Congratulations Spaz!

My cousin Jeannie (known as “Spaz” in the blog comments)
gave birth to twins this morning, a girl and a boy. I have been thinking about her all day. I remember bringing both of my babies home from the hospital and
the weeks that followed. I was sleep-deprived,
overwhelmed, and suffering from hormone induced manic depression (this is a
term I made up, NOT a real disease but I think it is a fairly accurate
description of the emotional state of a new Mother). I have a mini panic attack when I think about bringing two babies
home at once. How will Jeannie
cope? Will she ever sleep? How will her daughter (three and a half)
deal with the two new additions in her life? How will she manage breastfeeding TWO babies? How will she balance the emotional toll of childbirth with the
demands of two babies? The answer, I
know, is a simple one. Jeannie will do
just fine. She will because she has
to. She has a wonderful husband and
amazingly supportive parents who have taken up residence in frigid New England
for the winter to help the family adjust.

I was walking on the treadmill wondering what the best gift
for a new Mother of twins would be and, as if on cue, Oprah introduced a very
interesting guest. Her name was
Pricilla Dunstan and she claimed have the ability to accurately interpret baby
language. Priscilla Dunstan is a Mom from
Australia who has a photographic memory for sound. She has intensely studied the sounds that babies make and created
a fairly simple, supposedly accurate method for translating baby sounds into
actual words. She will release a DVD
entitled, Dunstan Baby Language, on November 28^th.

I watched the show filled with skepticism. How could this woman possibly know what
babies are trying to say? Is it
possible that all babies, regardless of where they are born, speak the same
universal language? The very notion
seems completely absurd. I watched
eight Mothers of very young babies tell their stories, through tears, of
frustration dealing with their babies’ constant crying. I watched Ms. Dunstan listen to each baby
and, based upon the sound the particular baby made, tell the mother what the
baby needed. It seemed, unbelievably,
to work.

I am still a skeptic but I am seriously considering giving
the DVDs to Jeannie as her baby gift. If
these DVDs can offer even a small amount of insight into her babies’ needs,
then they will be money well spent. One
thing that I think Ms. Dunstan failed to recognize, however, is how any new
Mother is going to find a block of free time long enough to accommodate the
watching of two DVDs. She really should
consider releasing CDs that use hypnosis to teach women how to understand the
language of babies. That way women can
do what they do best: multitask. They
can catch up on their sleep and learn to better understand their
babies.