Oh, the wonderful places you’ll go! (if you can lug enough stuff

If you haven't already started a weight-training program, you'd better get cracking. Before you know it, you'll need the strength of Schwarzenegger, the balancing skills of the Flying Walendas and the patience of Job. All of these heroic skills and more will be required of you as a new parent.

And that's just to get your newborn as far as the family car.

Actually traveling somewhere once your infant is safely strapped in, wrapped up, binkied, diapered and fed, is never a given. For starters, you may need to hitch a trailer to the car in order to accommodate enough baby accoutrements. Enough, that is, to crush a pack mule, but only barely enough to get you around the block while prepared for every possible dire contingency.

Nonsense, you may say, 'I used to hitchhike to Mexico for a week with nothing more than the shirt on my back and the wind in my hair.' Well, maybe. But you can kiss those carefree days of yore goodbye, my friend. You're a parent now, and nothing will ever be that easy again. And carefree? Nevermore.

Just getting to the store to buy a can of Mexican chilies will take more organizational skills and logistical planning than the average space shuttle launch. Once all the baby gear is inventoried, checked, packed and loaded, and the family expedition is ready for final countdown and liftoff, it'll probably be time to stop everything and change diapers again.

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Which will probably look like a pretty attractive advantage at this point. Saves on embarrassment. There's a reason new parents tend to quickly lose touch with their childless and single friends. It's not so much that they don't have enough in common any longer; it's just that it's too exhausting to launch the Lewis & Clark Expedition every time you want to step out the door. Come to think of it, it was probably the parent of a newborn who invented the VCR.

Fortunately, there are babysitters, but even this welcome relief comes with a price. If you go this route, your wife will almost certainly fret and worry and have trouble relaxing-and that'll be before you leave the house. Never mind that you've been fortunate enough to coerce one of your own mothers to do the job. Your spouse will undoubtedly worry that she's somehow not quite qualified. After all, how could she POSSIBLY know enough about caring properly for a helpless little baby?

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