Man that's an ugly baby

OK, so I'm stealing a Stephen Lynch lyric (one for two on the good looking baby). Steph was in town last night and we were looking up baby pictures of friends who have recently had babies. Fortunately, most of these children fell into the "yup, looks like a baby" or "wow! that's actually a cute baby."

Then there were the others.

You know of what I'm speaking.

Some babies are not cute.

In fact, they are downright ugly.

Everyone has been telling me that I will think that my baby is cute, no matter what he looks like. I beg to differ. I think I can be honest with myself. I'm going to notice if it is an ugly baby. As Steph said, one of her friends make the comment "The baby has such nice hands..." that's code for "But a really ugly face."

In fact, I don't expect cute. Most babies have a misshapen head, some bruising, and squall alot. I may think the toes and fingers are cute, and there will be "oh, we have a baby and it's healthy." But there will be no "this is the most beautiful baby ever." In my opinion, most babies aren't even cute until about 3 months of age. My comment will most likely be along the lines of "yup, he looks like a baby."

So, in the interest of science, we went on a bunch of hospital online nursery sites and looked at the babies.

Baby cuteness follows a bell curve.

There are about 10% of beautiful babies. The ones you coo over and inspires strangers to approach.

Then there is an additional 10% who are cute. Like a regular baby, but with better skin, or more alert eyes.

The next 60% are the average baby. Would be difficult to pick out of a lineup. Bald, squinty eyed, looks like they run an illegal gaming operation. Most babies fall into this category, and realistically speaking, so will our baby.

The next 10% are the "sorta ugly" baby. These would be the "nice hands" baby. Most parents aren't willing to admit to this. We've all seen them; usually they turn out to be nice looking kids and adults...it just takes time to grow into their features.

The bottom 10%. "Wow! that's one ugly baby!" Your brain screams this as soon as you see the baby. You are forced to hold it, but you immediately give it back in fear that ugly is contagious. Granted, it's not the baby's fault, there are just some really unfortunate instances. One baby we found was over 11 pounds. It had no neck...it was jsut a round ball of flesh...like a mini Jabba the Hutt. Another baby had some issues (hydroencephalus?) and had a tremendously large noggin. It looked like what would happen if Frankenstein was a baby. It was actually scary. I did feel sorry for the poor little thing.

Stephanie and I discussed the ethics of starting a website "uglybaby.com" and what would happen to us if we did. I mean, looking at the baby pictures killed about 2 hours. It was definitely fun. But it was also time consuming.

I guess I don't really have a point, except that i hope the baby will be on of the 60% like me...."yup, average looking" And if anyone says the baby has "nice hands" I am on to you!!!