Sophie White has sanity-saving reflections and recipes

Newborns are equal parts adorable and pure torture. Sophie White has identified some unusual sanity savers — but please don’t judge her

Newborns are conniving creatures, I think we can all agree. They have no head control and few motor skills, yet possess an incredible knack for identifying whenever you, the parent, have found a little snatched moment of peace. And destroying it.

My new one, frankly, puts the ‘dick’ in ‘dictator’. If I wasn’t suffering under his torturous regime, I’d actually be quite impressed with just how efficiently he has, in three months, crushed my gentle spirit. Obviously, he has his good points. He smells divine and is covered head to toe in beautiful downy fur, earning himself the nickname of the Velvet Mouse, but the minute — the second — something isn’t going his way, he turns vicious.

He has an incredibly frightening cry that sounds distinctly like the opening movement of O Fortuna by Carl Orff, and if any of us are less than instantaneous in our response to his needs, he will escalate to the iconic crescendo in mere moments. It’s amazingly bizarre to hear the 13th-Century Latin goliardic poem bitching about life and cruel fate emitting from the pudgy face of a baby.

Great tactic though, as the sense of impending cataclysm invoked by this seminal banger really puts a fire under me when it’s time to change his nappy. When I’m at home and the O Fortuna cry starts up, I have been known to even sing along. It’s a good way of slightly undercutting the doom-laden atmosphere and making my life with this little

guy feel a bit less like John Boorman is directing proceedings.

The real ‘fun’ starts, of course, when the baby starts up the horrific shrieking when we’re out and about. Innocent passers-by are understandably jarred by the impromptu performance and then immediately judgmental of me, the mother, and therefore assumedarchitect of this poor child’s devastation.

“He’s actually fine,” I long to roar at them. “I’m two seconds from my house and will be stuffing a boob in his mouth.”

With my first baby, I would’ve made an elaborate show of consoling the child, if only to deflect the horrified stares and muttered critiques of my parenting. Three babies in, I have no such concerns and have discovered the joys of noise-cancelling headphones. Now before anyone rushes to report me, I can still hear the baby — the headphones just take the edge off the crying and keep me from having about 80 mini-breakdowns a day.

I’ve pretty much deemed the headphones a medical imperative at this point. They should be distributed in maternity hospitals, in my opinion.

Blending the pesto in this recipe is another great way to drown out the kids.

“He has a frightening cry that sounds like the opening movement of ‘O Fortuna’ by Carl Orff ”