If you’ve ever raised a baby, you know how the presence of an infant can transform your home into something like Arkham Asylum. It’s just constant chaos, noise, paranoia and catatonia, and I haven’t even mentioned the food and feces that litter the walls, floor and your clothes. But hey, it’s all worth it once they grow up to be ungrateful money grubbers who show you no respect!

Dealing with a baby is hard. Dealing with a crying, frantic, fussy baby is hell on earth. And even just a few weeks in, I’ve learned a few tricks for making life with a baby just a little more tolerable.

How to Take Care of a Fussy Baby

• Trick #1 – Feed the baby. Seriously. They are hungry ALL THE TIME and they’re get super pissed if you don’t feed them. It’s tremendously annoying. So get some boob in his mouth STAT.
• Trick #2 – Burp the baby. Stupid idiots can’t even burp themselves. And boy do they have gas!
• Trick #3 – Wipe the baby’s ass. Constantly. Unlike your old college roommate, babies don’t enjoy stewing in their own shit. So you’ll need to do this a lot, and you’ll occasionally be urinated on for your trouble. But look at the bright side: in 13 years he’ll wipe himself. Sure, in between bouts of talking back to you and your second wife, but at least you don’t have to literally take his shit anymore. Only figuratively. 
• Trick #4 – Shove something in the baby’s mouth. And I don’t mean a thermometer – that goes in his ass. I’m talking about a pacifier or your finger or a cigarette or a plastic bag. Something that will shut him up so you and your neighbors can’t finally get some sleep.

This is helpful stuff, right? But by far the most effective trick I can teach you is this one:

• Trick #5 – SWADDLE HIS ASS.

Swaddling is universally accepted as panacea for a cranky baby. But it’s not as simple as wrapping your child in a blanket, oh no. First of all, “wrapping” is a euphemism for binding him so tightly that he can’t move an inch, and second of all, swaddling entails a lot more than just the blanket technique – there’s a whole system!

Observe:

• First, “wrap” the baby in a blanket so tightly that he can’t move, can hardly breathe and will never escape.
• Then pick the baby up and throw him in the river place him on his side.
• Next, jiggle the baby; not so much that you turn his brain to mush like a British au pair, but just enough that he thinks he’s once again encased in the jello-like substance that was your wife’s body during pregnancy.
• Now apologize to your wife for referring to her body as a “jello-like substance.”
• And finally, get as close to your baby’s ear as you can and tell him that no matter what he does, you’ll always be better than him and simulate white noise by loudly making “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” sounds.

There. Now you’ve either got yourself a calm, sleeping baby or you’ve engineered a demented, mumbling psychopath who wants you dead at all costs. Well done!

Really – the severity of the swaddle technique is such that when I design the world’s first Baby Straight Jacket, I won’t even be sent to jail. Instead I’ll be praised by parents everywhere for taking the hassle out of calming a baby while simultaneously removing the tiresome euphemisms from the process.

Let’s be honest: Behavior-wise, babies aren’t all that different than lunatics, so let’s cut to the chase and start treating them the same way. (Basically, sometimes I want to taze my son.)