If you are the parent of a newborn baby here in the 21st century, you surely know that there’s a dazzling abundance of technology and information to aid in the wrangling of your tiny new human being. There are smartphone apps that allow you to document every action taken by (or perpetrated on) your child, from feedings to bowel movements to naps. You can attend baby yoga classes, read online articles about overcoming colic, and even watch YouTube videos to learn to decipher the sounds your baby makes, so that you will know exactly what she needs as soon as she makes a peep.
My wife and I have all of these resources at our disposal, and yet there are still times when we cannot keep our wee little girl from crying and screaming like a fun-size banshee.
Sometimes the baby is hungry — I know this because she makes “the hungry sound,” and also because the iPhone app tells me she says so — but just as she’s about to nurse, she suddenly flails her little arms and legs and wails uncontrollably. Then, a minute later, she turns back and suckles contentedly for the next half hour.
After struggling through countless incidents like that one, I finally figured something out. You can meet all of your little one’s needs with ever-greater efficiency, but the bottom line is still this: newborns have a problem with transition. And with good reason — as anyone who has participated in childbirth knows — for babies, that first transition is a doozy.
Childbirth is painful for the woman giving birth. I know this because — throughout labor — my wife conveyed this fact to me quite clearly (not very eloquently, but extremely clearly). On the other hand, nobody really talks about how traumatizing the whole process must be for the baby. I mean, in spite of all her agony, a mother remembers giving birth, but I have yet to meet a single baby who can recall any of it! Until I hear a better explanation from the medical community, I’m assuming this is because babies find the whole ordeal so shocking and traumatic they just block it from their memory. Pretty solid reasoning, no?
Just in case my amateur psychology isn’t that convincing, let’s look at it like this: after the better part of a year in the soothing embrace of her mother’s uterus, bathed in a constant flow of warm liquid, a newborn-to-be is abruptly evicted — forced by intense muscular contractions down a birth canal so narrow that her soft little head must stretch and contort just to fit through.
From there, she is ejected, naked and bewildered, into the cold air and the stark light of day. That is, if she makes it that far; my own dear little peanut, after enduring the torments of labor, had the added peril and indignity of emerging with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. (She’s fine, fortunately, but apparently that’s a hazard shared by at least a third of all tiny humans.) It’s a cruel joke, if you’re a baby, that at the instant you’re born, the lifeline that nourished you for so long becomes a deadly snare, waiting to strangle your first breath away from you.
And if that’s not bad enough, there’s more! Even if you have a qualified medical provider on hand who’s experienced with such a dangerous situation — for instance, our wonderful midwife — chances are she’ll turn to the expectant father, who at that moment is so delirious and sleep-deprived that he probably can’t be trusted to sign his own name, and SHE’LL HAND HIM A BIG PAIR OF SCISSORS. Then she’ll point to the thick cord wrapped around the baby’s delicate little neck and say, “you wanna take a whack at that?”
Now, all of that already stacks up to form the Dagwood of trauma sandwiches, but consider one thing more: unlike her parents, a baby suffers through all of these ordeals without the prior benefit of instructional DVDs, “What To Expect” books, advice from other already-born babies, or the indispensable insights of Dr. Oz. The truth is, apart from a vague sense-memory of all those Mozart recordings you dutifully played for her in the womb, and then the horrifying ordeal of birth, your newborn has no experience of anything whatsoever.
So the next time you find yourself exasperated, unable to figure out why your darling baby is shrieking like a hyena and fighting your every effort to put that adorable elephant-print onesie on over her head, take extra pity on her. She may be thoroughly rested, well fed, and properly burped, but based on her very limited understanding of this world, every time she senses the beginning of any kind of transition, she just might be struck with the terrifying feeling that she’s about to be born all over again. It’s going to take her a little while longer to figure out that the terrible past is behind her, and that she’s living in the future now.
Tim Perrins is a part-time stay-at-home dad who lives with his wife and their brand new tiny human in Park Slope, Brooklyn. More of his thoughts about babies and other things that confuse him can be found at www.RevoltOfTheImbeciles.blogspot.com.
