BROWN: Raising baby (gadgetry required)

After attending a family baby shower for Princess Summer and soon-to-be-born Bella Marie over the weekend, I’m totally in awe of my super-human ability to raise three children without the benefit of modern gadgetry.

Did you know it’s positively barbaric to dry baby bottles without a drying rack? Seriously, it looks like a miniature dish rack with spindle-looking prongs you slip a baby bottle over. It allows the air to circulate inside the bottle.

Huh. I just sat the bottles down in the regular old dish rack to dry or, in Summer’s babyhood, I put them in the dishwasher.

And what modern-day mom would consider breast feeding without the aid of a Boppy? A Boppy is a horseshoe shaped pillow that goes around the mom’s tummy and elevates the nursing baby to breast height; comfy for mom and babe.

I used a bed pillow.

A Boppy is also useful in helping the baby learn to sit up. You arrange the Boppy on the floor and sit Baby down in the middle. The Boppy supports the baby’s back and prevents that nasty tipping over thing babies do when learning to sit up.

Again, bed pillows worked great back in the dark ages.

Also in vogue for the modern baby are his and her diaper bags; one for mom to carry and a more masculine version for dad.

Dad’s version even has an insulated carrier for the rack-dried baby bottles and, unlike the shoulder-strap version for mommy, dad’s diaper bag is a backpack.

Speaking of diapers, did you know they change colors now when they’re wet? Yep, no more finger-sweeps to see if a wet diaper is the cause for Baby’s crankiness.

And — get this — soiled diapers don’t go in a lidded trash can any more. They go in something called a Diaper Genie. Like magic, you feed the diaper through the top of the Genie device, and it ends up in the sanitary bottom part of the contraption looking like a diaper sausage.

I am not making this stuff up.

Bassinettes aren’t made of wicker anymore. They’re made of slatted wood just like a baby bed except smaller, and mom doesn’t have to reach over and gently jiggle the bassinette because it rocks on its own with the touch of a switch.

Baby bathtubs come with an inflatable bed at one end to assist parents in bathing newborns. Older babies are bathed in the other end where it’s deeper, and there isn’t the inflatable cushion.

The plastic tubs are designed to fit over the kitchen sink or the bathtub.

Please don’t tell anyone ... but I bathed all three of our kids in the kitchen sink. When they got too big for that, I bathed them in the laundry tub in the laundry room.

Only when they were big enough to not require too much assistance did they graduate to the full-sized bathtub, which I found to be a back-breaker even when I was younger.

My babies’ bottoms were smeared with either A & D Ointment or Desitin. Bella’s bottom will sport something called Butt Paste.

Now I ask you, where’s the glamour in that?

Baby swings don’t wind-up anymore. They run on batteries; as do baby monitors.

Bottles aren’t warmed in a pan of water on the stove or in the microwave. They’re warmed in a baby bottle crock pot.

And finally, remember those child-proof cabinet locks and doorknob do-dads? Well, guess what? The children figured them out, so the manufacturer had to enhance them.

The Big Guy and I are going to night-school starting next week to get our engineering degrees. We’re going to need them if we ever plan to open another cabinet or door.

Linda Brown is marketing director for The Ottawa Herald. E-mail her at lbrown@ottawaherald.com.