Things I’ve Learned About Parenting a Boy - Part I
March 7, 2007
Lisa recently metioned in a comment that she is having a boy, and although she has 2 girls, she doesn’t really know much about raising a boy. Well, I owuldn’t call myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have learned a few things (mostly through trial and error) along the way. So, here are a few suggestions I have so far, and I’m sure Xander will teach me some more as we get older.
- setting aside a baby washcloth as a “pee-pee cloth” can save you and your baby quite a few outfit changes.
- keeping your baby’s chest (and pee-pee) covered in the bathtub can save you lots of time rewashing your baby after he pees in the tub (or in his eye…)
- there are lots of cute clothes for boys, but sometimes you have to look harder for them - particularly in stores like WalMart where there are 5 or 6 racks of girl clothes and 1 or 2 racks of boy clothes…
- it’s ok for boys to smell like lavendar and chamomille - and the flowery scent doesn’t make them any less “manly” 
- pacifiers may be a “crutch”, but it’s a crutch I’m willing to live with. If you’re going to use a pacifier, the ribbons made to clip them to baby’s clothes can be a huge time saver in searching for and cleaning dropped pacifiers.
- if you’re going to give your baby a bottle, try giving him a cold bottle first. He may surprise you and drink it just fine - thus saving you countless hours in heating up bottles.
- avoid diapers that have an absorbant strip near the top of the diaper (where it would rest against a belly button) (like Luvs) - if you forget to pull the diaper up high enough, you’ll get leaks every time.
- not everything has to be blue - in fact, it’s quite nice to have some yellow, green, orange, red, brown, etc. I do stay away from pinks and purples.
So far, raising a baby boy hasn’t been so much different than I would imagine raising a baby girl would be. However, as they grow, they become more and more different. I’m sure Part II of this series will have some very different suggestions.
I mentioned previously that Xander is suffering through his second cold. This time around he has a very unpleasant cough, and a loss of appetite. For about a week it was quite a bit of work to get him to eat 3 or 4 ounces in a sitting. So, instead of two “meals” in the evening, Xander was pretty much snacking his way through the night. When he’s sick and very stuffy, he has a hard time nursing.
When I’m a parent I’ll never put my kid in one of those leash things. When I’m a parent I’ll never take my infant to a resturant. When I’m a parent I’ll… I’m just wondering how many of us utter those words - particularly at times when someone else’s kid is irritating us. I know Zach and I used to say all the time that we wouldn’t bring our baby to reaturants - what’s the point, it’s not like you can enjoy a meal, since one of you is always attending to the baby, and then when he or she cries, it irritates the rest of the patrons who had maybe escaped their own screaming babies to come out this evening, only to be met with it at the resturant too, and on and on… So now I’m chuckling at myself because last night Xander did go out with us.
Xander has another cold. Which means another trip to the doctor’s office. We sort of fell into this practice, as it’s the local one who interacts most frequently with my Ob/Gyn. When we signed up for the practice, we didn’t know which doctor would be Xander’s, as there are 3 pediatricians and a few nurse practitioners. Our pediatrician actually attended the c-section and was the first to examine Xander (Xander was kind enough to pee on the good doctor at that point…) Since then we’ve seen this guy 4 out of the 6 times Xander has visited the office. He is by far my favorite. When we went for Xander’s 4 month check-up, I spoke with the doctor about my concerns around Xander’s distaste for tummy time. Instead of scolding us, and telling us how important tummy time is, he remarked that he was having the same difficulty with his 3 month old son, and said it sounded like we were doing everything we could to encourage the tummy time.