So, my wife and the baby are both finally asleep. I should be sleeping, too. That’s what they tell you to do, sleep when the baby sleeps, but I have to read to her. I read to her in a whisper as not to wake her, but in hopes that the information will reach her somehow. (Sure, she doesn’t even know what her fingers are for yet, and she still regularly punches herself in the face, but I have to try.)
I read the baby books that my wife and I read. The ones that say she’s supposed to sleep for 16 ½ hours a day. The ones that say she’s supposed to eat every three hours. The ones that assure us that she will eventually learn the difference between night and day. She needs to know this stuff or else the system, carefully devised by two wonderfully analytical parents, will break down.
They say that babies don’t come with a manual. In my opinion, this isn’t exactly true. They just don’t come with their manual; the one that works for that particular baby. The fact is there is no shortage of books devoted to child rearing. And they range from German Evangelical books that warn you against giving the child anything that it wants lest it refuse to work in the fields when it’s 5, to the touchy-feely, “recreate the womb all day, every day or the baby won’t trust you and someday, God forbid, may even vote Republican” books.
And, of course, everything in between. I know because, as I write this, there are currently six different books scattered on various surfaces around the house, each of them confidently preparing us for “What to Expect.”
Regardless of which parenting style is represented in the one we’re currently referencing, all of the books, every five pages, feature the disclaimer: “…But all babies are different.”
They readily admit that a published repository of knowledge beyond the fact that your baby will most assuredly eat, poop and occasionally sleep is really just 500 pages of opinion and anecdotal evidence.
As a result, every page reads like: “A great way to cure baby’s constipation is to hold her while bouncing on an exercise ball and listening to Andy Rooney. But all babies are different.”
The best any of these “experts” can ever do, is tell you what worked for them.
At any rate, when we found out we were pregnant, my wife and I couldn’t have known that we would one day be inviting a 9-pound, manic/depressive, abusive milk-o-holic into our lives. And then we would have to think only happy thoughts or she’d blink us into the cornfield like that Twilight Zone episode starring the kid from Lost in Space. Or worse yet, she’d poop stone ground Dijon mustard on us.
For being so immature, she’s devised a brilliant method of making us remove her diaper so she can freely loose her cannon-like bowels, unencumbered by any form of absorbent barrier.
Sometimes she’ll make a face, and my wife will say: “Do you think she’s pooping?” Countless times she has lured us into removing her diaper right before she turned her changing pad into a monochrome, digestive Jackson Pollack. But we’re getting wise. Now we listen for that hearty sound; the sound like someone blowing a mouthful of cream cheese through a harmonica. That’s when we know it’s real.
I must go now; I hear her stirring and she will want to feed. Over and over again I tell her that Daddy can’t lactate, but still she sucks holes in his tee shirts seeking sweet sustenance. In that dark place, I know that she will not stop until she bends Nature to her will, and her beleaguered father weeps man-milk from his furry bosom.
