I. Candid Verses: Not-So-Cute Babies!

Was 2011 a year of a telltale sign? My sister had a baby. A lot of my cousins gave birth to a lot more baby cousins. My childhood friends became proud fathers and mothers for the first time. The girl I had a crush in high school had an uncomfortable Caesarian. And then our neighbor’s daughter that unexpectedly eloped had a set of twins.

Am I really getting old or is it simply the manifestation of Zuckerberg’s masochistic hobby? When I see countless pictures uploaded meticulously in order from the bloodied inception to the poise of nurses in the emergency room; from the multiple shots outside the hospital to the drive home; and then from hundreds of friends and family holding the new born at different angles for the camera to the first suckling, I am tempted to comment: “SOMEBODY, PLEASE GIVE THAT BABY A BREAK!”

Isn’t anybody concerned about the psychological trauma this baby is going to experience later with all those camera flashes and loud-mouthed family? My Mom argues it is all for memory, but I am skeptic about this because I see more pictures of my Mom than the baby in any given album. Then, she goes on how cute the baby looks just like I used to: how it has my eyes, lips of its mother, nose of its father, hair of its grandfather (which means no –hair) and of course the animation of its grandmother.

This makes me nostalgic for a second until I realize she’s dead wrong: For starters, babies at inception aren’t cute at all- they only look awfully similar. Don’t judge me! Even my sister wistfully remembers how she thought her baby only resembled our primate-cousin than any cousin in our family. My nephew only got his pleasing look when he was about 6 months old. Because you could now obviously tell that he was not swapped in the hospital and belonged to our family.

But then why do hundreds of friends and family keep commenting how cute and adorable the baby looks right from the birth. I have a couple of theories: 1. They are doing what everyone is doing. It is in our genes 2. Subconsciously they are worried that their own babies will not be labeled as cute in the future. The latter I fear is everyone’s fear. But now here’s the catch: Since you’ve already used all those cute and adorable comments and whom it resembled during birth, what are you going to say when it lives to your frivolous expectation at 6 months? You are only left with the obvious “OMG! Your baby has really grown big.” What did you expect? It eats, sleeps, and cries. It cries when it wants to eat or poop. Such is the simple life of the baby!

But then, cuteness doesn’t necessarily correlate with sanity. Every baby, even the cutest one, comes with its own set of tantrums. My sister says she hasn’t slept more than 3 hours at a time in the last six months and my brother-in-law has become really cranky at work. Please do not blurt out that you can’t wait to play with someone else’s cute baby because you’re lying. Do you really have the time? Besides, I gather that my nephew has become a mischievious little monster poking everyone in their eyes who wants to hold and cuddle him. I knew he was going to get back for all those “birth-flash-trauma.”

Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m over-reacting just a little here. If we are making all those comments not out of concern but simply out of compulsion, the question we should ask is: Do we really care about others’ children then?  The late George Carlin, let peace be upon him, famously quoted once “We don’t care about your children, because they’re YOUR children.” We can make comments though. Comments that make us feel good about ourselves and bode well for our future offspring. Maybe that’s a telltale sign.