If you’d like to marvel at the human body today, and if you haven’t recently eaten anything, you should watch this infographic-in-motion which shows how a baby gradually takes over all the space inside his lady host. He starts innocently enough, confined to the space already reserved for lady parts. But by just five weeks in, the baby has outgrown that area and begun to compress the lady’s organs. At 13 weeks, he’s moving around in there, and at 21 weeks, he has purchased all four railroads and built a hotel on Park Place. All the normal organ business, if there is such a thing, is now being carried out in an extremely constricted space. Despite this intrusion, mom just laughs and keeps going (though never at the same time for fear of incontinence.)
Babies take a lot of room and I have a sneaking suspicion that it doesn’t stop when the little thing clears out of my lady’s belly. And more, I’m afraid that I’m going to wake up one day soon and there will be so much baby-related paraphernalia that I won’t be able to find the baby itself and I’ll have to give up and settle for spending my days with a few boxes of diapers in a swing that’s a little too small for me.
It’s all those products that seem so daunting. And all of them branded with ridiculous names like Mommy & Baby-A-Go-Go or Kid Science Labs or Grow Free. Play Free. BPA Free. None of it sounds like things I even want in my periphery vision, let alone jabbing me in the soles of my feet as I investigate the mysterious crying sounds coming from somewhere inside my apartment.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what I really want to hear, that 99% of child-rearing can be accomplished with a handkerchief and a Swiss Army knife. Because I already have those things and I like the design better.
But there’s no ‘BPA Free’ sticker on the knife, so I guess I just reserve it for prying open new containers of baby products.