I Thought I Was Done With Babies

I thought I was done with babies.

Now, I'm the doll whisperer.

By: Laura Onstot

When we sat down to dinner this past Christmas, I thought we’d survived the onslaught of gifts. My husband had cut over 30 toys out of raccoon-proof packaging. My mother-in-law and I loaded garbage bags full of wrapping paper, cardboard, and any remaining hope I had for being a minimalist. I was relieved it was over.

But after awakening from a pre-dinner nap, Uncle Doug pointed toward another pile of gifts for the girls. Uncle Doug is a favorite, always down to wrestle his gaggle of nieces. He tells wild stories of his travels around the world: the time he almost died scuba diving, carrying a moose he shot in Alaska back to the plane a few miles away, the pig roast in the Philippines where he was welcomed with his name carved into the pig.

His gifts are unpredictable, and always a hit. One year it was a geode smashing kit, another year it was projector lights that spun colors around the girls’ dark room. It was magical for them—reminding them of the northern lights in Frozen. It reminded me of the rave that I never attended.

My daughters tore through the wrapping paper and revealed baby dolls. After I cut approximately 50 plastic zip ties and dropped no fewer than 5 F-bombs, they pulled out freakily human-looking dolls. (Why is doll packaging so obnoxious? Another topic for a different day.)

My daughter handed me one to hold, and I started cooing at it (in front of a table full of adults), before I remembered it was a doll, not a human. My brain has some strong-ass baby-nurturing wiring, probably due to the fact that I spent a lot of time caring for my five younger siblings. It was weighty, like a real baby, and its wide eyes stared into mine. I felt my brain squirt out some oxytocin. I was gonna care for this baby, whether or not it had a brain.

But then my mother-in-law added batteries, and the dolls started crying uncontrollably. "Quick!" I yelled, "Where are their pacifiers?" My daughters had not seen this newborn-mother side of me—an archetype of myself that I thought was long gone, or at least suppressed by my IUD— but they recognized I wasn’t messing around. Suddenly, the mom who refused to play Barbies with them was fully on board with taking care of their dolls. They shoved the pacifiers into the babies’ mouths. I began to relax, until I realized that the pacifiers did not stop the crying.

"Damn it," I thought, "These dolls are way more realistic than I anticipated.” I spent 20 minutes rocking the dolls with squats– the only form of rocking that calmed my daughters down when they were babies. I had really colicky babies and a nice postpartum ass. (Uncle Doug clearly didn’t know what he was getting us into when he pulled the most expensive dolls off the Walmart shelf. Or maybe he did, that a**hole.)

My glutes were burning, and I dreamed of ripping the velcro open on the doll’s back and turning her off. But these dolls had unleashed this competitive side in my brain. I was gonna f*cking calm these babies down, no matter what it took. Would I whip a boob out? Only time would tell. The rest of the family continued eating their prime rib, undisturbed by my neurotic behavior. I shot Uncle Doug a death glare, but he was too busy telling the story of the gator hunt he just returned from.

I finally realized these dolls, Chloe and Zoe, would calm down after I patted their backs. It was patting that seemed slightly unsafe, like the vibrations could trigger an earthquake, but I was gonna prove my mothering.

Now, months later, these dolls have become the things my daughters pull out whenever friends come to visit. Every time I hear one of those babies cry, I respond exactly how I did when my daughters were little: my blood pressure skyrockets, and I cannot do anything until I get the crying to stop. My husband, meanwhile, doesn’t even seem to notice.

Thankfully, Chloe and Zoe aren’t always inconsolable. When you turn them on, they coo and babble for a few minutes. Their eyes don’t close when in a lying down position, like the dolls of my youth. They remain open, staring into my soul, so I feel guilty if I set them down. Sometimes Chloe sighs, like she’s going to fall asleep. I feel a prick of hope. But then she continues babbling. Eventually her eyes shut, and I feel immense relief. I can finally fold that laundry that’s been sitting on the couch for months. But two minutes later, I hear an ominous noise her electric eyes make before opening. Her eyes slide open wide, and she begins to wail, and just like in real parenting, the cycle continues.

Whenever we finally get the baby calmed down, I tend to turn into the psychopath I used to be when I had a sleeping baby. I don’t let anyone talk above a whisper. I legit tiptoe around.

I was baking quietly last week while Chloe and Zoe slept. When the muffins came out of the oven, I asked our neighbor girl if she wanted one in a whisper. She was sitting on the couch with the baby wrapped in a blanket in the crook of her arm. “WHAT?” she shouted. “OMFG, you’re gonna wake the baby!” I wanted to angry-whisper. Instead, I realized she was holding a doll and repeated my question out loud.

“I can’t get up,” she said, “Zoe is finally sleeping.” I let her eat her muffin on the couch, because god forbid that baby start crying again.

I did not anticipate I'd still be soothing babies again, yet here I am. Thankfully, I can turn Chloe and Zoe off when my daughters aren’t looking. “Oh wow, Chloe has been sleeping for five hours? She must have a really good mama. Or shall I say, grandmother.”

Laura Onstot started writing to maintain her sanity when she left her career as a research nurse to be a stay-at-home mom. Unfortunately, she realized writing only revealed her insanity. She is not humble at all, and finds her own writing very funny. She forces her friends to read every article she writes, because praise is her drug of choice. You can find more of her writing at lauraonstot.com