I love my husband. He is one handsome dude but after nine months of carrying our child, I have to admit I wanted the baby to look like me. Not a chance. Even in the 3 d sonogram I could see the girl was taking after her Daddy. "No problem", I thought. Steve has beautiful blue eyes and, in my culture (or at least in my family), one of the benefits of marrying "un americano" is the possibility of having a blond and blue eyed member of your family.
But after 14 hours of labor I gave birth to my father in law. That is who Amelia looked like as a new born. She even frowned like him. Again, my father in law is a very handsome man, but after all that pain, all that labor, the kid should have been my spitting image. How ungrateful can nature be?
What made it worse is that everyone who visits the new mom tells her about it. "Oh my God Ana, she looks just like Steve". Strangers would look at the two of us by ourselves and wonder if she was mine, until her Dad arrived. My mother, who knew what a hormonal mess I was at the beginning even called Amelia "little Howard", my father in law's name.
A word to the wise, even if the Mom is not a hormonal mess who can't sit down to feed her own baby, keep those comments to yourself. Tell her the baby is beautiful. And if she asks who does he/she looks like: LIE! Just say, "it's too early too tell" or the always safe "she's a combination of the both of you".
Those first six weeks of post labor hell, I kept looking at Amelia wondering when would I see anything that would resemble me. My best friend from home came to see us for Thanksgiving and saw a picture of me as a newborn, lying on my side. She could tell I was a little hurt by the fact that the baby looked nothing like me. She was nice enough to look at the picture and say that Amelia had my ears. That is a true friend.
Two months after she was born, Amelia smiled. And there they were: MY DIMPLES! Yes, she is my child. Those 2 indentations on her cheeks were all mine. And that's all I needed.
At 11 months, she still looks more like Steve, but I like to think that my personality is coming through. She is loud, friendly, loves the mirror, loves to laugh and smiles all the time. My parents say I wasn't even that sweet and funny as a baby--but I, in my revisionist history, say I was. Come to think of it and in all honesty, my brother was the friendly baby. Ay, Mama!
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Wait until you have more children and then you're told they all look like their father or some other member of your family. You'll be like I went through all this and the kid doesn't look anything like me. As for me I have a niece who looks and acts more like me than my girls. The third one will be the charm, we'll see.
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