Henye Meyer, mother of nine, doesn't mind admitting that babies are dull, dull, dull...
A friend of mine was out with her mother-in-law, wheeling her new baby, when I bumped into her. After some general chat I remembered, unusually for me, that the baby was a recent acquisition …yes, my social skills are weak. I congratulated her and added, "I suppose I ought to ask to see it." She obligingly tweaked back a fold of the blanket and I observed the small creature in the pram. "Quite nice - for a baby," I said. "You know I don't really go for little babies."
Half an hour later the phone rang. It was my friend. "I can't thank you enough!" she said.
"For what?" I asked.
"For saying what you did," she explained. "I don't bond with little
babies, either, and my mother-in-law thought I was some kind of pervert till we met you."
Most people have an instinctive affection for a new baby. It’s such an ironclad norm that nobody, at least nobody but me, is willing to admit publicly that they don’t have the correct feelings.
On thinking about it, I must have had some suspicion that this baby-worship wasn’t for me even before I had any of my own, because I remember being determined not to become a doting mother.
Sometimes I wonder if I overdid it, though, with my first baby. She was acceptable enough, with dainty features and enough hair to look finished, but to my eyes she looked pretty much like the rest of the squirming wrinkled creatures in the hospital nursery. One baby there though, was distinctive. He had a pointy head thatched with reddish hair and looked like he was wearing that hat that the Tibetan lamas claim is made from the hide of the Abominable Snowman. I took all my visitors to see him.
"But where’s your baby?" my puzzled friends asked.
"Oh, she’s over there," I told them. "But she’s nothing special."
They were horrified. How could I talk like that about my own child ? Especially my first? There was no way I could think of to explain to them that it was possible to look at babies dispassionately, so I guess they thought I was mad and I thought they were.
It isn’t as if I haven’t had the opportunity to learn to bond immediately with a baby. I’ve had nine. (Religious conviction, not ignorance.) But, I just don’t feel what most mothers feel for their newborns, or what most women seem to feel for babies in general. To me a baby is a stranger, like any other person I meet for the first time. As I get to know a baby, I do develop a relationship with it, not as adult to baby but as individual to individual.
I don’t think I short-changed my kids as a result of this delayed bonding. I fed all nine myself, most of them for a full twelve months. They got plenty of cuddling and attention and as far as I know I never did anything to interest the child protection agencies. The odd thing is that I can’t recall any of my children questioning my attitude towards babies, though I never made any secret of it.
And now I’m a grandmother. All my children seem to be revoltingly besotted over their own babies, but fortunately they all know my weakness. Now and then, just for fun, one offers me a baby to hold.
"Come on, you know they make me feel like I’ve got cockroaches crawling all over me," I protest, and they laugh and take the baby away. I’m content to regard my smallest grandchildren from a distance, and in some cases, even admire the better-looking specimens.
As an experienced old hand, though, I feel I have skills these young mothers haven’t yet perfected. The temptation to prove I can do something better than they can is irresistible. So if one of their repellent little creatures is fussing and won’t settle, I’ve been known to pick it up – put it over my shoulder – pat its scrawny little back.
But I try not to let anybody actually see me.
For what or for whom don't you
have the 'correct feelings'?
