When Babies are Born. What Happens Next?

There are plenty of babies in the ancestor’s photos.

They had loads of them.

And families were big.

You peer back in history and imagine huge families with everybody helping and babies just fitting in. Everybody knew what to do because there was always a baby to practice on, and there were elders on hand if you didn’t.

It might be harder now. You have to save up, and race biological clocks to get one. And once it is here, the extended family of old might not be next door. So you are on your own with google or a good book. 

But some things never change.

It is a Huge Surprise

1930 something and look at his face.

Babies enter the world under a cloak of sweetness. You get a couple of days watching it sleep and marvelling at tiny toes. On day three, there is another surprise. It wakes up and starts taking over. 

After a Few Weeks it is Still There

This is a Good Thing, of course. All that work checking they are still breathing is paying off. Then you realise it is planning to stick around for life and is taking its time to grow up. That can be daunting.

After weeks or months without sleep, it is normal to consider sending it back. Some people find another parent in the same boat and can laugh about this. Others struggle on and talk about Getting into a Routine, unaware that the baby is busy calculating how much post-natal depression it can generate, and whether it can do both parents at once.

There is no Right or Wrong way

It is easier for those who give in, forget routines, or getting dressed, rock it, love it, feed it and keep things cleanish.

And laugh at foibles like this:

Insisting it can only sleep across the middle of the parent’s bed.

Being sweet as pie to one parent and screaming blue murder when the other one approaches.

Waiting until somebody wants to eat, go to the toilet, shower or dress and screaming another lot of blue murder.

Luckily for the baby, it knows when to hand out rewards and that you will forgive everything for a smile, or gurgles that turn into words. So it does, and you get enough of those to keep you going for years.

They Turn into Small People

When they get up on their feet you’ve got your own personal clown, and phones groan with an overload of cute moments. At the same time, they need to assert more will. Their tools include: biting, throwing things, thrashing about in despair, refusing to eat and saying No.

The ancestors had more babies. and fewer photos, than us but you can still see the signs.

They try to Hurt Themselves

If they get bored with arguing they set off looking for danger. They don’t check to see if you are following, because they know you will.

People without Children are Important

Non-parents are gold. They like children much more than other parents do and have energy, and time to play. Anybody with small children needs to gather a few of these, and preferably share a home with at least one of them.

Then they Grow Up and There was no Right or Wrong Way

That’s it. Blink and they have grown up.

Parents of grownups slither around between two camps. 

Sometimes they suffer from Perfect Parent Syndrome. This means lying to themselves and everybody else about how successful and well-adjusted their children turned out to be.

And when anything goes wrong, they think about Formative Years and drag up tiny slices of evidence of bad parenting, so they can take the blame and catastrophize about the future.

But it’s not all about parenting. The main thing is to be in a safe country, with food and a home. From that point, the best you can do is give them something to do, like watching chickens, wait for them to grow up and see what happens.