As the parent of a newborn, you have very few functions, but they’re all incredibly important: You are the provider of food, warmth, snuggles, clean diapers. You speak to your baby in hushed tones, or giggle, you adjust them to the outside world by touching them, and often you calm them by jiggling, rocking, and bouncing.
Constant movement is, after all, what they’re accustomed to, and many new infants have a rough time getting used to the largely motionless environment that is Earth.
There is, of course, then, a huge industry of high-tech baby bouncers and rockers, seats that jiggle and wiggle and make white noise and sing. Some new parents swear by these seats, and find that their newborns are happiest either in the arms of a parent or in the damn bouncer, which inevitably breaks down on a particularly rough evening.
Babocush is a badly named product in that realm: It’s a cushion that attaches to your baby’s bouncer, cradling them and rocking them gently on their stomach, which can help with issues like reflux, common and troubling in very small babies. This product, they say, will help with digestive problems and colic (excessive crying in infants of unidentified origin). The videos of babies rocking and rolling around on the Babocush — posted on Facebook recently — are extremely funny and cute, but the product itself is proving to be quite controversial for the Facebook parent set. You know the kind of parents I’m talking about: the ones who are waiting for literally any opportunity to freak the fuck out.
One of the Babocush videos now has over 25,000 comments on it. Some of them are positive, of course, because this contraption actually looks kind of cool. But, of course, many of them bemoan the wretched state of parenthood that would lead one to seek some respite from an infant who demands to be bounced 100 percent of the time. “Pretty soon a baby won’t know its parents. Just vibrations and jiggling,” one insightful comment reads, and several threads devolving into a discussion of the safety of bed-sharing with an infant, the most Facebook of parenting issues ever to exist.
Hey, parents! Chill out! No one is trying to shirk their parental duties or force their baby to bond with a machine. Mommy just needs a minute, okay? And anything that helps is probably a good thing. Plus, the babies look cute as hell on this thing, right? Sheesh.
