Crying Babies
24 October 2011, early morning
Parents who can’t control their crying babies should be made to pay reparations to all those sitting around them. How inconsiderate of them.
— Shima’s friend and planning all-star, @jasontsang
I’m sure in a previous life I have complained about a crying baby on a plane or a train. “Why won’t their parents do anything?” Now I have a baby. Here’s the thing: if it was so easy to get a baby to stop crying don’t you think the parent would get their baby to stop crying. Do you think parents want to listen to their baby cry? Trust me when I say it’s no less annoying if it’s your own baby who won’t be quiet.
How are you going to reason with someone that craps their pants in public and doesn’t respond to their name? It’s a challenge. There are certainly lots of things you can try and do to console a baby, but the only sure fire way to get a baby to stop crying is probably something along the lines of diazepam. If you think you can rock a baby to sleep, or that some warm milk will get them to shut up, you are in for a rude awakening if you ever have a baby of your own. Mytilli will cry because she is tired, while laying down in bed. Mythilli will cry because she is hungry, while inches away from Shima’s breast. How does that even make any sense?
Shima and I have more or less fled restaurants when Mythilli has started to get cranky because no one wants to eat with a baby wailing in the background. That’s the considerate thing to do. If we were stuck on a plane? Well, that’d be a long flight.