Just another reason not to give unsolicited advice.

A few days ago, I attended a baby shower. Along with the baby food guessing games, diapering races and other shenanigans, all of the attendees were asked to write a piece of advice on a notecard that she could put in her baby book.

The mother-to-be has told me numerous times about how nervous she is about having a boy -- she comes from a family of 5 girls and has no experience with infant boys. So coming into my own Mommyhood ignorant of the workings of baby boys, I thought long and hard about what I should write. I knew it should be boy specific. But what piece of advice, that perhaps I'd received late, was the most helpful? It only took a moment to realize what it should be. The single most important piece of advice that I knew of for newborn boys.

Always make sure that the penis is pointing down.

Because, you know, this is something that isn't often written in the books or mentioned right away by others. I think for those experienced with baby boys, this just seems like a total "duh," but it took me weeks to figure out why my son's diapers kept leaking the way that they did. I was just too sleep deprived to consider the physics of the matter. And when you factor in erections -- as much as you may not even want to even fathom those occurrences, they happen all too often -- it becomes even more important to make sure that the penis is pointed into the most absorbent part of the diaper.

So that's what I wrote. "When changing diapers, always make sure the penis is pointing down."

Once everyone had written their advice, the hostess collected them and handed them to the mother-to-be to read aloud. She read all of them aloud except mine. I'll be honest that I was so knee-deep in chocolate-y cake and laughing at other advice at that point that I don't think I noticed.

But as I got up to leave later, the hostess pulled me aside to tell me that she removed my advice card from the pile. This was a baby shower and she didn't understand why I would write such a thing. After all, there was really no need to be vulgar. I was taken aback. I mean, when did the word penis become a dirty word? I was offered what I thought was an important, non-sarcastic piece of advice about being a first time Mom to a boy. Advice that would help a Mom avoid being sprayed and even more laundry. But somehow I was being inappropriate. I started to try to defend myself, to explain why I wrote that particular item but somehow I figured it would do more harm than good at that point.

It's days like those that I really, really wonder if I'll ever find a place in this weird world.