Holy beans, I have access to a computer and the baby is sleeping. Quickly blog faster! I only have a few minutes so I'll keep this post narrow: Women are insane. To be more specific (and, like, fair), what I mean is that some women really lose it around babies.
I've really noticed it walking through the wilds of Gumpendorfer Strasse with the Mouse.
Complete strangers will surreptitiously cross traffic so that they can walk near the baby and peep at her feet. Old ladies rise from their bus seats like Lazarus to peer into the carriage, and young girls come bounding out of the shops where they work to coo and sigh.
There is much squealing. It goes like this. Someone will come up and say, "Mei das Putzi ist ja GANZ ein neues, so ein KLEINES *indecipherable cooing*" Still smiling like madonna, they ask, "Und? Wie alt?" (Loose translation: "What a wittle snooky wooky wookems woo. How old is she?")
And I say: "Fast ein Monat." (A month, or whatever). And they squee and clutch their hearts. When I told one woman on the bus that Nava was only six days old the woman actually shrieked and had to clap her hands over her mouth and sit down. Other times real tears come into these ladies' eyes.
One person I have only met once for five minutes walked right up to us in the street, apologised briefly ("Sorry, ich muss das jetzt sehen -- so SÜSS!"), pulled the child's sock off and then just stood there holding her foot. Another girl was gazing into the carriage when, with no forewarning, she reached in, pulled the sleeping baby's dress up and placed a single finger on her teeny weeny belly button. Then she literally stood there until it started to rain.
It's insane. Worse, I'm almost certain that I'm going to become these women - I, too, am grievously addicted to the smell of fresh baby and the sight of wittle pink toes.
However. Despite the crazy, its exactly those hormones that make us ladies into sensitive fertility goddesses.
Our worthy minds aside, though, girls' bodies are amazing on an esoteric level, and that is especially obvious when it comes to perpetuating the species. Not to brag or anything, but my body isn't just some abstract temple: it's a serious, life-building factory. My magic womb knit an entire person together while the rest of me ate Ben & Jerry's and sobbed at vapid Dove commercials. (By the by, pregnancy really solidified my belief that any person who thinks I shouldn't be the boss of my body can go hump a scroll.)
Every part of the female organism is linked to every other part, and to the baby, like that jellyfish tree in Avatar. The baby bleats once and you're awake; if you think about the way she smells your breasts leak. When she nurses, your uterus contracts ever closer to its pre-pregnancy size. Many aspects of childbirth and care would physically hurt more but you're flooded with love chemicals. I imagine there is a mixing board in our wombs and before it sits a great mother DJ with her incantations and ivory chopsticks, tweaking our cycles and sleep, our blood and milk.
The whole system is enough to make you believe in rain dances. Women are fucking awesome.
So, you know, I guess its okay that strangers come and try to smell my kid's head. It's a side effect of their feminine awesomeness. And anyway, they can usually be scared off with that other essential womanly skill: bitchy resting face.
I've really noticed it walking through the wilds of Gumpendorfer Strasse with the Mouse.
Complete strangers will surreptitiously cross traffic so that they can walk near the baby and peep at her feet. Old ladies rise from their bus seats like Lazarus to peer into the carriage, and young girls come bounding out of the shops where they work to coo and sigh.
There is much squealing. It goes like this. Someone will come up and say, "Mei das Putzi ist ja GANZ ein neues, so ein KLEINES *indecipherable cooing*" Still smiling like madonna, they ask, "Und? Wie alt?" (Loose translation: "What a wittle snooky wooky wookems woo. How old is she?")
And I say: "Fast ein Monat." (A month, or whatever). And they squee and clutch their hearts. When I told one woman on the bus that Nava was only six days old the woman actually shrieked and had to clap her hands over her mouth and sit down. Other times real tears come into these ladies' eyes.
One person I have only met once for five minutes walked right up to us in the street, apologised briefly ("Sorry, ich muss das jetzt sehen -- so SÜSS!"), pulled the child's sock off and then just stood there holding her foot. Another girl was gazing into the carriage when, with no forewarning, she reached in, pulled the sleeping baby's dress up and placed a single finger on her teeny weeny belly button. Then she literally stood there until it started to rain.
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| Ickle wickle baby toesies! |
However. Despite the crazy, its exactly those hormones that make us ladies into sensitive fertility goddesses.
Now, I'm not saying breeding is our best feature. Women don't need to have kids. Even if they do have kids I suspect that raising those kids is a whole lot more challenging than just bringing them into the world. There are many parts of women that are brilliantly designed to do all kinds of other things, like sneezing and calculus. And we should do them. It is great news for the world that ever more women are shaping religion, politics, science, engineering and other fields previously monopolized by the boys (who did a lovely job most of the time, but also brought us, respectively, holy war, regular war, social darwinism and the bomb).
Our worthy minds aside, though, girls' bodies are amazing on an esoteric level, and that is especially obvious when it comes to perpetuating the species. Not to brag or anything, but my body isn't just some abstract temple: it's a serious, life-building factory. My magic womb knit an entire person together while the rest of me ate Ben & Jerry's and sobbed at vapid Dove commercials. (By the by, pregnancy really solidified my belief that any person who thinks I shouldn't be the boss of my body can go hump a scroll.)
Every part of the female organism is linked to every other part, and to the baby, like that jellyfish tree in Avatar. The baby bleats once and you're awake; if you think about the way she smells your breasts leak. When she nurses, your uterus contracts ever closer to its pre-pregnancy size. Many aspects of childbirth and care would physically hurt more but you're flooded with love chemicals. I imagine there is a mixing board in our wombs and before it sits a great mother DJ with her incantations and ivory chopsticks, tweaking our cycles and sleep, our blood and milk.
The whole system is enough to make you believe in rain dances. Women are fucking awesome.
So, you know, I guess its okay that strangers come and try to smell my kid's head. It's a side effect of their feminine awesomeness. And anyway, they can usually be scared off with that other essential womanly skill: bitchy resting face.
