Hello!
I've read Babble since my wife was about 5 months pregnant but I've never been a big poster. Now with a three week old daughter, I figured I'd share with you some thoughts now that I've had a bit of a chance to reflect.
This is a rather long, hopefully not too rambling post.
Some of the opinions, thoughts, and expressions in this post may
disturb you slightly. It's filled with jokes about baby shaking, and a rather large dose of profanity. If you're weak of stomach or have an idealized
view of babyhood you may get uncomfortable.
I've decided to be rather frank in my discussion of this, quite simply
because I think there are those of you that will benefit from my honest
perspective. Some of you don't have, and never plan on having children.
Some of you have children and are veteran parents that have much to
teach me. Others still are mere weeks, days or months away from being
where I am now, typing softly on a keyboard at 5 am, with a
just barely
sleeping baby resting on your lap, twitching your legs despite the
muscle fatigue for fear that any disturbance in your rhythmic movements
will wake your new overlord and master.
To the first and last
groups, I need to begin by telling you this, as it is a fundamental
understanding you need to have. Not only for your own futures, dealing
with other human beings, but also appreciating what your parents went
through with you.
Essential Truth #1- Babies Destroy Man. Bill
Cosby has an oft-celebrated comedy routine called "Fatherhood", wherein
he describes how two intellectuals holding PhDs, himself and his wife,
have a baby, and are reduced to "oggie-woogie baby need a widdew poopy
change" style speech. This, while true in a fashion, is not an accurate
view of child rearing. Rather, the truth is a bit darker than this, and
doesn’t make for quite the mass-appeal comedic routine.
You
see, a baby knows no mercy. No remorse. No logic, reason, kindness,
compassion, or even basic expression of most human emotions. At first,
it’s single, solitary way of expressing anything other than complete
satisfaction is an ear-piercing shriek several decibels over that of a
lawn mower, usually directly at your face. Imagine, if you will,
someone that you have never met before, screaming in your damn face for
over four hours straight, at the top of their lungs. Never ceasing,
barely even breaking to draw in breath for another banshee-like wail.
This is the most accurate description I can give you of the first two
days of the second week of a baby’s life.
The first week is
much simpler, of course. As a baby is born it’s “turned off” more or
less, and that first week is time for it to charge its batteries and
prepare to soften concrete, bend support beams in skyscrapers, and
destroy most of Neo-Tokyo (I made an anime joke there) with its
unhappiness about the fact that it has, again, shit all over itself.
All
of this, in and of itself, wouldn’t be that big of a deal (unless you
live in Neo-Tokyo) if it weren’t for one stupid, horrible fact. It’s
your baby.
Babies,
by design (evolution motherfuckers, hell yeah), have this cry that sets
off a specific trigger in their parents. Sure, other people hate the
sound of a baby’s cry too. It is, after all a loud, near ceaseless,
high pitched sound that usually you can’t quite get away from. But to
the parents of that baby, it’s something special. A gift, if you will,
from Mother Nature is that a baby’s cry is specifically designed to set
its parent’s teeth on edge, and cause them grief. You see, in nature,
it would be a hint that the mother needs to remember to pick up its
young and maybe put some food in its horrible little mouth so the other
ape-people can get some fucking rest.
However, the wonders of
modern society such as work, school, and my shiny new XBOX 360 mean
that occasionally you want to put this adorable little lump of flesh
down for a few seconds of non-back breaking peace. In America, and most
westernized countries we’re supposed to be able to do this
occasionally. When most people even think of babies, their third
thought (after poop, after screaming) is usually one of an adorable
little tiny human, tucked safely into a crib, snoozing away. For some
newborns, this is easily the case, and those are lucky parents indeed.
For most real parents however, babies, in their first three months, who
notice that they’re alone in a crib, flailing and unmoving, flat on
their backs and unable to change it, freak right the fuck out. Which of
course cues the parental freak-out, and the circle of life continues
(If you’ve ever seen The Fifth Element, and, like me, practically
memorized Zorg’s speech about destruction causing chaos, you know
exactly the kind of chain reaction I mean.). The screaming begins, and
the parental checklist is brought out.
