Your Baby Is Ugly (And Other Things I Blame On Hormones)

Everyone knows that pregnant ladies are flush with hormones.  Not everyone knows that those hormones still rage for months after delivery…….and they can make you a crazy person.

For example: Thanks to hormones, I no longer hate The Big Bang Theory.

The Big Bang Theory was on roughly 78 times a day in the hospital.  And you’d think that would make me hate it even more.  But in the aftermath of childbirth you’re not thinking clearly.  You’re vulnerable.  Suggestible.  Add a pinch of postpartum hormones and suddenly I’m sobbing through the opening credits of a sitcom.  Uncontrollably.  Unabashedly.  Weeping.

Hormones jump into your brain and camp out for months.  They call the shots.  They make you do things like cry at The Big Bang Theory.  Or check six thousand times to make sure your sleeping baby is still breathing.  They make you believe, on a cellular level, that your child, above all other children, is a miracle.  Not a drooling sack of shit, but an actual, literal miracle.

A national treasure.

I’m not a scientist, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably some sort of evolutionary mechanism to preserve the human race.  And if that’s the case, it’s working.  Because I honestly feel that, in order of awesomeness, it goes: my daughter, the Baby Jesus, maybe Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, that royal British baby, and then every other dumb baby, all tied for who even cares.

Fucking crazy.

Another thing that happened immediately after my daughter’s birth — and this I blame completely on hormones, and not on my general cuntiness — was that every other baby I saw was a horrific troll.  All of them.  Babies that, in retrospect I admit are adorable, made me want to gouge my eyes out.  Every single one.  TV babies, magazine babies.  Even biracial babies, which are arguably the cutest of all babies.  It was the weirdest thing.*

Luckily, that only lasted a few months.  Strange babies are now tolerable.  In fact, they’re almost borderline cute.  Cute adjacent.  I guess the hormones are finally mellowing out.

The Big Bang Theory still pulls at my heartstrings, though.  I doubt that will change.  But in my defense, you try listening to that theme song and not get overwhelmed to the point of tears.  The enormity of the universe, and how we’re all just hurtling through outer space on this tiny speck of dust, living, loving, and dying in the circle of life, all in the blink of an eye.  Mankind’s odyssey from the dawn of time, summarized in a concise 25 seconds?  I mean, come on.  If that doesn’t move you, you might be dead inside. In that case, I can’t help you.

*To my dear friends who may be reading this: Not YOUR baby! The other babies are the gross ones. Your baby is obviously a cherub. A beautiful crystal of perfection, refracting light and love forever into the universe. It’s those other babies. You know what I’m talking about.