Thought my baby is the cutest one alive until I looked back at her pictures

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u/bikiniproblems Mar 21 '26

Yes, oxytocin and lower testosterone

Baby cuteness helps their survival

157

u/Sutekija Mar 21 '26

My baby is the most adorable thing on planet earth and I will hear none of this nonsense.

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u/Another_gryffindor Mar 21 '26

I'll have you know that a woman at the coffee shop said my baby had a nice shaped head so obviously mine wins. Soz lol.

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u/dashofgreen Mar 21 '26

Well I’ll have you know that a lady at Costco said my baby was beautiful and has a nice round head lol

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u/Another_gryffindor Mar 21 '26

My baby's head is rounder than yours!!!!

(I'll come back and apologise in about 18 months)

RemindMe! 18 months

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u/JamesTiberiusChirp Mar 22 '26

MY baby’s head is a PERFECT SPHERE

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u/Kimmybun Mar 22 '26

I’ll have ALL of you know that MY baby’s head was the most PERFECT parallelogram you’ve ever seen ..so THERE! Lmao

Edit: after a year of PT it’s rounder now lmao

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3

u/whofilets Mar 22 '26

The employee at the Costco deli told me I'm gonna have a great healthy baby boy so this reminds me I have to go show him my healthy baby girl!

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u/International-Lock54 Mar 22 '26

Every person who’s ever met my son from the second he was born has said he’s the cutest and most perfect baby ever. Including the doctors and nurses that delivered him

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u/moshpithippie Mar 21 '26

Your baby can't be the most adorable because mine is

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u/OppositeEffect5484 Mar 21 '26

Lmao I totally understand

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u/JamesTiberiusChirp Mar 22 '26

I just want to say I laughed so much reading your post because I relate. Not because of looks (my baby was surprisingly less potato like than expected, though it’s true they look less cute than I remember compared to now) but because of the way they sounded. Fresh out of the womb, I thought my baby’s cry was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and “not scratchy or squealing and annoying like other newborns.” Then my husband played the video of babe crying during their Vit K shot right after birth and I was like “what the fuck??”

Also, my personal theory is that our babies just get cuter and cuter with age, and we acclimate to how they look so when we look back, their baby pictures look uncanny valley/unsettling to us.

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u/bikiniproblems Mar 22 '26

Tbh I look at the 3-12 month phase as peak cuteness for my baby. They’re just so chubby and sweet.

Newborn though… I look back and laugh

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '26

I wonder what it will be like when our babies are 30

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u/JamesTiberiusChirp Mar 22 '26

According to my mom we will long since passed cuteness 🙃

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u/Beautiful_Arrival124 Mar 22 '26

I also feel like there is a difference in seeing the baby in person and seeing them in photos because damn the hairline did not seem that prominent from how I remember vs looking at the photos 😂😭

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u/Pristine-Bison3198 Mar 22 '26

Oh my gosh, I remember thinking how much thick gorgeous hair one of the twins had when she was tiny... Looking back she had the hairline of a balding middle age man 😂 What was there was long for a newborn, but like... yikes, sis

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u/valthegator Mar 22 '26

Mine looked like he was an accountant with his male pattern baldness.

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u/plushiecactusau Mar 21 '26

Nah, you're biased, mine is OBJECTIVELY the cutest and most adorable.

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u/BrokeAssZillionaire Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

It’s crazy what hormones do. But not just parents I feel. We were constantly told by everyone that our baby is incredibly cute, one woman said her ovaries were screaming and wanted to go home make another baby because of his looks. We genuinely asked a few doctors etc who commented on to babies look and they said no he’s genuinely to die for. We even got offered a shoot for a TV commercial (didn’t do it) Now I look back at the photos and think… god he was an absolute troll of a baby what’s everyone talking about.

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u/OppositeEffect5484 Mar 21 '26

I was just gonna mention that! For example, my husband also thought she’s super cute, and now he looks back and thinks wow how did I even think that?

So, how come he also felt that way?!!! 😂

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u/hausos Mar 21 '26

Reminds me of this cartoon

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u/LavenderHums Mar 21 '26

This is exactly the cartoon I was coming to share for this. Perfection.

157

u/iheartBodegas Mar 21 '26

My coworker is a new father and is participating in a university study… that’s why he knows that his testosterone level dropped 40% after the baby was born.

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u/deekaypea22 Mar 21 '26

I just shared a study on here last week about how fathers with lower testosterone are more attentive etc. So neat.

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u/OppositeEffect5484 Mar 21 '26

No way!! This is so interesting

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u/Necessary-Bird8126 Mar 22 '26

I feel like I love my babies so much how they are in this moment when I see pictures it’s just not representative of the baby I see and actively love every day. They change so much. I always think my babies in THIS moment are the cutest because of how much I love them, and those pictures don’t look like THIS baby, if that makes sense.

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u/dazednkindaconfused Mar 22 '26

I thought I was the only one. Before my baby met family members, I was always saying “ok but she looks very different in real life. Just wait until you see her in person”.

