If your baby has an iPotty (training potty with iPad attached, obviously), your toddler boys have portable urinals, and you and your daughter are currently wearing matching breastmilk-pendant necklaces, congratulations! You’re taking advantage of some of the completely absurd new and innovative parenting products available today.
If you’re a slacker dark-ages parent like me, you should be ashamed of yourself. I know I am. I can’t believe I never had a poop alarm to insert into my babies’ diapers, and instead relied on being tipped off that a change was needed when they had a fountain of poo running up their back and out the neck hole of their onesie. The technical parenting term for this is ‘poonami’, by the way. I never even had any crafty keepsakes made from my placentas, for pity’s sake. The craziest thing I did was have a plaster cast made of my pregnant belly because who doesn’t want to have a ginormous commemoration of the fattest and most uncomfortable most glorious and radiant time of their lives to hang on the wall. So what if the product looks like an igloo meant to shelter a sumo wrestler?
When I heard about some of the products available to new parents today, I had no choice but to do further research in order to make fun of the people who buy this crap—I mean, become more informed. So I called up a girlfriend of mine who—like me—has more kids than she can responsibly handle, and we decided to do a little investigative research at Babies “R” Us on Route 29. We were a good team because two frazzled mom brains are better than one, but admittedly still less effective than the brain of your average third grader.
The following are a few of our favorite new parenting products. If you’re wondering whether the parents who buy these things are better than the rest of us, the answer is of course they are. They may also be higher strung and alarmingly sober.
SnotSucker
This is a tube you stick in baby’s nose and suck out the snot like a straw. When my kids were babies I had one of those ball-shaped sucker things that you squeeze to suck snot out, which grossed me out because I didn’t know what all was stuck up in that ball over time. Know what’s grosser? Knowing exactly what’s there because you sucked it up into your own mouth-hole. If you can stomach this, you win parenting.
Breast milk alcohol test strips
I won’t concede that moms who use these are better than I am, but they may in fact be sober-er. Or interested in keeping their babies sober. (Does it really matter? They’re not driving, and when they try to walk they run into walls anyway.) Let’s just say my nursing bras were made out of cork and my kids turned out O.K. They still prefer to have their grapes cut in half and fermented.
My PeePee Bottle
This is a personalized water bottle intended for use as a “travel potty.” Because asking your 3-year-old to pee into a tiny Nalgene from her car seat is way more sensible than stopping at a rest stop.
Baby butt fan
This is funnier in name than in function. I think the purpose is to dry baby’s caboose before re-diapering it, but originally I thought it had something to do with alleviating smell in which case Good Luck With That.
Placenta brooch
This is just your average brooch shaped like a placenta, not actually made out of your placenta. So, not weird at all. If you want weird, you will have to send your placenta to someone who will dry it, cut it up into pieces, and sew it together Frankenstein-style in the shape of a teddy bear. You can find this service online. I’m not kidding. If you already have all of these things and need to know what to get next in order to stay at the head of the pack of bats*#t crazy, well-equipped parents, you may want to check out Play Doh-scented cologne, baby wigs, the “baby lasso,” the over-the-door baby hanger, and “gas plugs,” which you actually shove right up your baby’s southern hemisphere. You’re welcome, and your gold medal for parenthood is in the mail.