Let’s Have a Chat About Babies

As I sit at a county chess competition (I know, you’re jealous of my Saturday daytime social life), watching kids of all ages sneeze, cough, wipe their noses on their sleeves, speaking at something I think my first grade teacher would have referred to as an “outdoor voice”, and get dangerously close to me I have to remember that there was once a part of me that wanted to raise a kid from scratch. I don’t even make baked goods from scratch, why in the Hell did I ever think a kid from scratch would be a good idea?!

Let’s have a chat about babies. I’ll be the first to admit that the new baby smell that folks talk about is actually fucking delightful. Sniffing a newborn makes me feel a little creepy or like I am stealing a little part of their soul but the wonderful, feel-good endorphins that are produced from that sniffing outweigh the thoughts that I am a soul snatching creep. I should also admit that I have a rating system in my head when it comes to inspecting a new baby. I’m not going to spill the beans about my criteria because I want to keep my friends that are still producing babies from scratch to still invite me over to sniff their baby.

There’s also the other smells babies produce. Vomit, poop, blended turkey dinner from a jar. Aside from producing smells and yelling when they need something but can’t tell you what it is, they are just this really cool thing that you made with another human. I personally would rather just own a Tamagotchi. Plus, with my track record of keeping house plants alive you all would probably all prefer that I own a Tamagotchi too.

Because I am not just all sunshine and rainbows, I suppose now is the time for the trigger warning. Spoiler alert: Inability to have children the old-fashioned way. I found out in the summer of 2021 that the way our ancestors conceived children is no longer an option for me. Considering my opinion of kids was on par with my opinion of the idea of ever having to eat liver and onions, this sounds like heaven – right? Not so much. There is a huge difference between opting to not do something versus being told you cannot do something. I was fine with not having kids until I was told I couldn’t. There are days that I am just fine with not creating a terror that looks or acts like me and then there are days where I wonder if I would have enjoyed the weird, gross smells and being peed/puked/pooped on by my spawn knowing that one day they may be the ones changing *my* diaper.

Probably not. I think I will stick to being a stepmom to three teenage boys while still working on finding the Hints from Heloise article about removing hormonal teenage stench from drywall.

(Originally started writing this on January 14th in case you were confused as to how I obtained a time machine to roll backwards to last Saturday.)

When going through my husband’s old photos, I took a photo of this picture so that I would have a good laugh anytime I see it on my camera roll. It seemed really appropriate for me to include it on this post. Byeee, baby fever.