The Dark Side of Having a Good Baby
Is Good Always Better?
“She’s so good”, the flight attendant says as I leave the plane with my three-month-old. “You would’ve never even known she was here!”
Yes, I’m one of those assholes. I’ve been blessed with an angel baby. Which I can recognize and own because my first-born, Demi, is a two-year-old tornado who has been a handful since day one. If Calliope is an angel baby, Demi was a “spirited” baby. Not the hardest baby ever, but from birth she’s been fiery, defiant, easily agitated, and not easy on a plane. Which is basically what you’d expect from a baby. From weeks 4-12 she observed the infamous “witching hour,” crying incessantly every night from 5-10pm between cluster feedings. And still, she was not the hardest baby by a long shot. Her strong personality is one of my favorite things about her. She’s funny and she knows it, is highly inquisitive, and has a huge heart.
For having two kids 25 months apart, I will gladly take the hand I was dealt– that is, having the more challenging one come first. It’s made Calliope’s newborn days feel like a vacation. So much so that I booked a long weekend to visit my dear friend in Austin and I brought her with me. Yeah, I voluntarily took a solo trip with my three-month-old. Sure, there were challenges, but the activities we did and the quality time I got with my friend were not that much different than if I had gone by myself. It was a perfect opportunity to take advantage of these sweet pre-crawling, no-high-chair days of feeding her solely from my body.
And yet, every time someone compliments my “good baby”, it gives me pause. I’ve been a recovering people-pleaser for 20+ years. I have codependent tendencies and have trained myself to think of everyone else’s comfort before my own. I’m easy-going, low maintenance, and I don’t make waves. I myself was a total angel baby! My parents would beam with pride every time someone congratulated them on having such well-behaved young ladies as my sister and me. “They’re so polite!”, they would say at every non-kid-friendly work event we were brought to. Which I now know really just means, “They’re so quiet!”
So when strangers stop me to say how “good” Calliope is, how “well-behaved” of a newborn I’ve produced, something gnaws at me. Also, please don’t ever call an infant well-behaved. They’re literally just existing, so they can’t really do it “well” or otherwise.
Now before I lose you completely, please don’t think I’m not totally grateful for having an easy-going girl. But every time someone says she’s good, I feel this itch to whisper, “But you don’t have to be.” I occasionally worry that all of these compliments labeling her as “good” and “easy” will create some sort of expectation on her to keep being that way. So when my toddler is having a meltdown, and I only got to eat two bites of my dinner, and the dog needs a walk, and my husband’s work call is running late, and I know Calliope needed a nap 15 minutes ago but she’s still barely fussing, I want to freeze everything and look right into her eyes and say, “There’s still room for you to have big feelings. I have the capacity to deal with your needs too.”
Does that sound like a totally insane thing to say to a 14-week-old person? Yeah, probably. But I want to keep that intention alive, because things are only going to get more hectic. And maybe this is my chance to re-parent myself a little bit along the way. To tell my younger self what I wish I could have heard: that it’s OK to feel angry, or be sad, or not want to do something. That it’s safe to express those feelings, that there is space for those emotions to be held, and she’s still going to be loved and accepted.
Unless it’s a park or a Pizza Hut, our country is not set up to have loud, boisterous, developmentally-appropriate-behaved children sharing space with the rest of their community. Which is why most people don’t find it odd to say something like, “I didn’t even know there was a baby in this store!” As though being invisible is the ultimate goal.
So I’m excited for my beautifully irreverent toddler to teach Calliope (and me) what it’s like to unapologetically take up space, feel big feelings, and make our voices heard.
And even if strangers expect her to be a “good baby” and a rule-follower like her mama, to be seen and not heard… I hope she still learns to give ‘em hell.
