Babyhood (9780062098788) (10 page)

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 become 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

T
hose 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 saying “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

P
eople 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.

O
ne of the wonderful aspects of these various emissions is that they serve to bond and unite all new parents. I can now spot new parents on the street—even without their kids. Just look for a three-by-four-inch damp patch on their shirts between their shoulders and ribs, the part where very recently a youngster's head was resting and emitted a steady flow of sweet, sticky babyness. They leave a trail—not unlike snails. And this trail becomes an emblem, a team logo, a crest to be worn with pride. And a towel.

W
ay before your kid even gets here, everyone in sight does their level best to scare you about diapers.

“Oh, I can't wait to see
you
handling diapers . . . Hey, everybody—can you imagine
him
changing diapers? . . . Getting up in the middle of the night to change those diapers . . . you'll see . . . I mean, have you ever actually changed a diaper? . . . Boy, you're not going to like changing diapers . . .”

Okay, first of all, let me say this:
Thank God
for diapers. Because the alternative is unthinkable. Would you want to live in a world where there were
no
diapers? A world where the very items intended to be accumulated by diapers were
not
accumulating but rather flying through the air undeterred? I, for one, would not.

Second of all, let's get a grip here; it's not that big a deal. Especially in the beginning. I understand that once you hit the two-year-old point, diapering is pretty much like changing pants on a hobo. But on a newborn, it's almost a pleasure.

Admittedly, the actual skill takes a few practice rounds. The first time I tried to put a new diaper on my baby, I yanked the little Velcro strap too jerkily and actually punched the little guy in the jaw. A real solid shot, too. I knew instinctively that this could not be correct. Unless you're specifically trying to raise a welterweight, continual deliverance of powerful uppercuts is not advised when handling newborns.

And, of course, we had the Great Diaper Debate—cloth versus disposable. We wanted to be environmentally sensitive, considering that the accumulation of disposable diapers is now engulfing a good one-third of the world's landmass. In descending order of size, I believe it's now Asia, North America, and then Huggies.

So we vowed to eschew the convenience of these Earth-chokers and instead use only recyclable cloth diapers, nobly shouldering the added responsibility of constant laundering and increased waste-product handling. This lasted literally an
hour.
The first time you handle a particularly offensive diaper, you want it out of your hands and out of your house so fast that you're more than glad to look the other way and let someone else's parents save the planet.

S
ome people—and it's usually older people—are still genuinely amused by the idea of
men
changing diapers. It's hard to remember that not too long ago, fathers weren't big diaperers. As we approach the millennium, however, no guy—unless he's been cryogenically frozen since 1957—can possibly get away with
not
changing diapers.