What a sucker!

When I was pregnant, I asked mammas around here if there was anything I absolutely had to have for the baby and they all told me the same thing: Narhinel. Apparently it is a product that is only recently available in Italy and before you had to go to Switzerland to get it. When I asked what it was, I was told it was a "nasal aspirator." Huh? Basically because babies can't blow their own noses, when they get congested, you've got to do the dirty work. Narhinel is a long tube with disposable nozzle tips that you put in the babies nostrils to "suck" all of the icky stuff out (just for the record, the icky stuff doesn't go into your mouth - there's a stopper thingie that blocks that from happening). I had no idea how American babies got their nostrils clean but I figured that this "nasal aspirator" thing was some innovative European product. Lately, I've been using it a ton as Dylan has had a cold and a stuffed up nose.

Just on a whim, today I Googled "nasal aspirator" to see if anything would come up and, duh, it does exist in the U.S. but it's either electric or battery-powered, of course! And here I thought I was on the cutting edge. So up until a couple of years ago, Italian mammas had to make a run for the border just to get their hands on this stupid overpriced plastic tube while American mammas were happily choosing from a wide selection of electric nasal aspirators at their local Target. Figures...