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.