I feel very lucky that I gave birth to five wonderful children, and I am fortunate that they have all grown up to be outstanding human beings. I’m not quite sure how this could have happened, but, as I found out in the past few weeks, as the great grandmother of two additional baby boys, apparently I do not know the proper way to swaddle! In fact, I’m not even sure I ever used the term swaddle. Do you know that on the wall of each room in the obstetrics unit of Lenox Hill Hospital there are instructions on how to swaddle a baby? There is even a special type of blanket solely for such a purpose. Where did I go wrong in caring for our kids?
Remember when we took what was then called a receiving blanket and wrapped it around the baby, tucking in the feet and feeling as though they were all wrapped up? Well, we did not know what we were doing! There is a specific method, and if you do not do it properly your children might still grow up to be the fine humans that most of our kids are today.
The more I am around young couples today with their adorable babies, the more I learn all the things we must have been doing improperly. The most important lesson I have learned is: Don’t say a word. If you are told that the baby’s head needs to be slightly higher, lower or horizontal, just smile and do it. They must not cry even for one second. Pick them up and walk around—if necessary take them for a walk—do not dare suggest there was a time when babies in infant seats were placed on top of the dryer so that the rumbling from the machine would put them to sleep. In today’s day and age that would be a reason to call Child Protective Services. Forget the fact that you parented five children. Whatever you did was obviously incorrect even though those same babies are now the grandparents doing wonderful jobs of caring for their new grandchildren and they are doing what I learned to do a very long time ago. Smile and do not say a word.
Please do not tell anyone, but I remember the days just a few weeks after our daughter Malkie was born when we were living in the Heights and needed to make a shiva visit to Passaic to our dear friends, Rabbi and Mrs. Katz and their children as they were sitting shiva for their son Mayer. It was natural for us to call the dorm and ask one of the boys to come and babysit. They knew that when they came to babysit they were paid by many Shabbat meals. We took the bus from the terminal in the Heights to Passaic and on the return called our house to make sure all was well (from a pay phone, of course). They assured us that the baby was terrific. They had just finished diapering her with a receiving blanket. Did we panic? No, we laughed and laughed each time that we thought of it.
One of my granddaughters and her husband doesn’t even bother to tell me, but comes to my house equipped with dark green plastic garbage bags to tape (which they bring) over the shades of the windows in the bedroom in which the baby sleeps so that not one drop of light is allowed to peep through the window in the morning. Oh, and I almost forgot the towels which I would find in the morning lining the cracks at the bottom of the doors of the room! Oh yes, and there is that sound machine. Soothing vibes throughout the room. The pièce de résistance—the intercom machine placed on the kitchen, dining room table or wherever to listen in case there is a peep in the crib! My Mordechai, you and I must have been the worst parents. We didn’t have any of those “must haves” for our infants; we, even in the beginning of our parenting days, washed our own diapers (chas v’chalila), and I am quite sure that our children turned out none the worse for all of that ill treatment.
As a reminder of the way that the world is different today, I never heard of the following, but before my grandchildren Tamar and Isaac were allowed to leave Lenox Hill they were asked to sign a waiver stating they had been informed that it could be fatal to a baby if they are shaken. Wow, how sad is that?
Let the babies all grow up to be as special as their parents. Let the new grandparents enjoy this new phase of their lives, and wouldn’t it be funny if by the time these new babies have children of their own they are told by the hospital that the best way to handle babies is to let them lie unwrapped in their cribs allowing them to kick and move their arms and enjoy learning about these new movements?
Mazel tov, all!
Nina Glick can be reached at [email protected].
