September 3rd, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy
Here’s something about babies that nobody bothered to mention. Newborns have to grow into their heads.
My sister recently gave birth to her first child, a little girl who, hopefully, will be supplying our impending little one with hand-me-downs until they’re both in college. Because I am a dutiful (if not necessarily enthusiastic) brother, I packed my wife in the car and drove down to see the new baby the day she and her exhausted but happy parents came home from the hospital.
Because she is my niece she is, of course, as cute as a button on the belly of a baby panda. She’s got a bit of the squinty, jowly, miniature-old-man look that all newborns have, but she’s tiny and soft and she wriggles and makes little grunty, gurgly squawks that will be charming as all hell until the first time she gets colic.
I’ve never held a freshly minted human before, and it was quite pleasant. But I wasn’t at all prepared for the thing that she did with her face.
Rather, I wasn’t prepared for the thing she didn’t do with her face, which was move it with the rest of her head. I was reclined slightly on the couch, and she was lying with her head on my chest. She turned her head in response to some sound or another, but her face stayed in place. All the internal parts – skull, nose, eyes, jaws – turned where she wanted to look, but the pressure of her head against my chest kept the soft parts – eye sockets, lips, skin – from moving. She looked like a Shar Pei being dragged around by the cheek.
I really didn’t mean to mention this phenomenon to anyone, because saying “hey, your baby is cute, and OH MY GOD WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER FACE?” is too blunt for even my limited grasp of tact. But I made mention of how soft her newborn skin was, and we sort of got off on a tangent that ended with me wondering out loud how many of them we’d need to make a nice comfy bathrobe.
I am a terrible person.
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