good baby // bad baby

what not to say to new mothers

I’m curious about the indoctrination of goodness—how we inadvertently whittle personhood into what’s desirable and appealing because it’s obliging and demure; blank enough for us to project what we want upon it. I’ve been sniffing this narrow trail of socialization and it leads straight back to fresh Mamas and their babies.

Here’s a mordant note I wrote to Aunt Hilda, one of those well-meaning types who stops in to smell an infant’s fresh head and assess. Don’t let my snark fool you: I too have cooed and clapped: “what a good baby!” I, too, have worn itchy sweaters and searing perfume.

That was before I had four sons and the last one just six months ago.

Blown apart

Giving birth means having two hearts—flesh of my flesh—and one of them outside of you. It means life through a 10cm lens: and the aperture, even when Mama ‘gets her body back’ never closes. Everybody sees you’re blown apart; everybody sees the wind blow.¹

And when Mama’s blown open, don’t ask if she got a ‘good’ baby.

…Even if that baby is mild and doesn’t complain when you, Aunt Hilda—stiff-armed, wearing a scratchy sweater and too much perfume—try to take him from the heart that beats with the rhythm of his life. Even IF baby allows you to do this, don’t call him ‘good.’ Just call him a miracle, which is what he is. We don’t qualify miracles.

Don’t comment on the baby’s health, either. Health is a spectrum, most of which is invisible to you. Baby’s health may be a minefield for his mother. A woman with her heart freshly ousted from her body can trip easily into despair. Tread elsewhere. Miracle.

What do we think, folks? Was he a good baby? Paolo di Giovanni Fei // Madonna and Child

No good babies

…Though Mama might be scared to consider it, when she hasn’t showered in four days and her top-knot has made a dent in her skull where it hits the couch, she knows her new baby—with his zits and his cradle cap and his wall-eyes and his little prune-dent mouth that drips wet cottage cheese—looks more like a sewer rat than a human being. But she has not once thought of him as a ‘bad’ baby. Don’t plant that poison seed.

Mama needs you to notice these hearts: both of them. She wants to hear you say this baby is a miracle, even if you already have a dozen godchildren or grandchildren or cousins with children or a hundred children of your own. Perhaps this one was even born into a house with a quarter-dozen brothers. But every new soul-in-a-body is a miracle and miracles don’t diminish.

Don’t just notice the baby, notice HER. Mama’s desperate to get looked in the eye and told: “you just opened the portal and it was a ring of fire or a slit in your stomach and a heart came through. What a homecoming, what a sacred initiation! HOW DID YOU FIND THE STRENGTH AND THE COURAGE? Mama, you’re a miracle.” Say this with the reverence it deserves, even if she’s nested in stale couch blankets and even if she forgot to brush out the dry shampoo and all you can think when you look at the puff of white dust at her hairline is: George Washington.

If the baby appears to you, in your mohair sweater to be ‘bad’ consider these possibilities (privately):

This may be a baby who doesn’t love the Brussels sprouts that were brought last night by a helpful neighbor. He may be a baby who doesn’t love those four cups of coffee his mother drank so she could find ten shoes and toast five bagels and locate three water bottles (“but not that kind! the kind with the straw!”). This may be a baby whose insides are still pudding, so he’s unable to process even the food he was designed to drink. This mama may have eaten nothing but plain toast to assuage the digestive system of her cranky sewer rat. You have no idea what this miracle calls her to endure.

What’s ‘good’ anyway?

Is a ‘good’ baby a person who lays on a mat and expresses no needs? A person who sleeps and is quiet? A person who accepts whatever strange arm-tension and weird smells want to envelop him during this visit, which his mother allowed, despite her deep hunger for privacy and rest? This visit, which you, dear Hilda, promised “would be quick!”

They. Are. All. Miracles.

I’ve had what people told me were ‘good’ babies and I’ve had what people implied—because the babies cried and didn’t want to be held by those people—were ‘bad’ babies. My first baby was so ‘good’ he didn’t make a sound when he was born. He just looked at me and made an ‘O’ shape with his mouth and the nurses thought there might be some junk in his lungs (there wasn’t).

I was almost too scared to have a second baby because, after so much praise about my ‘good’ baby, I worried I’d get a ‘bad’ one. And I did! That little fucker roared like a lion when he came out and my heart sank, thinking of all the people who’d be disappointed I’d made this ‘bad’ baby. Actually, it was worse, I knew they’d be secretly delighted, a la: “we knew that first one was an anomaly, she’d never get a ‘good’ baby again. MAHAHAHA, teeheeehee.”

Well… just last night, my ‘good’ baby threw a watch on the floor, stomped up the stairs and told me he’s quitting… “Everything. All sports! And the newspaper, too!” My ‘bad’ baby heard the ruckus and came to see if I was okay and to give me a hug and a snuggle.

This is contrary to what the experts told me when I googled, “will my colicky baby be a difficult person?” To which they said: Yes. “A baby’s temperament correlates to his personality.”

Precisely the wrongest, meanest thing you can say to a woman who cannot put her uncomfortable baby down to sleep or shower. The way a baby behaves may correlate to cruciferous vegetables and caffeine, though more likely it tracks with some other unsolvable, passing mystery such as a Brillo sweater or sweet Hilda’s weird smell.

Mama’s living baby, no matter how much he sleeps or what sounds he makes is a miracle. Call that human being a miracle, leave what you brought, forbid Mama from writing you a thank-you note and go.

And don’t you DARE ask Mama if she was trying for a girl.

1. Thank you Paul, and thank you Apple,