Dad Is Fat

by Jim Gaffigan

  I’m not antidoctor. I think there is way too much pressure on doctors these days to be God-like saviors, and as a result there is much arrogance in the medical community. Doctors always have the attitude of “Look, we are scientists—we’ve figured out the human body. Trust us.” Yet whenever I go for a checkup, they are always like, “It’s either a freckle, or we have to amputate your head. That will be five thousand dollars.” I think most people’s apprehension about home birth is the absence of the doctor. I mean, could you imagine if there was no doctor at Jesus’s birth? That could have changed the course of history.

  Newbornland

  I’m not surprised by how much I love my children. I’m relieved. Shortly after I found out Jeannie was pregnant for the first time, I was worried. Would I be able to provide the unconditional love of a parent? I always found those Anne Geddes baby-flower photos annoying, and it kind of puts me in a good mood to see a teenager fall off a skateboard. How could someone like me ever hope to be a good parent? Even I knew my “Oh, what a cute baby” act was not very believable. What if I saw my baby and I was like, “Yuck!”?

  If you are having these feelings, too, don’t worry; it just means you’re a horrible person. The good news is when your baby is born, something happens. I can’t explain it. You just love your baby. Unconditionally. Even if you didn’t get the baby thing before, when you experience your own, you immediately fall in love and feel like you could kill or die for that baby. I was born with a heart that was two sizes too small, but when I saw my baby, it was like the Grinch discovering the true meaning of Christmas.

  The newborn stage is a special time. It’s really a sacred time when nobody expects you to do anything except enjoy your new bundle of joy. This sacred time lasts roughly twenty minutes, and then you become the publicity agent for the mother and the baby. The masses of family and friends want to be assured the mother is okay and get information on the baby. For some reason, it’s really important for people to know how much the baby weighs. This always baffled me. “How much does she weigh?” That’s rude. She’s not even a day old, and people seem to be obsessed with my daughter’s weight? She was nine pounds, but I remember telling friends, “She was eight pounds, sixteen ounces” because it sounded thinner. Either way, she carried the weight very well, but we put her on that Atkins diet anyway. Of course, there is nothing anyone can do with the information about your newborn’s weight. No matter what the weight, they say the same thing: “Oooh, big baby.”

  I don’t have to explain that newborn babies are an enormous amount of work. When we had Marre, it was exhausting … watching Jeannie do it all. With each newborn, I was shocked at how much work there was. The infant just lies there sleeping, crying, or cooing, not even offering to help. I always think, “Great. We got another lazy one.” Newborns are lazy. You even have to help a newborn burp. Of course then you have to try and stop them from burping for the next eighteen years.

  But babies are worth it. It’s amazing the power a baby has over a parent. They are so cute even though they are ridiculously out of shape. I mean, I’m out of shape, but a baby? Please. They have zero muscle tone. They can barely hold their heads up. It’s embarrassing, really. Still, they must have some kind of strange magic, because there is nothing that exists in the universe that can be as difficult, make you lose as much sleep, smell as bad, and still be so loved. Once on the road, I drove past a serious skunk smell, and my only thought was “I miss my baby.”

  Babies are adorable, but they kind of have to be because they are rude. “Waaaa.” That’s not polite. “Waaaa, waaaa, waaaa!” I don’t speak baby, but my guess is there is no “please” in that statement. Babies are the worst roommates. They’re unemployed. They don’t pay rent. They keep insane hours. Their hygiene is horrible. If you had a roommate that did any of the things babies do, you’d ask them to move out. “Do you remember what happened last night? Today you’re all smiles, but last night you were hitting the bottle really hard. Then you started screaming, and you threw up on me. Then you passed out and wet yourself. I went into the other room to get you some dry clothes, I came back, and you were all over my wife’s breasts! Right in front of me, her husband! Dude, you gotta move out.”

  It’s strange for a father when a mother breastfeeds. The baby always seems to look right at the dad like, “What are you going to do about it? Nothing. You’re pathetic. Why don’t you take a picture, weirdo?” When I complain about this to Jeannie, she thinks I’m being crazy, but I don’t trust newborn babies. We really don’t know them. We don’t know what they’ve been doing in utero for nine months. They could be a terrorist, a communist, or, even worse, a book agent!

