First-baby bliss

Youth, they say, is wasted on the young. I'd like to introduce my own variation to that ol' chestnut: First babies are wasted on new mothers.

Here's the deal: When you have your first child, it's all uncharted ground. Every obstacle is encountered and overcome for the first time. Your kid doesn't sleep, doesn't eat, doesn't poop. He has gook coming out of his eye, he's losing his hair and sometimes his excretions are so forceful they reach the nape of his neck. All is fodder for the worry mill, so new mothers spend half their time in fits of consternation when, really, they should be sipping daquiris and checking out the sidewalk sales.

Trust me. Kenya was a problem baby. She had colic and cradle cap and alarmingly runny poo. She didn't sleep through the night until she was almost three, by which time her father and I were about ready to throw in the parenting towel. I often wonder whether her problems were feeding our anxieties or vice-versa. Looking back on it now, from the vantage point of fourth-child mayhem, I see the whole ordeal through different eyes.

One fresh-to-the-world little baby is a breeze. No bigger than a laptop and just as portable, a newborn isn't any more troublesome than a blister.

Sure, she cries from time to time, but stick a boob in her mouth and you can generally get on with your day (so long as your day can unfold with an exposed breast in it). New babies sleep almost constantly. You can strap them onto your chest and be off with you. Movies, travel, whatever. The world is your oyster when you've only brought one new baby into it.

But here's the crime: You don't realize all of this until it's too late; until your first baby is jamming toys into your VCR, and your second child has arrived on the scene. You'll never have just one infant again, and you forgot to take advantage of it when you did.

Five-week-old baby Kai is a joy. She wants nothing more from life than a comfy place to lay her downy little head, an easy-to-access engorged breast and the occasional opportunity to swing in her fancy Fisher-Price contraption.

As for me, experience has taught me that my infant's crying bouts will ebb and that the heat rash that sprang up on her chest today will be gone tomorrow. I know that babies are supposed to get gassy and that pink eye is not a serious affliction. All of this means I enjoy her more and that my life is not anywhere near as stressful as it was when Kenya was a wee one.

But all of this wisdom is moot now that I've added three more kids to the tribe. Sigh. The best I can do is press this education on my pregnant-with-their-first friends, and insist that they take advantage of the relative freedom of the early weeks and months of life with a firstborn. But, of course, the world doesn't work that way.

They will suffer through the same anxieties all first-timers do, then curse lost opportunities when subsequent children arrive to parents in a considerably more relaxed frame of mind.

mother's day