by Jim Gaffigan
I’m probably a comedian because of my father. I loved making my mother laugh, but the impression of my father I did for my siblings changed the trajectory of my life. When I lampooned the feared dictator of our lives, I had my sisters’ and brothers’ attention and respect. For a moment I wasn’t simply the youngest or just another competitor for food. I was an equal. It was very empowering. I liked the feeling.
By today’s standards, my dad wouldn’t be considered the greatest dad, and I’m sure his dad wouldn’t be considered the greatest dad either. I’m sure my grandfather’s dad would be considered an even worse dad. It probably goes all the way back to cavemen fathers just eating their children. What I’m trying to say is, dads are getting better. Either that or we are all slowly being turned into women. At least that’s what my gynecologist thinks.
The Narcissist’s Guide to Babies and Toddlers
Getting married and becoming the father of young children has taught me that I am a narcissist. The good news is that I am a really great, really important, and really special narcissist. I lived my life as a single man, and even for a few years into parenthood, just looking out for number one. If I picked up my mail, went in my apartment, and saw there was a letter for a neighbor, I’d think, “Looks like they’re never getting this. It would take way too much energy to go back outside. Besides, right now I have to watch some Wheel of Fortune.”
My perceived needs were all-important. When it came to my career, relationship, or taking the last piece of pizza, I was only thinking about myself. And, of course, the pizza. My stand-up act was established on a lazy, gluttonous, selfish point of view and, based on my success, people identified. Turns out everyone is a closet narcissist. Except you, of course. You’re perfect. Keep reading.
Unfortunately, these narcissistic traits that made me a popular comedian do not work well for someone who truly desires to be a good husband or parent. I’m not saying parenting cured my narcissism, but it changed me and continues to change me every day. I am now a teeny tiny bit less of a narcissist. Being a parent is a selfless adventure. The worldview of “Take care of yourself first” is no longer logical to a sane person if your baby wakes up hungry in the middle of the night. You can’t be like, “What’s that? The baby is starving? Eh, forget her, I’ve got to get some sleep.” For me, parenting was literally a wake-up call from my own simple selfishness. In other words, I’m not quite as horrible as I used to be. Raising kids may be a thankless job with ridiculous hours, but at least the pay sucks.
One would think it would be impossible to raise a child and remain a narcissist. That is completely untrue, and I am living proof. There are even some people whose narcissism is what motivates them to have children. This is an easy trap to fall into. We all harbor a secret desire to produce a child that is an extension of ourselves … especially me, because most bald, pudgy, newborn babies look exactly like me, but a little less adorable.
Of course, babies and toddlers are all narcissists. But they are supposed to believe the whole world revolves around them. It’s part of their natural development and a bunch of other stuff Freud said that I am too dumb to explain. One thing I do know: it doesn’t work to have two narcissists competing against each other in a parent/child relationship. If you don’t believe me, just try to convince a three-year-old to give you the last cookie. There is a lot of screaming and crying, and the kid gets a little upset, too. It’s a daily struggle.
So now that I’ve admitted that I’m a narcissist, I’d also like to admit that I’m probably not the greatest parent. The last thing I want is one of my kids reading this book in ten years and thinking, “That guy thought he was a good parent?” I don’t know why my children would refer to me as “that guy,” but I’m keeping my expectations low. I’m probably not the best parent, but I am trying. I’ll complain and joke about parenting and kids, but every parent knows it’s a heroic endeavor, and we participants need to laugh at it. After all, suicide is off the table now.
When Women Get Lazy
I am undeniably lucky to have married a woman like Jeannie. She is energetic, hardworking, and takes incredible care of the kids and me. However, during our marriage there have been periods when she has become rather lazy. Jeannie describes these periods as “pregnancy.” My view has always been, pregnant or not, that does not mean she can’t move some cinder blocks. We are a team, and I have to take a second nap today.
