Chapter Three: Uncle Wiggly
When my first child was about 3 months old, I came home from work to find her crying in the arms of her babysitter, Jane Sewell. I presumed as my mother and grandmother had, that the baby was “hungry, tired or needed to be changed”. Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, as we began to call her because we remembered Uncle Wiggly, was not rocking or patting her or singing. She was just rubbing the baby’s head from front to back. She looked up at me and asked, “How do we know they don’t have headaches?” That question changed my thinking about babies and parenting. You might as well believe that babies are just small human beings who, unlike us, cannot tell us where it hurts, what feels good or what frightens them. It makes sense and it will come in handy. The notion of empathy that Jane suggested is the one that makes you be on time for carpool, if not always, at least almost always no matter what.
