old baby, I saw many things that I would personally not do as a mother. I do feel bad for them, they have a very very fussy baby. She cries all the time, doesn't sleep more than 2 hours, and she has a projectile vomitting problem. My cousin seems to think that the solution to her baby's crying is to feed it. So basically, the baby gets fed every hour. Seriously, every hour. This seemed very strange to me, even with my limited baby knowledge...my sister's kids only fed every 3-4 hours. What is normal? Just because the baby is crying doesn't mean it needs to be fed, right?

The problem I saw with feeding the kid every hour is that it was still digesting it's previous hours meal, so by stuffing it's face again, the only thing it could do was projectile vomit half of what it ate. Lovely. Everyone in our group got vomitted on at least once a day. From what I understand, babies that young do not have a developed esophgus which is why they spit up/vomit. Also, my cousin did not have her baby on a schedule. The kid would be up being held and bounced at midnight while us grown ups were watching a movie! My sister has told me that having kids on a schedule is extremely important in keeping them happy and sleeping normally.

I was a little nervous about Mr.P being around such a fussy baby, thinking he'd be scared shitless and would want to delay our family planning. However, he didn't seemed too phased by the baby crying and he spent a lot of time holding and playing with her (which meant he got puked on many times). I felt relieved when he told me on the way back to Seattle that he is hoping we have a baby in 2009.

Other People's Kids.

Last night we had dinner at our friends, the M's house. They have a 9 month old baby girl. In thinking back on the night, I realize that I did not hold or play with her the whole time we were there. Does that make me a bad person? Here I am, someone who daydreams about having my own child, but yet I hardly acknowledge my friend's child. At one point I thought about picking her up, but I was also holding a glass of really good wine and I didn't want to risk spilling.

The truth is, by nature I am not a kid person. I don't have a lot of experience being around kids, and I'm not one of those people who loves to play with and hang out with other peoples kids at social gatherings. I feel like I'm the kind of person who will grow into being a kid person once I have my own kids. I saw this happen with my sister, she was even less kid friendly than me, and she is now an awesome, doting, stay-at-home mom to her two daughters.

It's an interesting discussion piece, the idea of whether or not kid friendly is an innate behavior, or something that can be learned. I'll have to contemplate this some more.