You know that moment when you've finally delivered your newborn, when the glaring fluorescent lights and OB massaging the placenta out of your weary body seem to fade away and you have that first glorious parental epiphany that your screaming, slippery child is the most beautiful baby on the planet? Just so you know, you can start cashing in on that pretty face right away.
As long as your baby's not born prematurely, gets a work permit and note from the doctor, they are free to appear on stage or set or silver screen almost immediately. This will give you minutes to forecast how your acting prodigy will dazzle the world with their spit-up and cradle cap and eventually make you their high-earning manager.
If you're living in California, your barely-born child can begin working in the movies when they are 15 days old. If you can't possibly wait that long, move to Wyoming, West Virginia, New Mexico or another state where baby stardom begins as soon as the umbilical cord is cut (there's a funny director with a clapboard joke there somewhere that I haven't quite formulated yet, but you get the...ummm, picture). Apparently at this age when newborns startle whenever their parent inhales, they are perfectly capable of handling lights, makeup and the other "stress of filmmaking." Since babies in movies don't generally have lines, I suppose that stress is limited to being smeared with birthing-gunk replicators like grape jelly (no strawberry! no K-Y! remember allergies!), collecting on your meager day rate and dealing with your stage mother who is still applying ice packs and sitting on a blow-up donut. Who's complaining? It's a hell of a lot better than hanging out in a co-sleeper and snuggling up to grandma all day, right?
