You’ll probably injure your child
The worrying isn’t made better when you yourself are the reason your child is hurt.
This is going to happen and you need to get comfortable with it now. There’s a 99 per cent chance you will injure your baby. Not on purpose, of course, but they’re slippery, jittery little suckers and eventually you’re going to make a dent.
The main areas of threat are:
• cutting fingers while clipping fingernails
• hitting heads on door frames/car doors
• dropping phones on bodies/heads.
Fingernails are probably the first hurdle. Your newborn will come equipped with a set of wolverine claws and the intent to use them on you and himself.
If you think sadomasochists are intense, wait until you have a newborn in your arms who seems determined to claw out his own eyes and draw blood from his own cheeks. It’s disturbing. Then you try to latch that little beast and your boobs suffer a torturous death by paper cuts.
So you decide to cut your baby’s talons.
I don’t like to give advice, but if I did, I’d tell you to let someone else do it the first time. Your baby won’t remember but you will never recover from the tidal wave of regret and grief when you slice into your child’s tender new fingers. And MAN can those things bleed! Best give that special milestone to your partner, mother, sister or random midwife to deal with.
And then there’s the moment you give your precious newborn a suspected head injury. When you’re carrying a child who won’t be put down, all day long, you tend to think of them as part of your body. But they’re not part of you so you don’t always account for their body parts when walking around.
What I’m saying is: it’s not really your fault if their unfused skull accidentally connects with a door frame.
Dropping your phone on the baby probably is your fault, though. Then again, you need to take photos of them when they’re sleeping because when they’re awake they pull that weird gassy face all the time and it’s just not as cute as the sleeping face. And taking that sleeping shot from above is much more Instagram-worthy. You know how the ’Gram loves a flat lay. Shame about your baby’s flat face, though.
Look, don’t feel too bad. They’ll injure you right back—breastfeeding neck, baby wrist, post-pregnancy back. Your body will be twisted, pulled and strained because of this kid. I’ve pulled a stomach muscle from lugging my kid around on my hip. I’ve damaged a shoulder trying to pick one up.
Soon enough, you’ll be at the mercy of a baby who’ll headbutt you, kick and slap you and throw things at your face. All out of love, of course.