Babyhood (9780062098788) Read online

“Um, Mom, that’s not how he likes to be held . . . We always support his neck . . . like this . . .”

  “Always?”

  “Well, since yesterday.”

  Boy, nothing endears you to your parents more than telling them how to deal with babies.

  “Do you remember me dropping you a lot when you were a baby?”

  “Um, no, not really, but . . .”

  “Did your father drop you a lot, that you recall?”

  “No, but you don’t . . .”

  “So why don’t you calm down and get your wife a sandwich?”

  When everybody oohs and aahs over the baby, they’re not just being nice; they’re angling to see who the kid looks like. Up till then, I had no idea how explosive this issue is. I always assumed that everybody looks at least a little like one of their parents, and usually it changes. You may look like your father as an infant, but your mother as a toddler. What I didn’t know is that when grandparents first hold their newborn grandchildren, family resemblance isn’t just an interesting coincidence—it’s a matter of utmost pride. Failure to look like the right side of the family is an insult and a dishonor.

  When it was quite apparent to everyone that my son looked like his beautiful mother, my mother actually said to me, “So, you’ll have another kid, that one’ll look like us.”

  Everybody wants to talk to babies, but no one knows what to say. “Hello” is very popular. You can’t not say it. You pick up a baby, you just start saying “Hello.” Over and over. “Hello . . . hello . . . helllll-ooooo . . .” Like you’re on the phone and the baby’s just not picking up. In reality, they hear you fine—they’re just waiting to hear what you say next.

  Usually what comes next is a question. The inevitable high-pitched, dopey-voiced, grown-ups-talking-to-babies voice.

  “Who’s the cutest baby?”

  “Who’s got an itty-bitty nose?”

  “Who’s got a poopy diaper? You? Do you have a poopy diaper and an itty-bitty nose?”

  First of all, these questions are way too easy. The reason babies don’t answer is because they’re insulted. They don’t like being patronized.

  “You know who the cutest baby is, so why ask? Give me a tough one.”

  “Who’s that in the driveway? Is that Grandma pulling up in the driveway?”

  But not that tough. That makes them angry.

  “How the hell should I know who’s in the driveway? I can barely see over this giant stuffed frog.”

  Plus, I think they resent questioning in general. It’s like an interrogation.

  “Who’s that? What’s that in your nose? Why are you crying? What did you do? And how do you explain your juice ending up on his bib?”

  And they start sweating.

  “Hey, I’m innocent, I tell ya. I’ve only been alive three and a half weeks . . . I just learned how to breathe, for crying out loud . . . I also, incidentally, just learned how to cry out loud . . .”

  Observing my relatives with the baby, I realized they fall into a few different categories of adult-to-infant communication:

  There’s The Greeter:

  “Who’s that? That’s your mommy. Who’s that? That’s your daddy . . .”

  Who often works hand in hand with The Tour Guide:

  “This is the living room, can you say living room? And this is the foyer! You don’t want to spill anything in the foyer . . .”

  Who’s not quite as annoying as The Embarrasser:

  “Did you make a stinky? I think you made a stinky. I’m going to tell everyone you made a stinky, even though we’re not a hundred percent sure . . .”

  Or The Entertainer:

  They just lean over the baby and make amusing noises.

  “Ha-cha-cha—cha . . . Ha-cha-cha-cha . . . Boo-ta-boo-ta . . . chook-chook-chook-chook . . .”

  These, of course, are all derivatives of the quintessential and official baby-speak noise—“Coochie coochie coo.” I’m not sure how that became the industry standard, but it is. I imagine that at some point there must have been a meeting. “Coochie coochie coo” beat out perennial favorite “goo-goo-gah-gah” and the straightforward but too-literal “Greetings, Small Bald Round One.”

  As we said our good-byes to friends and family, I noticed I anointed every male who attended this inaugural gathering with the title of “Uncle.” Related or not, pretty much any male adult who spends more than ten minutes in the company of your child becomes an uncle.

