They say all children are beautiful, and on a metaphysical level, they're certainly right. On a more practical level, however, they're wrong, and they know it, but they keep up the pretense because they don't want to be perceived as
insensitive. Babies, after all, are sacred ground. If you aren't nice to babies, if you can't experience the joys of a newborn, you're dead inside and don't deserve to walk the planet with the rest of us. Or so goes the conventional wisdom.

This argument is academic until that day when the friends with whom you once shared heated debates about the perfect Long Island iced tea are suddenly more concerned about the perfect bottle of Similac. They're having kids like there's no tomorrow, and your world is a spinning maelstrom of baby showers, birth announcements, and Diaper Genies wrapped in festive pink or blue paper.

And let us please face facts: there're a whole lot of ugly adults out there, and they weren't dropped here by aliens. Every single one of them was, at one point, somebody's newborn. The sad truth is that, inevitably, one of your friends will give birth to a child that resembles a bulldog chewing on a hornet.

How you handle your first meeting with a friend's ugly baby is a defining challenge of your relationship. The moment your friend gave birth, that little bawling creature -- no matter how scary-looking -- became the center of her world, and you and your friendship became a highly dispensable luxury (at least during the first six sleep-deprived months). Your friend would throw you over for a lot less than failing to be extravagantly, deeply, profoundly impressed by the fabulousness of her offspring. As such, the initial viewing of an ugly child can pose an extremely unpleasant dilemma if one has not been properly prepared for it -- and one rarely is. Parents don't generally announce the birth of their child by saying, "It's a boy! And he's as ugly as the working end of a skunk!"

Alas, the moment you meet the little bundle of joy, you must call upon all of your creative resources. If the child turns out to look like a normal baby -- in other words, he or she resembles Winston Churchill -- then you can offer up the oohing and aahing parents expect to hear. If the kid is truly ugly, you may find yourself stopped in your tracks. This is bad. This is one of the very rare times when saying nothing is even worse than saying the wrong thing. So say something. And since parents aren't really paying attention to what you say anyway, unless it's not oohing and aahing, make sure whatever you say has an oohing and aahing quality to it. That may get you through those first tense moments. Most important, develop a stock list of new-baby comments you can whip out whenever your honest response would hurt someone's feelings. In general, it's best to stay away from qualitative comments and stick to the purely quantitative.

Here are a few things you can say when "Oh, she's so beautiful" is just too disingenuous:

* "Oh, he's so small." This is a great way to demonstrates your keen powers of observation, and it allows you to be entirely honest in your appraisal.

* "Wow, look at all that hair." Since the ugliest babies often come with werewolf-like manes, this comment gets used quite a bit. Parents often take an inexplicable pride in giving birth to a hairy newborn, especially if it's a boy, so this one could earn you some extra friend points.

* "What beautiful knuckles." I actually think this comment is pretty lame, but it was suggested by my friend Claire, who has had to suck up to her share of ugly babies (and their parents). Ironically, she herself spawned an ugly baby, but unlike most mothers, she knew it. "She can always get plastic surgery, and she'll have a great personality," was her statement when she and her husband first accepted the fact that they had an ugly daughter.

* "Oh, he looks exactly like you." Everyone says this anyway, so parents will probably be unaware that, again, you are stating the obvious and preserving your integrity and your friendship, all without causing harm or emotional distress to anyone -- unless one parent, like Claire, is a realist who knows an ugly kid when she sees one. In that case, your friend may be aware that he or she has just been insulted.

* "Anytime you need a baby sitter, you just let me know." This is the perfect response when you're dealing with an ugly, fat, bald baby with misshapen knuckles and no resemblance to either parent. Your friends wouldn't even let you pick up and hold Junior, never mind leave him in your sole care for a few hours. Trust me, by the time they get around to letting you baby-sit, the kid will probably be a toddler -- and toddlerhood is the one point in human development when almost everyone gets to be cute for a while.

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You can send your baby's picture, or other correspondence, to Kris Frieswick at k.frieswick@verizon.net.

Issue Date: September 6 - 12, 2002