My Friends And Family Are Becoming More Attached To My Baby Than Me

“We have to bring Holt,” I sighed to my fiancé, a couple weeks ago, before leaving for Passover. “No one wants to see us! They don’t care about seeing us!” And even though it was family and friends of family, it is also true that NO ONE really cared if my fiancé or I came. They only wanted to see the baby.

“But he’s going to be so cranky. It’s his bedtime when they want to start dinner,” my fiancé moaned reasonably.

I knew all of this, and I knew Holt would be a nightmare. But when you have a baby, people want to see the goddamn baby. Honestly, we’ve not brought the baby before when we’ve been invited over to people’s homes – because he’s napping or it’s his bedtime – and the looks of disappointment on people’s faces when we show up at the door is almost heartbreaking. Literally, their faces fall, as if we just gave them some awful news, like, “I’ve just smashed into your car while parking.”

I want to kind of hug them and say, “It’s okay. You’ll see the baby another time, I promise.”

People don’t even bother to hide the fact they want to see your baby more than they want to see you. I want to say to family, when they open the door and we haven’t brought our baby, “Well, WE’RE here! Isn’t that good enough for you?”

But, as I’ve said, when you have a baby, no one cares about seeing you – they’ve seen you for decades – they just want the baby there. This is especially true, I think, for grandparents.

Sometimes my mother-in-law will drop by unexpectedly (I don’t mind) and if the baby is napping, her face falls too. I’m sure she’s always happy to see me, but she is THRILLED to see the baby.

“Bring the baby!” everyone will tell us, while we, the parents, who know our son better than anyone, will sigh and say, “Well, we might leave him at home. That’s kind of his nap time, and he won’t nap anywhere but his crib.”

Then people will be like, “Oh, he can sleep on my bed. It’s no problem. Bring the baby!”

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