Hidden Hazards of Parenting

When you're preparing to become a parent (as if you can ever be prepared) the books tell you about getting peed on, getting spit up on, sleepless nights, crying (by both the baby and you), and the epic loads of laundry.

What they don't really warn you about is how often you must wash your hands -- before changing a diaper, after changing a diaper, before feeding baby, before picking up baby, and so on. Or more accurately, what all that handwashing will do to your hands, especially at this time of the year. Warning: it will leave your hands dried out beyond belief, and beyond relief, as your knuckles crack and bleed unless you slather yourself in lotion each and every time. Just ouch. I'm pretty sure I got looks in the pediatrician's waiting room from other parents who were horrified by my hands.

Another thing they don't warn you about is how perilous opening a cannister of formula can be. It all has to do with the freshness seal or whatever you want to call it -- that foil you remove in order to actually get into the cannister.

We use Similac Advance, but this is the only image with the foil seal shown.

That mother is thicker than ordinary foil. And if you don't get it all off in one shot, attempts to remove the rest of it can lead to wicked painful papercuts. No, not papercuts. FOIL cuts. Holy $%!& you have not known papercut pain until you get one from this stuff.

And genius me thought it'd be a good idea to shower without a bandaid and while washing my hair managed to string a hair through the cut which is also HOLY $%!& painful.

So watch out for formula cannisters. They are armed and dangerous.

On a side note, who knew you could spell cannister as canister as well? And now that I've sat here and looked at both spellings, neither looks correct...