Moose in the Kitchen

Baby M weighed one ounce short of ten pounds when she was born a week and a half ago. She was two feet long. That, my friends, is a big baby. Let’s all take a moment to clutch our loins in sympathy. To be clear, this is not my baby. I haven’t posted this past week because I was doing other things (mainly drinking beer, as I recall), not spending 22 hours in labor capped off with a friendly C-section.

We went to meet the baby today for the first time. Conveniently for me, the me who has been feeling somewhat socially awkward lately, my mom came up for lunch before we left. So I got to plague her with questions.

“So what can I ask a pregnant woman?”

I wasn’t planning to ask her if she already regretted the baby or if it usually took a few months. Nor was I going to say, “So. Pooping during delivery. True?” I wasn’t even planning to ask if labor really did feel like stretching your labia over your head and rolling off a cliff. I just didn’t want to say something well-meaning but completely insensitive. New mothers often have a lot of hormones and not a lot of sleep. I don’t need to be the saintly epitome of womanhood who soothes weary souls with her very presence, but I don’t want to make anyone cry either.

“You can ask her how she’s feeling,” my mom told me. “You can ask if she’s getting any sleep.”

I nodded and took mental notes. Her advice might seem like sense of the common kind that any fool should know, but never underestimate my ability for awkward comment. Besides, it’s reassuring to get advice from someone who knows. Someone who had your very head yanked out of her with forceps.

“If she looks good, rave about it.” My mom paused. “If she doesn’t look good, DON’T SAY A WORD.”

Luckily, she looked very good. I may not have raved appropriately, but we weren’t two steps into the room before I found myself with an armful of very large newborn. It was like holding a wriggling ham dressed in purple fleece. I’m good with kids six months and up. Six months or less and I worry about inadvertently killing them. I assumed a panicked expression and sat down on the couch, a couch being a soft place to break her inevitable fall. And to give me enough leverage to climb out the window when her father grabs a gun because I dropped his new baby. This was not an idle fear by the way, the gun safe was right next to the door, the door three feet away from the couch. And I say “a gun” because he had a choice of several.

Baby M just snuffled and fell asleep on my chest. I held myself very stiff, because if you stay stiff nothing bad will ever happen. After several frantic checks to make sure she was still breathing (I was rather worried, she was very still, and aren’t babies supposed to make noise or something?), I relaxed enough to take my shoes off. Shoes off was a big step, as I might have needed them to RUN AWAY FROM THE BIG MAN WITH THE BIG GUN BECAUSE I KILLED HIS BABY.

For anyone who’s worried, I’ll spare you the suspense. I didn’t kill any babies today.

Babies don’t have much in the way of personality until they hit a few major milestones, one being Smile, another being No Longer Resembles Large Ham. But she was quite prodigious with the head lifting and the projectile vomiting. Also the pooping. We did, in fact, witness a major milestone. While changing Baby M’s diaper, her mother exclaimed, “Your first smelly diaper! Hey, honey! Come smell this.”

In a stunning demonstration of what parenthood can do to a person, he walked up and sniffed the diaper. We were not invited to do the same, consideration for which I am still grateful. Biology is a powerful force when you’re a female in a room with a baby, but not quite that powerful.

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing. Number one, the visit wasn’t about me (who knew?) and number two, we discussed everything from umbilical cords to the parents’ preference of pot over alcohol for their eventual teenager. Once crusty plugs enter the conversation, you tend to stop fretting about word choice and start wondering how something so cute could produce so much questionable byproduct.

Welcome to the world, Baby M.

Related posts:

1. Under No Circumstance Should I Be Allowed to Breed