"And they wrapped her in swaddling clothes..."

One of my friends had a baby the week before Thanksgiving, and I got to hold her tonight. She’s a peach of a baby, quiet and sweet, her two-month-old gaze fixated on whoever holds her like she wants desperately to say something back to those cooing in her face. She got slightly fussy at one point. Linds wrapped her up cocoon-like in a blanket and handed her back to me, saying, “she’ll go right to sleep now.” And she did. I stood there rocking this swaddled up bundle for a solid twenty minutes, feeling all was right with the world.

There’s nothing in the world like rocking a sleeping baby. It didn’t make me want to have one myself, but it did make me think that if more people in the world held babies on a regular basis (well, actually I was thinking if men in positions of power held babies on a regular basis), the world might be a better place.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes would probably argue with me. But I’d argue right back on this one.