fuenf neun scaling the alps

Over Christmas, Christian and I received a wedding present from Christian’s co-workers: a big box of baby clothes! You see, that’s what happens when you do something like get married because you’re knocked up; instead of wedding presents, people just jump ahead to the baby shower presents.

In this instance, a lot of the things in the box actually seemed kind of useful and fulfilled several items on my “things we have to get by the time the baby’s born or else rot in hell for being terrible parents” list. There were some outfits, some bathing accessories, some “muslins” (this is the term in my British baby book for what appears to be cloth diapers, but sounds like something out of Mary Poppins), a pair of split pants, and some pastel colored straps that looked like something out of Baby’s First S&M Collection. After dividing everything into piles–”Useful Things,” “Things to Regift to the Next Poor Pregnant Sucker,” and “Things to Bring to Europe to Scare Christian’s Parents”–I tossed the straps a Christian and suggested he find out what they were sometime when he’s bored.

Well, it took about a month, but last week, Christian finally got bored (or curious) enough to find out what the heck the S&M straps were for.  The thing, however, is, when he actually started asking around, he discovered that most of the people at his company didn’t know what they were, either.

I supposed I should have been prepared for that. First off, most of the people at Christian’s company are men, and men in China don’t really do anything… well, around the house anyway. As babies seem like household accessories, it would stand to figure that even fathers might not be schooled in all the tools of the Chinese baby swaddling trade. Add to this group, the women who are under twenty-five. None of them have had their one allotted baby yet, and I don’t know about you, but before getting pregnant, I didn’t know about the vast majority of things that went along with a baby, so you can hardly blame the girls. This pretty much leaves the women in their thirties and older. I think there might be two of those at Christian’s company. Maybe three.

But one of them did know that the thicker strap was meant to wrap around the baby’s middle to keep him warm (the Chinese like everything warm: food, beer, children…). This sort of explains why all the Chinese baby clothes we now possess look like they’re meant to dress pumpkins rather than mini-people: Chinese babies must have layers upon layers of these belly wraps underneath. The second strap, thinner and longer than the first is somehow used for securing the cloth diaper on the baby without pins. I will likely use a marker to color it black, and tie it around the kid’s head like a ninja-style headband (it will be oh-so suave with his snoopy bodysuits).

Really, I can’t fathom how someone could reliably secure a rectangular piece of fabric to a wriggly little baby with little more than a cotton belt. I suspect that might play into the popularity of split pants: Chinese parents eventually just give up and say “screw the diaper.”

For anyone who doesn’t know what split pants are, run a Google image search on “split pants China,” and you’ll quickly get the idea. Basically, they’re pants with a hole over the kid’s naughty bits that allows him or her to squat down as soon as the urge to do nature’s business strikes. It’s a fine idea if you’re letting the little tyke run loose in the countryside, but in cities, it can get pretty nasty (think child-squatters on the sidewalk, in front of mall entrances, out of windows, in restaurants…).

The day Christian did his investigation, he discovered another reason for why the Chinese think split pants rock (I’d always assumed it was because diapers cost money), when he got into a diapering discussion with another of his coworkers. As the conversation was later relayed to me, this poor coworker of Christian’s was pretty concerned about our decision to utilize diapers and its effects on the welfare of our future son.

“But on a boy, diapers harm it,” was the gist of what the man said while pointing down to his crotch.

Now, in my mind, that would have been the opportunity to investigate further and find out exactly what kind of harm we will presumably be subjecting on our unborn child. I mean, are we talking a rash here? Curvature? Cancer? Various deformities? Dwarfism? What could possibly be so terrible that people feel compelled to let their children go around desecrating public areas?

As Christian wasn’t raised by wolves,  he skipped the question and answer portion of the conversation and instead tried to assure the man that he’d worn diapers as a babe and had managed to escape any genital horrors. The coworker still looked unconvinced, so Christian added for good measure, “Oh, and besides, we’ll be using special European diapers.”

“Ahhhh,” The man said in approval, “That is okay.”