Baby night

I was blessed by the company of a family, albeit a family of strangers, who entered, exited and shopped alongside of me this evening, as I had the good fortune to pay attention to my surroundings because I was sans children, at the grocery store.
I say blessed because the family consisted of a dad (he was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, which also caught my attention, and he looked like he was in his 40s); a girl of about age 8, and a newborn baby that screamed mindlessly and uncontrollably unless her dad was holding her. Blessed to be taken back to the early baby days of my early, early, early adulthood. The baby didn't look much bigger than a sack of flour and it knew it didn't want to be in the seat. As soon as we checked out in adjacent check-out lines, the baby was strapped back in and wailed, and wailed, and wailed, and wailed, so that it could be heard throughout the store and within a three-mile vicinity (that is, if you happen to have very excellent hearing). At one point, the baby was screaming so hard that its feet were turning purplish pink. I looked over at its baby carrier and all I could see were the backs of tiny little reddish feet.
At the end, in the checkout line, when the dad put the baby back in the seat and the all-consuming wailing commenced again, the checkout clerk commented, "That makes me not want to have children."
I thought, "That makes me not want to have more babies." I remember the feeling of being a new mother, and one of my worst fears about the whole baby experience was not being able to make a baby stop crying in public at places like the grocery store. Feeling helpless and like I and the baby were bothering everyone around brought on extreme anxiety at the time. I can't really recall that ever happening to me more than once. I was shocked that in my first experience with a baby, I got a good one. She hardly ever cried. If she cried, it was easy to figure out what was wrong. Once I figured it out and fixed it, she laughed and smiled and seemed content.
The dad with the baby tonight looked completely unfazed with all that misery the baby was projecting. He obviously had been through all this before. Or, perhaps, mom had dealt with Wailing, Virtually Inconsolable Baby all day and he was giving her a break after getting home from work at 5:45 p.m.
Shortly after that, I met another new baby. She was peacefully sleeping in her seat and she looked beautiful and peaceful, like a painting of a baby, someone's ideal.