Of course, pregnant women are not lazy. In fact, they are the opposite of lazy. Whatever they are doing, they are also always growing a baby. Even when they are sleeping, they are growing a baby. They are constantly multitasking. I’m often not even tasking.
This is because women are amazing. And I mean that in a very pandering way. (I’ve been told more women than men buy and read books, so there is your shout-out, ladies.) But truly, women are amazing. Think about it this way: a woman can grow a baby inside her body. Then a woman can deliver the baby through her body. Then, by some miracle, a woman can feed a baby with her body. When you compare that to the male’s contribution to life, it’s kind of embarrassing, really. The father is always like, “Hey, I helped, too. For like five seconds. Doing the one thing I think about twenty-four hours a day. Well, enjoy your morning sickness—I’m going to eat this chili. Mmmm, smell those onions.” You can’t eat chili in front of a pregnant woman. Sometimes you can’t cough, snore, or breathe around a pregnant woman. Most important, you can’t complain around a pregnant woman. I know that because I’ve lived with one for eight years. Every one of the man’s problems is insignificant on a relative basis.
HUSBAND: I’m tired.
PREGNANT WOMAN: Oh, really? I’m growing a human being.
HUSBAND: I have so much work to do.
PREGNANT WOMAN: Oh, really? I have to push a baby with your head size out of my body.
HUSBAND: I’m going to stand in the corner for the next nine months.
Witnessing Jeannie give birth to five healthy babies has taught me many things, but mostly that I could never have a baby. Granted, I don’t have a uterus. But even if I did have a uterus, I don’t think I could do any of it. If men had the baby, our species would be long extinct. That’s why females always have the babies. Except in the seahorse world: supposedly the male seahorse has the baby. I don’t understand why they didn’t just call that the female seahorse. It was probably some stubborn scientist’s fault.
STUBBORN SCIENTIST: [Condescending.] And that one there is the male seahorse.
STUBBORN SCIENTIST’S ASSISTANT: Um, Bill, sorry to interrupt, but that seahorse is having a baby.
STUBBORN SCIENTIST: Oh … [Beat.] … the male seahorse has the baby. You’re fired.
Pregnancy is an incredible sacrifice. I used to think morning sickness should be used to describe us people sick of getting up in the morning, but morning sickness is no joke. It’s incredible what a woman’s body goes through when she’s growing a baby. I can barely digest cheese, and Jeannie has endured five full-term pregnancies. Suddenly, simple actions like eating, sleeping, peeing, and tying shoes become Olympic hurdles. I only remember Jeannie complaining once or twice: “I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m cold. Let me back inside.” Being a supportive spouse, I would explain that I’d let her back in the house once she moved those cinder blocks. A deal is a deal.
During pregnancy, the dominant hormone is progesterone, which is a Latin term for shut up and get away from me, you horrible man who ruined my life. By the way, here is a piece of advice for you soon-to-be-fathers out there: pregnant women don’t like to be called “bitches” AT ALL. You’re welcome.
I’m jealous of pregnant women. When pregnant women have cravings, it’s “adorable” and when they put on twenty or thirty pounds in nine months, it’s “healthy.” Yet when I have cravings and put on thirty pounds, I’m considered a “fat tub of turds.” I’m not sure, but I believe this is sexism. Everyone wants to rub a pregnant women’s belly, but when I ask people to rub my belly, I get kicked out of Dave & Buster’
s. It’s just not fair. I put on more weight than Jeannie during each of her pregnancies. I justify it by thinking, “Well, just another thing I’m better at than she is.”
Still half the size of my stomach.
Oh My God, You’re Pregnant?
Pregnancy is an abstract concept to grasp. You see the baby bump, and people are congratulating you and your wife, but you really don’t know what’s going on in there until you see that 3-D ultrasound. Very early on, you can see a fully formed baby who is kicking and sucking its thumb. I remember being shocked when I first saw my son on a twelve-week ultrasound. He already had more hair than I did.
