Baby crazy people – an apology

On By Swarn GillIn Humor, Parenting

Our first child was born last Friday night.  It is a wonderful joy and a great way to bring in the New Year!  It’s quite an ordeal I have to say though.  My experience can only pale in comparison to my wife who actually had to do the hard part.  We had to induce labor and then the baby’s heart rate was dropping and they ended up performing a Cesarian.  All that was quite a bit of craziness as it is.  It’s hard to believe that something so natural as the propagation of life could be so complicated, but I simply reminded myself that without all this medical madness survival rates would be a lot less for newborns than they are now.  Or that mothers dying during childbirth would be far more frequent.  I am SO thankful I live in a country, and have a job, that gives me fantastic medical care.  When I think about how much of the world (and even in the U.S.) does not have such great medical care for child birth it gives me such a feeling of gratitude for all that I have, I cannot even describe.  It makes me even more impatient for people who complain about their job who have good health care like I do.  If you’ve had a kid with that health care plan you should be a lot more thankful, because it could be a whole lot worse!

Back to the topic at hand.  Baby crazy people.  You’ve all met them at some point.  They absolutely gush over babies.  Some of them have had babies, some of them haven’t.  Maybe you’ve dated one and got concerned that they were just going to trap you into a relationship by getting pregnant.  Baby crazy people frightened me because I didn’t really understand them.  Please keep in mind, I am not saying that now that I’ve had one, I’m one of those people.  I am definitely not.  I am crazy about mine, as I should be, but I still don’t see myself doing back flips about other people’s babies.  My apology is based on the fact that I have perhaps judged these people too harshly in the past.  Thinking that perhaps something was possibly askew about these baby crazy psychos.  I mean seriously they love babies so much that when they get close to one, my first reaction has always been “You know it’s not yours?  You can’t have it.”

But baby crazy people are my new favorite people and here’s why.  Because my wife had a C-section we were at the hospital for 3 days and we had a lot of nurses and doctors come to see us.  It’s hard to get any rest there.  They are constantly coming by to check on the mother and the baby.  Machines are going off here and there.  It’s not very peaceful, and I would say that the facility we had our baby in was more peaceful than most.  There are also roving specialists who come by.  Pediatricians, lactation specialists, baby hearing specialists, respiration specialists, etc.  It’s mind blowing.  Awesome and a little irritating at the same time after only 2 hours of sleep in 36 hours.  🙂  Hands down though,my favorite people, especially the nurses, were the ones that absolutely loved our baby.  They were crazy about him.  They were the most helpful, the most caring to us, and most importantly the most caring to our child.  I began to think, well what kind of nurse would I really want working at this part of the hospital.  A nurse who didn’t like babies and I had to only depend on their sense of professionalism to do their job well, or do I want someone that gushes at the sight of a newborn baby and can’t stop melting at the sight of it?  The answer is obviously the latter.  Obviously it doesn’t guarantee they are going to be a good nurse either, but they definitely won’t be a bad one, and if they don’t know the answer to your questions they are going to try their hardest to find someone who does.  And I began to realize that being baby crazy is no different than any other passion we all share.  Not many think the atmosphere is as cool as I do, or likes interacting with college students as I do.  I am sure you’d much rather take your pet to the veterinarian who loves animals as much as you love your own pet.

So basically I’m saying, I am glad the world has baby crazy people.  This is my apology.  I might not completely get it still, but gush away at babies.  There is no reason why any baby shouldn’t have as much love as possible. 🙂

20 thoughts on “Baby crazy people – an apology”

  2. diane

    while I appreciate your gushing over your health care and all, you (and a lot of other folks) are actually laboring (pardon the pun) under a misconception about our current health care system and results. my sis-in-law is a senior nurse at johns hopkins hospital (premier world-class research hospital in baltimore, md) and the daughter of an internationally recognized oncology researcher. we recently got into a discussion about babies and birthrates and all, and this is part of her response:

    “However, pregnancy related deaths have increased from 7.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1987 to a more recent figure of 15 deaths per 100,000 births – and we are talking about U.S. numbers – placing the U.S. towards the bottom of most developed nations. That means each year in the U.S., about 700 women die of pregnancy-related complications and 52,000 experience emergencies such as acute renal failure, shock, respiratory distress, aneurysms and heart surgery. An additional 34,000 barely avoid death.”

