The first time Mycroft held the new baby, he was less than impressed. All the thing did was spend every waking moment screaming and wailing with its face all red and screwed up. His mother had deposited it on his lap and tried to smile through her tears and asked him to look after it for just 15 minutes please because Mummy's at the end of her tether.
Mycroft scowled at the screaming thing in his arms that was quite frankly ruining everything, "You were meant to make Mummy happy," he told the tightly wrapped bundle, "All you do is make her sad and keep me awake and I really don't think this situation is working. I shall ask Daddy to take you back if you carry on like this." Mycroft warned the still screeching thing.
Mycroft started rocking back on forth, like Mummy did, but after a while he stopped, rocking had never once calmed the baby down, so there was little point in continuing. Instead Mycroft tried to think of everything Mummy and Daddy had done to try and calm the thing down and then reasoned that since nothing had ever worked, doing the exact opposite was probably the way to go. How bothersome that such an experiment had been left up to him.
Mummy had always told him that the thing needed to be swaddled, wrapped up really tightly in blankets. Mycroft had frowned at this and asked why. Mummy had told him that all babies found it soothing but Mycroft couldn't think of anything less soothing than having his movement restricted. At this point Mummy had wearily tried to explain something about a book saying it reminded the baby of the womb but the thing was making Mycroft's head hurt and unlike Mummy he could just walk away from it so he had done.
Mycroft paused for a moment, trying to think over the things inhumane screeching. Well, because the book had said that babies liked being swaddled Mummy had always wrapped it up tightly and only ever freed him from his swaddling for bath time. Mycroft briefly recalled the fact that the thing usually seemed calmer in a bath before he unwound the blankets from the baby. Then, because he didn't really like holding the thing and he remembered before the thing arrived Mummy liked picking him up and holding him and how much he disliked that too, he put the thing on the floor.
The effect was almost instantaneous. Mycroft silently congratulated himself as he sat down beside it. "That's better. If you're going to be like this more often then I might consider keeping you, I suppose." He said and he looked properly at his brother for the first time. He was a little surprised because it actually looked like a tiny person instead of just a scrunched up lump in a blanket, and instead of seeing a screwed up wrinkly face he could see big bright eyes and round cheeks. He couldn't remember ever having seen the babies' eyes before.
"There see, you look better as well. I didn't notice you had blue eyes like me," he noted with mild surprise, reaching out to poke the baby gently in the tummy. The baby gurgled contentedly and brought his chubby hands up to clasp clumsily at his brothers. Mycroft smiled despite himself. Perhaps he could get used to being a big brother after all.
