Month: October 2025

August 6

You are a fine specimen of a little man. That is confirmed when Dr.OB/GYN comes in to my room the next day and sees you have finally been released to General Pop(ulation) and your basinet (really, a see through acrylic rectangle box with no cover and a baby mattress on a trolley, wedged in to my bed so we can do some hands on bonding.  A huge grin engulfs Dr.OB/GYN’s usually somber, always tired and pale face.  As he cups your head in his large hand he says, “You have a grand young man”, and with that pronouncement, he exits, stage left, scurrying to the next mother, the next baby, the next fire to put out.

It is your Cousin, Pretty Little Dutch Girl’s 16^th Birthday today.  Although I call home, I can not get though to wish her a Happy Birthday – she is doing what 16 years do – having fun.  Who needs adults (except to provide food for your belly, and a roof over your head, allowance and shell out for extras like dance classes so that she can later say, you never wanted them anyway).  But me, I‘m not bitter.

August 7

I did not sleep last night, just so revved, we are off to our very own Personal Zoo.  I don’t care that the day is unseasonably chilly, like a fall day, with sulky clouds, threatening rain to come, obliterating the blue sky.  We are going home!

We arrived to a quiet house (apparently Pretty Little Dutch Girl is still out having fun).  Your father drops us off in a hurry, leaving you, me and the suitcases at the front door so he can get back to work. 

I carry you in your car seat, over the door and we step in to a mostly tidy house but it does not look like a floor has been scrubbed or dusting done since the last time I did it. 

I put you down so I can lug in my suitcases, your baskets and flowers and pause to make a plan.  You are looking around at this new territory, not sure what to make of it.  Geez, it is dark, I mutter as I flip on some light. 

I take you out of the carrier to better cuddle you, walking from room to room to introduce you to where you will be living.  Then upstairs I go, crossing the thresh hold of your room, my promise to you realized – next time I entered this room you would be in my arms, ready for your crib, put together by Dad’s loving handles, with bumper pads, baby sheets, blankets and duvets, a brightly colored overhead module, stuffed bears, dragons, doggies, even hand crafted stuffed raggedy Andrew doll… fit for a prince to dream of slaying dragons, climbing mountains, crossing lakes, rivers and oceans as you matured in to a Grand Big Man.

But wait.  You look so small, so lost in that big crib.  No worries, I go to Plan B. I scoop you out and nestle you in a Moses like hooded wicker basket, with canary yellow lining and  fitted sheets, blankets and mattress.  Now you look at home – comfy and snuggly rather than overwhelmed and overshadowed.  One thing about you and me – we always have a Plan B.

Now… the fun part… Reality Check… Up and onwards… Keep calm and Carry on.

The END of the BEGINNING

August 5

Dr. D. comes in with a tape measure to give to me, showing your length at birth (18.5 inches or 47 cm long); the circumference of your head was 13” or 33 cm), weight of course, 4 pounds 14 ounces or 2220 grams.  You have O+ blood from your Dad and Grandma, I assume since Grampsey and I are A+. Great things come in small packages.

Today is the day Dr. D. decides to pontificate about the hazards and hell of post partum depression that he has observed with all his Moms a couple of days after they are thrown out to the mercies of manipulative (probably listening and observing in utero) babies, fathers and other family members  who choose not to see or hear Mom dancing as fast as she can …until such time it reaches a crisis. 

Well, you know me, I think I know it all already so kind of tune him out… but his words come back to haunt me when I am bleary eyed, sleep deprived and you, Wonder Baby are crying again.  Although I am in your room, sleeping on the couch beside you (we mustn’t disturb Daddy, he had that operation just a year ago and has to go out to work each day). I hear you from like a million miles away, like you are buried in a tunnel. 

I crawl around in the dark, trying to find you, or at least find the light switch.  I persevere, flood the room with light, and there you are, face beet red from exerting so much effort in order to wake me up.  I swear, sometimes I thought, if there was a chair under the window sill, maybe I would have just crawled up there, flung open the window and flew like a bird, out to the silence of the unknown.

But then I would pick you up and your cries would turn to dry heaves and shudders and I would feel so ashamed of myself.  “Sorry, Wonder Boy”, I whisper, “I’ll wake up faster next time. Promise.” 

