'Treasure this special time, it passes so quickly' is something my wife and I have been repeatedly told in the last few weeks. Given the annihilation parenthood brings of everything you once held dear this advice seems absolutely absurd. Even the routine of the irregular is lost forever when a child is born and the permanent twilight zone that new parents inhabit feels anything but special. Having a baby is like the worst ever game of charades - every clue is crying and every answer milk.
And yet dimly I understand the meaning of these well-wishers. A baby in its earliest weeks and months is the definition of a blank slate. When we wonder why we procreate it is of course to satisfy primal genetic urges to replicate our DNA but there is also the enjoyment of moulding a miniature version of ourselves. Anyone involved in a long term relationship knows how stubbornly resistant partners can be to seeing the world our way which is, of course, the right way. Children are the perfect solution to the impasse which soon develops
How defenceless a newborn is; how completely dependent. Few things are more amusing than a baby's startle reflex, especially when they sleep, but how completely inadequate a response it is to the hungry attentions of a predator. Without us parents babies are just lunch to the nearest sharp toothed carnivore.
And so in those first few weeks although a baby may wail a bit we can satisfy ourselves with how completely they will be attuned with our Weltanschauung (as my wife would say) when in just a few short months they can communicate. But then how crushing the disappointment when finally the longed for moment comes. Your child proves even more recalcitrant and unreasonable than your wife (NB your wife, not my wife). How prone to the blandishments of TV advertising, how sugar obsessed, how contrary.
This is what people mean when they enjoin you to hold close every second with a baby because babies can't disappoint: in fact they can't do anything except babying. What I especially enjoy are the expressions so loaded with meaning so utterly divorced from what the baby is at that moment experiencing. My particular favourites are glances of importunate beseeching and earth stopping reproach. A baby's face is an open book but all the words are unknowable.
It won't be long now before I discover the baby shares my wife's scorn for French baroque music ('too many bells'), that he favours a Full Windsor knot and that he doesn't like oysters. Until then I am treasuring every minute.
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