Paranoid parents unite!

Don't pity us, but we're increasingly irked by how two well-adjusted, mature professionals are verging on becoming neurotics. It's all Sonny's fault, of course. One day, we're worrying that his complexion is distinctly yellow, and that jaundice may have him in its vise. Then he turns red-hued on us - and we're berating ourselves for not having more assiduously kept his skin from excessive sunlight.

And so it goes. He's crying too much (and what if it's not just hunger?). Until he emits not a peep for hours on end, and mightn't that be a bad sign too? He's not sleeping enough. Or else too much. He's drinking too much breast milk, or else too little. We've even dragged other folks into our little world of paranoia. For a spell, people seem to be underlining Sonny's supposed cuteness a tad too much: Do they secretly think he's pedestrian as babies go? Then the next cohort of gawkers are mum on the subject, and we feel deflated over that.

On anything even remotely medical, we've been consulting our little library of parenting books and making Internet sweeps. Know what? This either reinforces the fear, or else we learn that there is probably nothing to worry about... which isn't definitive enough either for hypochondriacs-by-proxy. Not, however, that we're beating the door down at the local medico, since our chronic worrying is balanced by a obstinate refusal to entirely succumb. We're caught, in short, between two opposed, and very draining, psychological forces.

Apparently, it's just something called First-time Parents Syndrome. Whatever. So long as we don't start seeing monsters under our own beds as well...