This checklist is often as follows;
“Is
she hungry? Did she poop? Did she pee? Is she uncomfortable? Did I
break her? Is this the time when we’re just supposed to let her cry?
Holy shit what if I did break her? Why won’t she shut up? Did you try
feeding her? What? I can’t hear you over the Jet Engine in my ear.
Screw you I was just trying to help. I know but I just don’t know
what’s wrong! Jesus should we go to the emergency room? Yeah I guess
so. Get the Diaper bag just in case. Oh God in Heaven I swear I will go
to church every single Sunday for the rest of my life if only you make
her be okay. Oh she just burped, and she’s just staring at us like
we’re idiots now. Hey God you know I might miss a Sunday or two, that’s
okay right?”
It is impossible for any human being to take
proper care of a baby, and not be reduced to a complete moron at at
least one point in the process. Four nights ago, my daughter was screaming at
the top of her lungs, and my wife needed a break. I decided to be
useful while I was pacing about with the baby in a sling, and got ready
to go to the grocery store. I started the car, to warm it up, and
because I didn’t want any strange homeless people stealing my child
(that I didn’t
want someone to take her at that point is the
truest sign of insanity), I locked my drivers side door. From there, I
moved around to the rear passenger side door, and after about 20
minutes managed to get my screaming heap of fleshling genetic code
strapped into the car seat. Again, not wanting anyone to walk off with
my baby, I locked this door. I then went back around to get in the
front seat to drive off to the store and be productive, only to realize
that my screaming, cold, terrified infant baby girl was locked in my
car, safe from homeless man and parent alike. My wife, who I’d “given a
break” staggered half naked to the back door with the keys, and was,
thank the good Lord, too out of it to realize what her idiot husband
had done.
This is the kind of thing that happens to parents.
Perfectly reasonable people are reduced to this sort of thing on an
almost daily basis. You need to also bear in mind that all of this
comes right along with all the regular, everyday things like trying to
do laundry (which I’ve never been good at to begin with), the dishes,
and God-forbid, some actual homework.
But it’s all worth it when she’s not crying because you love her, right?
Essential Truth #2 – You do not love your baby.When
you first met the love of your life, it was very likely not obvious.
Even if you really, really liked that person, actually saying “I love
you” probably took at least a few more jello shots. Over time, you got
to know them. Their habits, their likes, their dislikes, the fact that
she leaves dishes all over the house, and all of these different
aspects collect until you know a person well enough to love them.
You don’t know your baby. Partially because they are new, and partially because they have little to no personality
to know.
Sorry,
all of those nifty little greeting cards and TV movies are horribly
fucking wrong. I need to reiterate. You do not love your newborn baby.
You don’t, for large swaths of time, even
like your newborn
baby. At this point, your newborn baby represents a gigantic
inconvenience to your life, and everything you ever want to do. I don’t
mean fancy things like “learn to paint”. I mean basic things, like, you
know, eating.
Now, you know you
should love your
newborn baby, because that’s what all those greeting card TV specials
and cheeky American comedies with that dry witted British guy have told
you. Especially at those times when she’s in what’s called the
“quiet-alert” period. This is when they are staring around at the
world, wide eyed and wonderful, almost the ideal baby.
A new
parent knows differently however. The baby being awake is A Bad Thing.
This “quiet-alert” stage is best thought of as this;
You
see, the reason you don’t get a feeling of peace or serenity from this
picture is because you know what’s fucking coming. Much like someone
who winces when he looks at a closed fist after having been punched in
the face several times, you can associate an image with a result. You
see, even though you’ve been reduced to a useless idiot, you still have
the basic animal pain instinct.
I don’t watch a lot of
television, but I have friends who do. They’ve told me that recently
here in Denver, the gub’mint has been stepping up the Public Service
Announcements discouraging baby shaking. Up until about two weeks ago,
both my wife and I saw the entire thing as one huge tragedy. “Who the
hell would shake a baby?” we’d say to each other, a look of shock and
vague amusement at the misfortune of those weaker of wills than
ourselves (don’t get all high and mighty with me here People, you have
the same wicked joys sometimes, we all do.).
