The Sound and the Newborn

Approximately 48 hours ago, my wife brought our second child - a daughter named Cecily - into this world.  I was once again plunged into the world of a newborn.  We have a two-year-old son named Simon, and maybe he was the same way he was just born and I'd blocked it out, but Cecily seems to be much more of a screamer.  It's nothing that seems unusual; if anything, maybe my son was an exceptionally mellow newborn.  It's hard, though.  It's hard because outside of changing her diaper or handing her over to the wife to feed, there's not much I can do to make her feel better.  With Simon able to articulate his feelings and communicate his frustrations, it's tough to go back to a world where the only feedback is decibel level and the intonation of a yelp.

I seem to remember Simon calming down as soon as he was tightly swaddled, but Cecily requires an extra step: she requires one of us to hold her and bounce up and down.  I've found that it works best if doing so while walking like a chicken, but that may simply be because I believe everything works better while walking like a chicken.

I had also forgotten the pure joy of watching a sleeping infant.  Cecily, like all newborns, if I'm to be honest, isn't the super cutest.  I've had the honor to see other friend's newborns, and almost all newborns take a few weeks, if not months, to grow into full baby cuteness.  But there's a grand delusion that washes over you when you look at your own spawn that removes all that objectivity and floods your brain with a simple message: this human is perfect.  This, for me, is accompanied by great joy ("I made this!") and great humility ("I made this?").  I imagine that this is similar to the feeling one might get by, say, discovering the Higgs Boson or calculus, but we men get to be a part of this elite club just by having unprotected sex and then not skedaddling for the hills.

It's crazy, right?  Taking care of a newborn is simultaneously the most terrifying and incredible experience ever.  As Simon has grown up (and at only 2 and change, he already feels so old), the parenting experience has certainly changed.  But there's something about the untainted helplessness of a newborn that is entirely unique.

My hope is that I'll be able to write often and regularly, and share what it's like for me to be a dad.  Being a father is also a bit of a paradox.  It feels entirely personal - after all, who else has my children? - and yet certainly is something I do that is the most commonly shared with other people.  So this is to all Dad Men everywhere, but more specifically, it's to me.