Baby smell

Years before I had William, I had friends who raved about the “baby smell”. Moms seem to go goo-goo for it. I loved reading Amelia Bedelia books as a kid and there is one dedicated to how much the mother loved the baby smell. I always thought that babies smelled great, but I don’t think I quite knew what the “baby smell” even was. Then when William was a baby friends would hold him and sniff until their eyes popped – going on and on about how they just couldn’t get enough. I agreed that he smelled good and I loved to smell him, but never once did I go into convulsions from inhaling too much. Austin even insisted that there was no such smell and that all babies smell like is formula and baby powder. I wouldn’t have gone so far as to say they smelled like sour milk, but I did think that the “baby smell” was simply Johnson and Johnson’s plug in the market.

Until today! I had lunch with some coworkers and we went to a restaurant blocks away from where one of them takes his son (4 months old) for daycare. So, on our way to lunch Kevin picked up his son and brought him to lunch. Once I was done eating I did the polite thing and offered to hold Iver while Kevin finished. What I found next was that my head was shaking and my eyes were squinted shut because I couldn’t stop smelling him. He just smelled WONDERFUL! I almost felt like I was doing something illegal or morally wrong by how much I was obsessing over his smell, but I really couldn’t even control myself. It was almost euphoric.

In that minute I forgot about pregnancy pains, have long forgotten about labor pains (though I hardly had any), I forgot about sleepless nights and crying fits and spit up on my clothes and diaper costs and complete dependency…all I thought about was how wonderful it’d be to have a baby. I think the baby smell is a trigger God created in a woman’s brain that is set off once she has her first baby…and maybe never goes away. I don’t know. But I know I never thought anything smelled as sweet as Iver did today.

Yes, his name is Iver.


- manda