Perfect Babies

October, 2011

    Jill called me after spending the afternoon with Leslie, Joe, and Baby James.  ‘Mom, do you know that Joe Rydberg thinks that his baby is perfect?’ she said with disgust.  And I’m pretty sure that she was rolling her eyes in her inimitable way.  ‘He thinks that James is the most perfect baby in the world.’

    ‘Don’t get me wrong’ she added.  ‘I think that James is a great baby, I think he’s really cute, I think that he’s a pretty good sleeper for being six weeks old....but perfect??’

    I have to agree with Joe on this one.  I too think that my first grandchild is pretty darn perfect.  Just like I once thought my own firstborn son was perfect...

    I have a very vivid memory of standing with Aunt Shirl and staring through the nursery window at Steve as he lay swaddled in a blue blanket in a tiny baby bed, one baby among twenty or more in the Prentice Hospital nursery.  Steve was born before the days of rooming in. In 1976 new-borns spent most of their first hours in a hospital nursery while their tired mothers tried to sleep and anxiously awaited the arrival of their babies at feeding times.  Visitors met the new babies through the nursery glass.

    I remember staring at Steve and thinking that he was the most beautiful baby in that entire nursery.  I actually remember being surprised that all the other people standing and staring at the babies weren’t pointing at Steve and saying ‘isn’t that the most beautiful baby?’  Just like Joe, I thought that Steve was the most perfect baby in the world.

    It wasn’t until months later when I was looking at pictures we had taken of newborn Steve that I realized that Steve was not quite the perfect baby I had imagined.  Steve’s delivery had been a bit traumatic because he was what they called a posterior presentation, so I had spent four hours trying to push him out before he was finally delivered with forceps.  Being stuck in the birth canal for all those hours had given my beautiful baby boy a somewhat elongated head.  While I was blissfully staring at the nursery window at my beautiful baby boy, all those other people at the window were probably thinking to themselves, ‘Wow, look at the pointed head on that one!’

    I also thought that Steve’s sister Leslie was perfect--although her baby pictures show bright red marks on both cheeks from the forceps that were also used to deliver her.  And I thought that Jill and Johanna were perfect--although baby pictures of Jill show a red, squished up face.  Johanna, however, does look perfect in her picture!    

    Love, mother-love, father-love, aunt-love (because Aunt Shirl agreed with me that Steve was the most beautiful baby in that long ago nursery and I’m pretty sure that Jill thinks that James is nearly perfect) may indeed be blind,  and beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder.

  I’m beholding Baby James and I’m thinking he’s perfect.  As perfect as his Uncle Steve!