Two weeks in, we’re weary and bleary, but at least our son is excited to have a little sister. Some of the time. Mostly, he’s about as excited to see a baby as everyone else is, it’s just that he’s more honest about it. Look, babies are lovely, and there is a certain thrill to meeting them for the first time. Even the first few times. After that, the point is made and the fervour subsides a little. Babies are adorable but they don’t have much range. Fifteen minutes into being handed someone else’s, I might as well be holding a warm, purring sandbag.
My son is excited when his little sister is awake on her mat, moving her arms and legs about like a stranded turtle. He thinks this is funny because, well, it is. I mean, just get up, you stupid baby! But by the time she’s clasped his finger with her whole hand, released it and turned her face inside out to begin crying again, his arms are resolutely by his sides and he’s off to play with his toys by himself.
And that’s just when she’s awake. When she’s asleep, he acts as if we’re trying to excite him with a toy from which the batteries have been callously removed. Babies, he’s discovering, sleep for 18 hours a day and feed or cry during what’s left. The crying might be the biggest shock to his system. He does not care for it and it would be nice if I could ascribe this disdain to concern, but it is definitely contempt. Both for the noise itself – for there are few more penetrating sounds on Earth than a newborn in full fanfare – and towards us for the false advertising he’s beginning to deduce from this whole affair. He was promised a miraculous adventure into brotherhood with a serene and toothsome living doll, brought home just for him. What he got was a smelly little smoke alarm made from bright pink meat, who sleeps all day and he’s not allowed to touch.
I’ll admit the cries have stunned us, too. Even second time round, we’re amazed by how rattling they are. Consider that even the smallest whimper of a newborn appears to presage high danger, much like when a character from a period drama coughs once into a hanky and everyone knows they’ll be dead by Michaelmas, Whitsun or Maundy Thursday, basically any of those days the English make up to sound fancy to Americans.
As a result, her cries – her actual full-throated, blistering cries – might as well be air raid sirens, so if he’s finding it hard to enjoy that part of newborn adjacency, he’s not alone.
Perhaps, then, it was a surprise when he bounded into nursery on his first day back, screaming about his little sister to all his friends. They trundled, quite charmingly, towards him, as if he was an old timey newsboy waving reports from the Russian front in a public square.
‘SHE IS SMALL AND LOUD. I LOVE HER. SHE IS MY LITTLE SISTER,’ he says, repeatedly, as they flock to hear more. All reservations cast aside, he is a newborn evangelist. Maybe talking about babies is more pleasant than looking after them full-time. Not that I’d know anything about that.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
