Of course you do. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past millennium. Or you don't speak English. Although I'm sure other languages have their equivalent.
Anyway, I think that whoever came up with that saying never had THE INTERNET. Or a library. Or any friends.
The saying should be, "Babies come with 10,000 instruction manuals... and blogs, and pamphlets, and magazines, and general pieces of advice. Now deal with it."
Our baby even LITERALLY came with an instruction manual... as in, he was sent home from the hospital with books for us about how to take care of him. I was given a ton of "now you're a mom" literature at my prenatal appointments (yes, that's BEFORE I was even a new mom). And then we get a monthly magazine from the hospital about "taking care of baby in the first year." This is all just the free stuff that is given out to every mom who gives birth at this hospital... but if you also count the "Parents" magazine subscription that came with a baby shower gift, the "What to Expect" book that I picked up at a yard sale, all the blogs that get shared around on Facebook and Pinterest, and just everyday encounters with the human race ("Oh, you have a baby! I was once a baby, let me share my wisdom with you."), I think it is safe to say that babies DO come with instruction manuals. Plenty of them.
Now, I think the gist of the saying is that raising a baby is hard, and as a new parent, you don't know what to do. And this is true. But it's not for LACK of information. It's because you are trying to build this new little appliance and instead of having one set of instructions in 9 languages, it came with 12 books all telling you different ways to do the same thing.
Only your appliance is a person.
And you feel like if you don't choose the RIGHT way to build it, your little person coffee maker is going to spew out something other than coffee for the rest of his life... ok, I gotta stop mixing my metaphors here; it's getting weird. But I think you get what I'm saying.
This may sound a little rant-y. And it's not anything new moms haven't been complaining about for thousands of years. But in reality, I'm not really complaining. I actually ENJOY the free advice (well, most of it) and it is my choice to read all those magazines and blogs. I do so because I often glean helpful information (did you know you can crush up Cheerios to coat banana slices so it's easier for your baby to pick up??? genius! he doesn't get nearly as frustrated... much less tray-banging.). So anyway, think of this as more "rambling" than "ranting."
My conclusion is... do I think it's a bad thing that babies come with all these instruction manuals? Not necessarily. But I try to think of it as like an "idea book" that comes with LEGOs. My husband is a die-hard "follow the instructions" guy when it comes to assembling his LEGO sets, but when I am working on them with him (yes, we are grown people who buy LEGO sets to do together), I sometimes like to change things up. It drives him crazy, but most of the time it still works. You still have to put the walls in roughly the right place in order for it to look like a house (there are some things about babies that need to be done a certain way; like, most babies have to be fed and changed on a regular basis, for instance...), but if you make a bush instead of a palm tree with the green pieces, that's ok.
If you're a mom, enjoy the instruction manuals. But if some days you need to leave them in the junk drawer and let your little coffee maker spew out whatever he is spewing, go for it.
Thanks for reading.
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