The Column: Raising kids isn't what it used to be

Sometimes feel out of step with life?

Past the age when it makes sense to consider vampire facials, shark-diving excursions or mosh pit frolics?

You have company.

For fun, let’s review the modern-day miscellany noted above.

Vampire facial? Yes, it is a thing. Blood is drawn from the arm, platelets mixed with a filler and the compound injected or applied directly to eliminate wrinkles and restore a healthy blush. Among those who’ve tried it: Kim Kardashian. So, as they say, moving right along …

Shark-diving. This is an idea you may have felt moved to contemplate aloud when stuck at a party where some showoff was recalling his latest bungee jump in Kenya or heli-skiing adventure in the Alps.

"Really?" you might have said. "I was just thinking about a trip to the Neptune Islands off South Australia, where I would climb into a cage, go below and wait for a great white shark to visit within a few inches of my face." You remember the night. On the way home, your wife couldn’t stop laughing and saying, "You?"

Finally, we turn to the mosh pit, not new, of course, but still around and beckoning fans of heavy-metal music to body-slam one another while the band plays on. Do not expect Medicare to pay for hip replacement surgery if things go poorly.

What has set me off this time? My children often inquire along the same lines.

"Wow, Dad was really wound up again, wasn’t he?"

"Doesn’t take much."

"Just a mention of pineapple pizza."

"Or old guys in Speedo bathing suits."

"Parking prices at Citi Field."

"Red-light cameras."

"Golf."

For the easily aggrieved, the list is long and regularly updated.

A late contender is something called the Snoo Smart Sleeper Bassinet.

This is a sort of snazzy, artificial-intelligence crib that promises to relieve parents of what once came with the job title: sleep deprivation and imminent nervous collapse.

Developed by pediatrician Harvey Karp, author of "The Happiest Baby on the Block," Snoo "imitates" the womb, "boosts sleep with gentle rocking and soothing" and "often calms upsets in under a minute," according to Happiest Baby’s website.

The device — purchase for $1,495; rent for $149 a month — is a terrifically big deal in upscale parenting circles. A story in the style section of The Washington Post said Snoo inspires passion "bordering on religious devotion."

Wow, huh? "Religious devotion."

Right now I am thinking about a little apartment above a barn in Putnam County where we lived when I was a bureau reporter for an upstate newspaper.

It is, maybe, 3 in the morning.

My wife and I are bumping, bleary-eyed, into each other trying to soothe the first of our four children, a lovely little fellow with powerful lungs, Olympic stamina and an appetite so hearty that I half expected him to call out, "set ’em up, again" after draining the last drop of formula.

Around and around we walk in hopes that mileage, alone, will send our recent arrival to blessed, babykins oblivion for just an hour or two so that we can grab some sleep and quit staggering through the hallway like woozy heavyweights in the 15th round.

"Take him for a minute. I’ll warm the bottle."

"No, I’ll do it," says my wife. "Last time you got lost looking for the kitchen."

We survived — most parents do — and drowsily met the wee-hour demands of No. 1 and, later, the equally insistent 2, 3 and 4.

Had there been a Snoo and we, the wherewithal — slim chance on what in those days was the hilarious pay of a newspaper reporter — would we have signed up? Would we have settled our little blanketed bundles into the comfy, space-capsule confines of Dr. Karp’s contraption and dozed — ah! — as blissfully as the babies?

Truthfully, who knows?

But for sure, I look back happily on all those early morning hours of lost sleep and post-midnight marathons, and my wife’s consoling touch on the shoulder and mine on hers, and the precious weight of a squirmy little somebody just starting life and impatient for what comes next.

Really, I’m not against all the amazing, whiz-bang stuff available now. You don’t want to get stuck in the past or bypass the present. A bassinet that rocks, soothes and calms? Incredible, all right.

Three cheers for modernity.

What’ll they think of next — disposable diapers?