“I was standing in the kitchen, my daughter wrapped in a blanket and rocking against my naked chest.”

Mervyn pitched in to help out his wife with their newborn daughter. He picked her up and shared a quiet moment with his baby, warm against his chest in the kitchen. He had mastered the art of warming up the formula and getting into the bottle with one hand. Everything was going perfectly until…

This is a comment by Mervyn Kaufman on the post “Babies And the Rebirth of Men“.

Mervyn Kaufman said:

I loved your story. It brought back to mind a landmark in my early life as a parent. My daughter didn’t start sleeping through the night until she was about six weeks old. Which meant that at some point, in the wee hours, we’d hear a cry and my wife—who habitually hates having her sleep interrupted—would crawl painfully out of bed, and head for the kitchen to warm up the formula.

One night, I heard the first soft cry and quickly decided to pitch in for my wife. I leaped out of bed and rushed in to pull my baby daughter out of her crib. I held her and she was quiet—and warm. The latter was helpful, because in my haste I hadn’t grabbed a robe, and I slept naked then. So there we were, standing at the kitchen stove, my daughter wrapped in a blanket and rocking against my naked chest. It took only a few moments to bring the formula to an acceptable level of warmth. And by then I was adept at getting it all into a clean bottle–even one-handed. The baby was hungry; she really chug-a-lugged the formula.

I turned off the light and burped her appropriately—that wasn’t hard to learn. Then all of a sudden it all came out. Projectile vomiting all over the kitchen and all over me. That was my parental baptismal … and I’ve obviously never forgotten it!

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