Thanks Dr, D.  You took the time to let me know I was not an aberration. I was just feeling and reacting like a hormone driven, overtired Mom… through out the universe.

August 1… Cont’d

As I am up and about all the time now, others mothers and those still in waiting, come sidling over to find out the exact story because surely I have been the ‘soupe du jour’ the last few days.  I tell them,  “I’m fine, I’m fine”, with a flip of my hand (like Dr. D. to me?). Still they persist, “Why were you in ICU, then a wheel chair? Why is your baby not in the General Nursery?”  “Oh, you know, trouble with waking up from surgery and a small to date baby.” They nod their collective heads sagely, having never heard this condition even existed, then walk down the hall discussing it together.  Does that mean that the Wheel of Fortune hit me so they and their babies are safe, they ponder in their heads.

However, there is good news for us and bad news for another Mom and Baby that pushed you and me out of the lime light.  A mom came in to delivery with a wild fever that they could not control before the baby passed through the birth canal.  The mother was sent to ICU, the baby sent to isolation since no one quite understood what virus was relentlessly attacking their bodies. 

A couple of days later the baby was in the Special Nursery with you so I can only assume that he was no longer contagious (fingers crossed) but I never did meet his mother… did she hemorrhage, develop sepsis… so I’m just saying, you just don’t know… for whom the bell tolls.

August 3

I am sharing  my semi-private room with a lovely East Indian lady who also had a baby boy who is big and strong and in the General Nursery so is brought in the room all day and at night for feedings.  She is a cheerful soul, and all the reprimands she gets from the nurses that she does not get out of bed enough, does not walk enough, does not feed her baby the right way slides off, her like water off a duck’s back.  As they point at me and tell her, this is your second baby,  why can’t she be like me, she says and rightfully so, “Who cares?  Someone keeping score?”  Yup, I have been lucky. 

I have shared my room with so many great mom’s, different cultures, different socio-economic backgrounds, way older than me (and I was almost 31, way younger, like 17 and pregnant with twins. I often wonder, “Where are those kids now and will their paths ever cross with you,  Wonder Boy, one day?”

August 1 Cont’d…

Two weeks after you came home you had to be re-admitted because of your failure to thrive… so we were told.  Truthfully, I was that often told small to date babies internal organs do not always mature in utero. 

When the Pediatrician met up with me at your crib side, he took one look at me and asked if I was on some fad diet – apparently, in his estimation, I did not look like I had given birth a month ago. Fortunately Dr. D. was also there, who explained,  “No, No, Quite Contrary is Jack Sprat who could eat no fat….”

By the time you were six months old those things had straightened themselves out and you were my Budda Baby.  And that was why you and I parted ways with the Pediatrician.  We were there for one of your needles (before crusaders confused parents who in turn denied their babies ‘the right to get inoculated’).  The pediatrician walked through the door and said, “Your baby is fat.”

Now that statement can be said in many ways but to a Mom’s sensitive ears it sounded both critical and patronizing. I looked at him (come to think of it, as gaunt as he was… almost anorexic, how could he have questioned me about my weight), then at my baby (well truth be told, you were working on a third chin) and decided that I would take you, my Budda Wonder Boy to Dr. D.  from now on, who had all kinds of human failings, including a paunch pot belly, a second chin, and long, curly hair growing out of his ears.

Side note for any who care:  I have had a plethora of intelligent, kind, wise specialists both pre and post Wonder Boy’s arrival and if they went fast, with their coat tails flapping in the wind, isn’t that how I go through life?

August 3

I got going up and down the hall to the nursery every couple hours down to a science (since you were small, I had to feed you more often), zigzagging through the slow moving traffic. (Why can’t the slowpokes move to the right so all of the Roadrunners can get on with getting on?). 

Now that I am up and about and know all the Nursery Nurse, I am being told things about you – like “the best baby in the nursery”, “very special, so alert, will not even let anyone else pick him up – he demands we call you as soon as he wakes up”, “mark my words, this baby is a mover and shaker, he is going set the world on fire”.  Of course we loved this praise but you can’t tell other people, even your family,  because it would sound too braggadocios so like Jesus’ mother Mary, I got to ponder  these words and keep them close to my heart.