Baby crazy people – an apology

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. 🙂