Distracted Dad
Richard Hearn finds there’s plenty to cry about
When I wake up and feel a bit peckish, what I do is this: get calmly out of bed, wander downstairs and, depending on the time of day, maybe make myself some toast, cereal or perhaps even a more elaborate meal. I do this with the minimum of fuss. Urgency, yes, we’re talking about food, after all. But calmly.
What I don’t do is this: scream as if an alien has smashed their way through the windows and is attacking me from the end of the bed. Or as if, I don’t know, the carpet and floorboards have fallen away to reveal I am perched precariously above a pit of lava.
I’m saying this because my seven-week-old son is different from me. He likes to follow the more extreme path outlined above. His emotional nought to 60 in less than a second is remarkable. From a sleeping start, he is crying at full throttle within a split-second, with such urgency and, seemingly, a degree of anger that assumes he’s been ignored for quite some time, when in fact it really is a nano-second, the sort of length of time only animators and Olympic sprinters are aware of.
“His emotional nought to 60 in less than a second is remarkable”
The cry itself is, of course, one of nature’s finely-honed weapons. (I’m sure I’ve read that an ambulance’s siren is based on a baby’s cry, its modulations designed to be un-ignorable, but on a Google search haven‘t been able to confirm this. I’m leaving it in. Who‘s going to sue me? Babies are notoriously weak on solicitors’ letters and ambulances surely have more important things to worry about. They always seem in such a rush).
I need to write about this topic now, because a baby at this age has such a distinctive cry, such an urgent, incessant, impossible to ignore sound, and it’s going to soften and vary as each week passes.
The issue, of course, is that his cry is his default reaction. If an adult is tired, hungry, or needs the loo they might yawn, lick their lips or cross their legs in turn. He’s got the cry. Whereas we have a Swiss army knife of communication, a baby just has the one sharp blade. Plus, everything’s new to him, and potentially frightening. At my age, I get fearful about things I’ve never experienced before such as skydiving, or cooking a soufflé. He’s at such a young age that almost everything is a new experience, even things extremely commonplace. Something everyday to the point of numbness – sneezing or the theme tune from Hollyoaks – can make him want to scream. OK, so we are the same on that.
