Throw Back Thursday – Measuring Babies

From Daddy Diary 1: Ella Tales ( from 2017)

I’ve noticed that we have lots of measurements about newborn babies.  We measure birth weight, discharge weight, length, APGAR (just google it if you don’t have children).  By the way, Ella got a solid 8 on the APGAR scale.  It should’ve been a 10, but the Hungarian judge screwed her on her Respiration score.  Also, I’ve noticed that everything about babies has to be measured as a percentile.  We as a society find it very important to compare our babies against every other baby ever born.  I think we use this framework so that parents will have at least one thing to brag about.   If your baby isn’t the biggest or longest or doesn’t have the biggest head, you can say, “My baby is in the 97% percentile for fingernail density.”   

The Cuteness Scale 

Context matters.  In some areas of society, staring at a girl for 9 straight hours is frowned upon.  I spent about that long staring at Ella yesterday.  It seems much less creepy when the object is your own daughter.   

After staring at Ella for the greater part of a day, it occurred to me that we don’t measure the most important feature of a baby, cuteness.  Currently, there isn’t a scientific unit of measure for cuteness.  I propose we start measuring cuteness, and the unit of measure will be called an Ella.  For those in countries using the metric system, we will use Ellameters. 

As a frame of reference, the baby on jars of Gerber baby food would be about 9 Ellas.  Using that scale, my baby girl would be 6.02×10²³ Ellas. 

Feel free to apply this to puppies and kittens as well.  The influence of my daughter’s cuteness shouldn’t be limited to just one species.  

See for yourself.