My Expanding Baby Vocabulary

A baby's vocabulary is limited, but mine has done nothing but expand since the moment Edith entered the world -- and before.

Of course, some of those words were already a part of my vocabulary; I just use them much more, and in more creative ways. For example: poop. I've never used that word as much as I have in the last four months. And not only poop, but innumerable variations. I know I've said poopy and poopster, and Miss Poops-a-lot sounds like something I've said, too.

Where my vocabulary has expanded the most is in the abbreviations department. Shortly after I found out I was pregnant, I started lurking around some online pregnancy boards. (For "30 Rock" fans: the scenes in one of the last episodes when Liz visits some baby boards aren't too far off the mark.) Abbreviations sometimes seem to take up half the posts, and I'm not just talking about your typical lol's and tmi's.

Here's a mini dictionary:

• bf: breastfeeding 
• bm: breast milk (but usually much funnier if you accidentally replace it in your head with bowel movement)
• cio: cry it out, always a hot topic
• dd: dear daughter
• dh: dear husband, only sometimes used sarcastically
• ds: dear son
• ebf: exclusively breastfeeding
• ftm: first-time mom
• lo: little one
• mil, fil, sil, bil: mother-, father-, sister-, brother-in-law
• pp: postpartum
• sahm: stay-at-home mom
• so: significant other
• sttn: sleeping through the night
• tia: thanks in advance

While the last on the list certainly isn't exclusively related to babies, it's the one that took me the longest to figure out. As I saw more and more posts ending with TIA, I thought it was uncanny that so many women on the site were named Tia. Whoops.