So very different

I was talking to my parents over Skype a bit ago and my father mentioned that things have changed since they were new parents. I agreed and pointed out that we were chatting overseas over video for free. Since then I've been thinking about all the ways things are so very different now.

Birth philosophy has changed, making it far closer now to how it was in the grandparents' time. Except there's far more washing of hands. For a while everything was clinical with mothers giving birth on heavy drugs on their backs and feeding the kids of this highly artificial but easy to store cow's milk product. Now we know on your back is probably the worst way. The coccyx just blocks the whole exit making things much harder. Birth positions are quite varied – under water, on a bouncy ball, leaning against the wall, etc etc. Drugs are still strong, but much more targeted to avoid affecting the offspring. Breast feeding is still a bit awkward in the UK, with about 20% of children still getting breast milk after 6 months – but at least medicalness and legislation is trying to make it easier.

Nappies. As far as I can tell, there are like 30,000 alternatives for nappies. At least we've got velcro now, and don't have to deal with pins.

Information is soooo much easier to come by. The wife posted a comment about how the baby seems to have engaged, and she got lots of replies saying things like my baby dropped 2 weeks before I gave birth and other really useful things. It's like having the joint experience of all your friends and relatives, and a few strangers on tap. I can hardly imagine how hard it must have been just not knowing and not knowing you didn't know.

We've known the sex of the child for about 26 weeks now. It makes picking names much easier. And we've already got a bunch of clothes. Not that getting unisex clothes would have been so hard – I have no idea what people used to do. Just do the bulk of the shopping after the birth?

I don't know what they did in my parents' day when it came to exposing children to music. Especially while they're still in the womb. Put on record after record? Put on the radio and hope for something good? The wife and I put together a playlist of 3200 songs combining our favourite appropriate contemporary music and a huge chunk of classical music. We just hit play and let it go until we need to turn it off. The other day work gave me an iPod nano as a baby shower present. Quite nice of them – I really appreciate it. I've whittled the playlist down to the 2500 songs that fit on it. We can now play it all day at a fraction of the power consumption of the PC we used to use. Plus UCLH apparently has iPod docks, so we we can have music for the birth without needing to being a laptop (no wifi, what's the point?).

Some months ago I made a list of things cultural things I wanted to export the kid to. A fair chunk of that was meant for when she's older and can read herself or watch TV, but one thing I really want to do is use Skype video and get her grandparents to read to her. I really want her to get to know them, and them living on another continent would otherwise make it hard. But as long as they're comfortable reading to a small camera… I just have to figure out where to position the camera so it looks like they're making eye-contact.