Previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here.

I recently spent some time paging through my copy of What to Expect the First Year, the holy bible of advice when it comes to keeping your infant alive until its first birthday. Looking at those pages brought me right back to the experience of day-to-day care of a new baby. It’s exhausting and joyful and horrifying. It often brought me to the brink of my physical limitations. But that effort and pain is part of what makes the experience so complicated and rewarding.

Perhaps because the movie adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey had just been released, I couldn’t help thinking about another pastime that involves two people in such a delicate balance of pain and pleasure. I know that BDSM isn’t really what it looks like in the movies, but neither is parenting a newborn the calm, attentive process it appears to be in the parenting books. So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at how much of the book’s advice would be as applicable to new parents as to beginners on the BDSM scene.

Aubrey Hirsch’s previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here.

In my experience, the question you get asked most often when you’re pregnant is “When are you due?” It’s almost reflexive. Someone sees your distended belly, offers their congratulations and then, without hesitation, asks, “When are you due?”

When I was pregnant with my son, I didn’t really mind this question. I found it mildly annoying (like I do most pregnancy-related questions), but not particularly intrusive. It was an easy question to answer. October fifth. It came rolling off my tongue easily, almost robotically, and over and over again. If all my utterances over those nine months were put into a word cloud, “October fifth” would loom large as the phrase I said most often by far.

I held that date in my mind like a lucky number. I marked it on my calendar with a big red heart. I counted down to it with the help of my pregnancy app. Twenty-two more weeks! Sixteen more weeks! Four more weeks!

Previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here.

If there’s one thing I never thought I’d be, it’s a mommy-blogger. I’ve clicked my way onto more than a few mom-blogs during frantic, middle-of-the-night Google searches. While they were sometimes helpful, I always left with the weird, unpleasant feeling that I’d just been party to some kind of child exploitation.

I can’t help but notice that some of these blog kids are living in their own personal versions of The Truman Show. Their lives are serialized online. It seems that everything is shared: their milestones, their struggles, their photos (so. many. photos.), their most vulnerable moments—all offered up for blog readership or, more troubling, blog sponsorship.

It’s almost Christmas and all over the Internet, mom blogs are filling up with gift guides for babies. You’ve seen these. They’re packed with affiliate links and, therefore, stocked with the priciest and most instagrammable versions of things you might typically buy for a child. Gifts like this $167 hoodie. For a baby. And these $60 shoes sized for a non-walker. And this $198 rag doll. You read that right. Who in their right mind would buy this for a child? If someone bought my kid a $200 doll, I wouldn’t put it in his toy box; I’d put it in our safe deposit box.

As the mom of a two-year-old (who is not armed with affiliate links), I’m here to level with you. Here is my gift guide to what your kid really wants this Christmas.

Age 0-3 Months

Nothing. Babies this age can’t do anything! Save your money for when they can actually focus their vision on fixed objects. If you simply must wrap something up, make it clothes. And pick a pattern that will look good with poop on it.