Heading home, on the road to the rest of his life

The first mistake most new parents make is to take the baby home, leaving behind a hospital full of professionals.

“What’s the rush?” I ask.

“I want to go home,” my wife says.

“But you’ve been home before,” I say. “You know what that’s like.”

“Let’s go,” she says.

So I pull away from the curb the way fathers of newborns always pull away from hospitals, as if driving a load of champagne across rail tracks.

“Watch that bump,” my wife says.

“Got it,” I say.

They are in the backseat, mother and son, wrapped in blankets against the December chill. More blanket than baby, there’s almost nothing to this infant boy. At 3 days old, he’s light as a passing thought.

“You sure this car seat’s tight?” my wife asks.

“I double-checked,” I tell her.

She double-checks my double-checking. Moments like that make a long marriage worthwhile.

“Told you,” I say.

“Just checking,” she explains.

And off for the rest of his life we go, onto the freeway, where I drive the speed limit. Ever driven the speed limit in L.A.? Of course not. It’s unsafe.

Little old ladies in Buicks pass us as if we’re standing still. Trucks pass us. Electric cars. Sea gulls. Women pushing strollers. Squirrels. Virtually everything in L.A. is whooshing past us.

“Not too fast,” my wife says.

“See that, a Vega,” I tell her. “A Vega just passed us.”

“Look, he’s blowing bubbles,” she says, admiring her second son.

The birth was easy. There were painkillers then. Morphine. Demerol. And that was just for the fathers. The mothers got a little help too.

“The doctor said that during the circumcision, his heartbeat didn’t change at all,” my wife says proudly.

“The doctor’s?”

“No, the baby’s,” she says.

In a hospital, even a baby senses that things will turn out well. The people are prepared there. A calm efficiency pervades the place.

Now we’re headed home, where calm efficiency disappeared in 1983, replaced by a sort of martial law intended to keep things orderly. There are curfews. Chains of command. Constant surveillance. Into this tender truce, we bring the baby.

“They’re home!” the little girl screams.

“Someone get the camera,” says the older daughter.

“Cheese!” says the boy.

I bring in the flowers. I stow away the baby gear. I stay clear of the baby until there’s some sort of septic issue that threatens the public health.

“Can you change him?” my wife asks.

“Into what?”

“His diaper,” she says. “Can you change his diaper?”

It’s been a good 10 years since I’ve changed a baby, and when I say “good” I mean in the sense that I didn’t have to change a diaper. For even back then, I was never very good at it.

So I set this new baby on the changing table, where he looks at me skeptically. You can almost read his thought balloons.

“Who are you again?” the baby wonders. “Where’s the person with the bosom?” That sort of thing.

“Hold still,” I tell him.

He wiggles like a trout.

“You’ll fit in fine here,” I say.

The baby soon finds that being dressed by his father is akin to the birth experience, only worse.

For example, I can’t seem to thread this kid’s tiny hand through a shirt hole the size of a nostril. I grab and try to guide his hand through. He pulls away.

I try bringing the hole to the arm instead of the arm to the hole. No luck. I’d have better luck building a microcircuit with my lips.

“Where’s his other sock?” asks the little girl.

“What other sock?”

“He’s missing a sock,” she says.

The world has plenty of socks -- more socks than people, probably. More socks than attorneys.

But the loss of this one particular sock concerns us all. It’s a symbol of frustrations to come.

Finally, we find the sock. Tiny as a thimble, it had slipped off the changing table, where the dog sniffed it out of sight. When I place a fresh one on his foot, it fits him loose. Lord, he’s tiny.

“I’ve had cheeseburgers bigger than you,” I tell him softly.

“Do you always think of food?” he wonders.

“Pretty much all the time,” I say.

It’s 3 in the afternoon. Darkness nears. Long nights. And there are many hours to go before we sleep.

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Chris Erskine’s column is published Wednesdays. He can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.