Man vs. Baby Page 13
• Baby passports are, as I suspected, a rip-off. I’ve said before that all babies look like Ross Kemp, but the idea that any baby is still going to be recognizable on its passport photo five years after birth is insane. . . . Besides which the immigration people barely even glanced at it. Charlie could have sailed through passport control with a drawing of Gregg WallaceII on the back of a beer mat (and it wouldn’t have cost us fifty-odd dollars).
• As for the heat . . . it turns out that taking a baby to a hot country is fine. People in scorching climates have babies quite a lot, so it’s a bit daft for us to think that if we take a baby to a sunny place, he will suddenly burst into flames, as if someone’s opened the curtains on a vampire. It’s just a matter of common sense, shade, avoiding midday, and applying factor thrumpteen sunscreen.
(Just a note on suntan lotion: let it dry off before picking him up or anything; otherwise it’s like wrestling a seal that’s just left a massage parlor. Charlie was in less danger from the sun than he was from me juggling him like a bar of soap.)
• Even with all precautions, there is a threat from the sun. To you. You will burn. You will be so preoccupied with keeping the sun off the baby . . . You. Will. Burn. As I write this, my face is a haunting red. (I think I applied sunscreen to myself once in the whole week.) In fairness, I did mention to Lyns, before we went, that I wanted to come back with a bit of color. I just didn’t particularly want that color to be the same as an angry baboon’s penis.
• Sandy beaches are a bad idea. A six-month-old baby puts everything in reaching distance in his mouth, so, in hindsight, sitting him down to play on four acres of powdered glass is a bit dim.
• Unless you’re willing to use gaffer tape and a stapler, it is easier to get a squid to wear a fanny pack than to get a baby to wear sunglasses and a hat.
Finally, what I would say to anyone considering taking their baby on holiday is this: Go.
For all its pissy little challenges, to spend time together, away from our newly destroyed home, was incredibly special.
I will always remember Charlie’s face as he curled his toes in the sand for the first time. His delight at being pushed around a hotel pool on the back of an inflatable crocodile. And his fascination as we sat on a bench, hand-feeding a sparrow some chips, overlooking the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea.
Small price to pay that it was the same color blue as my trampled bollocks after the flight home.
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I. I don’t know why Americans don’t use the word pram. It’s short for “the Perambulator”—which sounds like a really shit wrestler, but was actually the name of an early stroller patented by an American guy called Charles Burton. Apparently, he was struck by the fact that: “Carrying a heavy child in the arms . . . is not only a wearisome occupation, but often one which . . . is the cause of serious injuries.” Which is nineteenth-century speak for: “This kid weighs a ton and keeps kicking me in the bollocks.”
II. Gregg Wallace is a presenter on MasterChef UK and has an oversized, perfectly circular head.
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MAINTENANCE
When I think about what is needed to take care of a baby, I keep thinking about the film Gremlins. All babies should be presented to their parents in a little wooden box by a wizened old Chinese guy, with some basic instructions: don’t get them wet, don’t feed them after midnight, and, if you think they’ve crapped, for God’s sake don’t pull back the waistband of their diaper to check . . . you’ll get shit on your fingers.
MAINTENANCE
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When I was a kid at junior school, there was a tradition that one child would be chosen to take care of the class pet over spring break. I realize now that this was a tradition based on the fact that teachers really don’t want to be saddled with a fucking gerbil for two weeks.
Nevertheless, it was considered a great honor to be entrusted with the welfare of the guinea pig, Cracker. Obviously, this job fell to only the most mature, organized, and trustworthy of eight-year-olds. So when I asked Miss Wilson whether I might be considered a candidate, she looked a little bit horrified. What she said was: “We’ll see, Matthew, we’ll see.” When what her eyes were saying was: “Not in a million years, sunshine. You’re dressed head to foot in shit from the lost property box, yesterday you swallowed a pencil sharpener, and if I send Cracker home with you, I will be sending him to his certain death.”
