Coming back from the Feb. 28 snow day, sophomore Kelsey Guthrie was quick to part ways with Taylor, her infant daughter.

Even though Guthrie had been waiting since last semester to have a chance at taking care of Taylor, a couple days was enough to change her mind.

Frankly, teacher of human growth and development Kristi Henderson was used to it. Worn out and done: That was how most students were after taking care of a Baby Think It Over — a computer baby — over the weekend.

“Usually when they come in on Monday mornings, they are dying to get rid of it, saying, ‘Cut this thing off of me. I’m done. I don’t want it anymore,’ ” Henderson said.

Taking care of the Baby Think It Over simulator is part of the curriculum for the human growth and development class and what convinced Guthrie to take the class.

“The purpose is for them to have a simulative experience of what it’s like to care for a child on their own,” Henderson said.

Naturally, the process began with pregnancy.

Students had to wear a 25-pound water-filled empathy belly around their waists for a day that let them experience what a pregnant woman feels on any given day of her third trimester.

“The fake pregnancy was pretty much to see how it felt to walk around with that much extra weight and see what people’s reactions were to it,” Guthrie said. “I gained 30 pounds in two minutes. It was really heavy. I didn’t wear it all day.”

It’s an exhausting task, Henderson said.

“They get overheated, tired, cranky, difficult to go to the bathroom — all the enjoyable things you have to do when you are really pregnant.”

The empathy belly’s design included two balls that press against the lungs, causing pain, shortness of breath and even bruises in some.

For senior Aleigha Green, with a petite frame of 4-foot, 10 inches, the 25 pounds of added weight made for a particularly difficult workout in her aerobics class.

“My legs went numb and my back hurt,” Green said. “It really felt like I was pregnant.”
Green also noted a peculiar side-effect of the empathy belly.

“I ate a lot,” Green said. “I know I wasn’t really pregnant but I did — I ate a lot of food.”

After trying a day with the empathy belly, students took turns taking home a Baby Think It Over for a weekend.

Henderson programmed the baby simulator to act like a real baby. It needed to be fed, burped, changed and rocked — even at 3 a.m.

“The first night it woke me up three times,” senior Laura Oyler said. She also took home a baby during the snow day break.

“I had to feed it each time, and it takes 20 minutes to feed it, so that was the worst part,” she said.

The computer baby recorded how students treated the baby and gave a score on how well they did. The baby even registered little head bobbles.

“It’s really sensitive, and I didn’t know that until I took it back, and it said the neck moved a lot,” Guthrie said. “That deducted a few points now and again.”

And the fake baby reacted to the students like a real baby.

When Guthrie accidentally fell up the stairs and hit the baby’s soft spot, the baby registered the trauma and did what a real baby would.

It cried for 14 minutes.

“They are pretty accurate in how they react,” Henderson said. “The more trauma, the more crying. But 14 minutes is a long time to have to listen to it.”

It would be hard to listen to a real baby, but students found it more annoying to tend to a plastic doll they don’t love.

“I’d rather take care of a real baby,” Guthrie said. “It cried like a real baby. It acted like a real baby. It needed to be fed and burped like a real baby — yeah it did — but it doesn’t sit there and make cute faces at you and make baby noises. It just cries, eats, poops and sleeps.”

The only advantage a Baby Think It Over has over a real baby is that, “You can give it back. That’s about it,” Guthrie said.

And the students were more than ready to hand in the baby after two days and couldn’t help but warn other expectant students waiting for their chance to take the baby home.

“I’d be like, ‘Child, that thang is going to wear you out,’” Green said. “They’d be like, ‘They [the babies] are so cute,’ but I’d be like, ‘They are cute right now, but wait ’til you take it home.’ That’s what I say.”

As the name suggests, most who experience a weekend with the baby simulator rethink and become adamant against pregnancy any time soon.

“I can barely take care of myself. Trying to take care of a child and me? I cannot do that,” Green said. “I’d have to get a job, I’d have to get a place to stay, all that. It’s too much right now. I have to finish high school.”

The difficulty of the experience discourages teenage pregnancy, Henderson said.

“I just kind of wish that everybody could have this experience because they’d realize how big of a hassle it is to have a kid as a teenager,” Guthrie said. “It would really mess up your social life, and it’d just mess up everything honestly.”