  “Uncle Mark was my college roommate . . . say good-bye to Uncle Mark . . .”

  “Say hello to Uncle Cable Guy . . . Uncle Cable Guy was supposed to be here between eight and twelve . . .”

  “Please don’t stare at Uncle Car-Jacker. It makes him nervous.”

  Women, naturally enough, are automatically disqualified from being an Uncle. But the good news is that the qualifications for “Aunt” are just as negligible. Even if a friend comes over with a date that everyone knows he’s never going to see again, you still say, “Say good-bye to Uncle Tommy and Aunt, uh, I’m sorry, what is it? Barbie. Right. Aunt Barbie.”

  Why are the requirements for these jobs so lax? And, more importantly, who wants more relatives?

  After the last of the coffee was served and the hugs and kisses were distributed, the crowds did go home, and the exciting momentum that carried us through pregnancy, and then through all the drama and elation of the birth, started to subside. In its place, staring us in the face, was a vast unknown called “The Rest of Our Lives.”

  We went upstairs, took the baby to the room we had set up, stocked, and decorated to within an inch of its life, looked at him, then at each other, and realized, “Now what?”

  We had no idea how one starts the process of actually being parents.

  The first impulse is to fall into “host” mode.

  “Would you like a drink or something? Diet Coke? A beer? Oh, no, of course . . . I forgot—your people don’t drink . . . You want to freshen up? There’s a bathroom down the hall—Oh, your people do it right in their pants, don’t you? . . . You want to watch TV? Video? I got the Godfather trilogy . . . Tell you what, we’re going to probably eat in an hour or so . . . so why don’t you just, uh . . . sit there, and we’ll watch you. Okay? Okay.”

  Just a Few Things

  to Worry About

  When you first have your baby home, your brain is seized with a plethora of potential dangers.

  “I could drop him. I could drop something on him. I could roll on top of him in my sleep . . .”

  These are big fears you can instantly envision. But there are plenty of ways you can harm a baby that you don’t even see coming.

  I’m changing my son’s pajamas, and he starts screaming. I panic. “What? What could it be? I’ve done everything right. I’m blocking him so he can’t roll off, I cleared away everything in a two-mile radius that he could pull down on top of him, I dimmed the light so as to not damage his little retinas, I put on soothing music for his listening and dancing pleasure . . .”

  I even did the little thing where you gather up the sleeve at the cuff, so you can pull him through in one shot, as opposed to the go-in-the-sleeve-with-him and snake his arm through inch by inch, like a little arthroscopic camera. So why’s he screaming at me?

  Apparently, when you pull a baby’s fist through a sleeve, some of his fingers don’t always make it. Halfway through the process, a pinky can jump out into the middle of the road. So while you’re singing a catchy melody from Peter Pan to his face, you’re quietly breaking off a good one-fifth of his favorite hand. You can’t see that coming.

  Simple things like clothes can be riddled with danger. Did you know that their feet can get caught in your shirt pocket? Pockets that have been unopened since you bought the shirt become a treacherous baby-foot magnet.

  Did you know that when you pull a T-shirt over a kid’s head, the entire head can get stuck in the head hole, and they seem to have no idea that it will be over in one thirty-secondth of an inch? They bec
ome engulfed in fear, believing they’re stuck in an endless black void of time and space. Maybe they’re reliving the trauma of birth. Who knows? I suppose we wouldn’t like that either. If every time our pants were too tight, we thought we were getting sucked into the center of the earth, we might be a little more careful getting dressed, too.

  But there are so many things that can go wrong, it’s unbelievable. In the name of preparation, I made up a brief list:

  You could hold him too tight.

  You could hold him too loose.

  You could carry him up the stairs and trip on your pants.

  You could trip on nothing—just the sheer pressure of hoping to God you don’t trip.

  You could toss him up just when the phone rings and answer it instead of catching him.

  You could toss the baby in the air just as a stork is flying by, which snags your baby midair and delivers him to another family.