Three AM, on a
Wednesday night, having someone Who You Do Not Love scream in your face
for four hours is incentive to shake a fucking baby. (Uncomfortable
moment coming) You start to come up with plans to rent a paint shaking
machine from Home Depot, just to make sure the job is done right.
(Uncomfortable moment over.)
This is where society comes in to
save the life of your child, and indeed, has likely actually saved the
human race from complete extinction due to baby shaking. Shaking your
baby gets you in trouble. It’s honestly not so much that you don’t
want to end this horrible, teeth grating, nails-on-a-blackboard-times-one-fucking-m
illion
sound, any way humanly possible, from bags to hammers to the lathe in
the metal shop of the nearest high school. It’s that you know you’re
going to be in a heap of trouble the second you do. That’s right buddy.
Likely a good portion of the reason that your mother didn’t kill you
when you were young was a good ol’ helping of “what would the neighbors
think?”. Think about that next time you’re ticked off at lawmakers.
Speaking of your Mother (see what I did there?), brings us to my next point. Luckily for you, it’s a little more upbeat.
Essential Truth #3 – Everyone has done this.In
the afternoons, when I’m at my most lucid, I will think about my
child’s future. This is a vastly humbling experience. Not in so much
that I’m worried about college, or her potential suitors, but more
that I’m cleaning the fecal matter out of her vagina, behind which lay
her ovaries. Six months ago (approximately) my daughter got eggs in those tiny
ovaries. That means that any potential grandchildren I may have are
halfway there already.
Thinking about potential grandchildren
leads me to think of my daughter eventually having sex, which of
course, as a modern parent, leads me to the terrifying thought of
teenage sex and pregnancy. I think of myself as a teenager, and my
attitude, how cocky I was and how much I mouthed off to my own mother.
And now, I’m thinking, how can anyone be so full of themselves with
someone who has cleaned shit off of their genitals?
Everyone you
see. Every last, single human entity on the face of this planet (except
possibly test tube babies but they aren’t common enough to worry
about…yet.), has been here. Whether their mothers or fathers did a very
good job of it or not is all up to life, the universe, and everything.
The fundamental truth still lies there, however. Everyone you meet has
shit on their own genitals at one point in time. Everyone you meet,
everyone you shake hands with, have sex with, hate, love, vote for,
vote against, shoot, rape, kill, convict, execute, admire, lust after,
model yourself after, or clean up after, has been grown in the uterus
of a woman. Either thrust violently, three months too early, through a
tube, one to four centimeters smaller than their head, or had that
woman’s abdominal wall sliced open, organs moved aside and been drawn
out by the cold rubber gloves of someone they may never meet again.
Every, last, single person.
Think of this as you speak to others.
Essential Truth #4 – There is Shit They do not tell you.About
three days after my daughter was born (or was it four? They all blend
together), I was acting like a good dad, and changing yet another
diaper. I opened this coffin for feces expecting the usual smorgasbord
of sights, smells, and even occasionally sound, and I wasn’t
disappointed to find a veritable battlefield of mustard yellow poop
speckled with bits of white here and there (milk curds from her
mother!). However, this time, my daughter had given me a very special
surprise. Nestled there among the rolling hills of amber was about an
eyedropper of the most terrifying fluid to a new parent. Blood.
When
a baby is in the uterus, it is flooded day in and day out with hormones
from its mother. This causes it’s genitals to become engorged, and even
causes the breasts to plump up and form small breast buds. We were
informed of this by our very helpful nurses and told that this swelling
should go down in just a few days. Easing the worries of a new dad,
they also told me that there might be a bit of milky discharge due to
these hormones and that it was nothing to worry about. What they did
not mention to her father, was that as these hormones go down in baby
girls, it actually triggers the baby’s very first (and last for about a
decade or so) period. What not telling a father that blood will be
leaking from his daughters vagina will do, is cause some poor fucker a
heart attack and won’t they just feel awful
then? Jerks.
