Two decades ago I gave birth to the first of my two children.  With a cocktail of emotions ranging from joy to trepidation, my husband and I embarked upon a journey that took us from zero to twenty years in the blink of an eye.  Today, I have the delightful pleasure of providing daycare to my brand new baby grandson.  My, how things have changed.

Each day reveals something new that makes me scratch my head and ponder how I ever survived parenting with such archaic resources.  As I care for our little grand-squirt with all the modern conveniences I never had, I reflect on my days as a young mother and think, “I sure wish I had that.”

It started with the baby registry.  I never had one.  It would have been nice to point gift-givers in the right direction.  In helping my daughter prepare hers, I soon realized this was one new thing I am glad I didn’t have to deal with.  Today’s baby goods selection is overwhelming.  The smoke is still pouring out of my brain from trying to help her choose a feeding system.  There were bouncers, diaper bags, crib sheets, mobiles, and the list goes on.  On one website there were six categories of strollers with upwards of two hundred strollers per category.  It leaves me with the question, “How is anyone in the stroller business making any money?”

Oh, but what I would have given to have one of those strollers.  Today’s fancy little systems have an infant car seat that snaps into a stroller frame when you are ready to roll.  How many times did I arrive at the mall just five minutes after an unhappy, screaming glowworm finally fell asleep only to rouse her for the dreaded switch from car seat to stroller?  There is nothing quite like shopping with an overtired little one in your care.  Pay no mind to the twitch.  It only happens when I recall those moments.

Another blissful innovation comes in the form of two very special words:  Digital Thermometer.  Why did I have to survive countless fevers without this gadget?  For years I was convinced my own mother could tell what my temperature was by pressing her lips to my forehead.  She was just faking it when she read the mercury (yes, mercury) thermometer.  I found it impossible to read the silver line against a clear glass tube no wider than a piece of spaghetti.  Today, I still have difficulty getting the angle right—just hit me with the digits, Arsenio!

Helpful though these advances may be, they don’t foster instinctive parenting.  Some of them may even cultivate obsessive worrying.

Back when a cell phone was the size of a shoebox, I put my children to sleep in their cribs, closed the door and went about my business trying to knock out stacks of dishes and laundry (and maybe an uninterrupted phone call) before the first whimpers of “I’M UP!” hit my ears.  I didn’t need a baby monitor for that.  I’m fairly certain neither child is scarred by the few times I didn’t hear them immediately, leaving them to cry it out for a few minutes.  Today, however, not only we can have an audio monitor, but we should upgrade to a visual one.  Go, Go Gadget Eyes!

My kids’ tubby time consisted of the sink filled with water and my carefully placed arm behind their backs as I washed them.  I adjusted the water temperature and tested it by—horror of horrors—my elbow!  Today, my grandson has a big plastic tub, cumbersome to fill, but oh boy, it has a special sticker on the bottom.  The sticker is actually a thermometer with sad faces on either end for tooooo hot and tooooo cold and a smiley face in the middle.  When the water temperature is juuuust right, Granny Goldilocks gets a big, “YOU DID IT!” grin.  Yay, me!

And then there are those things that cause my left eyebrow to make friends with my Herman Munster hairline…

Diapers are by far my favorite.  When my babies made a stinky, my nose gave it away.  If they were wet, it wasn’t difficult to detect the diaper’s full appearance.  If my sleep deprived senses didn’t get it by these natural cues, my wee one’s cries usually tipped me off.  Now—oh the bliss—now we have a little yellow stripe down the middle of the diaper.  If it turns blue, guess what?  It’s wet!  How did I ever get along without this technology?  I know one thing for sure; this visual aid causes me to use more diapers than I did in the nineties.  I suppose that’s good news for the baby’s bottom and the diaper company’s bottom line.

In all honesty, it would have been nice to have some of these great new versions of tried and true child-rearing necessities, but I don’t believe the end result would have been different.  I still would have made and learned from mistakes.  No invention could have helped me avoid all the frazzled days, temper tantrums or every danger scare.  Nothing could have made snuggle-time more snuggly or seeing that first smile more precious.  None of those things would have made me a better mother.

Still, as I hold my precious grandson, convinced my heart might burst with love, I do realize there are a few things I have today I wish I had when my babies were still babies.  Among those that immediately come to mind are maturity, patience, wisdom and oh…a digital camera.

Yeah, I wish I had that.

As Ever, ~Cindy

Philippians 1:21

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