I am absolutely petrified…just barely able to move my fingers to type this post of my fears….

I made do with cloth diapers all through my daughter’s infancy; there were no alternatives then. I was envious when the disposable diapers came into being, and wished they had been there when I had my baby. Never mind, I thought, one day, as a grandmother, perhaps I will benefit from the convenience they represent.

HA.

I reckoned without the “what goes around comes around” factor. Now, disposable diapers are a big ecological no-no, and cloth diapers are the green (er, sometimes literally, if the baby is having loose motions!) and responsible way to go.

So I am back to the prospect of diapers, diaper pails, washing, drying, folding…oh, the works, that I was SO glad to get away from all those years ago….

I have not yet come to stuff like baby formula, pacifiers, humidifiers or the millions of other details….

I realized that I had forgotten some of my diaper-origami (more precisely, how to fold a diaper so that there is a pad of cloth down the centre.) And I found myself googlind nappy-folding sites….

Oh my goodness, I am overwhelmed. How on earth am I going to come by the store of knowledge and wisdom and maturity and patience and expertise that I am supposed to have as a grandmother? I am a TOTAL ignoramus. My daughter and son-in-law, I think, are going to send me home in disgrace in just a short while. And this, if I am successful in not dropping the baby….

Well, everything is on the internet these days, so I am probably be going to be holding The Baby in one hand and the mouse in the other.

Must email Nirmala, a friend of mine who recenly became a grandmother, and is doing a great job with her grandson, about lots of details….

For a long time now, the word “nappy” stood, in my vocabulary, for a short form of the name “Napoleon”…that’s about to change soon.

Also…with my baby, it was MY baby, and I did what I wanted to do…but with The Baby, it’s someone else’s baby, and I must do what the parents want, which may not be the same thing as what I want! For example, they may not want me to take a short cut to peace and quiet with a pacifier (I did that with my baby, until she started having one pacifier in her mouth, one in each hand, and also started dropping one, or all, of them and demanding instant replacement…at one time I was buying pacifiers by the dozen!)

If you lot read a news item in a few months about “grandmother banished back in disgrace from the US by disgusted parents of infant”…that would be…ME!

Is this helpless little one going to be, one day, the kind of confident and self-assured young woman that my daughter is today? I look back and realize what a miracle has been achieved!