I really really really dreaded having to deal with the crying, but actually… tfw you pick her up and start singing and her flushed upset little face starts smoothing out and she looks up at you… hm. it’s not so bad man


iatrogenic crying (when you comfort your baby so ineptly they keep caterwauling long after the initial bad stimulus fades away)


boyfriend CJ, placidly translating for the baby as she cried during a diaper change: “help. I’m stuck in reality and I can’t get out”

also:

CJ, putting a pacifier in the baby’s mouth: what if she notices it’s a scam? and there’s no food

me: what is she going to do, vote against the incumbent? me?


before having a baby, I thought it sucked that babies took so long to turn into interesting people. “good for people who like babies but I’m not one of them. I want a child who can tell me her theories. etc.”

but now I have a baby I feel no hurry at all?? she’s great as she is


me, cuddling the newborn: I’m serving cloth mother so hard right now


(affectionately, to baby) I’m going to protect and nurture you until one day you can hurt my feelings more accurately than practically anyone else can


(only managing to spend like 70% of Adderall time on deliverables) woman who craves to maximize shareholder value waylaid by gazing into her daughter’s eyes while singing lullabies

woman whose baby is not quiet: I yearn to work as soon as soon as the baby is quiet

same woman when the baby is quiet: [walking around holding baby. singing nonsense. kissing baby hair. FAFFING]


me: I think she’s bored. She cries until I pick her up and walk around, then she looks at everything. I endorse her learning about the world, but I have things to do… can I put her on the roomba?

spouse: you may not put her on the roomba.

me: what, concretely, is the harm?

spouse: she’ll run into things

me: I’ll make a little palanquin for her so she won’t get knocked off

spouse, again: you may not put her on the roomba.


me, thinking of another contraption for the baby: we could spare her some frustration when she’s learning how to crawl by making her a little cart, as an intermediate step

spouse: …and how would this cart work

me, confused about where the confusion was: er, it would be a simple wheeled chassis under her torso that supports most of her weight, so she can focus on mastering the limb movements without all the required strength and dexterity

(back and forth)

spouse: you know that her arms need to go under her torso, right? there’s not much room for a chassis

me: oh. oh, fuck!

spouse: what

me: I was somehow envisioning… um, millipedes? their arms go out and then down. I thought the baby, too… would…

spouse: you

Breastfeeding

me before childbirth: my breasts are both good in different ways

me after childbirth: there’s a good breast and a bad breast. the bad one with high variance milk output will be steamrolled by the homogenizing power of the state until it is economically legible


the creature & I suck at our respective halves of breastfeeding. a few days ago she chomped me so hard I cried. we were both just staring at each other and crying. obviously this was unpleasant, but it was also interesting? nice, even, to have that moment with her


the worse a baby is at a basic survival thing, the more labor and care it implies her ancestors expended to make the thing work anyway


it’s called milk letdown because it’s always letting her down


breastfeeding is like one of those cartoon fights where you only see some flailing limbs and sprays of blood in a cloud. except instead of blood it’s milk


me, checking watch: it’s almost time to torture the baby again. bring her to me me: yet again we will inflict the brown disk of malnutrition on her