Newborn Babies

Being a mother is a wacky job, with getting used to the limp cooked noodle body of a newborn to teaching a teenager to see the light about good nutrition and exclude the brownies as a daily necessity.

I was afraid of everything about my first baby. There was no tie to carrying him close to my heart for nine months. He was handed to me in a basket - not literally, it was a baby carrier, but you get the picture.

He opened his eyes and looked at me briefly, then satisfied, went back to sleep. We took him home and started to get used to him.

I had the notebook and pencil out to record the bottle feedings as required by the adoption agency. I was good at details that can be put down on paper, but not good with the reality of a newborn and his quirks.

The screaming when he woke up like clockwork and no food was shoved into his mouth. A major quirk. He panicked - oh no! - they're starving me!

I guess he did starve for a minute or two as the bottle heated in a pot of water on the stove, while one of us changed him. I wonder if he ever forgave us for that.

That little thing had a pair of lungs on him strong enough to cause me to buy earplugs when he went at it. I would have been deaf by the time he was five, otherwise. I didn't let him cry like some ridiculous people advised. Always go with your heart and you'll be a more loving person in the long run, I always say.

He knew that he needed me and that I'd be there as soon as he let me know it.

Now my daughter was just the opposite - Miss Too Cool For Words. She could handle the ninety second wait for her bottle, no problem. She never minded being changed or being hassled getting dressed.

She drank and relaxed and burped like a real trooper, no coaxing it out of that girl with a thousand gentle pats on the back.

She went right to sleep and stayed there, no matter where I laid her down. Just don't tuck her arms in the blanket, her one request - more like a demand. She'd flail and make such a face until I released her tiny arms. An independent girl, that one. Still is.

My son hated to fall asleep, so we had to do things to help him along, like a soft pillow under his back. He could not resist that heavenly comfort. He never moved an inch on that huge pillow. Just went right to sleep.

Around two months of age, he woke up a lot, so I'd pick him up and nestle onto a fat rocking chair with him and sing to him while he stared up at me, mesmerized by my "beautiful" voice of lullabys and stuff.

My daughter never needed that. Come to think of it, she never heard me sing to her those first early months.

Could that be why, by the time she was two and a half years old, she could sing like an angel?

Gee. That's embarrassing.