This is how old you feel, being a parent.

When I called my mom up on the phone to let her know that I'd had my first child -- a healthy, happy baby boy who just happened to be like four months old at that point -- she sighed. "Well," she said, "I can't say I'm surprised." It was about three weeks after the first time I met him, in the waiting room of the paternity clinic, and I had the test results in hand. They didn't surprise me, either. Even though the paternity had been between me and one other guy, from the second I saw that baby, I knew -- I just knew -- he was mine. Partly because the guy was Italian, and this baby didn't look Italian at all, but I'm still pretty sure the other part was some kind of paternal instinct. Either way, I was 20 years old and I was a father, and what I felt about that was about 80 percent terror.

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By Jef Otte

The baby wakes up and he's hungry. He wants some food and he wants it right fucking now. Unfortunately for the baby, there are a number of things that need to take place before that can happen: He needs his diaper changed, he needs to get strapped into his high-chair and his food needs to get mashed up, and daddy needs to make some coffee before he loses his shit -- and even though we go through the same routine every morning and I know he knows he's going to get fed just as soon as the routine is finished, every morning he screams at me pretty much until the first bite of food goes in his mouth.

That baby is a real prick.

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In an article titled "Mike: Do What's Breast for Baby" (no, really), the New York Post reveals the Mayor's plans to boost breastfeeding at city hospitals.

"He's cracked down on smoking, trans fats, salt and sugary drinks. And now, Mayor Bloomberg is promoting a new health initiative: breast feeding," the paper notes. "The Health Department is pushing a sweeping initiative to prod dozens of city hospitals to get more moms in their maternity wards to breast feed."

Hospitals who want to participate in the "Baby Friendly Hospital" program can get federal funding for "technical assistance." The move would involve 24 of New York's 36 medical centers, and would require that they set up a plan to bolster breastfeeding with new moms.

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A baby boy was born on a PATH train en route to Manhattan yesterday, allowing for all sorts of hilarious "express train" jokes from the dailies. Rabita Sarkar and her husband, Aditya Saurabh, New Jersey residents, hadn't expected the baby for another two weeks, but, as they say, the baby waits for no train. The couple had been on the way to the doctor to check on Sarkar's "false" labor pains, which, as it turned out, were quite real -- and they hadn't wanted to take a car lest their baby be born in it. So they took the train instead.

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Once upon a time, hip, taste-making Manhattanites in the know would trek to Brooklyn to propagate the species with relatively more space and sometimes even backyards in which to park their Maclarens. But a surprising trend has been uncovered by DNAinfo, which reports that birth rates in Lower Manhattan have surged in the last 10 years. Community Board 1, which makes up the area below Canal Street, reports 1,086 babies born there in 2010. This is up 12 percent from 2009 and doubles the number born in 2001.

This also represents a recovery trend in the neighborhood from 9/11. But the point is, it's a trend.

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Is this the original Jayden?

It's that time of year again! Let's look at what we all named our babies in New York City in the last year, and figure out which name is the "most popular," which really means your kid is just going to get called by a first and last name, or some other nickname, all his or her life, so as to differentiate him or her from the swarming masses who share said name. Take it from a Jennifer.

The winning names for 2010 are...

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A book landed on our desk today, which happens with some frequency, but this book caught our eye more than most. It looked just like surprise bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep, the modern parent's tame rebellion of choice, but it was titled Seriously, Just Go to Sleep.

According to the accompanying press release, the idea to make Go the Fuck to Sleep G-rated came about when its author, Adam Mansbach, read a "highly censored rendition" to his three-year-old daughter, who "recognized herself as the culprit and was delighted."

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The parents of Adolf Hitler, the 5-year-old New Jersey child with the most unfortunate name, have had their newest baby, a boy named Hons Campbell, taken away from them as well. Adolf and his sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie, were all taken into custody by New Jersey Youth and Family Services in 2009. The Campbells, Heath and Deborah, say they don't know why Hons was taken, and the agency has reportedly been prohibited from talking about it. However, last year an appeals court ruled that the older children were at risk due to the parents' "unspecified physical and psychological disabilities," including violence in the home.

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via BBaunach

According to the hilarious (or icky) headline writers at Reuters, the "crowded, stretched world" is awaiting its 7 billionth baby as we speak. (As luck would have it, we weren't all raptured out on Friday.) The U.N. says this new member of society will be born on October 31, which also happens to be Halloween, which...should we be concerned? Some say yes, that Baby 7 Billion foreshadows tough times ahead, and should draw our attention to plans of how our giant population will share food, water, and other necessary resources; others think it will be damn cute, and anyway, everybody loves babies! Still others fear the baby may have pumpkin qualities.

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Finally, moms on smug-parenting site UrbanBaby are speaking out on the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests. The discussion thread we looked at today starts out like this: "I hate that I'm too much of a p*ssy to actually occupy Wall Street with the rest of the 99%. Finally, people are standing up for themselves and starting a revolution, but people like me are too lazy and afraid to join them. WTF?"

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