Angry Baby

It is obviously ridiculous to be mad at a baby. I like to have a little talk with myself about this sometimes. Tiny babies, I reason, are not driven by motivations. They are incapable of metacognition on any sophisticated level, which makes them incapable of planning in advance. It also makes them incapable of manipulation. Or, speaking more to my own feelings, it makes them incapable of revenge. No matter how compelling the evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, the sheer number of instances in which the baby seems to be mounting an hysterically aggressive and effective retaliation campaign sways me to thinking seriously of them as perverted prodigies; precocious sociopaths. (I.e., “Look, my Timmy is starting to walk an he’s only five weeks old!...” “Well, my Laura is plotting my imminent ruin, and she’s only three months old…”)

It sometimes feels like I am raising the exact opposite of the Dalai Lama.

Small babies are driven by needs, right now. Little reptiles. Or, as my mom says, little puppies. She often jokes, “Ask any dog what time it is, and they’ll say, ‘NOW!’” Babies are on the “now” program, as well. There is no upper brain thinking at all. Hungry? Scream. Poop sitting too long on bottom? Scream. Scared? Scream. Screaming? Scream. But of course. You get the idea.

I calm myself down most times by watching shows about people with ridiculous numbers of children- quintuplets, three sets of twins, two sets of quadruplets, etc. These shows remind me that I have it easy. It makes my one screaming infant seem like a walk in the park, which, by the way, I can take with one normal sized stroller, not a weird Dr. Seuss contraption. If it’s a real bad day, I watch the shows when the new parents bring home the squirming hives of children, and some sadistic camera crew documents their first days as parents of 2470875102759 newborn babies. They use night-vision goggles so the viewer can really appreciate the midnight wake-ups, clearly showing bleary-eyed postpartum moms yanking addled bosoms from night shirts over and over and over, while dads fumble with tiny diapers full of black tar and jam enormous, traffic-cone pacifiers into tiny clenched faces.

The truth of it is that taking care of children, particularly babies, is hard. And awesome. Like, really awesome - not “this new flavor of Mountain Dew is really awesome” awesome. The awesome that changes you into something bigger and better than you were before, that tears a hole in the veil between you and infinity, and allows you fleeting glimpses of the nature of God, the meaning of life, and the relationship between love and the relativity of the universe. There’s also a lot of poop.