Allie Kingsley Baker - The Mama Sutra: Ancient Positions and Practices to Soothe the Modern Baby

She was turning purple; we were turning green. Her screams amounted to Help me, you incompetent fools! She wasnt even nine pounds, but with her in our arms, we carried the weight of the world, because she had become our whole world. A world we thought wed mapped out. Like everyone else, we read the parenting books. Okay, we read a lot of articles. All right, we bought a lot of books and skimmed a lot of articles on our phones. Who has time to read those things? Babies just eat, sleep, and poop, right? How tough could it be to manage that routine for something the size of an eggplant? But we werent managing.

We stood over the changing table, anxiety sweating, while she flailed around in what was clearly record-setting agony for an eggplant. We had nothing to offer that she hadnt already declined. No other tools at our disposal. We were helpless, and that helplessness was the worst feeling either of us had ever experienced. We were helpless in the face of a fart.

Previouslywere talking a lifetime of observation herefarts were funny. Tony sneeze-farted in his fifth-grade English class while reading aloud Huck Finn and never lived it down. Allie (allegedly) sounded a foghorn the first night we slept together. Hilarious! But in this moment the laughter had gone silent and deadly. We were dealing with serious gas, seriously trapped in our newborns belly. It wasnt funny at all.

Our article skimming had failed us, and in the dire immediacy of our babys tortured tummy, picking up a book that weighed more than she did was not an option. We needed actions, not words. Over the next twenty-four hours, we gave her two different types of gripe water. We cycled through bottle brands and nipple flows. Out of desperation, we finally stuck a plastic tube lubed with coconut oil up her butt. And, sure, the plastic tube whistled as that little fucker of a fart found its way into the nursery, and absolutely there was a moment of relief shortly after. But as the three of us lay in bed, avoiding eye contact, the consensus was obvious: There had to be a better way.

Not just a better way to relieve gas but better ways to help our baby in every circumstance. We wanted more options when the limited advice wed found failed. We wanted to be experts in a variety of techniques to calm fussiness, to induce bowel movements, and to encourage better sleep. We didnt want to feel we had to resort to pumping our baby full of medication or jabbing her with foreign objects. We wanted to be professional parents.

As adults, when something goes awry, we dont jump to extremes to find quick relief. When our backs hurt, we stretch, get a massage, or see a chiropractor before asking the doctor for painkillers. If were backed up, we drink water, eat a prune or two, and maybe invest in a Squatty Potty before downing a gallon of psyllium husk and sitting on an enema. Why shouldnt our babies get the same time and attention to detail and process we give ourselves?

Thus began our exploration of the broader world of infant care. We learned that knowing all the options was necessary because what works for Hazel wont necessarily sit well with Jacob. In discovering the diversity of theory and technique thats out there, we were able to adopt a more bespoke approach to tackling our babys daily challenges.

And though we did ultimately find the information we sought, it was extremely challenging to come by. It was scattered all over those baby books and the Internet like crumbs from a smashed cake, and it was just as hard to gather together. Some of it came from conversations we had with top pediatricians, pediatric chiropractors and massage therapists, and world-renowned sleep experts. We found gems that amounted to a kings ransom, but each person had only two or three, and no two were alike. Our journey became less like a research project and more like a scavenger hunt. Put another way, there was a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach to baby care that existed but had yet to be collated into a single resource.