Mother Nature is one clever lady. Prior to having my own, I had never seen a newborn baby that I really thought was cute. I mean, they’re not ugly necessarily but they all kind of look the same – kind of like a cross between a worm and an alien. They’re all red and wrinkled. They look a little like old men. They look constipated. I’ve thought this about pretty much every newborn baby I’ve ever met. 

That is, until I met my babies.

I’m not going to say that my babies weren’t any of the things I listed above. They were all of those things, I’m sure. But they’re mine. And, just as Mother Nature intended, I thought they were the cutest thing on the entire freakin’ planet.

And I’m totally thankful that Mother Nature thought this through because I was at least a little worried that after I delivered my first baby, the nurse would hand her to me and I would think (and hopefully not say out loud), “Ew, gross” (which, by the way was my exact response when I delivered the placenta and the doctor showed it to me.  But, if I’m being honest, I still feel like that’s a reasonable response to a placenta). But anyway, I didn’t think “Ew, gross” about my newborn babies. Not even when they first came out and were covered in goo. Granted, I was exhausted and, at least was the case for my first baby, was just thankful that I didn’t have to put the oxygen mask back on and get ready to push again but still, they gave her to me and all I could think was how perfect she looked.

And therein lies the dilemma. 

Because, you see, I love mail.  I love to receive “real” mail (as opposed to email) and I even love sending mail to other people.  My Christmas card list includes pretty much every person I’ve ever met.  I love an excuse for a good mass-mailing.  So soon after my first baby (and all subsequent babies as well) was born, I prepared to mail out birth announcements. These days it seems like most birth announcements feature a picture of the child whose birth is being announced. And while I think that my babies are so cute that I could eat them, to the entire rest of the world (with a few exceptions like grandparents and weird people who legitimately think newborn babies are cute), they are just another alien-worm baby. And I always swore that I wouldn’t put a picture of my baby on her birth announcement. Because, and I’m speaking from experience here, people will receive said birth announcement and will feel obligated to put it on their refrigerator. Only to them it will be like hanging a picture of ET on there. And who wants that? No one. No one wants a picture of a small, reddish, wrinkled baby with a constipated expression on its face hanging on the front of the device where they keep their food.

And I know in the rational part of my brain that my baby is no different. But, the other part of my brain, the mother part that thinks that my babies are beautiful, non-red, non-constipated looking, non-wrinkled, alien-worm babies, seems to be having trouble not wanting to send their picture out to everyone I know. Because they are so cute. So. Cute. 

So four out of four times I sent out a birth announcement containing a picture of the baby.  And while I did not receive any formal complaints, I’m sure there are people out there who received each announcement, took one look at it and cringed, like I used to, and wondered how long they had to display it before tossing it into the trash.  But I would just warn those people that they may find themselves, at some point down the road, oogling over pictures of their own weird-looking alien baby, and thinking that they’re beholding the greatest beauty in the world.  And when that happens, and they send me a birth announcement with a picture of their little worm, I will happily hang it on my fridge for an appropriate amount of time!