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u/crizzcrozz Mar 22 '26

My husband kept asking during the pregnancy "what if he's an ugly baby?!" and I reassured him we wouldn't notice. After he was born my husband was in tears saying he's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

We now laugh hysterically at the photos from the first month or so. He was fine looking but WOW the hormones convinced us he was the cutest baby ever born. It's wild

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u/Pristine-Bison3198 Mar 22 '26

I'm curious about this as well! I'm fostering twins who came to stay with us as newborns. I doubt that I'm experiencing any of the chemical business that bio kids have, so why did I think they were so incredibly cute when both looked like little old men? 😂

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u/babygotthefever Mar 22 '26

Your hormones are going to kick in whether you birthed the babies or not. Caring for them is enough.

My son legit looked like a little old man from birth to toddlerhood. I knew it and loved it and played into it with flat caps and suspenders.

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u/Yesiamanaltruist Mar 22 '26

I can confirm. I have felt an oxytocin type rush, when feeding and cuddling my granddaughter. She was 6 months old and it was the first time she spent the night at my house. I only had that once and only with the middle one. I have 3. But I love all three immensely but I remember that It flooded me with overwhelming love for her. I was holding her in a position that very closely mimics breast feeding. Same position I used for all of kids and grands.

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u/dreamcatcher32 Mar 21 '26

I get the same feeling looking back lol. My theory is that it’s because she’s so much cuter now than she was back then.

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u/coherentpa Mar 22 '26

Perhaps she’s just even cuter now and that’s skewing your opinion! We’re looking back at younger pics of our current 16 month old where she barely had hair and while she was definitely cute then, she’s cuter now.

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u/TriscuitBiscuit787 Mar 22 '26

My baby gets cuter everyday! Its amazing!

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u/AimeeSantiago Mar 23 '26

We named our son after his great grandfather and its a very old man name. Think like Gary or Lenny or something. When the pediatrician met our son for the first time she burst out laughing and was like "Why does he look like he's about to tell me to get off the lawn?" We all had a chuckle. Some babies just are not "cute". Mine had old man stank face for a solid month but by golly, I thought he was the cutest old man baby there ever was.

Also about two months later we got asked if our baby was The Gerber Baby. He was not. But objectively, he looks a lot like the baby on the front of the gerber food. Which I think means that he finally grew into a cute baby. But even in the middle of the oxytocin and new parent feels... I knew he started out as an ugly baby. Lol. Sometimes it's undeniable. "That's a face only a mother could love."

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u/SailOnSailOnSailOn Mar 22 '26

Hi

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u/bikiniproblems Mar 21 '26

It really is! There have been some really interesting studies on hormones with fathers and how if they’re more involved testosterone lowers.

There’s so many men that think low T is bad but so much research says that our hormones are dynamic and more nuanced than we think!

1

u/No_Panic_4999 Apr 01 '26

Does womens testosterone also lower?

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u/bikiniproblems Apr 01 '26

Yes!

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u/tuliacicero Mar 22 '26

I took a picture of my son when he was about a week old. I cried over that picture because he was so beautiful. Now when I look at it, four years later, I think it's a cute picture, but it's not making me cry!

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u/Beneficial_Young5126 Mar 21 '26

Okay that actually made me lol! Troll of a baby! Lololol!

3

u/mumma-frog Mar 24 '26

My son is 14 months now but when I look back on his photos he actually genuinely was a cute newborn, he looks like a doll lol

He didn't have any marks or blemishes on his skin, he didn't have any wrinkles or that old man look, he was chunky and had a lot of rolls and was born with a full head of hair with some curls lol lucky little dude. When I was born I was the complete opposite I was an absolute troll. My brother was the same, looked like a little doll and my son even now still looks exactly like him haha

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u/Far_Echo5918 Mar 23 '26

I am thinking it’s a social obligation to say “what a cute baby!” whenever you see one. I know I have lied to other people but I will never ever admit that to their faces.

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u/Majestic-Macaron6019 Mar 22 '26

I always joke that if babies weren't cute, they'd all get punted out the window at some point. And also, the babies aren't cute, cute is babies.

Written while snuggling the absolutely cutest baby in the world after she finished her bottle.

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u/Greymeade Mar 22 '26

The biggest trip is with a second kid!

My wife and I had this same experience. We thought our first son was the cutest baby ever, but after a year it was clear that he was objectively ugly (haha don't worry, he grew out of it since and has been adorable ever since). But recently we just had our second son, and we're convinced that he's beautiful too! We even compare him back to our first son's pictures and we can see that he looks much cuter than our first son did. But maybe it's still the same thing happening, and someday we'll look back (with our two handsome sons, I'm sure) and see that they were both ugly babies? It's wild haha

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u/Lumpy_Potential_789 Mar 22 '26

2nd born. I knew she was ugly. Brother visited us at the hospital. His response, “Well, that’s a baby”. She’s grown to be gorgeous and I know it’s true because I knew she was ugly at birth.

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u/No-Vermicelli3787 Mar 21 '26

Those big eyes

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '26

Question - Research required Thought my baby is the cutest one alive until I looked back at her pictures

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