As the last Friday of the term approached, I was gutted when Emma Mackey was presented with Cracker for the second time that year. I was devastated. Miss Wilson, seeing my disappointment, called me over as I was leaving and said: “Look, Matthew, I’ve got a very special job for you. I need you to take care of Buddy.” She then, with some ceremony, handed over the small potted cactus that had been slowly festering on the windowsill since I’d started at that school three years earlier. . . .
A fucking cactus.
That was how much faith Miss Wilson had in my ability to care for another creature. It wasn’t even a regular plant. A fucking cactus. The most indestructible of all plants. Cracker would have needed water, food, daily attention, and affection. Buddy, on the other hand, would survive the onset of a nuclear winter without me even glancing at him (while he cactus-laughed at me losing my hair and teeth). But I figured this was my opportunity to demonstrate that I was ready for responsibility. Besides, Miss Wilson had cleverly anthropomorphized the bloody thing by giving it a name. Buddy was my friend.
Needless to say, as I left that day, I didn’t want to stuff Buddy into my schoolbag, so I thought I would try to balance him on the handlebars of my bike. Inevitably, as I pedaled away from the playground, Buddy slipped and fell straight under the front wheel of my bike, then he went under the rear wheel of my bike, and, as I reversed to see the damage done, he went back under the rear wheel and then again under the front.
Buddy had been in my care for about fifteen minutes, and now he was lying on the ground looking like spiky guacamole. Buddy was dead.
I think this experience was where my fear of being entrusted with the welfare of a baby came from. Metaphorically speaking, I really didn’t want to run over Charlie on my bike.
THE SMALL STUFF
I knew that the maintenance of a baby would not be simple. That it would take organization, conscientiousness, and common sense. All things which, as a child, I was lacking, and as an adult I am still working on.
As it turns out, babies are surprisingly robust. But the upkeep required to keep them alive does make looking after a cactus, or a guinea pig for that matter, look like child’s play. With babies, you can’t just water them. Or pop them in a cage, put down some straw, and exercise them by putting them in a massive wheel. It’s more complicated than that.
All parenting books give you advice about the big stuff: how to feed a baby, how to change her diaper, how to get her to sleep. But most of them don’t talk much about the small stuff that’s required day to day: how to dress him, how to bathe him, and in general how to stop him from looking like a miniature hobo. All that is stuff you learn on the job.
And it’s not straightforward stuff. Babies don’t want to be clean, they don’t want to be dressed, they don’t want to have their nails clipped or their noses wiped. All of this stuff annoys the shit out of them (and nothing is potentially more explosive than a six-month-old being mildly inconvenienced). So the simplest of things becomes a daily battle and maintenance an ongoing war. But, as in every battle, strategy is everything.
The great Chinese military strategist Sun-tzu once wrote, in The Art of War, that to win any conflict, “You must swoop like a Falcon . . . move swift as the Wind, attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.”
It is thought that, in these words, Sun-tzu was describing how he achieved a great victory over the Chu army in the Battle of Boju in 506 BC. But, according to historical record, Sun was a parent, so he may well have been describing a strategy for dealing with a baby that doesn’t want i
ts nose wiped or its face cleaned. Faced with this ultimate foe? If you don’t swoop like a falcon, you don’t stand a chance.
BATHTIME
According to our old friend the Baby Whisperer, babies “don’t really get very dirty.”
I beg to differ. Maybe Charlie is an exception but, from what I’ve seen, when babies reach the age at which they are eating solids, they tend to finish most days in a kind of cracking cocoon of crap. A mix of liquids, bodily accretions, and food congeals around their body which, as it dries, leaves them barely able to move at the joints.
