Babies are sick, man


birth, babies, bodies, breastfeeding, family & parenting / Monday, March 14th, 2011

A few posts ago I talked of counting out the newborn days in the cast-off crescent moons of his perfect fingernails. While I am still a sucker for the beauty of small babies and their magnificently tiny thumbs (how can something so small demonstrate such destiny and difference from our brother apes?) I realise such wistful thinking is always a challenge to the Gods.

The new one is sick again. Yes, AGAIN, which gives me pause to marvel at another physical attribute. I mean seriously, little britches, how far can you puke? I realise rather than getting all TS Eliot I should actually be counting out my days in liqui-tabs which, for the record, we have used nine of since Saturday.
We’re talking full on Roman showers in thathousehold, from hair through top, bra and pants, on jeans, in socks, down my back, on tena ladies (that is not what they are for, my son). On Friday he sneezed sick into my mouth. Nothing says true love more than not dropping your child after such an act of involuntary indecency, or proves beyond doubt that babies really do have absolutely appalling manners.
Everything even vaguely porous that we own now has that seemingly transient, some times stronger than others, faint but also identifiable, whiff of milky puke on it. Worse, I seem to have developed a habit which is one part acrobatic superMum and the other total fracking loser. When he smiles his widest most loving smile and I realise a cascade is imminent instinct kicks in and I find myself contorting to catch the flow in my hand. What a party trick! That is, until I realise I am marooned stroking a screaming baby with one hand, a precarious puddle of puke in the other.
I’m told in Germany there is a saying along the lines of never buy a cat born at Christmas, the vet’s bills will bankrupt you. While I would never return newborn, there is something about wintery babes which makes me tempted to wrap mine in goosefat and keep him swaddled for a couple of years. That, or have more kids – my mother wisely counsels that a brood of four or more is preferable as one of them is always well.

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