Baby Physics

Most people have heard the facetious question, “Which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?”

The first time I heard that old joke, I had to think for a moment, before I smiled and answered that, despite the striking difference in their bulk, (and the difference in being struck by them) they do, in fact, weigh the same.

Now consider this: which would you rather hold for two hours, six pounds of feathers or six pounds of baby. Yes, the two weights are the same, but the two tasks are not.

That’s what I mean by, Baby Physics.

There are certain laws of infant dynamics that become apparent the longer you deal with babies. Here is a short list:

The Law of Relative Mass

A baby held in one’s arms will double in absolute density every ten minutes.

According to this law, a six-pound three-ounce child, after a time span of an hour, will weigh about 125 pounds (Don’t bother checking my math; if you don’t believe me, go visit a friend who has an infant and offer to hold him or her for a few minutes. Warning: stand between your friend and the door, and under no circumstances agree to “watch him/her for a minute” while your friend runs to the store for diapers and wipes. You will never see your friend again)

Murphy’s Law of Liquid Dispersal

Anything that can be spit up, will be.

This, of course applies to breast milk or formula—kind of an equal-opportunity maxim—but it also embraces anything that a baby ingests: a collection of viscous substances of uncertain origin, including baby cheese (you’ll know it when you see it). A related corollary states that the volume of the spit up will vary in direct proportion to the darkness of the color of the clothes being spit up-on, and the expense of having them dry-cleaned.

McGurskey’s Third Law of Nursling Acoustics

A Baby’s cry is nominally ten decibels more intense than the engine of an XF-84 Thuderscreech (generally considered to be the loudest airplane ever built) when they want something.

Of course, when they REALLY want something, it gets a little louder.

Swee’ Pea’s Corollary: Contrary to normal laws of acoustics, decibel volume tends to increase rather than decrease with the inverse square of the distance between you and the baby. No one has been able to explain this anomaly, but no one who has ever tried to ignore, even for a minute, a baby’s cry, will dispute it.

The First Law of Excrement

No diaper can hold baby poop.

For this reason, diaper makers will almost never make any definitive claim to feculence control on their packaging. They usually restrict their come-ons to the categories of “comfort,” “ ease of handling,” and some vague claim to “added absorbency.” Well, at two o’clock in the morning, when your cherub unloads on your pajamas for the third time in a week, you may be thinking of words other than “added absorbency” to include in your scathing email to Kimberly Clark. But, to be fair, one look at the stuff little ones produce and you have to cut the diaper guys a little slack. Just remember the joke about the optimist who gets pooped on by a bird, who then smiles and says, “Thank God elephants don’t fly.”

Houdini’s Law of Fluctuating Resources

No quantity of baby supplies is sufficient.

Prior to the birth of our twins, we received generous gifts of baby clothes and paraphernalia . At one point I think I counted forty-seven baby blankets. Yet, most nights, when I have finished feeding, burping, changing, re-feeding, re-burping, re-changing, comforting, rocking and crooning the twins back to sleep, I cannot find a single blanket to wrap them up in before laying them down—not even the blankets they were wrapped in when I picked them up to start the routine. I am not sure where blankets, burp cloths and onesies go to hide—probably the same place as the single socks that mysteriously vanish from the dryer. Of course, they magically reappear on laundry day (which is every day) in greater numbers.

This is only a partial list. For a complete index see Spock’s General Theory of Baby Dynamics (that’s Dr. Spock, not Mr. Spock, and if you’re old enough to know the difference between those two, you probably look like me, only not as tired).