  I think it’s also weird how many babies go for the skinhead look. Don’t take fashion advice from a baby. I tried to do the “onesie” thing last summer, and I’m not sure, but I think people were laughing at me. Anyone who has ever been the parent of a newborn baby knows that baby clothes are just plain stupid. I mean, they are cute for pictures, but after that, just take those stupid clothes off and wrap your baby in a towel. How much time and money would we save if we just wrapped them in towels? For those of you less concerned with the environment, paper towels would be even better.

  Unfortunately you get tons of baby clothes as gifts. That is what people want to get you. Baby clothes are like torture for both the baby and the parent. Getting babies dressed up in those little clothes is a major struggle. The baby is screaming, and you are in a panic, so you are always putting their wrong leg in the armhole and the head through the leg hole. All the while, your baby is turning red and wailing, like, “Why are you doing this to me?” and you are just apologizing over and over again, like, “Shhh, I’m sorry, we’re almost done, shhh, Grandma gave this to you and she wants to see you in it, shhh, oops, it’s on backwards, I’m sorry, let me start over … shhh …” Then, when you finally get the clothes on, they usually throw up on them, or it is immediately time for a diaper change, and you have to start all over again.

  Of course, what people should be giving newborns are diapers. Just diapers and coupons for free diapers. Newborns go through like a case of those a week. Giving a newborn clothes just makes no sense at all. Newborns can’t dress themselves, and from what I’ve experienced, they never go out. Either that, or we’ve had some really homebody newborns. I’ve been around five newborns, and not one of them has said, “Tonight I’m meeting some friends for sushi—can you help pick out an outfit?” Fashion’s Night Out is not a big thing for babies.

  And the snaps and buttons never end. I always feel like I’m trying to put a duvet on a moving comforter. As I snap baby clothes, I can hear the employees at the baby clothing factory laughing at me: “Ha, ha, no, no, put twenty more snaps on, Bob. Ha, ha, ha! Now put on a snap that doesn’t even have a matching snap. Ha, ha, ha, good one, Bob!” I’m sure there’s someone named Bob working at the baby clothing factory. Well, at one time there probably was.

  Instead of figuring out a way for baby clothes to have something less stupid than snaps, the geniuses named Bob at the baby clothing factories were busy designing something even more stupid: baby versions of adult shoes. My brother-in-law Patrick bought our then three-month-old Jack tiny Timberland hiking boots. Our baby couldn’t walk, let alone hike. Patrick explained that the boots would be cute. Cute, yes, but only because they’re ironic. A baby wearing construction-worker boots that weigh more than he does. Really, it’s mean. It’s like giving a blind person a microscope. “Look at him fumble with that. Isn’t that adorable? I have to get a picture. He’s holding it upside down.”

  Newborns always get gifts from your friends and family. New dads don’t. I know, it sounded unfair to me, too. What did the newborn do? Nothing, right? The people giving the gift don’t even know what the newborn would want. It’s usually the first time the person is meeting the baby. How could they know the baby’s taste? Usually they are not even gifts they can use. Once someone got our newborn son a book. A book? Hello, the baby doesn
’t even speak English—how do you expect him to read it? Then I realized it was one of those cool touchy-feely books with barely any words. Like one page is felt, then there’s like a crinkly page, then a silk one. Anyway, I stuck that book in my desk drawer for me to read later. That book was way too nice to waste on a baby. Please, just get them diapers.

  Before I had kids, I was afraid of diapers. Now I am a diaper expert. At times I feel like a diapering professional. I can change a diaper standing, squirming, screaming, on an airplane, and even in the dark. And I can change a baby’s diaper, too.

  Changing a diaper in the middle of the night is a unique skill. It’s like The Hurt Locker, but much more dangerous … and you don’t have the two other guys on the elite squad to help you out. It’s just you, the baby, and the wet diaper in complete darkness. Around 4 a.m., you’ll hear the half-asleep cry from the baby. Allow me to take a moment to describe what a half-asleep baby is. Sleeping babies will often cry due to discomfort of some sort. If you can find a way to defuse the problem immediately, they will return to a fully sleeping state. If you miss this opportunity to intervene, even by seconds, the results can be devastating to an entire household.

