My one piece of advice for new parents

It's funny how people react to advice. I mean, you get it all the time, right? Everyone has an opinion or a deep insight into how things should be, and it either makes an impression or it doesn't. The most odd or obscure ideas can sometimes be the most influential.

Take my husband, for instance.

On Thanksgiving in 2001, four days before I went into labor with our first child, we had dinner with friends and met a new couple who had one child. As we later discovered, neither my husband nor I particularly cared for this couple, but we put on a good show. Plus everyone was fawning over me and my enormous load, so I was kind of loving it. (Truly. I gained 45 pounds with that pregnancy.) And then the husband portion of this couple turned to David and said, "I only have one piece of advice for you. Clean your house before you go to the hospital, because it will be one less thing you have to worry about when you get home."

Now, this deep insight should have been easily dismissed and forgotten. But despite the prenatal classes we took and the dozens of books we read and the consultations with our doula and our OB, despite all of the natural childbirth preparation and birth plans and the nightly stretching of bodily areas that were never meant to be stretched by human hands, this one piece of advice from a guy he didn't even like was the one that stuck. And so four days later, as I was doubled over on the bed moaning and cursing, my husband was vacuuming. As I was sitting on the toilet deep in transition, pleading, "I'm pretty sure it's time," he was happily scouring the sink. I believe there was whistling. (In all fairness, it was a fast and furious labor that neither one of us really knew how to handle. But still.)

Finally, when my water broke and I said I was ready to push, he snapped out of his domestic reverie. I laid down in the backseat of the car, leaking amniotic fluid on the fabric upholstery, clamped my legs together and off we roared. Fifteen minutes after arriving at the hospital our daughter was born. One push. Our doula arrived in time to get me a post-delivery juice. We paid $600 for that juice. In the end, it all worked out. Our daughter was healthy, I made it through natural childbirth, and we have a good story to tell. HOWEVER.

Knowing how easily new parents can be influenced by seemingly innocuous advice, I try to avoid it whenever possible. Live and learn, I say! But here's my one and only nugget: when it comes time to feed your baby yogurt, if you so choose, only ever give them plain yogurt. Never ever give them the sweet stuff unless you sweeten it yourself with fruit. Because in a few years you'll realize how awful that sweet stuff really is and no matter how hard you try the kids won't touch the plain stuff, and you will look back and think Damn! Why didn't I follow that awesome advice!? I fed my kids vanilla yogurt as babies, thinking that since it was white it didn't have as much sugar as the colored variety. Yes, that is how naive I was. Now they won't touch plain no matter how I doctor it up. So that's it! Plain yogurt. You're welcome. Now go forth and do whatever else you need to do to deliver and raise that baby. Good luck!