It can be confusing deciphering our society’s view toward pregnancy. Culturally, we cherish a pregnant woman. We acknowledge the sacrifice. People will give up their seats on buses. We say “Congratulations” when we see a pregnant woman, but there is usually an element of scandal associated with it. Pregnant women are either too young or too old, or it’s too soon after another pregnancy, or she’s going to get in trouble at work. She’s too poor, too rich, too successful, too skinny, too fat, too crazy, too busy, too single, too married, too too.
“Oh my God! Your sister is pregnant? She was just a kid twenty years ago!” Why are we always surprised to find out someone is pregnant? Really, getting pregnant is the most amazing unamazing thing ever. Of course conception is miraculous, but it is how we all got here. My mom got pregnant. Your mom got pregnant. EVERYONE’S mom got pregnant. Yet still we’re shocked it could happen to any other woman. We are shocked when a teenager gets pregnant. We’re shocked when a fifty-year-old gets pregnant. But, really, that’s how it’s been happening forever. As human beings, we end up acting like we are the first generation on this planet to deal with pregnancy. We are most shocked when really attractive, successful women get pregnant. It’s unbelievable. “Did you hear Beyoncé got pregnant? It’s almost as if she’s a human being!” There’s always that unspoken commentary of “Why would she do that to her career?” How many Grammy Awards would Beyoncé need to win before it would be time for her to have a baby?
I think there may be a belief mothers are no longer sexy or somehow an exception if they are sexy. The concept of a MILF is rather insulting if it’s based on the belief that having a baby makes you unattractive. So, therefore, the rare mother who is attractive needs her own special term. Actually “MILF” is pretty insulting anyway. Sorry I brought it up, ladies. I think Jeannie gets sexier with every baby she has. And I’m not just saying that because she will most likely be reading this book. Hi, Jeannie. Sorry I destroyed the microwave last night, again. Can you clean it up? Think about it, though: When you see a gorgeous woman, and then you find out she’s had a bunch of kids, doesn’t it make her like a hundred times hotter?
It’s not just celebrity moms. We are surprised that any beautiful, successful woman would want to have a baby. Why would she want to do that? I don’t know. Why would your mom want to have you? As if without the ticking of some socially imposed biological clock, no women would voluntarily choose to get pregnant. People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Quitting. Have you seen a baby? They’re pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn’t it?
Witchcraft
Jeannie has had all our babies at home in our apartment. Hey, we’ve got the room, right? If you are unfamiliar with home birth, like I was, you probably think of it as taking a hundred years of advancement in the field of obstetrics and just throwing that away. You just wing it. Well, that’s what I thought, too. During the birth of our first child, I remember thinking, “Hey, I can’t program a DVR, but I’m here to help. Now where would you like me to stand terrified? That will be my contribution.”
At times, it seems we elected to have our babies at home mostly to make other people feel uncomfortable. I quickly learned that people don’t want to hear about home births. Their first reaction always seems to be, “Oh, you had your baby at home. Yeah, we were going to do that, too, but we wanted our baby to live.” There’s usually an assumption of irresponsibility or laziness: “You didn’t want to go to the hospital?” I sometimes explain that the hospital was, like, twenty blocks away and that I didn’t feel like putting on pants. “Weren’t you worried that something would go wrong?” Don’t most people worry at the hospital? Hospitals should just be renamed “houses of worry.” Actually, we had our babies at home, not in a Waffle House. “At home? Isn’t that a little too comfortable? Why didn’t you have the baby in that germ-infested building where sick people congregate? Didn’t your wife want to give birth in a gown someone died in yesterday?”
Believe me, I get the concern. Home birth sounds crazy. It is a wild experience. I remember at our last home birth, there was so much screaming at one point, I actually woke up. I thought someone had scored a touchdown or something. When I saw my wife was just having another baby, I asked her to keep it down and went back to sleep.
