babydom

From baby +‎ -dom.

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: bā'bēdəm, IPA^(key): /ˈbeɪbidəm/

babydom (usually uncountable, plural babydoms)

1. The stage of life when a child is considered a baby.
   • 2012, Molly Harper -, Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors:

     Then again, Mama thought I would be marrying Zeb— best friend since babydom—someday, which showed how much she knew.

   • 2013, Parenting Magazine Editors, Parenting Guide to Your Toddler:

     The 1-year mark is a major milestone, the official transition between babydom and toddlerhood.

   • 2014, Sandra Tsing Loh, The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones:

     There is this time during babydom that the mother herself can lie about like a baby, like a beached whale, having birthed her bloody spawn, and the mother can just hover in those sparkling dust motes of afternoon sun and be cradled and lifted and suspende in the golden light.

2. The world or realm of babies.
   • 1856, The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil - Volume 8, page 158:

     I wish I could read their mothers a lecture, which would ring in their ears until there was a complete reform in babydom.

   • 1875, The Leisure Hour Monthly Library - Volume 24, page 168:

     Babydom is a world separate from ours, and comparatively few amongst us have power to understand baby language, to sympathise with baby thought, and still less to compose works or use language with sufficient merit to meet the approval of baby censorship.

   • 1894, The Week - Volume 12, page 613:

     Another idea, that of converting the Tuileries garden into a centennial reproduction of all the babydoms during that period, with specimens of their toys, costumes, pictures, amusements, etc., their mammas and the nurses — that is ranked as "puerile."

   • 2011, Lenard R. Roach, Run/Stop-Restore, page 27:

     When the child spots your Commodore machine sitting on the computer stand, he then decides that it's time to step out into new horizons never reached before in babydom.