There seems to be a baby boom at the moment. People are having babies all over the place, which is fabulous if you adore babies in general, but not so fabulous if you’re not that keen on them, unless they’re yours or closely related, then you can gaze adoringly at the little miracles for ever. I find that 10 minutes admiring the dinky little fingers and heavenly widgy face and saying, ‘What a lovely babyâ€, is about enough for me.
And it’s not just the looking. You often have to do holding, which makes me nervous — another ghastly admission. What if I drop it or don’t hold its delicate little head properly? Or, having sensed that I am a babyphobic witch, it starts screeching and weeping?
My friend Fielding agrees. ‘Other people’s babies look like babies,†he says sensibly, but he did once make a ghastly anti-baby blunder. Someone rang to say that a friend of a friend’s sister’s child had just had a third baby.
Fielding managed the obligatory congratulations, thought he’d put the phone down and called out to the wife, ‘that’s all the world needs, another fucking babyâ€, with the phone not down at all. ‘But I look round,†he says, ‘I see half the world starving and the rest of it stuffed with lunatics, and I can’t help coming to a fairly Swiftian conclusion.â€
That is pretty harsh, but baby-visiting is complex. The people with the babies might not realise that the visitor is perhaps going through personal hell and torment. He or she might be envious and longing desperately for a baby, can’t ever have one or hasn’t had one yet and the biological clock is ticking away. Worse still she might have a mother desperate for a grandchild who nags poignantly every time her friends have one, as my mother used to do. ‘When am I going to be a grandma?†she would say, sighing hopelessly, her blue eyes filling with tears. But luckily my daughter arrived, utterly beautiful and endlessly fascinating.
‘And did you believe it when visitors said your baby was perfect?†asks Fielding. Yes I did, because she was, and now she’s grown up and, unlike me, she loves baby-visiting. She loves the gazing, holding, name-choosing and shopping for darling little outfits.
Inspired by her example I did manage a pleasant half-hour baby visit last week, followed by an admiring five-minute gaze at next-door’s baby on my way home. Then I rushed indoors in an unnatural way to gaze lovingly at the dogs, took them out for a walkie and met an acquaintance with her dog and new baby. She looked knackered, her eyes sunken, her hair awry and her baby squawking robustly. ‘I don’t know why anybody bothers,†she says fiercely, but in a rather refreshing way. I bet she was pretending. —