Essential Truth #5 – A pacifier is not an Off Button.From
nearly the moment that my baby girl was born, she could be nearly instantly
calmed by the insertion of her mother’s or my pinky finger in her
mouth. While this proved to be a very useful aid in Not Killing Our
Baby, after a while we realized that having your finger plugged into
the baby at all hours impeded important tasks such as typing, diaper
changing, showering (ourselves), sleeping and playing Puzzle Fighter HD
online on XBOX Live Arcade. (Username : Fishdinner27 )
In light
of this, we decided to maybe give pacifiers a try. While we’d been
warned that occasionally babies didn’t have a strong enough sucking
reflex right off, we had not been warned that the insertion of the
pacifier into the mouth of the baby would cause instant disgust on the
face of the baby, followed by an intensification of aforementioned
Neo-Tokyo destroying screams. At this point, Godzilla actually knocked
on our window and asked us very politely if there was anything we could
do to quiet her down, as he had a busy day at the office tomorrow.
Back
to the finger. We are now convinced that our baby overlord is only
satisfied by the taste of parental suffering and desperation.
At least we know that she’s our baby.
Essential Truth #6 – Babies are born too early.Human
babies are born about a trimester earlier than they should be. Why is
this? Humans have huge brains. Most animals can walk, talk, and run the
fuck away from scary shit a few minutes to a few days after they’re
born. However, they don’t really tend to do a whole lot else for the
rest of their lives. There was a time when that was the case for human
beings also. As they evolved though, humans’ heads got bigger and
bigger to fit bigger and bigger brains. Eventually this got to the
point where they killed mothers more often than not in childbirth. So,
somewhere along the line, something caused the human body to get smart
and push the ejection seat button about two to three weeks after that
head has gotten to the “
just too big for your actual vagina” point. What this means is that the babies human beings give birth to are very, very stupid.
Human
babies have, as I’d mentioned before, ONE method of real communication.
They retain this single ability for a very long time, in animal terms.
They cannot walk, they cannot talk, and they cannot run the fuck away
from scary shit for about the average full lifespan of a Red Breasted
Robin. This means that human babies need a lot more attention, a lot
more saving, and a lot more fucking headaches than just about any other
animal baby. This also means that the cherished, beautiful, happy baby
you’ve dreamed of having (or dreamed of others having, or expected
others to have, or whatever) is a FUCKING LIE. A human baby is more or
less useless. A human baby, in its first three months of life is more
or less still a fetus. One you can touch and hold and have to clean the
poop off of, sure, but otherwise still a fetus. Any sort of joy that
you may have expected playing adorable little games with your baby will
have to wait, because until that three month mark, she will likely do
little other than eat, sleep, poop, or terrify the living hell out of
you. Sometimes they combine all of these, but even still, any
interaction you have with them is purely out-of-context in what passes
for their little minds.
For you new or soon to be parents though, I have managed to compile a list of things a newborn baby
is useful for, and included it in this document for your use.
1. Paperweight (only when swaddled tightly).
2. Weight.
3. Counterweight for grocery bags.
4. Relationship fight starter.
5. Counter to caffeine.
6. Anti-Theft Alarm (only works at night).
7.
Hole that you throw money into to watch it vanish into the blackness
never to be seen again and oh God I’m so poor how will I ever afford to
feed this thing?
8. Neurosis inducer.
9. Restaurant Meal Buying Grandparents attractor.
10. Free pass to be a jerk to just about anyone (“man I’m sorry I yelled at you, my daughter was just born three weeks ago.”)
11. Hot chick attractor.
12. Vomit squirt gun.
13. Poop squirt gun.
14. Pee squirt gun.
15. Wife’s breasts maker-bigger-er.
I’ve
now spent about two hours bouncing my baby girl on my lap, and it’s
getting time for her to eat. I can tell because she’s smacking her
lips, even as she sleeps, no doubt dreaming that her servants will
bring her more food, and more of the sweet suffering she so desires.
And
just so you know the face of the monster I am battling, I’ve included a
picture below of the monster as she’s being burped after having been topped off
with poop-fuel.
Okay, so maybe I do love her.
But just a little.
