New mothers are obsessed with numbers. I’ve always known this but the point was driven home this week during the California leg of my Babies R Us Colic Solved Seminar which was heavily penetrated by expectant mothers. While I never thought I’d see more creative questions than those from the mothers in my clinic, it seems first-time pregnant moms worry more about details and numbers. There's an obsession with black and white understanding. Perhaps it’s the nesting instinct or their abundant free time. Once with a baby you have less time to spend contemplating the subtleties of such things as ‘what constitutes a good burp’ or ‘how much gas is too much gas.’
One of the key messages that I convey in my seminars is that no two babies are alike. There’s a lot of variability in infant activities like feeding and elimination. I make it my job to detail the variants of normal and illustrate just how individual a baby can be. This offers young and expectant parents the freedom to truly relax. While we all want to believe that our babies will eat, feed and sleep by the book, such a book has yet to be published.
Ultimately as parents we learn as we go. And hats off to those parents who take the time under the glaring fluorescent lights of a big box retail store to ask questions and learn about what will make their baby tick … or poop.