Exciting saga of a new husband being introduced to the world of babyhood
My Wife and the baby
I was raised in a male dominated family. There was my father, me and three brothers. Growing up I was never around babies, only at an ocassional family visit where there was an infant. I only sort of glanced at them but really I had no interest in examining them closely. My reason for beginning this story with background information is to help you understand my side of it.
I married a wonderful girl with a great sense of humor and an understanding attitude toward her hsuband, namely me. Everything was great for two years of our marriage. We lived a casual style free to make plans as we went along.
One day my wife informs she is pregnant and isn’t that wonderful? There was a pause while I processed this information about something I hadn’t thought of ever. “Well,” I began, “It’s certainly a surprise.”
It was an opening which wiped the smile off of her face.
“Is that all you have to say? Don’t you get it? This is the beginning of starting a family.”
“Sorry”{it’s a word uttered often from then on”
Well so long casual life style. In the next month I hardly saw my wife except at bedtime. She joined a class for expectant mothers meeting weekly for husbands and wives. I declined the invitation to come with her. Why? she demanded to know. Don’t need it and not interested was my careless reply. This was the beginning of many gross misunderstandings about this baby business.
She replied “Now I’m getting the true picture here. Your reply is a callous remark about raising a family or even caring whether we have a baby or not!” She said this with tears welling up in her pretty eyes. Here came another “sorry” from me. I was definitely floundering around in unknown waters far over my head.
“”Sorry” she replied with harsh sarcasm. “A sorry answer. You don’t even know what you’re sorry is about. I get it now, you only married me for the sex. Don’t deny it! A good lay and a built in housekeeper. No, don’t touch me. A hug or two isn’t going to make it right!”
Some more tears and she left the room.
Flowers and taking her out for dinner weren’t enough. Only when I promised to attend the baby classes thing was there an end to the hostilities. So I went to my first meeting in the local high school gym. Looking around I spotted some guys who looked as uncomfortable as me. That helped a little. At least I wasn’t an insensitive monster in a class of my own. I guessed these guys were as ignorant as I was about birth and babies.
Between you and me the only good thing about the weekly classes was being with my wife. I was getting notes when I came home from work announcing she was visiting some of her friends or she was shopping for baby stuff. And now there were plenty of dinners eaten in the kitchen prepared and stored in the refrigerator. Mostly cold stuff because I think she was afraid I might burn the house down if I had to warm anything up.
Man. I couldn’t wait to have this baby born. The months went by slowly for me as I watched my wife become jumbo size. She had a belly swelling up bigger and bigger. Just when I thought it couldn’t possibly get any bigger it crept our a few more inches. I swear I was afraid to touch her belly. It looked like a baloon so close to bursting that even a finger on it would meke it explode violently and probably kill the baby. I dreaded the times when she would grasp my hand and make me touch the thing. Even worse when I had to feel the baby kicking.
At last the day came when she went into labor. I declined the doctor’s invitation to witness the grand event. I’m sure I wasn’t the first husband to chicken out. He told me to go home then and they would call me when she was ready to have the baby. What a relief. I only had a couple of drinks. I wanted to be sober when I saw my wife.
I was summoned to the hospital. Several hours later a nurse entered the waiting room and called my name. She smiled at me and I followed her to the baby nursery. The nurse had me stand by the viewing window while she picked up a baby from a bassinette. She came to the window and I got my first look at my daughter. It was sort of shocking to me. I expected to see one of those healthy red cheeked babies like on the baby food labels.
Instead she was still somewhat red and wrinkled up. I studied her clsoely. Not only didn’t she look like those cherubs, she was kind of long and scrawny. So there she was red, wrinkled, long and skinny. I wondered if babies sort of grew out of that ugly look. If not, she wasn’t going to have any friends based on her looks, so hopefully a sparkling personality was in her future.
I was very nervous when I entered my wife’s room. I was in for more shocks. I expected to see a radiant happy mother bursting with good cheer. What I saw was my wife with dark circles under her eyes, looking exhausted and with a little vomit on the corner of her mouth. I just leaned over and pecked her lightly on the cheek.
Witth a wan smile she asked me if I had seen my daughter. Unfortunately I’m not a good liar and I put on a broad smile and blurted out,
“What does it do walk, crawl or fly?”