    While I heartily applaud that maggie and the baby had such a wonderful experience, the reality is that america is *not* the leading nation in *so* many aspects, it is pitiful. we enjoyed that status for many years but have become lazy and greedy, I feel, and have let our status slip.

    waddya say ’bout them apples? 😉

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    1. Thank you for reading and for your response. I am not certain I implied that we had the best health care system. I don’t think we do by a long shot, especially in regards to the equity in which health care is administered to its citizens. So as the income disparity increases in our society it would not be surprising that our numbers are not as good as other developed countries. The numbers for people with my type of job are still probably as good or better than those from 1987, but those who live below the poverty line which is many more today than in 1987 have probably increase dramatically.

      My comparison however was largely based on looking at most of the world. Developed nations still comprise a small portion of the world, and most people live at or below poverty levels. If you compare our infant mortality and maternal mortality rates to countries in Africa, the numbers are staggeringly better here. By orders of magnitude.

      It is also important to remember that as with may statistics increases don’t always mean we are doing much worse. Much of it has to do with awareness of problems associated with child birth thus changing how things are diagnosed. At least part of the increase may be due to that so these numbers aren’t always an indicator of health care, especially when the numbers are still a relatively small percentage of mothers. As understand increases and technology advances this impacts the statistics. Even in my field you can get concerned if you look at a history of tornado occurrences over the past 60 years going from about 200 per year to over 1000. This however has nothing to do with climate change, but changes in our ability to detect and report tornados.

      Cheers,
      Swarn

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  3. I SO was not a baby person until I had my own. Heck, even after that, it was still about another 2 years before I can say I became a baby person. (I think I finally had a good night’s sleep about then.)

    I do now find myself often gushing over babies. The gush is reflexive, but upon reflection, the some of the reasons echo what you wrote. Once I had a kid, it kind of did start to feel like all the babies were mine in the sense that we are all part of the village and we care for everyone. It really DOES take a village. I am grateful for those who are kind and conscientious villagers. I can only hope to be the same.

    These little ones teach us a lot about ourselves and the world around us. Now buckle up for the experience of a lifetime! xx

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    1. Thank you for your comment Regina. 🙂 I was actually saying to a friend the other day, that having a kid sort of does make me feel like I am part of a whole different community I wasn’t a part of before. And the feeling of community is always a nice one. 🙂

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  4. Congrats on your little one, he is adorable and I am happy to hear that even though it wasn’t the smoothest delivery, it all worked out at the end and everyone is happy and healthy. Thank you for sharing your story!

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        1. Thank you! I definitely am. It’s amazing how much entertainment you can get out of watching a baby yaw or stick its tongue out. I think babies are a good reminder to appreciate the simple pleasures in life. It seems especially fascinating to think about all the things that they are discovering about themselves. I swear at some point he was just fascinated with his own arm. It’s like he was thinking “What is this appendage? What does it do?” lol

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  6. Congrats!!!! for both you and Maggie and your new baby. What a wonderful way to start the New Year. And for this moment, let us let go of our ideas and judgements about our nations health care to allow good news. A child has been born, healthy to loving parents. Thank you for sharing these delightful moments with all of us – have fun being a baby crazed person, it is your baby, you have that right.

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  7. Rajdeep

    You’re so right Swarn! I was definitely not a baby person till i had mine but I’m still not an “other peoples baby” baby person but I can see now why some people are! And the hospital experience you described is right on the money. I had a week hospital stay and the babies were in the NICU for 3 weeks and I was so grateful for the nurses there who were over-the-top baby people. And since i couldn’t be there 24/7 after i was discharged i was happy knowing these nurses were with my babies when i couldn’t be. I have to say that despite a pretty scary ordeal, the docs and nurses that took care of us were amazing and I’m not sure it’s like that for everyone else who has had a difficult delivery so I am very thankful for all that we have 🙂

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