With this in mind, there is a fierce debate online among parents as to how often it’s necessary to bathe a baby. It’s a debate largely sparked by a mom blogger in the US who wrote that she only bathed her newborn once a week, if that. Which I just can’t imagine. Again, I’m in no position to judge anybody for their parenting decisions, but I can only imagine that after a week without a bath, her kid must look like some sort of feral, mat-haired spider monkey, which, if it escaped, would spook the neighbors into calling pest control to catch it in a big net. But this woman and her many supporters are adamant that, when it comes to bathing your baby, once a week is enough. (And they are probably just annoyed that you can’t take your tot out into the back garden and hose him down, without Child Protection Services sticking their nose in.)
The official advice, in the UK at least, is to bathe your baby a minimum of three times a week. But for a lot of us, bathtime is the daily touchstone of the evening routine. As much a vital part of that routine as alcohol consumption and pretending to be deaf when your partner says that it’s your turn to tackle the diaper bin.
Baby bathtime has always conjured images of splishy-splashy fun: grinning wet babies wearing foam beards and hats and expressions of delight. And it’s true that it can be a really enjoyable task for both parents and baby. It is also one of those rare daily responsibilities that experts are right in saying can be a great time for bonding.
But sometimes, after a long day following expert advice to bond over diaper-changing, playing, dressing, reading, tummy time, and feeding, there comes a point where even the most patient of parents must think: Okay, can everyone stop bloody bonding for a minute and let’s get the yogurt and SpaghettiOs out of this kid’s chin folds? Not every moment is a moment.
Particularly as the window of opportunity for splishy-splashy fun is quite a small one. The joy of bathtime doesn’t really begin until babies can sit up on their own. Before that, they just lie there, splayed on their backs and looking confused. At this early stage, a baby doesn’t appear to be having much fun at all and looks more like a frog that has regained consciousness mid-dissection.
So, maybe newborn bathtime is just not as much fun as it’s made out to be. But it is straightforward. The hardest thing you have to do is support her head, or put her in a little waterproof seat thing that sits in the water.
But then one day your baby can sit up on his own, and he is suddenly alert to the fun of his echoey surroundings. He gently splashes and plays with the confused menagerie of ducks, sharks, and squirty dolphins (and other plasticky bath crap that outnumbers him ten to one). And this is the window of opportunity in which to get those treasured snaps of a happy baby, cheerfully playing as he sits in the tub.
Because, before long, he can stand up as well and is no longer content to sit still in the water. He doesn’t want you to hold him, and he certainly doesn’t want to be washed. And, by the way, you can stick your little waterproof seat thing up your ass.
HOW TO BATHE YOUR BABY
Fortunately, we covered “How to bathe your baby” in our parenting classes. I remember it mainly because our tutor, Barbara, announced that she had an “acronym” that spelled out the things to remember. She then wrote “T.D.C.T.” on the whiteboard. Which isn’t an acronym at all, because acronyms are supposed to be pronounceable (like NATO or NASA). I know this is pedantic, but what actually annoyed me was that she then revealed that the initials stood for “Temperature, Depth, Cleaning, and Towel.” And it occurred to me that instead she could have said “Temperature, Water Depth, Ablutions, and Towel.” Which would actually be an acronym. And it would also have spelled out how I felt as a forty-year-old man in a classroom on a Saturday morning, being taught how to use a towel.
Temperature
Making sure that the temperature of your baby’s bath is correct is obvious, but really important. A baby’s skin is incredibly sensitive to heat and cold. So, as Barbara pointed out, you can’t run a bath at the same temperature you would enjoy yourself; it’s just way too hot for them.
Speaking personally, I just don’t enjoy a soak unless it takes several layers of skin off as I get in. In fact, it’s amazing we were ever able to conceive at all, given the temperature I like my bath to be. Doctors say that when attempting to conceive, it’s important to keep your testicles at a cool temperature. But, over the years, I’ve enjoyed regular baths that have been so hot I may as well have been tea-bagging Mount Vesuvius.
(Lyns is the same. I don’t mean she’s been dropping her balls in a volcano, I just mean we both like a bath that is about the same temperature as the earth’s core.)
