Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

When you walk down the street, you invariably see someone peering into a pram or cooing to a baby in someone's arms, making baby noises and getting soppy over the littly.

"So beautiful!"

"Let me nurse the baby. Looks like you."

Enough to make you want to throw up.

Little babies have nothing to recommend them. Nature would do better to let them be born with teeth and able to walk, ready to forage for themselves and able to supervise their own toilet activities. There would have to be adjustment for the actual birth to accommodate the larger child; perhaps gestation in a giant test tube would be the answer.

When my first daughter was born, I was as clucky as anyone. She was a really beautiful baby, all pink and compact, clear blue eyes. I was proud of my achievement and ready to accept any admiration that came my way.

My son was a different proposition; a hefty 10 lb, 2 oz, he looked more like a footballer than a baby. He was passably good-looking, but not handsome enough to merit praise.

By the time my second son was born, I had definitely gone downhill in the 'good looks' stakes; he was god-awful. Long, skinny, with loose folds of skin like a bloodhound, and hair that stood out like a golliwog. He was born in a heatwave and bushfire, and developed an unsightly heat rash all over him. All the babies in the hospital had the same rash, and accident victims were packed in ice in the days before air conditioning.

People peered into his pram and were at a loss to find the usual complimentary remarks. It was impossible to praise him; the final pronouncement was "isn't he long." I just about had to fold him in halves to fit him in his pram. He grew into a handsome man but his beginning was horrible.

I finally got it right when my second daughter was born. The perfect child: beautiful to look at and a temperament to match and much easier to manage than daughter number one.

Four children were enough and then the grandchildren began to arrive. Grandson number one would have been at home in a monkey's cage at the zoo. Wrinkled and old before his time. Granddaughter number one looked as though she had been swapped at birth, definitely Italian with a shock of black hair, passable but definitely not beautiful.

My daughter's son looked like an ET clone. Felt like keeping him under wraps until he turned human. He is now a presentable teenager, but the beginnings of my family hierarchy were definitely not promising.

The saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is definitely true. People admire different things, and what one person thinks is perfection another finds abhorrent.

Just as well or we would all want the same thing or person, and the world would be in worse shape than it already is. Luckily, all eyes are different so our picture of beauty is varied, too.