A New Niece

I have a brand new Niece! She was born yesterday morning. She’s a cute little thing - I even held her (briefly). Usually I refuse to hold babies because they kind of freak me out, but with every baby my Brother & Sister-in-law have, I get ever so slightly less freaked out by them. If only they would have 20 or 30 more so that I could get properly used to them.

Babies are cute and stuff, but it would be great if you could skip that whole first bit where they’re so small and breakable and smelly and goo-ey, and skip right to the bit where they can go to the toilet on their own and tell you if they want something instead of just crying. I can barely look after myself let alone a little person who needs things all the time and can’t tell you what they are.

I guess what I'm saying is that babies are really so much nicer when they belong to someone else.

Crazy Over CCTV

A week or so ago, this horrible and kind of odd thing happened here in Australia where a woman on a train platform got distracted for a second, and the pram with her 6 month old baby in it rolled onto the train tracks just as the train came into the station – and the baby survived without barely a scratch on it.

Yesterday I finally saw the CCTV footage of it happening and I must be going crazy because I had nightmares about it all last night. I’m not sure what it is about it that bothers me so much given that the baby survived – I think it’s the fact that I’m a bit weird-ed out by babies and their fragility. Maybe it was watching the mother freak the fuck out after it happens (understandably). Or possibly it’s because of that hopeless feeling you get when you’re watching something horrible about to happen and knowing that you can’t stop it. Either way, who wants to see that happening no matter how fortunate the outcome was?

I’m pretty sure that what makes me even crazier than having nightmares is that my other thought on seeing the footage was ‘Damn that must have been a super strong pram, I wonder what brand it was?’

Freaky Baby Danger

I have this theory that because of all the preservatives and chemicals and what-not in our food nowadays, it's having a weird effect on humans in the long term. A bit like evolution, but not in a good way. I figure that this is what is causing things such as women having babies that are too big to actually come out of their bodies without being cut out.

Ok, so my sister-in-law's baby fit out of her body, but surely a very small woman giving birth to a 10 pound, 6 ounce baby is not something that should happen in the normal order of things. I also think it's not normal to squeeze out a baby that big without the aid of drugs to kill the pain, but I don't think I can blame that on the additives in food so much as my sister-in-law being crazy. Although the craziness may be a result of the food.

So I'm an Aunty again - and today I actually held a new born baby for more than 20 seconds. Freaky. It's not that I'm not one of those people who are scared they're going to break the kid because they're so small - that's not something that has ever even really crossed my mind. It's more the fact that they freak me out, because they make all sorts of weird noises and they cry for things, but they can't tell you what it is that's wrong with them. It's just not normal. And the noises they make aren't reassuring noises. They're weird gurgling, wheezing, clicky noises that are the kind of sounds that can convince you that something is seriously wrong. Even if it's not.

When I left the hospital today, they hadn't filled out the name on the birth certificate, so I might still be in with a chance to give him Danger as a middle name. My Sister-in-law isn't so keen on it, but my brother thinks it's great, so it could still happen. He suggested tat they could give the baby 2 middle names -A normal name, like John, plus Danger. Then they could just not tell him that Danger is his middle name, so he wouldn't know until he went to get a passport or something - and surely that would be the best way to find out that Danger is your middle name.

Danger is (or will be) his middle name

My Sister-in-Law was supposed to make a baby on Wednesday, but sadly, she is still pregnant. I say sadly, because tomorrow is my birthday and as I love birthdays so much, it won't do to share my birthday with the new baby - We will be ripped off out of one party per year if that happens. Our birthday celebrations will forever be combined, when we could easily be having two separate parties and double the birthday fun.

I've asked her to try to hold the baby in for a bit longer so that it won't happen, but apparently things don't work that way. I have a feeling she's going to go into labour tomorrow. I told her that for my birthday present, I wanted to pick the baby's middle name. I've picked 'Danger'. That way, when he gets older he can tell everyone 'Danger is my middle name.' She wasn't very impressed. My brother thought it was great - and it's definitely way better than splodgy, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

Splodgy

A very very sad thing is happening this Thursday. My long time lunch buddy (the company receptionist) is going on an extended holiday. This means that for 5 long weeks, I will have no-one to eat lunch with. I will be spending my lunch break hanging out in a big group of one.

Ok, that's a half truth. I do have some options, although at this stage, I'm not prepared to consider them. Give me a week or two and I might be so desperate for a lunchtime venting session that i might have to brave it and spend an hour hearing about chatty-lady's daughter's boyfriend's Aunt's Cat's bung leg. I'm just not ready for that quite yet.

In other news, I am about to become an Aunty for the second time. My sister-in-law is due in about a week, and she has spent the last few months trying to think up a suitable middle name for the baby (a boy). They decided that they wanted to let their daughter come up with the name, but it has all ended quite badly because she was genuinely devastated to find that they were unwilling to name their son 'Splodgy'. I tried to tell her that Splodgy is a girl's name and that she needed to pick a good, strong boy's name like Splatty - but it wasn't much help. She knows what she wants and is very vocal about it. I suspect the baby may be call Splodgy, even if his birth certificate says otherwise.