Is your baby a good baby?

“Is she a good baby?” I look up at the flight attendant blankly and reply, “Excuse me?”

“Is she a good baby?” she repeats, “I mean, does she sleep and eat well? If they do those two things then you’re golden, right?”

I blink a few times before I can come up with a response. “Do you have a child?”

“Me? Oh, no!” She laughs, “ I’m totally not ready for that kind of commitment.”

Clearly.

At the beginning of my journey in motherhood, “is she a good baby” was often the first question anyone would ask me. Worse, I was asked in Arabic "عم بتعزبك؟", which translates to “is she giving you trouble?” I felt it was more of an assumption than a question. As if this baby was simply a troubling inconvenience instead of a beautiful miracle that I had prayed for. 

The question would so easily roll off the tongues of visitors before even asking the simple question of “how are you?” I know now that this is probably their strange way of asking that without realizing what a loaded question they are presenting. At first, I would fumble with a response and make up excuses for her constant nursing and the sleepless nights. “She’s underweight, so I don’t mind the night nursing” or “Oh you know, she has acid reflux so it’s hard for her to sleep properly.” It was as if my child was an employee for whom I was giving a performance evaluation. They would nod along with my clumsy answers, and some well intentioned guests would even try to offer solutions. Solutions for things that were not even problems. 

As I grew more confident in motherhood, I started to think long and hard about this question. Was my baby a good baby? Well, yes. What was the alternative? To say no? No, simply because she didn’t sleep 12 hours through the night from 6 weeks old? No, because she wanted to be held close and cuddled in my warm arms, just as I enjoy being hugged by my husband? No because she wanted to nourish herself with breastmilk so that she could grow and thrive? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that society’s idea of a “good baby” is so far from the reality of the human nature of a newborn that we are confusing first time mothers so terribly and setting unrealistic expectations for them. We are asking mothers to fight against their intuition and try to get their baby to fit a mold he may not be ready for yet. Some babies sleep through from 2 months. Some babies don’t until 2 years. Every child is different, but one thing is for sure mamas: Every baby is a good baby. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.