  You could make him wave to someone who doesn’t wave back, and he’s so traumatized he’s never able to hail a cab.

  You could park his carriage near a building that, unbeknownst to you, is targeted by left-wing terrorists.

  You could diaper him so tight you cut off his circulation.

  You could try to call your pediatrician and mistakenly call your podiatrist, who tells you the best thing for your baby’s cold is Dr. Scholl’s foot powder, which ironically cures the cold but leaves the baby smelling forever like a very old tennis shoe.

  You could be so sleep deprived that you accidentally feed a cold and starve a fever. Or is it spring forward and fall back? Whatever it is, you do something bad.

  You could carry him outside in the “football hold” for so long you think you’re in a game and accidentally punt.

  You could wind the mobile over his crib so tight that the whole crib takes off like a helicopter and flies through the roof.

  You could absentmindedly fold up the stroller with the kid still in it, and not discover the mistake till days later when you’re setting up for another stroll.

  You could take him to the beach and he gets too much sun.

  You could be so afraid of him getting too much sun that you bring the child out only at night and he becomes a vampire.

  You could put him in diapers that have such extra-strength, super-duper sticky tabs that he inadvertently drags home your neighbor’s dresser.

  You could beep his belly button with a finger that has a hangnail and puncture him.

  You could baby-proof the house so thoroughly that no one can get out.

  You could accidentally touch his schmeckle in such a way that thirty years from now he writes a book which shames you throughout the nation.

  You could feed him a bottle that’s too hot.

  You could feed him a bottle that’s too cold.

  You could feed him a bottle that’s just right but actually belongs to three angry bears.

  You could be so groggy that instead of milk you grab the dog’s stomach medicine, put it in the baby’s bottle, and the next morning they’re both licking their own bellies.

  You could forget to take off the safety cap under the bottle nipple, causing the baby to suck so much air he starts hyperventilating so you try to help by putting a paper bag over his head, which is when your wife walks in and rightfully takes the child away and he has to grow up without a father.

  You could burp him so hard he needs a chiropractor.

  You could give him a bath and the water’s too hot.

  You could give him a bath and the water’s too cold.

  You could make the water just right, but the same damn bears come in and rip the place up.

  You could put the baby too low in the plastic bathtub so he kicks open the plug and gets sucked down the drain.

  He could get sucked only halfway down the drain and you can’t figure out which way to pull him out.

  You could bathe him and get soap in his eyes.

  You could bathe him and get soap in your eyes, you can’t see what you’re doing and end up poking him in the eye anyway.

  You could use “No Tears” shampoo so it doesn’t matter if it gets in his eyes—only it’s past the expiration date, so tears come.

  You could leave him in the water so long he becomes permanently wrinkled and people think he’s a sharpei puppy.

  You could actually throw out the baby with the bathwater.

  You could clip his nails and a nail piece flies off the clipper and up his nose.

  You could drop a pacifier, it lands rubber side down on a tile floor, bounces into his ear, and for the rest of his life people can only talk to him on one side.

  You could have a magnet on the refrigerator in the shape of a little hamburger, which he eats and, though it doesn’t hurt him, twenty years later he gets lost on a camping trip because his compass keeps pointing to his stomach.

  You could be taking cute, naked-butt baby pictures, reposition him one too many times, and he ends up in the emergency room with rug burns.

  You could get him looking so cute in those baby-butt pictures that the people at Michelin use him for an ad, and while shooting the ad, a tire rolls over his legs.

  You could step on a rake and the handle flies up and hits you in the face like a Laurel and Hardy movie and the kid laughs so hard, he hurts himself.

  You could pat him on the head and your wedding band hits him in the soft part of his skull and scrambles his brain.

  His mother could be in another room and call for some scissors and without thinking you hand them to him and say, “Hurry, run!”

  You could be holding the baby while talking on the cordless phone, and when you hang up, you put them both down and for days you can’t find either one of them.

  You could affectionately rub his head after walking across a thick carpet and the static electricity makes his diaper catch on fire . . .

