Nic Narrates

According to every other commercial on the Discovery Channel, it’s Shark Week ’09. I’m sorry, but my fear of the ocean aside, the sharks have nothing on my latest adventure and it happened on land. In fact, it happened on a balmy summer evening in my married friends’ 2 bedroom condo. Now also home to….baby.

After the Baby Shower and The Birth and the Congrats on Baby, etc.; I knew I was due to visit them. It was the friendly thing to do! I knew I’d have to stop in with a coffee cake or some junk and meet the little bugger. And I knew I didn’t want to.

While I’m happy for my friends- this baby is a real joy for them, I’m not the kind of person who is going to coo at the Little One. I know my ovaries are supposed to kick into overdrive or something and I’m supposed to be all “Oh, I want one!” But no. Instead, I’m the kind of person who gets more excited about the dog on the sidewalk rather than the baby in the stroller. I figure the dog won’t turn 11, realize I don’t actually know everything, and then decide I’m ruining their life and that they HATE me.

So I guess you could say I dreaded going to see them- mostly because I knew they’d corner me into holding him. My anxiety over this was paramount- something akin to public speaking or visiting the dentist. The thing is, when it comes to babies, I just don’t know what I’m doing and am fearful that all I will ever accomplish is to make them cry. And really, who wants to be the Girl Who Makes Babies Cry? While my fear may seem ridiculous, it’s steeped in Historical Fact.

Once upon a time, I was a 10 year old babysitter (yeah, back in The Olden Days people actually believed a 10 year old was not only old enough to be left home alone but also a suitable watcher of children and babies), which incidentally is the last time I held a baby. The baby I was watching at the time, of course, was blissfully asleep when the mom left- promising that he’d sleep the whole time. Fat chance that happened.

Baby woke up and WOULD. NOT. STOP. CRYING. I tried to feed him to no avail. I changed his diaper without needing to. I picked him up and walked him around the house with a jostle here and a jostle there. In the end, I put him back in his crib and stood back…and joined him in his tears. I kept waiting for the mom to come home and ask how it went. Oh, you know, we were just crying.

Previous history notwithstanding, my friends sat me down on their formerly pristine Crate & Barrel sectional and deposited their offspring into my arms. There I sat dubiously holding their six week old and nothing about it appealed to me. Actually, I kind of felt put out. I didn’t want to hold him in the first place, but how do you say “no thanks” without being rude?

Within 20 seconds he scrunched up his face and began a timid, then audaciously repulsed wail. It was as though he could literally smell my fear…like bees or something. In the meantime, my friends laughed and made no indication that they were at all inclined to alleviate me. Ha! Ha! Ha! Look at the silly single girl! She’s going to cry! It appeared that I was marooned, afraid to stand and force him back into either of their more skilled arms, and beginning to sweat. All the while, an alarm in my mind was sounding. FAILURE. FAILURE. FAILURE!!!

I’ve never been so happy to board a CTA bus and return to my relatively quiet and baby-free home as I was that night. Now I’m just praying that I don’t see my likeness on the family web site. I’ll be the one, the ONLY one, with the constipated look on her face while Baby screams in my unwelcoming arms.

Filed under: domesticity is overrated, friends, hateful, haterade, jaded, Just Another Day in Crazy, mothering, must be a sign, romper room, singletons, so what if i scream? by Nic