Lets play a game!

My son’s digestive tract is a long and twisting road. It is fraught with hairpin turns, cul-de-sacs and is at the very least 300 miles long. It’s Lombard Street on acid. It is in such a sorry state the commuters on this interstate of woe take the better part of a day to reach their destination. Trying to relieve the pressure that causes such consternation for my child is a task not easily accomplished. To you uninformed people out there simply holding the infant over your shoulder and patting them on the back will not coax all the trapped air out. It will let some out, yes, a clever ruse to mislead you into a false sense of accomplishment but there is much more still lingering in there…waiting…


To effectively rid the afflicted of this gas you must play a game, Baby Gas is what I have coined it. Imagine the labyrinth game of old where you tried to negotiate the steel marble from point A to point B by tilting the board on its axis while missing the holes that littered the board’s surface. The concept is the same with Baby Gas. Your steel marble is the gas trapped somewhere inside your child’s tiny body. You must navigate through the corkscrews of their system by any reasonable* means to one of two exits. More points are given to those who are able to release the air from the upper exit instead of the lower. The game begins the moment your baby starts crying that frustrated cry that every parents knows and dreads, the one that is not easily solved by a bottle or change of diaper. Once the game has started you are given a predetermined amount of time to remove the gas. There is no judging of skill or form only of results. A variety of maneuvers have been used to win this game; the over the shoulder, the football hold, the starfish, the whack-a-mole, the pendulum and the hippy hippy shake are just a few. Magical liquid such as gripe water or Mylicon are allowed because everyone, you friends, your neighbors, people in the grocery store, desire for you to win this game as quickly as possible.

Of course the game is completed once the foghorn that is your child has stopped their ear crippling scream and have resumed their normal placid drool laden expression. Congratulations! You’ve won and don’t be surprised if people around you cheer at your success. For those of you who fail, migraines, facial ticks, and glares from bystanders will accompany you day and night.

To the victory goes the spoils but remember you’ve won but one game and there are many, many, manymanymanymanymanymanymanymany more where that came from…