  Any of these things could happen.

  But fortunately I’m not, by nature, a worrier.

  Translating Your Child

  Those first few nights, every time our baby cried, we sprinted to his side. Because every cry sounded like an emergency.

  “What’s the matter, Pumpkin? Are you hungry? Thirsty? Still upset about losing that umbilical cord?”

  But all he’d say was, “WWAAAAAHHHHH.”

  What we didn’t understand is that babies have a veritable library of cries, varying in pitch, duration, and emotional intensity—and it’s your job to figure them out.

  “Waaaaaaahhhhh-gk!”

  “Is that ‘hungry’?”

  “No, ‘hungry’ is higher pitched and a little more nasal.”

  “Waaaaaaahhhhh-gk!”

  “Diaper?”

  “Could be, hard to say.”

  The differences are very subtle. For example, our son’s “The-light-is-coming-in-from-outside-and-scaring-me” cry is almost identical to his “The-drool-on-my-sheet-is-hardening-and-cutting-me-across-the-cheek” cry. And his “Something-you-ate-had-pepper-in-it-and-I’m-very-resentful” cry is only one little throaty nuance away from “Remember that German shepherd the other day? I hate him.”

  In time, you become an expert at not only interpreting your child’s cries and sounds, but all his quirks, likes, and dislikes.

  “Oh, you better take that orange shirt off him . . . orange, for some reason, makes him hiccup.”

  A lot of times, you can get carried away with this new skill. My wife convinced herself early on that our son had remarkably specific musical tastes, and she could break it down for you by song and artist.

  “He loves the Beatles . . . John a little more than Paul, and really responds strongly to George. Loves ‘Taxman,’ can’t make it through ‘Let It Be.’ ”

  All new parents pride themselves on being able to interpret their children because not only are we showing off our own laser-keen parenting know-how, but we also get to ascribe to our children abilities and intellect that truthfully they don’t really have.

  When my son started sa
ying “Da-da,” I—as might be expected—was convinced that he was not only singularly gifted but was in constant conversation specifically with me.

  I began to show off our little performance piece to anyone who would listen.

  “Watch this . . . Okay, Son, what’s my name?”

  “Da-da.”

  “Huh? What’d I tell you . . . Okay, who’s married to Ma-ma?”

  “Da-da.”

  “You see how smart he is? He knows lots of other stuff, too. Watch . . . Okay, what was the name of the movement in modern art that was popularized in Europe in the early nineteen-twenties?”

  “Da-da.”

  “Da-da-ism, that’s entirely correct.”

  It’s Your Turn

  People often ask me, “What’s the difference between couplehood and babyhood?”

  In a word? Moisture.

  Everything in my life is now more moist.

  Between your spittle, your diapers, your spit-up and drool, you got your baby food, your wipes, your formula, your leaky bottles, sweaty baby backs, and numerous other untraceable sources—all creating an ever-present moistness in my life, which heretofore was mainly dry.

  Certainly, there have been other changes in my life since the arrival of my child: I feel an even greater commitment to my wife and our marriage. I feel an instinctive, primal love of which I did not know I was capable. I feel a heightened sense of responsibility toward my community and planet Earth.

  But above all, it’s the moisture. It’s just really moist now.

  Before we go any further, allow me to take a moment to clarify the various categories of moisture. There’s spit, which is the wet stuff that’s in your baby’s mouth; spittle—spit that’s left the mouth and is hanging off your baby’s face in long, suspended, pendulous gobs; and drool, which is secreted during sleep and collects in large, lukewarm pools.

  And, last but certainly not least, spit-up (often referred to by the slang “cheese”), which is hot, lumpy, and frankly too repulsive to discuss any further. “Cheese” has an almost magnetic attraction to adult clothing, and the more expensive the garment or the more pressing your need to get out of the house, the more likely the chance this substance will be propelled out of your baby and onto your freshly dry-cleaned attire. Cheese just loves this.