When I first started this parenting gig Dr Google was my lifeline. Not only was I desperately sleep deprived, existing only on Hobnobs and a prayer, but I also had ALL of the questions and they came up constantly, day and night (especially night). I was in uncharted territory without a guide and worried incessantly about every move I made. The “Week by Week” book was good, but it couldn’t tell me WHY HER POO WAS GREEN. Reassuringly Dr Google was always there for me, a mere tap away. I didn’t have to wait for a reply or make an appointment. It was there for me at 4am whilst I lay awake with a baby strapped to my breast. It allowed me to wrestle a modicum of control back at one of the most unpredictable times of my life. And most importantly Dr Google never looked down its nose at me. It did not give me a condescending smile and enquire if I was a first time mum in such a way that I knew what it was actually asking was “were you dropped on your head as a child?”
But what you realise after about four months is that Dr Google is a false friend. We have all had false friends in our lives. At university I must have spent half my student loan on those dust-like cereal bars that look healthy but have more calories than a McMuffin. And don’t get me started on the pantsuit I bought that, whilst excessively comfortable and lunge-friendly, gave me a giant camel’s hoof that couldn’t be taken out in public.
And why is Dr Google such a pernicious false friend?
Firstly it has a penchant for all queries leading to diagnosis cancer. It also takes you down bottomless rabbit holes. Because it’s online where every opinion is welcome, you never get resolution, just seventy different, completely opposing views. You also find yourself wading through a baffling new acronym lexicon, including DH – dear husband, DD/DS – dear daughter/son, AIBU- am I being unreasonable (probably yes), DML – dear mother-in-law (I suspect the dear may be heavily laced with sarcasm in this case), and so on and so on. You start out with one question and end up with ten more, convinced you are an awful mother. Ultimately turning to Dr Google becomes an exercise in self-flagellation.
Here are nine things I turned to Dr Google for and apologies in advance, a lot of these are poo related.
1.Why is her poo green? This will happen at some point, probably at 3am, when you can’t even see the nappy properly. Dr Google will direct you to the Poo Pantone; yes, a spectrum of baby poo swatches, from Honey Mustard to Vivid Khaki to Wild Charcoal. As reassuring as this is, when you are trying to colour match in the middle of the night and don’t see your particular shade on there you can easily spiral out of control.
2.Why is she grunting like a wildebeest in her sleep? No one tells you that by about four weeks old your baby will start to sleep-grunt like an unholy combination of the Predator and Beavis/Butthead. Dr Google provided a host of potential solutions; elevating the bed, a reflux wedge, Infacol, colic water, vaporisers, earplugs (for us not her), howling to the new moon at midnight whilst rubbing yourself down with heather. Nothing worked, it just stopped at about eight weeks old, because it was (let’s hear it) JUST A PHASE.
3.What’s the longest a baby has gone without a poo? Reassuringly Dr Google told me they can last a couple of weeks, although if that actually happened I think I would lose my mind and start chanting to the gods of baby bowel movements.
4.Why did she just do a RABBIT PELLET? A rabbit pellet! And the turd queries just keep on coming.
5.How do I get a baby to drink from a bottle? We had an epic battle of the bottle with Bella. Dr Google provided a smorgasbord of potential solutions for this. My favourite was the suggestion that you should start breastfeeding and then sneak the bottle teat in half way through. I tried this and Bella stopped drinking, looked up and laughed at me. Mama didn’t raise no fool.
6.When should I start a routine? Here Dr Google directs you towards two opposing camps of parenting gurus. There are those who believe you should get your baby on a strict schedule the moment they pop out of the womb (perhaps to prepare them for a timetabled world of Outlook and Skype meetings) and those more laissez-faire experts who believe in going with the flow. With SO much to read you just end up ping ponging between the two until you are more baffled than when you started (if possible).
7.How do I get her to self-settle? There is a point when you think self-settling is the holy grail of parenting; you believe it exists and the idea of it gives you hope, but you’ve never seen it personally. Thanks to Dr Google I quickly learnt that I was doing EVERYTHING wrong here, and that Bella would still be either sucking on a boob or a dummy aged 21 in order to get to sleep. In the depths of the blogosphere I did find one thing that worked; replacing the dummy with a strip of cloth that I rubbed all over my chest like some kind of milky dance of the seven muslins.
8.How do I get my baby to nap – IN. THE. HOUSE? After they learn to self-settle they should be able to nap in the flat, in a bed. But no. Apparently at four months old she should’ve been sleeping for circa two hours at lunchtime and waking up refreshed and delightful, not sleeping for 30 minutes max before waking up a raging red eye-browed beast.
9.What can you do to help teething? Baby teeth seem like a pointless waste of time. All that protracted pain only for them to fall out and be replaced. Babies should just gum away at things until they hit adolescence. That or baby dentures. In the absence of mini falsies, I have spent TOO MUCH time Googling teething remedies and TOO MUCH money buying teething remedies, from devilish powder that gets everywhere and resembles class A drugs, to an amber bracelet that got stuck in Bella’s fat folds, to delicious tropical smelling gel that I want to eat as well, to a plethora of toys designed to be GUMMED to death all of which last about ten minutes before being lobbed out of the pram (literally toys, out of the pram).
Raising our little humans will always come with questions because looking after a baby is like nailing soup to a wall. They change constantly and just as you think you have it figured out the bar moves and you have to start all over again. But now I am saying NO to Dr Google. NO to the rabbit hole. NO to having 40 tabs open on my phone. OK even writing that scared me, so maybe it’s not NO, it’s sometimes. Dr Google will be my occasional friend, my once a month for coffee and cake friend, but no longer my bestie. What’s changed is that I am slowly learning to trust my instinct. Now my instinct is definitely not always right, but I am tired of Dr Google telling me I am always wrong.
Mumz in the hood 
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