Free Babyhood (9780062098788) by Paul Reiser Page A

allowed to say, “We just want a healthy child.” No one gets to say out loud that secretly, women want girls and men want boys. So you deny it. You convince yourself you genuinely have no preference.
    But if it happens to work out your way, there’s no way to pretend you’re not smiling a teeny bit wider.
    â€œWould you like to cut the cord?”
    â€œWhat?”
    The doctor handed me something frightening, shiny and metal, and said, “You’re going to cut the cord, aren’t you?”
    Okay, here’s the thing: I know everybody does it, and it’s a magical moment and everything, but . . . what is that? Does merely being present at the birth automatically qualify a person to perform a medical procedure? If you visit your friend in the hospital, they don’t invite you to take out the guy’s appendix.
    â€œCome on, go ahead . . . we’ll be right here in case you screw it up . . .”
    Of course, I did it. Because I wanted the experience of that magic moment, and, plus, I didn’t want the doctor to think I was a wimp.
    I had been forewarned that babies don’t always look so pretty at birth, so I wasn’t shocked by that. What did surprise me is that they come out with perfectly manicured fingernails. Neat, trim, little white lines around the whole front part—amazing. What do they need that for? It’s practically the only thing they have at birth that resembles even remotely what it’ll look like later on. And there’s nothing they have that could be less important. Perhaps if they spent a little less time on their nails and used it instead to, just for example, finish developing their facial features , everyone would be better off. But, kids . . . there’s no talking to them.
    For the next few minutes, doctors and nurses continued to run around, they did a bunch of stuff, then they did some other stuff, wrapped the baby up, and then placed this brand-new person on his mother’s chest.
    I remember that my wife cried like a baby. The baby, ironically, cried like an angry woman in her thirties. I cried like a man exactly my age. The three of us cried, and held each other, and cried a little more, and then somebody nice must have packed us up and taken care of everything, because somehow, sometime later, the three of us—now and forever a family—went home.

Whose Idea Was This?
    W alking into the house for the very first time with the child felt a bit like a honeymoon. The big difference, of course, is that when you carry a baby across a threshold, they’re significantly lighter than the average adult bride, and also, we didn’t immediately jump into a Jacuzzi and bad-mouth the band at the wedding.
    Like the previous nine months, my wife did the actual carrying. I supervised.
    â€œCareful, don’t drop him . . . Honey, you almost dropped him there . . .”
    The short journey from the front door to the baby’s room took an inordinately long time, because though he weighed significantly less than a wheel of cheese, we choreographed the move like he was a piano.
    â€œOkay . . . swing him around, now bring your end over . . . watch out for the umbrella stand . . . you know what, let me move the sofa out of the way . . .”
    Halfway to his room, I remembered.
    â€œOh, damn.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    â€œI forgot to get this on tape.”
    All that time during the pregnancy when I was supposed to be reading baby books and taking baby classes and learning baby CPR didn’t go totally to waste because I did use the time to shop for the perfect video camera.
    â€œLook, honey, this one has the screen that flips open, plus we can digitize the baby’s face like they do on those cop shows.”
    Given all the time I put into getting the camera—not to mention all the time my wife put into making the baby—I thought it was