  Back to 4 a.m. The cry continues. Is it hunger or diaper? Always thinking contingency, I’ll start warming a bottle in a coffee cup of microwaved water. You shall see how this will come in handy later. You must react quickly and with purpose to the baby’s cries. If you don’t, the consequences are simple. You’ll be up for three hours with a tired, cranky baby. Like disarming a bomb, everything must be done in a stealth manner that will not fully wake the baby. You have to get in and out.

  An experienced pro like myself will grab the aforementioned warmed bottle (see, I told you it would come back), a new diaper, some wipes from the wipe warmer, and one of those scented blue diaper bags that are not only impossible to open but make as much noise as microwaving popcorn. You have to use the scented bag, or in the morning your house will smell like a subway station on New Year’s Day. With the Mission: Impossible theme song playing in my head, I position a bottle in the baby’s mouth, carefully propping it with a pillow while I quickly undo forty-five snaps on the sleeper. I will have exactly twenty seconds to complete my task. I carefully peel back the adhesive tape on the sides of the old diaper. The cries grow louder as the bottle falls out of position. And louder still as the cold air hits the open diaper area. Will I make it? The once-warm wipes feel cold to the touch, but it’s too late to back down. The ice-cold wipe further startles the screaming yet somehow still-sleeping baby. Then the diaper is on, tape fastened, and the bottle is repositioned. The hardest part is over. Disaster averted. But I’m not out of the woods yet. I commence resnapping the sleeper in complete darkness. I probably skipped a few, but who cares? The baby is silent. I raise the crib rail and tiptoe out of the room a victor, a hero. I stub my toe on the bouncy chair but muffle my yelp of pain. As I close the door, I hear only the drinking of the bottle and then suddenly, “Waaaah!” The diaper is wet again. Mission: Impossible 2.

  Dogfight

  Every year after Jeannie has her annual baby, I receive congratulations from friends and family. There’s always one person who says, “Oh, you just had a baby. Yeah, we just got a puppy.” What? In no other situation could you compare a human to an animal and people would actually be okay with it. You could never say, “Oh, you just got married? Yeah, I used to have a pig. Does your new wife like to roll around in mud, too? My pig loved that.”

  Of course, the dog-and-baby comparison is nothing new. Dog owners are sincere and mean no insult. Their dog is their “baby.” But, of course, a dog is not a baby. It’s a dog. I also understand some people prefer dogs to babies. We are raising our children in New York City, which is not the most popular place to have children. If you hear someone cooing, “Oh, how cute!” on the street in NYC, you better look down, because they are going to be referring to a dog.

  It’s a good thing babies have no idea how often they are compared to dogs. I would think that would be pretty insulting to the babies. Let me be clear. I love all animals. I love to pet them. I love to eat them. I’m an all-around animal lover, but besides the drooling and whimpering, your dog is not that similar to a baby. Take the smells, for instance. Babies are the two extremes on the spectrum of smell. They either smell like heaven filled with lollipops or like a microwaved cesspool. The cleanest of clean dogs still smells like a dog.

  Allow me to list a few other differences:

  1. Dogs come when you call their name.

  2. The absence of birth control does not lead to pet ownership.

  3. You don’t have to worry about your dog ever becoming addicted to meth.

  4. You do not have to save so your dog can go to college and then find out after they graduate that they want to be an actor.

  5. If someone is pushing a baby in a stroller, they are probably a parent or a caregiver. If someone is pushing a dog in a stroller, they are probably insane.

  In some ways, having a kid is easier than having a dog. When you go on vacation, you don’t have to kennel your kids (although a kid kennel is an intriguing new business idea—you’re welcome). You can stay in any hotel with your kids, and you don’t have to hide them when room service comes. I mean, sometimes I do, but that’s only because I’m hiding my fries from my kids. With children, you can look forward to a time when they eventually learn to feed and bathe themselves. If you give a dog a bar of soap and put it in the bathroom, it is going to eat the bar of soap. Dogs and kids are both affectionate, but dogs always have dog breath. Or soapy dog breath.

  And I’m the weirdo with too many kids.

