Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan Read Free Book Online Page B

annoying, and it kind of puts me in a good mood to see a teenager fall off a skateboard. How could someone like me ever hope to be a good parent? Even I knew my “Oh, what a cute baby” act was not very believable. What if I saw my baby and I was like, “Yuck!”?
    If you are having these feelings, too, don’t worry; it just means you’re a horrible person. The good news is when your baby is born, something happens. I can’t explain it. You just love your baby. Unconditionally. Even if you didn’t get the baby thing before, when you experience your own, you immediately fall in love and feel like you could kill or die for that baby. I was born with a heart that was two sizes too small, but when I sawmy baby, it was like the Grinch discovering the true meaning of Christmas.
    The newborn stage is a special time. It’s really a sacred time when nobody expects you to do anything except enjoy your new bundle of joy. This sacred time lasts roughly twenty minutes, and then you become the publicity agent for the mother and the baby. The masses of family and friends want to be assured the mother is okay and get information on the baby. For some reason, it’s really important for people to know how much the baby weighs. This always baffled me. “How much does she weigh?” That’s rude. She’s not even a day old, and people seem to be obsessed with my daughter’s weight? She was nine pounds, but I remember telling friends, “She was eight pounds, sixteen ounces” because it sounded thinner. Either way, she carried the weight very well, but we put her on that Atkins diet anyway. Of course, there is nothing anyone can do with the information about your newborn’s weight. No matter what the weight, they say the same thing: “Oooh, big baby.”
    I don’t have to explain that newborn babies are an enormous amount of work. When we had Marre, it was exhausting … watching Jeannie do it all. With each newborn, I was shocked at how much work there was. The infant just lies there sleeping, crying, or cooing, not even offering to help. I always think, “Great. We got another lazy one.” Newborns are lazy. You even have to help a newborn burp. Of course then you have to try and stop them from burping for the next eighteen years.
    But babies are worth it. It’s amazing the power a babyhas over a parent. They are so cute even though they are ridiculously out of shape. I mean, I’m out of shape, but a baby? Please. They have zero muscle tone. They can barely hold their heads up. It’s embarrassing, really. Still, they must have some kind of strange magic, because there is nothing that exists in the universe that can be as difficult, make you lose as much sleep, smell as bad, and still be so loved. Once on the road, I drove past a serious skunk smell, and my only thought was “I miss my baby.”
    Babies are adorable, but they kind of have to be because they are rude. “Waaaa.” That’s not polite. “Waaaa, waaaa, waaaa!” I don’t speak baby, but my guess is there is no “please” in that statement. Babies are the worst roommates. They’re unemployed. They don’t pay rent. They keep insane hours. Their hygiene is horrible. If you had a roommate that did any of the things babies do, you’d ask them to move out. “Do you remember what happened last night? Today you’re all smiles, but last night you were hitting the bottle really hard. Then you started screaming, and you threw up on me. Then you passed out and wet yourself. I went into the other room to get you some dry clothes, I came back, and you were all over my wife’s breasts! Right in front of me, her husband! Dude, you gotta move out.”
    It’s strange for a father when a mother breastfeeds. The baby always seems to look right at the dad like, “What are you going to do about it? Nothing. You’re pathetic. Why don’t you take a picture, weirdo?” When I complain about this to Jeannie, she thinks I’m being crazy, but I don’t trust newborn babies. We