Baby: Creative Impediment or Albatross?

I am writing this with an infant strapped to my chest in a Baby Bjorn. If I were paid to hype this product I might say something like this: “The Baby Bjorn allows me the use of both arms so that I can write this with a sleeping and drooling infant strapped to my chest. It also allows me to eat food, but I do worry about dropping crumbs on her head.”

The infant in question happens to be my two-month-old daughter, Emily, who doesn’t like to sleep in the crib during the day. So she sleeps on my chest smelling of baby. There are worse smells to be strapped to, for sure. Gas powered leaf blowers come to mind.

From the outside it may appear that a baby strapped to one’s chest for hours at a time is some kind of albatross, especially if you hate cute, sleeping babies who breathe adorably. The symbolism is different, trust me. Besides, I am no Samuel Taylor Coleridge or even an albatross-hunting mariner. Eventually Emily will no longer want to be strapped to my chest while she sleeps. In fact it would be a bit awkward to carry her in a Baby Bjorn once she can walk or attend kindergarten.

As Emily sleeps on my chest in the aforementioned Baby Bjorn, she could symbolize multiple impediments to creativity. Having Emily positioned in this way makes it incredibly difficult to record in the home studio, or even to concentrate on writing these brief paragraphs.

So my creative life is like water poured into a bowl of rocks – it has to find the unoccupied space to exist. I write when I have a baby strapped to my chest (have I mentioned the baby in the Baby Bjorn yet?). I record when my wife can take  Emily and when we can convince our son to be quiet. Sometimes this is late at night, as my son sleeps, my wife holds Emily on the couch. Not ideal, but no albatross.