Video Killed the Monitor Star

It’s 11:49 p.m. and the FTM and her parents -- staying with us for the FTS’s first week home from the hospital -- have gone to bed. I’m on baby duty tonight, and I’m taking a bold step. Rather than keeping the basinet next to the couch in the living room, where I’ll be sleeping (or rather, fretting), I’ve relocated the FTS to the nursery. There are some very good reasons for this:

1. It’s a nursery. We spent a lot of effort sanding, spackling, painting, and finishing the room for the express purpose of housing a baby. We now have a baby. You do the math.
2. It’s dark in there. Well, not all the time, but I can turn the lights out. If I’m hanging out in the living room watching bad sitcom reruns and writing, I generally want at least a little bit of light and sound. In the nursery, I can limit the external stimuli to a night light.
3. No pets. We share our house with a small menagerie—one dog and two cats. With the FTS in the nursery, we can close the door and be confident that none of our furry roommates will finally realize that the basinet is, in fact, the warmest, coziest place in the house.

So with the blessing of the FTM and after she went to bed, I moved the basinet into the nursery, killed the lights, and shut the door.

“But FTF, what if the baby needs something?”

Good question discerning reader! But fear not, for I am armed with a Summer brand baby video monitor. That’s right a video monitor. It’s one of the many items the multi-billion dollar baby industry insists we can’t live without. This in spite of the fact that our parents raised us with plain old audio monitors and their parents raised them with no monitors at all. And let’s not forget that back in the haze of our ancestral past, our forefathers and foremothers were raised by protohumans picking protonits from their little heads of protohair by the light of a waning protofire. (In my family, this is probably only two or three generations back.) But you know what? The baby industry got this one right. We really, really, really need this thing!

As I sit here, I’m watching FTS TV. The little guy wiggles around a bit, turns his head, and desperately tries to get on his side. But I know that he’s okay because it’s all here on this one and a half inch square screen, and I can be at his side in a matter of seconds. And check this out; it’s got night vision!!! (If I can see my baby in the dark from three rooms away, I shudder to think what the government can and can’t see. But I’ll save politics for another time.)

“But FTF, what if you have to take a leak?”

No sweat… the Summer brand baby video monitor is portable!

The FTS can get a relaxing bit of sleep in a tranquil setting, and I can write, I can read, I can fill up on caffeine and Chips Ahoy . Thank you Summer Corporation, and thank you multi billion dollar baby industry. You go over the top sometimes, but tonight, this FTF is in your debt.

Postscript – The FTS started fussing as soon as I started writing this post last night. I tried everything I could think of – rocking, walking, singing to him; saline nose drops; antacid drops; diaper change; hypnosis; Scnhapps – to settle him down, and nothing worked. Finally, at 2 a.m., the FTM emerged from her nest, sensing something was wrong. She cradled and rocked the FTS for 10 minutes and he was out like a light. She went back to bed and I dozed off on the couch, transfixed by the image on the baby monitor. Go figure.