It's Alive
It's lying in its crib, staring up at you. Staring hard. Not blinking. And thinking, 'You're a bit of an arse, aren't you?'
No it's not. That's just your imagination. Your brand new baby is capable of few thoughts more coherent than 'I'm hungry', 'I'm tired', 'I'm uncomfortable' and 'I'm bored'. Or the one he/she is thinking now, which is almost certainly 'I recognize you. You're that bloke.'
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| Advice For New Parents |
But the stare of a newborn baby cuts through its parents' defenses like a razor through ricepaper. It seems to be able to see deep into your innermost soul, and it doesn't like what it sees there.
Put it down to tiredness or shock. Few new mothers seem to have this sort of reaction, but several new fathers have told me about it, later when drunk. They talk of the baby's devilish halfsmile, of its unflinching gaze, of its seeming to know. 'Know what?" I Say, fascinated. But the new father doesn't reply. He doesn't want me to know as well. He just stares into his drink and contemplates his fate.
What he probably doesn't know is that the devilish halfsmile is a reflex, one of several you will be able to spot if you look close enough. The reflex smile (or 'pre-smile') has been seen in babies as young as three days old. It's a fleeting thing - gone before you have seen it, usually - and it disappears completely after a month, but it can seriously fuel fatherly paranoia, especially if you are finding the bonding process difficult. Drunks and the deranged shout 'Who are you looking at?' to anyone they pass - this is the new parents equivalent. The reflex smile, I should add, is entirely meaningless.
The first few days of a baby's new life are a whirlwind of novelty and activity. People will be 'dropping in' at wildly inappropriate times to 'pay their respects' (see how rough the mother is looking, confirm the baby is yours, eat all your biscuits, proudly present you with battery-operated fluffy pink hippopotamuses that sing annoying songs when prodded or thrown against hard surface).
This is strange and annoying and to be cherished, because you will rarely have this attention again as parents. Should you elect to breed again, don't expect anyone to turn up and see the second baby, let alone hand over expensive presents. You will do well to get the odd email. But a first baby always draws the crowds. One way to handle it is to arrange visits at a particular time each day, say between five and seven p.m. Then you can chuck them out before they drinking all your wine and asking what time's dinner. (It also forestalls maternal exhaustion. Several new mothers I know said it felt like being in a zoo.) Do stock up on biscuits, though. No one will bring them. And you and your partner will also need a secret stash for yourself, for the hard times.
For there will be hard times. A newborn baby is more than a full-time job. It's about one and a half full-time jobs, with lots of unscheduled overtime. You will have to learn a great deal very quickly. Antenatal classes will have attempted to cover these early days with baby, but by that point in the course your brain was so full of contractions and epidurals there was no room for anything else.
It was hard enough at that stage to imagine what the birth would be like; it was impossible to imagine what life would be like afterwards. So suddenly you are at home with your small baby, which cries half the time, wakes up at all hours of the day and the night and fills thousands of nappies in any 24-hour period. You learn fast because there's no choice. Some people say that newborn babies are anarchists. They are not. They are more like excessively demanding feudal warlords.
Before the birth you probably lived your life with a fair degree of freedom. Within certain bounds you did much as you wanted to. Now you are an indentured servant, utterly at the mercy of a pint-sized tyrant who invariably issues orders with a furious cry. (The crying may not be that loud as yet. But as baby grows, so will its decibel output. In six months' time it will be like living with Concords.)
And you may feel that you are not up to the task. If it's any consolation, this is the way everyone feels. To find out more, you can check out Advice For New Parents.