It takes a few months to settle in and get to know and understand a new daughter, work at which I have been diligent since, oh, before her arrival. And now that it’s been a tad over three months I feel confident in stating that I will keep her. That said, there are some parts of The New Daughter that I have felt to be challenging.
There’s no question that The New Daughter brings with her innumerable joys: that moment when she first laughs when carrying her in her car seat and she bumps up against your leg somewhat violently, but she likes it and you’re thinking “okay, kid, you’re gonna love roller coasters”; when she looks at you and arches her eyebrows, smiles, then scrunches her face and looks away in such abject joy that you know if she could articulate it she’d say “I JUST CAN’T FUCKING HELP MYSELF I LOVE YOU!!!!”
There is, however, all the puke.
The New Daughter pukes all the time. Most of it is what moms tenderly refer to as “spit up,” but let’s not fools ourselves: it’s puke. She pukes on herself, on me, on her mother, on the floors, on her car seat, on her “Bouncy Thing,” on the dining room table, on her changing table, in her crib. Due to voracious puking the New Daughter goes through approximately 6-7 outfit changes per day. I am, at this point, somewhat immune to the puke. I get puked on, and I’m like, “There’s puke on me whatever.”
One must balance the puking against The New Daughter’s obvious and absolute reverence for The Old Daughter. One looks on The New Daughter with love, knowing that a limited window exists wherein The New Daughter will reciprocate said love, as her own existence will soon forever become absorbed by hers and the Old Daughter’s collective judgmental thoughts and commentary about you and the other parent’s behaviors/habits/living conditions/lifestyles/aesthetic choices/&c. However, The New Daughter’s current adoration is adorable and fills you and the other parent with some feeling like the aforementioned, what the textbooks describe as “love.”
The texts of The New Daughter are as varied as “oooooaaaaaahhhhhhwwhhhoooopppp,” and ” … ” But don’t let the subtext fool you; she’s calculating the time for manipulation plus love divided by devotion, multiplied by a factor of 2 and algorithmed out until your inevitable death.
And that last bit might not come—surprise!—as soon as you once thought it would, when you were in your twenties. SCIENCE suspects that offspring enhance your living cells’ longevity.
Prosper.
