Between three and six months many babies start to compile an impressive collection of chins. Having come into the world with just the one, an averagely hungry infant will add a second, a third, maybe even a fourth. And these are only the ones on the surface.
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| Baby Chin Rash Breastfeeding |
Delve between the accumulated chin masses and you will discover secret underchins, each of them storing lost droplets of milk that have long since gone off and turned into cheese. Unless scrupulously washed at least once a day, these dank zones can become the cause of what non-parents call 'baby smell' - that faintly sickly, dairy whiff that parents hope to become immune to but never will.
It's the smell of ineptly dried laundry, with added curds and whey. See the proud parents handing over their baby to a close friend who instantly recoils as though lashed with a whip. Not every baby has a baby smell, but enough do to give them all a bad reputation. Nonetheless it can be overcome. It takes a brave man to probe the deepest recesses of his infant's chinzone with a moistened cotton bud. You are that man.
Note that a multitude of chins does not necessarily mean your baby is fat. Babies need to put on weight somewhere, and the vacant neck area is as good a place as any. Just because the baby looks fat doesn't mean that it is fat. All babies put on lots of weight, then suddenly grow an inch and look slim again. Their physical development comes in a series of lurches outwards and upwards: the weight they amass essentially fuels each increase in height.
A genuinely obese baby is beyond plumpness; their arms and legs look like sausages that are about to burst. Babies like these are storing up a whole smorgasbord of health problems for later life, and are relatively unlikely to represent their country at any sport (other than darts). But don't be concerned by plumpness. A former model of my acquaintance only ever gave her baby daughter skimmed milk because she didn't want her to get fat. Tragically; though, this woman was an idiot. Feed your baby normally and healthily and you can't go wrong.
OUT AND ABOUT
Mother and baby begin as a package; slowly, painfully, they separate into two slightly surprised individuals. Eventually, with a stifled little sob, your partner will let you take Junior out for a stroll in either sling, pram or pushchair. So starts the next phase of fatherhood - you and your baby out and about, proud dad and sweet child, while your partner stays at home and puts her feet up.
When baby is very small and sleeping a lot, you can go to the pub. I stood outside in the beer garden if I could, to avoid going home with a baby smelling of roll-ups and dead lager. Later on you can take Junior to parks and playgrounds to loiter with other sad dads or eye up the foxier mums. During the week there are usually more foxy mums than sad dads, which is nice. Faced with this numerical skew, many sad dads become surprisingly cheerful well-groomed dads with a twinkle in their eye. Some may not be dads at all, but unscrupulous single friends of dads who are renting Junior by the hour.
Having a small child attached to you makes it so much easier to spark up conversations in parks and playgrounds, as you find out for yourself.
Indeed, these trips out can be wonderful balm for the battered paternal ego, especially if your child is a looker.
Beautiful babies mean good, strong genes, and are the most effective advertisement yet devised for the contents of your trousers. As a result, some women passing you on the street will give you the most amazing looks. They never looked at you that when you were single. It will make you think and wonder, and may confirm your suspicion that some women are only after one thing. Good grief! If only you had known then what you know now! You would have ten children, be three times divorced and drinking solvent from a brown paper bag, Sometimes it's better to know nothing at all. To find out more, you can check out Baby Chin Rash Breastfeeding.