I am obligated to say your baby is cute.

[Quantess]

No matter what, Even if new baby just looks like ...meh...

I mean, come on.....

I am a really nice lady, and I am really nice. I find ways to tell you your ugly baby is cute, without you ever knowing I am lying.

[PoliticAverse]

1. He really is breathtaking! n/t

[Quantess]

3. A face only a mother / father could love!!

The kid might be good looking, someday. Anything can happen!!

[hollysmom]

2. no you don't you can say things like - look at that baby or

you could say
wow, look at xxxxxx
or
those eyes
or itty bitty feet
or what ever, there are noncommittal ways of confusing parents, they think you have said something and you have said nothing. I have been doing it for years. it is called avoiding lying.
I had friends with a baby born brain dead, they had it fed intravenously,. I did not say I thought it was cruel and let him die, I just said, oh he is so tiny, such small fingers and toes. they did not press me, as there were other visitors. why they invited us to visit and see the baby, I have no idea, they were celebrating his life while he lived I guess. the baby looked like a lump with only involuntary movements.

[Quantess]

6. Oh wow... what can you say, what can you do?

At that point ....you just support the parents. What a rough time it must have been for them.

[hollysmom]

8. they threw a welcome home party,

I brought baby clothes, I didn't feel comfortable not going, We were not close friends, but we had known each other for years and had dinner once a month with the same group of women where I was the only other one who did not live in NYC and had a car and could drive to her home and we lived close to each other. A few months later we were at the shiva.

[Quantess]

4. The baby probably will be cute, someday.

Just not today.

[Glassunion]

5. Even if that kid looks like hammered shit that's been through a wood chipper.

You tell Mr and Mrs Hammershitz that's the cutest little baby you've ever seen.

[sharp_stick]

19. Exactly

There are times when it's a lot better to say something you may not actually believe and this is one of them.

[mackerel]

7. My youngest daughter was an ugly baby. I wasn't fooled.

[Worried senior]

24. One of my granddaughters was

not a very cute baby.

She's pretty as can be now and so is the one that wasn't an ugly baby.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. " oh, he looks like both of you...how sweet"

depending on how you feel about seeing the parents often.

[Skittles]

10. a paternal uncle (drunk) told my mum I was the homeliest baby he had ever seen

*true*

[Solly Mack]

11. You're nicer than I am.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. "You must be so proud of him/her."

"Aren't babies fun?"
"I think he/she has your eyes."

There are a lot of things you can say about an ugly baby that keep the parents from realizing you think their baby looks like a monkey with a rash.

[NV Whino]

13. I'm allergic to babies

Never have to see them. Never have to lie.

[PasadenaTrudy]

25. Same here.

Ick.

[laundry_queen]

14. Thankfully I love babies

so I'm always able to find something good to say about them. And I rarely find them truly ugly. Even the wrinkly, angry cross-eyed brand-new babies. I think they are adorable.

My brother told me my third child, when she was about 7 years old, and been an ugly newborn (she wasn't in the room, thankfully). I've never forgiven him. I thought then, and think now, she was my prettiest baby. My brother thinks she's a gorgeous child now, but still insists she was an ugly newborn.

It's always better to keep those feelings to yourself, IMO. My brother is an ass, and yes, you sound like a nice lady.

[Separation]

15. Can't do that.

When my daughter was born she was perfect. There were Dr's and nurses coming into our room to look at our daughter. We were confused at the time because, well, she was our first and didn't really know what they were talking about.

Fast f9rward 17 months, and our son was born. He looked like a Klingon! Had a cone head and was all wrinkley and smoosh faced. I asked the Dr jokingly if we could put him back in for another two weeks.

People pretty much know ahead of time to not ask me "if their kids are cute or not" because they know I'll give them an honest añseer.

P.S. Thankfully my s9n has grown into his head. He was a fat baby but everything portionalized now.

[Phentex]

23. I had one alien with wrinkly skin that he had not grown into...

saggy, chicken skin covering a scrawny little thing. It would have been tough to call him cute. And he had dark, serious eyes like he was royally pissed off at having been born.

I had another that came out like the Michelin man's baby. Huge rolls of fat like he was about to burst out of his skin. He had a giant head, too. He's grown into his head as well.

I think most babies are cute. But it took my kids a few weeks to cute-en up.

[patricia92243]

16. You are also obliged to tell people how cute their pet is - or at least be quiet about their obvious

short-comings lookwise.

[panader0]

17. "Great looking kid. Is it adopted?"

[Populist_Prole]

20. Good one!

[Arugula Latte]

18. I find it strange that I find human babies the least cute of all mammal babies.

Kittens are #1 in cuteness. Bunnies, otters, piglets, goats, etc. ... also absolutely adorable.

I birthed two human children. It took a couple days for #1 to get cute, after the cone head and face swelling went down. #2 came out cute and beautiful. They are both gorgeous young people now, and that's not just me talking.

[Populist_Prole]

21. My mother used to drive us nuts

This was during the time all her younger sisters and nieces began having babies, and continued.

Not only was every baby "beautiful" but she would always always say how he/she "looks just like ( insert either mother or father's name ), especially around the eyes ( or nose, or mouth ) and all".

Bullshit. In a few rare instances, one could see a vague likeness of one of its parents...after 6 moths or so. In every other case, every last one of them looked more like Winston Churchill than any other human being.

I used to kid her and say that if I went and stole a baby from a maternity ward in Mongolia and substituted it for one of her new nieces/nephews/grands, she's still say "Ooooohhhh, and she looks juuuusssttt like you" to her mother.

Typical "mother" speak I guess.

[Chan790]

26. I was 8 when Crash was born.

My father says "He looks just like you!" to me and I responded "No he doesn't! He looks like Dr. _______!" my 50ish pediatrician who was completely bald and lumpy-headed with a perpetually swollen face.

Today, he looks like Che and is a militant, pro-violence anarchist. I think I liked my brother better when he looked like the illegitimate son of the family doctor.

[malthaussen]

22. All babies look like Winston Churchill...

... without the cigar, of course.

-- Mal