Obviously, these sorts of temperatures are no good for a baby. You’re trying to clean them, not make a soup. So you have to be really careful.
The recommended temperature is 98.6 degrees. Which, according to Barbara, can only be accurately measured using your elbow. For some reason, the elbow is the “go-to” joint when you need to accurately measure temperature.
I know that parents have relied on the miraculous temperature-gauging powers of the elbow for centuries, but I’m not convinced. It’s not as though the elbow is some hypersensitive erogenous zone. In fact, it strikes me as a particularly unsensitive area of the body to be taking such an important measurement.
Besides, you can buy bath thermometers for next to nothing, and, although Barbara seemed a bit suspicious of them, my instinct would be to trust the universally constant effect of heat on the element mercury before relying on Barbara’s or anybody else’s elbow. (After all, when climate scientists want to check the precise temperature of the upper atmosphere or the earth’s oceans, they don’t toss aside their scientific equipment and say: “Just a second, Bert, we need to be absolutely sure about this. Fuck the calibrated instruments, I’m going in with the middle bit of my arm.”)
So while we accepted Barbara’s overall point about the importance of the first “T,” Temperature, when it came to testing it, we ignored her advice and bought two electronic thermometers: one in the shape of a whale, and one called Beaky (which looks like a bird but I think is supposed to be a platypus).
And, despite the unwavering accuracy of Beaky, and the unquestioned reliability of Willy the Whale, I still make sure to confirm the temperature of Charlie’s bath with my bloody elbow before he gets in. As the Barbara in my head says, “You can’t be too careful.”
Water depth
The depth of the water should be “deep enough to cover the baby’s waist while sitting.” The recommendation is about five inches. (An easy way to remember is that it’s roughly the same depth as fans of Real Housewives.)
When I was a kid, I used to be bathed in the kitchen sink. I don’t know whether this is a northern thing, but I think it was once quite common. And, when I think about it now, it makes perfect sense. The kitchen sink is the ideal baby bath. It is the perfect depth. Not just that, but it’s also well contained—there isn’t really anywhere for a baby to go—and, vitally, it’s also at an ideal height (so, unlike constantly leaning into a bathtub, it doesn’t make your back feel it’s about to snap like a stressed Wasa crisp). In almost every way the kitchen sink is a lot safer and much more convenient than using a full-size bath.
All that said, despite its many advantages, we don’t bathe Charlie in the kitchen sink. I suggested it to Lyns, but she informed me that this wasn’t the 1930s, and I should stop being nostalgic about my happy days sharing a bath
with cutlery and pans.
Lyns was insistent that, instead, we follow Barbara’s suggestion to use a plastic baby bath. Which, in fairness, performs similarly to the sink. Basically, you put it in the main bathtub and then put the baby in that. It doesn’t solve the problem of crippling back spasms, but it does mean you can bathe a baby at the requisite five inches without filling a full bath, and also keep him reasonably confined and manageable. It’s no kitchen sink, but it makes sense.
We bought ours online for twenty dollars. It’s called something like the BubbleTime EazeeBath. It’s basically a bucket. A twenty-dollar bucket, but still a bucket. And if you think that for twenty bucks it’s got to be more complicated than that—it’s not. Here are the comprehensive instructions that it came with: I’m not kidding, a single page that consisted of these two diagrams:
Which as far as I can make out mean:
1. “Fill it with water.”
2. “Don’t put your baby in it and fuck off to a seventies night.”
Ablutions/cleaning
One of the main pieces of childbirth advice about cleaning your baby is that with a newborn, you should clean with particular attention to the charmingly named “umbilical stump” (the nub of the cord that is left behind on a baby’s belly button).
I’ll be honest, at the time of attending childbirth classes I didn’t really know what an umbilical stump was, so I didn’t question the handy hint and tip that followed (if I had known, I might have raised a hand).
But, according to Barbara, the umbilical stump often drops off while being cleaned and, when it does, some parents like to keep it as a souvenir.