The first day I was a father, everything was easy. I got to stare at the baby while the nurses took care of her. If I had a question, the nurse had the answer.

When we got home, it wasn’t horribly difficult to take care of the baby. I was a champ when it came to changing diapers and holding the baby. But when I had a question, there was no nurse around to provide an answer. So I turned to Google.

Before I explain a bit of modern obviousness, first let me explain the mindset of a new parent.

For nearly the entire pregnancy, parents are given information on how to deal with being pregnant and how to get through the birth. Very few details are given on how to care for a child for the next 18 months (let alone the next 18 years).

So when the baby does arrive and nurses go through checklists of information to tell parents before they leave the hospital, they dump details on you by the truckload. (I’m not saying that’s a problem. It’s just a happenstance.) By the time you leave the hospital, you’re lucky to remember half of it. And the details you do remember seem contradictory.

For example, we were told twice that we should contact the pediatrician if the baby was feeling too warm…or too cold…or if she was fussy…or if she was often sleepy. I started to wonder if there would ever be a case where we wouldn’t need to contact the pediatrician.

In the baby’s first week, I googled questions probably fifty times. Is the baby pooping too little? Is the baby pooping too much? Et cetera, et cetera.

So no, you probably don’t need to be surprised that Google is a great search tool to help anyone find the answer to almost anything. But it’s worth noting that it has kept me sane for the last month.