I don’t have to tell you how many “sorries” that dumb joke cost me. We now went into a complete change in our way of life. Babies, I found out rule the household. A demanding schedule of feeding, diapering, bathing and a strict time for naps and sleeping. Not to mention the midnight feeding times that I inherited. My wife had to teach me the routine of warming the milk to the right temperature, pouring it into the bottle and putting on the nipple. Then she would sit me down and place the baby in my arms. See, I was afraid to hold her.
I carried her as if she was a carton of eggs needing to be held with the greatest of delicacy, So I kind of finger held her and out away from my body. Her motherwatched this absurd handling and tried to correct my holding technique. When she wasn’t looking I would go back to the finger thing.
My wife didn’t get out of the house for two months. She had been afraid to leave our daughter alone with me in charge. By now I had mastered holding her the right way and feeling like a pro. It was nap time when she left after ten minutes of instructions which were also written down and pasted to the refrigerator door.
An hour alone and the baby woke up crying loudly. It wasn’t feeding time yet so I laid her down to inspect her diaper. Until now my wife took care of diapers. Although she wouldn’t admit it I’m sure she was worried I would stick the baby with the pins. Anyway, I opened up the diaper from hell. She had just been fed spinach. What that slimy stuff looked like, and worse, what it smelled like is hard to describe. I quickly closed the diaper to stifle the odor. I looked at her and said.
“How can a baby as pretty as you are do something so nasty?”
I checked the refrigerator memorandum. No mention about this deal. I was on my own. I went back to study the situation to detemine my next move. Well, she had to be cleaned up from the nasty stuff. Then try to put on a clean diaper. Using the very tips of my fingers I touched the corners of the deposit from hell and quickly pulled it out from under the baby.
.Bad move the deposit flew out of the diaper all over me and the floor. I set the baby on the floor so she wouldn’t fall off the table. It frightened her when her bottom hit the cold floor and she was screaming. I quickly ran the water in the bathtub and using my forearm to test the temperature I got it right. I ran back and picked up my screaming daughter ineptly saying
“ssshhhh” to her. Like that would work.
Not wanting to touch the nasty stuff I picked her upand held her upside down. It was a move guaranteed to keep her screaming even louder. Shaken but not crumbling I put her bottoms up under the warm water coming from the faucet. Just holding her bottoms up I let the water wash off her behind. Thinking I had handled the situation like a pro I tackled diapering her. It came out very loose since I was afraid I’d stick her. She stopped crying and was so tired from her screaming exercise, sleep was instantaneous. I made myself a drink.
When my wife came home she immediately went in to check on the baby who was still sleeping. Then she inspected the house suspiciously. Her mood changed quickly when she saw the spinach diaper still on the floor, a mess on the table and a trailing of the nasty stuff all the way to the bathtub. She whirled around as I tried to look calm and innocent, She yelled.
“What the hell happened? Gone a few hours and it looks like you were up to something. Explain please!”
“The baby isn’t hurt or anything. I had to clean her up from all of that spinach crap that’s all,”
Please tell me in great detail what you did to her.”
Too late to try to lie. I wasn’t exactly sure where I went wrong. But my wife did. The more I talked about laying her on the floor and holding her upside down under the bathtub faucet to clean her bottom the worse my wife looked. I tried to explain why the place wasn’t cleaned up and how I couldn’t touch that nasty stuff.
After a month or so she statrted talking to me again.
My baby duties were definitely at an end. Our daughter is an eighteen year old beauty now. And I comfort myself when I think about her psycho therapy to get over her mysterious fear of water. She is making some progress and should be over her phobia anytime now her doctor assured me.
I agree with Eva. There are a lot of men that can relate to this experience.
I would like to say that I was different. Observing how my little sister was handled by women, and I believe, even my father doing the honors. I always was a fast learner from just watching others do things. But you may not believe me. Why?
After I was paralyzed at 20, no woman ever let me hold their baby because of my hands and arms being paralyzed. Thinking that I would drop the baby. Likewise, I never married and didn't have any children. Largely because I respected women and did not impregnate them willy-nilly like most men do.
A great story though, with detail I can relate to.
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