Babies and Northern Lights

I am in baby hell and there is no obvious escape route.

Two of my good friends have had children within the past three months. One of said children was born just last week. Today I went to visit this newly created human. As we were sitting around admiring this little guy, we all started commenting on the looks of the baby. My first-time mother friend said that the baby's appearance had improved since being born. She noted that his head was sort of cone-shaped from the get-go and that his nose was sort of smashed. She went on to admit that her and her husband had tried to brace themselves for their new son not being the cutest addition to the family. Being the animal lover she is, my friend said that her first thought upon seeing her baby boy was "it's no puppy."

I could not agree more with my friend in respect to human babies being anything other than a puppy. They are not as cute as puppies. They are not as easy to take care of. They are not as affordable. Human babies cannot be put in cages for hours at a time. They cannot be bathed with a garden hose. Human babies require feeding numerous times a day and cannot be trained to use the restroom any specific place until years into the relationship. Human babies do not come when you call them. They do not take a liking to having their ears aggressively rubbed or being left outdoors on sunny afternoons...or any afternoons for that matter. And yet, nearly every woman I have in my arsenal of friends has signed up for a bare minimum of eighteen years of human babies for which I have very little explanation.

As an adult I have seen a few lines drawn in the proverbial sand. College or no? Moving away or no? Marriage or no? The only line drawing I ever gave much thought was moving and marriage. I knew that both of those decisions would very much dictate most aspects of my life. I sort of understood the ramifications of picking up and moving away and sort of understood the ramifications of getting married. Whether I understood the specifics of those processes is not as important as me having understood the seriousness of whatever the ramifications were. And yet, I always took solace in the fact that both moving and marriage is somewhat easily reversed. I knew that moving can happen at most any juncture of a journey. I knew that marriage was a little more difficult to reverse, but nearly half of us find a way so I could too.

Recently, I have started to notice that the number of folks on the other side of the baby line is rapidly increasing. Facebook is a hotbed for baby videos and baby announcements and gender reveals and 20 week updates (by the way, no one cares that your fetus is the size of a fig). Babies are everywhere and they don't seem to be going away. People I don't even know are having kids and announcing it to the world of Facebook on a daily basis. With every new baby, I feel a stronger sense of urgency to finalize my decision on which side of the line I want to stay. With every 20 week bump picture, I find myself considering what I would be craving if I were pregnant. With every gender reveal surprise, I find myself sucked in to the wonder of so-and-so having a baby girl as if one of these times someone's gender reveal party is going to expose that someone is having a pterodactyl instead of a boy.

I honestly don't get the attraction. Yet, I understand that I must be missing the appeal of children, because we all keep getting pregnant. Some of us are even signing up for baby #2.

I ask my mom friends to articulate what is so intriguing about their own child, and I never get a sufficient answer. I get a lot of "make sure you do everything you want to do before..." answers. And a lot of "you have plenty of time before you have kids." I've had a few "I would have waited a little longer" responses, but I never get an answer that communicates the reason for having a baby. I even ask my own mom who claims that my brother and me are the best thing she has ever accomplished. She gives me the predictable "you just don't know until you have your own" response, which I think answers why we all do just that. Babies benefit from the ultimate marketing campaign. We are all persuaded to jump on the baby bandwagon because the only way to understand is to get one for yourself. Babies are unable to be appreciated from afar. There is apparently some magnetic pull of early morning feedings and incessant crying. There is power in those little cone shaped heads and dirty diapers. In between the spit up and poop, there is some sort of baby drug these little unassuming humans are creating. To non-parents babies are like a mystical creature unexplained by all the parents in this world. Babies are like Nessie or Big Foot. They are UFOs and aliens. Babies cannot be defined or understood until you simply drink the kool-aid. Babies are the Northern Lights of adulthood. You don't know when exactly you're going to get to see them, but everyone testifies to the transformative experience of being in their presence.

I don't know when or if I will ever get to see the Northern Lights of parenthood. I used to think I would just sign up to get on the baby train whenever it was that I got bored with being just me. I assumed that since sixteen-year-olds all over America get pregnant without even meaning to (shout out to "Teen Mom" by the way) the process of getting pregnant must be pretty simple. However, I think getting pregnant can sometimes be as complicated as finding the Northern Lights. You've got to be in the right place at the right time. There can't be a cloud in the sky and it needs to be a new moon. You need to be outside of the city lights and it needs to be just the right time of year. I suppose having a baby would not be quite as magical if every person in this world simply put their name on the baby list and one showed up a few months later.

Sometimes I talk myself into wanting a baby. And then sometimes I remember that I have blankets hanging over the windows in my bedroom in some pathetic attempt to block out the sunlight allowing my husband and me to sleep until eleven on Saturday mornings. I realize that blocking out sunlight will be useless with a crying baby in that same room, and I heed the advice of all of you frazzled parents who longingly remember a time before parenthood when the sight of the Northern Lights was still just a dream in your clear, well-rested mind.