For years and years I heard people talking about how good babies smelled, but could never quite wrap my mind around it. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m not really into babies, other than my own, or if I just have a bum sense of smell, but babies always smelled of sour milk and baby paste. (“Baby paste” is a term I invented several years ago for the unidentifiable wet shmear that babies are constantly covered in, a mix of spitup, milk/formula drippings, and drool.)
I remember when Penny was first placed on my chest after the C-section I sniffed her head trying to figure out her smell. I had read in a study that mothers who had spent as little as 30 minutes with their infants could identify the babies later just by smell. Some survival of the fittest thing. So I sniffed, and I sniffed, but I smelled nothing except generic hospital smells.
Weeks went by, and I never really sniffed her thinking for sure that my Penelope had no smell. Or at least that her smell was so light only Berlin could identify her by scent. Or maybe Robert Pattinson.
And then last night I was rocking her to sleep in her nursery, holding her curled up against my chest, her all-time favorite position, and I took a deep breath of her to finally find her beautiful scent. I am officially one of those crazy people who sniffs babies. And who now finds the smell of my baby utterly intoxicating.
Penny’s pure, sweet, unadulterated smell is a beautiful mix of two things – her Pops’ world-famous nut bread, and New England the day after a huge blizzard when the air is crisp and fresh, and you can smell the newly fallen snow.
After an hour or so of breathing her in last night, and an hour of smelling her while she naps on my chest today, I know for sure that I could identify her by her beautiful scent alone. As long as I wasn’t outside my parents house on a January day eating a slice of nut bread. With Robert Pattinson.
