If Baby Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy

There's an old saying in the South that says "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." The opposite is not necessarily true. But this saying holds up pretty well in most homes I've ever seen. When the mother is happy, things are carefree and joyful. When someone puts a bee in Mommy's bonnet, then we're all in for a world of hurt.
This traditional wisdom ought to be applied to babies as well. In fact, it's much more true with the baby if you ask me. I've said before that a baby screaming at you right in your face is a difficult thing to take. Mainly because its so entirely foreign to us. If a guy came up to you in the grocery store and started screaming in your face, you'd punch him. You may not punch your baby. I repeat, you may not punch your baby.
A screaming, unhappy infant makes for many a long night for parents. The problem is two fold. On one side, there's the screaming infant which raises the tension in the household to a level of about 9 on a scale of 1 to 10. Then on the other side, and worsening matters significantly, there is the absolute ignorance as to what's causing this child's unhappiness. This amps that tension level up to about 98. That's not a typo. Nine. Eight. Ninety-eight!
I tell most people who are expecting or who are young parents the same thing. All the cliches you hear while expecting are absolutely true. Your life never will be the same. You really should have enjoyed your sleep. The baby does indeed run the home. But the funniest thing I heard was from my father. "If a baby's crying he's either hungry, tired, has a dirty diaper or he's in pain."
Finally, one cliche that is not true. I'll grant that 90% of the time or more, this saying holds up. But frankly there are times when the kid is fed, rested, dry and seemingly pain free that screams abound. Often from a face that was smiling only a nanosecond before. What do you do then? That's not rhetorical, I'd really like to know because most of what I tried didn't work.
My son is a usually happy baby. He can certainly pitch a fit like Roger Clemens pitches a fastball, but all in all he's jovial and funny. He scrunches his eyes and nose when he smiles big and it absolutely captures your heart. You have to smile back.
So the opposite is true for babies. "When baby's happy, everybody's happy." Why? Because the house is quiet, his smiles and laughs are infectious, and because a happy baby makes a happy mommy and then we're back to the original saying.
I work with a man who doesn't want to have children. He's in his early forties and has already had the operation where scalpels should never tread (that's a vasectomy operation for those who don't catch my drift.) I can't imagine a life with just me and my wife. And I am as crazy about my wife as Liza Minelli is just plain crazy. But while we are great together, we are complete with our child (and Lord willing more children later.)
If you lived 100 years of a life with no children and did everything you wanted to do, made all the money you wanted to make, what would you have at the end of it all? Where would your legacy be? To me, the greatest accomplishment anyone will ever do in their life is to raise a Christian child. That's my main goal. And if that's the only one I get accomplished, I'll consider all this a success. And the opposite is also true.