  Occasionally, a dog will be presented as some training method for having a baby. “My girlfriend and I got a dog. We are going to see if we can handle that before we have kids.” This is a little like testing the waters of being a vegetarian by having lettuce on your burger. Okay, maybe that metaphor doesn’t make sense, but neither does using a dog as a training method for having a baby.

  Circumcision

  When you have a boy, you have to deal with the circumcision question. If you are eating a hot dog while reading this book, my apologies. Most men cringe when they hear the word circumcision. “Uh, can you talk about something else, like prison rape?” Circumcision is just a scary word. I looked up circumcision in the dictionary, and it just said: “Owwwww. From the Latin for Ow!”

  Everyone will admit circumcision is crazy. The Germans flirted with the idea of making it illegal to circumcise your son. This is impressive, given Germans don’t really have a great record on the human rights front. Obviously, circumcision began as a religious tradition. I don’t know how they even came up with the idea of circumcision, really. I guess there was a meeting at some point.

  LEADER: All right, how should we honor God?

  GUY #1: I say we don’t eat pork.

  LEADER: I don’t know. I like bacon. Anyone got anything else?

  GUY #2: What if we cut off part of our penis?

  LEADER: [Beat.] Okay, no pork. We’ll go with no pork, and I want Guy #2 removed from this building.

  Jeannie told me that in the Bible, Abraham circumcised himself. Wow. I don’t even like clipping my nails. Apparently God told Abraham to do it. I would love to have overheard that conversation.

  GOD: Abraham!

  ABRAHAM: Oh, hey, God.

  GOD: I need you to do something for me.

  ABRAHAM: Well, sure. You’re God! Whatever you want.

  GOD: I need you to circumcise yourself.

  ABRAHAM: [Beat.] I think we have a bad connection here. You’re breaking up. Can you send me an e-mail?

  When you think about it, God’s requests in the Old Testament took a dramatic leap in difficulty. “Don’t eat that apple!” “Build a boat!” Then, out of nowhere, “Cut off part of your penis!” I imagine Abraham was like, “Uh, how about I build two boats and no more bananas?”

  We have to assume Abraham went through with God’s request. I
’m not sure how Abraham hid this adjustment from his wife. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was getting out of the shower and his wife was brushing her teeth.

  WIFE: What the hell have you done?

  ABRAHAM: Honey, I can explain … God told me to do it.

  WIFE: What? What if God told you to jump off a bridge? What if God told you to sacrifice our firstborn son?

  ABRAHAM: Actually, I have to talk to you about that one …

  Circumcision is a tough decision for any parent. Do you put your newborn son through an enormous amount of unnecessary pain, or do you have a kid with an ugly penis? Unfortunately, Jeannie left the decision up to me. I decided to go through with it, but only because each of my sons requested it. Of course they didn’t request it. I couldn’t even discuss the decision with them, but I was pretty sure they didn’t want someone clipping off part of their penis. I finally made the decision to do it for a number of reasons. One of which was fear. A friend recently had to circumcise their one-year-old because of repeated infections. Still enjoying that hot dog? Ultimately, I wanted my sons to be like their dad. Cut off from a little bit of their manhood.

  The only thing worse than deciding to have your son circumcised has to be witnessing your son getting circumcised. I’ve had to watch my three sons go through this, and it haunts me to this day. I’ve blocked out most of it, but I’ll never forget my first time. Well, my first son’s first time. Well, hopefully Jack’s only time. I remember everything vividly up until the point when I blocked everything out.

  Since we elected to do a home birth, we didn’t have the option of a quick circumcision after the birth, as in a hospital. We had to arrange a circumcision at home in our tiny apartment. Jeannie found a highly recommended mohel, Doctor Emily Blake, to do the procedure. Dr. Emily is a mohel, a doctor, and a rabbi. Talk about an overachiever. I was relieved to know my son’s son-ness was in good hands. Then Jeannie notified me that she was going to invite some people to the ceremony. What? I didn’t really want people to know we were even doing this to our precious newborn son, let alone throwing a party to announce it. I didn’t even know we were Jewish. There were a dozen guests, including my sister’s girlfriend, a priest, and our mohel/rabbi/doctor attending the ceremony. We literally had the beginning of a classic joke.