Yesterday in church.
In front of me there was a young couple and their 6-month-old baby, and a Grandma-type woman who was not related to them, who just happened to be sitting next to them in the pew. And “Grandma” (“Squeee!”) quickly took charge of the baby.
And just could not leave the kid alone. Every 10 to 30 seconds (I got so fascinated that I started clocking her, my bad for not listening to the sermon) she would shift the baby’s position. It reminded me of nothing so much as a little girl playing with a doll. It went like this:
Baby up on shoulder, joggling it and patting its back.
Baby on knee facing Grandma in the two-handed “posing baby on knee” grip, knee bouncing up and down.
Baby on knee facing the dais in the two-handed “posing baby on knee” grip, knee bouncing up and down.
Baby sideways on Grandma’s lap, similarly being jiggled by thigh bouncing up and down.
Repeat ad lib.
And it wouldn’t normally have been something that obtruded itself on my attention–old ladies play with babies during church all the time–except that the kid, who I assumed was female because it was wearing pink sweatpants and teeny little Mary Janes, kept trying to look around, dammit. She must have been just barely 5 or 6 months old, old enough to have mastered the spine muscles for sitting posture, and old enough to have mastered the neck muscles for “holding my head up and looking around”, but the back and neck were both still a little wobbly.
And she was doing her darnedest to look around every chance she got. Every time Grandma let her sit up, that little wobbly neck started moving the head around in little figure-8s like a periscope on Demerol, tracking slowly but definitely from left to right and back again, the big eyes taking in every detail of the surroundings, all the colors and patterns and movement and lights. She was looking at things, deliberately. Her face wasn’t like that “tiny baby thousand-yard stare” thing–I could see her choosing to look at things, her little face had the exact expression of, “oh wow i’m looking at stuf”.
And then Grandma would break it up by MOVING her. And she’d blink, and then patiently start over from whatever position she was in.
I really wanted to lean over and tap Grandma on the shoulder and say, “Geez, for goodness sake, leave the kid alone.”
Eventually the mom took the kid back–and she also kept her jiggling on her knee, although she didn’t shift her incessantly. And I wanted to lean over and tap her on the shoulder and say, “Look, hon, just let her sit there quietly on your lap. She doesn’t need to be jiggled all the time.”
People think that jiggling a baby keeps it calm. Well, in my experience, a baby that’s fed and dry is only irritated by jiggling, and then it starts to cry, and the person holding it who thought that babies need to be jiggled is embarrassed that the “baby doesn’t seem to like me”, and hands it back to Mommy.
So sure enough, about halfway through the sermon, which meant after about 45 minutes of non-stop jiggling and joggling, the baby got tired of it and got cranky, so THEN they resolved it, not by holding her close and letting her rest, but by producing a bottle and sticking it in her mouth.
Which she kept spitting out.
Because she wasn’t hungry, dammit.
She wanted to sit there quietly, being cuddled in a lap, and look at Pastor in his yellow shirt, but They (there’s always a They) wouldn’t let her.
Eventually she gave in to the inevitable and consented to drink some of the bottle. Way to produce an obese baby, peeps. :rolleyes:
You ever just wanna take a kid away from her parents because you know you can do a much better job?
Oy.