Highlights in Baby Holding

• Sarah's cousin Hannah was probably the first baby I'd ever held, and I must have been nineteen at the time. Her Uncle Fred (ten or so minutes after we first met) said, "Phew! She stinks! You hold her, Dave." And I did. I held her at arms length, like she was a scorpian or some kind of deadly snake. I could feel a room full of people all watching me, all thinking this guy doesn't have a clue, does he? After holding her for about ninety seconds, still as far away from my body as possible, somebody finally releaved me of this terrifying burden.
• My nieces came next. I don't have a lot of memories of holding them as newborns because, frankly, newborns scare the shit out of me. I know that whenever I did hold them, I did it in the way that small children do: I sat on a couch and crooked my arm and someone put them exactly in place (and then removed them again without me moving an inch).
• Huge jump in time here, but I think Jorge's baby came next. This was much the same as holding my nieces--me sitting like a good little boy while those with competence put the baby in my arms. I think I threw some standing up and sitting back down into the mix, but I was still mostly just frozen in fear.
• The next baby I held was Blaine and Colleen's. Aidan came early so he was a little guy, but with Humpy arriving not so long from now I couldn't in good conscience shirk the baby-holding this time around. (This is probably a good time to explain why handling newborns scares the bejezus out of me: fear of letting the head snap back combined with fear of inadvertently touching the fontanel. It seemed impossible to avoid both of those danger zones.) Fortunately I was taught the ancient secret I'd somehow missed over the first thirty-two years of my life: make a V with your forefinger and middle finger, and support the head that way. This makes for very easy baby-transferring from one person to the next. Get your V in place first, then get hold of the rest of the baby. (I'm sure 98% of the world all knew this already, but this was BIG NEWS to me. So thanks for filling me in before. Assholes.)
• Then this afternoon, we watched Mark and Tania's daughter for a few hours. Claire is just over four months old now, so she's not one of those teeny-tiny, bejesuz-scary babies, but it was the first time I'd been responsible for the entire care of a baby--feeding, changing, putting her to sleep, etc. (For the record: Sarah did all of the hard work (i.e work that related to poop), and her magical singing voice was what lulled Claire to sleep, but I like to think I was a contributing member of a team.) It went really well, all in all. She was tired, hungry, and confused by the bearded stranger at first and this let to some pretty serious screaming, but after a long nap she was golden, and we had a really good time taking care of her. It was confidence-building, and as a bonus we have that fresh baby smell all over the house. That's one for the Yankee Candle people: I want a candle that smells like baby. Hotcakes, that would sell like.