It may come as no surprise that home birth was Jeannie’s idea. I’m not really even a fan of cooking at home. At all of our home births, I was Jeannie’s birth coach, which is a generous title for “that guy in the way.” In reality, I would assist by performing counterpressure and get yelled at for doing it wrong. Don’t worry, it wasn’t just Jeannie and me; there was a midwife there, which means we believe in witchcraft. Actually, a midwife is a certified medical practitioner. She is not your “extra wife” and will not make you breakfast. I learned this the hard way. Most midwives are actually former labor and delivery nurses, which means that they have more experience with the whole labor from beginning to end than some doctors do. With healthy labors, doctors come in the bottom of the ninth and catch the ball for the winning last out, whereas midwives have been in for the whole game.
Jeannie’s first home birth was not even originally planned to be a home birth. The birth was supposed to be “natural,” without drugs in a birthing center at the hospital. It was to be at Bellevue Hospital, which I’ve always thought of as a mental hospital. Given how crazy Jeannie and I are, I thought it was only appropriate that she give birth in a hospital that was famous for its mental ward.
During the first and second trimester of her pregnancy, I remember nodding along to Jeannie’s excited tutorial as she explained all she had learned about natural childbirth versus C-section, the Bradley Method, and home birth. Like most of you reading this, I would end every discussion with “Well, obviously we’re not having the baby in our apartment, right?” Jeannie would assure me “No,” and then I would go back to whatever I was eating. Our “birth plan” was to wait until Jeannie was far enough into labor that she could have the baby naturally at the hospital in a birthing center without medical intervention or drugs. Great. As the pregnancy got into its third trimester, Jeannie became more and more enamored with home birth. She began talking about having our next baby at home. Great, whatever, and I went back to whatever I was eating. When she finally went into labor with Marre, we still were planning on going to Bellevue. The midwife came over, monitored the baby, and Jeannie walked around the apartment distressing about eventually going to the hospital.
By this time, I was aware that home birth was a safe alternative, but I still expected to be heading to the hospital at any moment. We had a bag packed and everything. The baby was in the right position, healthy with a strong heartbeat, and Jeannie just needed regular contractions to push the baby out. Then I remember Jeannie turning to me and announcing she wanted to have the baby at home. She was way too uncomfortable to go anywhere. Um, great. I stopped eating. I didn’t know what to do.
The midwife had all the necessary medical items for a home birth with her and told me to warm some towels and cover the things that we didn’t want blood on. Um, okay. “Blood on”? I’d never attended a birth, let alone a home birth. So I went to work. When the midwife and Jeannie eventually returned from the bath
room to the living room, they started laughing. Well, Jeannie was making pain noises, but there were some laughterlike sounds in her pain noises.
I had put a shower curtain on the floor, covered the couches and our new flat-screen TV with garbage bags. The midwife asked, “What do you think is going to happen in here?” I never said I was smart.
The labor was long and painful for Jeannie, but she did it. Marre arrived as we were all kneeling on the living room floor. The baby was perfect and healthy, and we were at home. I was so impressed by the midwife. She was incredibly skillful and professional but at the same time peaceful and respectful during the process. We all celebrated with champagne, and Jeannie and I got to sleep in our own bed. We were convinced. If we were going to have more babies and the pregnancies were normal, we would have babies at home. For our next baby, Jack, we planned a water birth. At the time, we did not understand that what you plan for a birth and what actually happens are not always synonymous. Jeannie labored in the tub, but Jack arrived in her arms on the way to the bedroom as the water was being refilled. I tried to explain to the newborn that he did it all wrong, but he really didn’t seem to care and just fell asleep. Katie, Michael, and Patrick were much better listeners. They all arrived under water in the tub and were greeted by their brothers and sisters shortly thereafter. Jeannie recovered quickly after the births, so I didn’t feel bad about asking her to “hurry up and clean the mess.” Whenever people tell me “You go on stage and make people laugh—you must be brave,” I always think of Jeannie. She really is amazing. So are midwives. If I ever give birth myself, I’m definitely going midwife.
