50 Ways You Know Your Baby is Doing Well

Experts offer plenty of clues for determining whether your baby is happy — the smiles, the giggles, the coos, the naps. Sometimes, however, the most accurate barometer of your baby’s state is you. Dozens of symptoms of your own behaviour can tip you off to whether your baby is in a positive state — though chances are you’re probably too sleepy to notice them. Just in case you can find a few minutes to read this, here are 50 signs your baby is content. Actually, if you do have time to read this, that’s number one.

2. You finished a meal. Sure, it consisted of a turkey wrap and Diet Coke, but you still finished it.

3. The telephone rings and you don’t answer it — not because you can’t, just because you don’t want to.

4. When you do answer the phone, you’re able to have a conversation of one solid minute with the person on the other end.

5. You not only feel the desire to brush your teeth, you actually have the time to do it.

6. When you look at your house, you find yourself believing, somewhere deep down, that it could, one day, with the right amount of effort and a big enough team, be clean again.

7. You find yourself bragging to others that you’re often getting up to four hours’ sleep at a time.

8. You and your partner are able to communicate with each other at fewer than 100 decibels.

9. When doing your bills, you actually check to see if the total is accurate before paying it.

10. In the shower, you not only remember to shampoo, but also to rinse.

11. You’re able to complete an entire visit to the bathroom without feeling on edge the entire time.

12. In a spare moment, you find yourself thinking about considering whether to maybe ponder the possibility of perhaps resuming your exercise regimen.

13. You take a bath.

14. You glance in the mirror to find your eyes are more than one-eighth open.

15. You find yourself able to perform simple arithmetic and operate small appliances without having to concentrate intensely.

16. You and your partner are able to get through the movie you rented from Blockbuster in only four installments over two evenings. You can even remember what it was about, mostly.

17. When someone asks you the baby’s name, you get it right on the first try.

18. You’re able to enjoy your bowl of Raisin Bran properly, taking a full 30 seconds to down it.

19. The e-mails you send are down to, on average, only a handful of spelling errors, and some of them are even semi-coherent.

20. The alleged out-of-the-house sightings of you over the past few weeks are actually legitimate.

21. When you start humming “Piano Man” to yourself, you get all the way to the second verse before slipping into “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

22. You can walk 10 feet without accidentally kicking a soother, stepping on a rattle or knocking over a stack of diapers.

23. You and your partner have dinner plans — at a restaurant. True, they’re for six months in the future, but they’re still plans.

24. You feel curious flutterings that may just be the suggestion of returning libido.

25. Some of your clothes stay stain-free for nearly a week.

26. You hear about major events within several days of their actually occurring.

27. You’re able to stop and chat with your partner several times per day, sometimes for 30 seconds or more.

28. You’re able to drive to the supermarket and back without once dozing off.

29. Your laundry room no longer resembles a missile testing site.

30. When people see you, they think it actually is you, as opposed to one of the walking dead.

31. Comments from those you run into have changed from “Boy, you could really use some rest” to “You know, you don’t look so terrible.”

32. Your mother calls once a day to check in instead of three times a day.

33. You’re 10-percent certain you know the location of your car keys, purse and cell phone.

34. You had time to assemble an outfit this morning that comes pretty darn close to matching.

35. The crossword sitting on your bedside table is now more than half done. True, it’s from three months ago, but you’re getting closer.

36. You realize you actually watched an entire Friends rerun uninterrupted, not counting commercials — and you even enjoyed those.

37. The visual hallucinations caused by those first few months of sleep deprivation have now settled into much more manageable garden-variety exhaustion.

38. When you catch your reflection coming out of the shower, you actually resemble a human more than a zombie.

39. You’ve started to speak in multiple syllables again, and complex sentences might be right around the corner.

40. At the grocery store, you’re starting to become reacquainted with items outside the “Baby Needs” aisle, such as bread, milk, cheese and deodorant.

41. People have stopped ending every conversation with you by saying, “There’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

42. Instead of falling asleep without a word to your partner, nowadays you can manage to murmur, “I love...” before nodding off.

43. You can tell morning from night with almost no problem at all.

44. You’ve started talking to people in a normal voice again instead of greeting them by saying, “Hewo, how’s da widdle snookums?”

45. If you count all the different bits and pieces of news you’ve read over the past few months, it amounts to almost an entire newspaper.

46. Every now and then, you’re able to snatch a few hours of sleep without lying awake wondering whether the baby is okay.

47. It’s been weeks since you fell asleep in the middle of a conversation.

48. Besides your mother, people have stopped bringing you meals.

49. When you drift off while playing blocks, the baby barely notices.

50. You’re starting to think about having another child.

iParenting.com 

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I.J. Schecter
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