Jennifer Byrne - The Intrepid Parents Field Guide to the Baby Kingdom: Adventures in Crying, Sleeping, Teething, and Feeding for the New Mom and Dad

Hello, brave new parents! So, youve decided to embark on the amazing adventure of having a baby. Thats great news! This journey is going to be exhilarating, surprising, hilarious, and terribly, terribly frightening.

You heard meI said frightening. Thats because your new baby will bear a shocking resemblance to a wild animal. One thats untamed, uncivilized, and utterly mysterious. A squirmy, regurgitating, unpredictable little creature. And its not just the baby, eitheryour whole life will become a mystery to you. Just as if you ventured into the vast plains of the Serengeti, youll be entering an entirely new ecosystem, with its own crazy set of rules.

For starters, your once-familiar landscape will become unrecognizable. Suddenly, your living room floor will be dotted with squeaky, blinky, potentially seizure-inducing toys, and your cars back seat will contain a car seat, mirrors, spilled Cheerios, and a cartoon-character sunshade. Your schedule will cease to have any logical structureinstead, your new wild infant will dictate who eats and when (FYI: you eat last, in case the suspense was killing you). Your attempts to leave your nest will be encumbered by brightly colored, Velcro-and-vacuum-equipped accessoriesseriously, its almost enough gear to start an entirely new village. Your ability to communicate with this wild infant will be almost nonexistenthis language skills are... lets say primitive, at best.

Watching your wild infant will be like observing a totally different species in its natural habitatfascinating, mystifying, and very, very scary. Except unlike a visitor to a safari, you cant just put down your binoculars and walk away from this wild adventure. You cant just breathe a sigh of relief that the safari guides know how to use tranquilizers, and think, Whew! Im so glad thats not my job. Because it kind of is your job now. This wild creature is all yours.

Thats where this book comes in. After all, if you visited the Serengeti, youd bring a knowledgeable guide, right? You need a fellow explorer whos been there before and knows the lay of the land. Someone who can tell you which plants are safe to eat, share the most effective taming methods, and teach you the difference between the footprints of a wildebeest and the knee impressions of a wild human crawler. Someone who can school you in the endless varieties and consistencies of wild poop classification. No, thats not wild boar dungthat came out of your baby!

Gradually, over the first year, youll adjust to your new ecosystem and its cycles and rhythms. At that point, your little wild animal will go from being a safari creature to being a fully integratedand much belovedmember of your tribe.

So congratulations, good luck, and may God have mercy on your soul.