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| A Failure to Thrive |
| 03.30.04 (6:57 pm) [edit] |
I had been relentlessly kicking for almost a month. So, when the floodgates finally opened, and I sensed a metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel, we can imagine a little smile appeared on my face. Mom, in obvious pain, woke Dad. He looked at the alarm clock, reading 2am, felt the puddle on the bed, realized the enormity of the situation, and did what he had to do. He put his wife in the car, drove her to the hospital, dropped her off in the ER, and went back to bed.
Seven hours of hard labor later, Dad got up and labored through rush hour traffic… to get the Denny’s breakfast special. Then he sauntered over to the hospital just in time to see two little feet popping out of his wife’s uterus (I was trying to be a little unconventional – upside-down—about the birthing process).
As you’ll find out, I proved to be an early bird later in life. I eat my dinners at four in the afternoon, get to class ten minutes before I have to, and get my papers done the day they are assigned. Why? I know the saying, “the early bird gets the worm.” That’s all.
Shockingly, when I did finally come out, by caesarian section, I was actually fifteen days late. I don’t know what the deal was. Maybe the womb was too comfortable. Maybe I was having too much fun in there. Maybe I got dizzy and just lost track of time.
Fortunately, I did finally come out. The gift of life, any life, is a miracle. But for Mom this one was special. She had eight pervious miscarriages.
I seemed a healthy enough baby: seven pounds and a few ounces. Wacky. Dad would always say that such wackiness resulted from my upside-down position in the womb. “It’s a sign,” Dad told Mom. She laughed.
She laughed when I spent much of my childhood standing on my head, possibly trying to get back inside that womb. She still laughs today when I dress myself in an avant-garde style, wearing things backwards, inside out or however they seem to fit (sometimes upside-down). “It’s your fault,” I tell her.
When I was pulled from Mom’s belly, I was nearly bald. I would have been, except that, right there, in front, was a swirling cowlick that stuck up where everyone could see. I was like Alfalfa turned around. I still have that cowlick today. It’s a part of me now. Fortunately, girls tend to like it, though the barbers tend not to.
The trouble wasn’t with the surgery at all. That went smoothly. The doctor incised into the lower three inches of Mom’s belly, and out came a baby. No harm, no foul. Well, not quite. As Dad watched his wife get cut open, he asked the doctor, “Does every woman have that thick a layer of fat?” Mom cringed. The doctor, in disbelief, said nothing.
After washing the blood and uterus parts off me, the doctor put me in Mom’s arms; he didn’t trust Dad. Dad peered down at his small, brown-eyed son. “He’s not nearly as good looking as his brother,” he said. I would always trust that Dad would say what he really felt.
Mom pretended not to hear him. Eight tries, and finally a living breathing baby; It wouldn’t have mattered if I were the ugliest thing on earth because in Mom’s eyes I still would have been perfect and beautiful. A mother’s perspective is never quite objective. But, then again, neither is mine.
“Let’s name him David,” Dad said.
“We can’t name him David,” Mom said,” “We already have one of those.”
It was true. They had adopted my brother David just eight months before. It was also true that he was a cuter baby than I. He had blonde hair, blue eyes and a good three pounds on me at birth; I think he had more shapely thighs too.
“Fine, then we’ll name him Danny, after my great-uncle who fought in the War.”
“Fine,” Mom said. “Like Daniel in the Lion’s Den.”
A few hours of post-womb sleep later, I engaged in my first carnal action: I suckled my mother’s breast. Was the instinct hunger, thirst, or maybe even quasi-sexual? Was it natural? It was the first time I had ever suckled; and the first time she had ever been suckled (David was adopted, so he had to use a bottle), so how could we know the difference between natural and unnatural suckling?
The trouble arose with the experimental drugs given to Mom for pain during the surgery. The drugs stopped milk production in her breasts. I sucked, but nothing came out… and Mom had no idea. How could she know the difference between a factory that’s producing and one that’s not producing if her factory had never produced before?
I knew the difference though; I could feel hunger; I could feel nothingness, but back then I didn’t know what knowing meant.
The doctors sent Mom home just two dayas after I'd entered the world. I still hadn't eaten.
I cried because I was hungry. Mom stuck her breast to my mouth because I cried. Dad held the pillow over his head because that just didn’t work. On my fourth day of life, Mom and Dad took me back to the hospital. I had dissipated. I wasn’t crying anymore. I had lost almost half my body weight, and I was struggling to hold on.
The doctors put me in an incubator with underdeveloped and life-threatened infants that had been born too early. Dad would joke later that if I couldn’t be born an early bird, at least I got to be with the other ones.
I was given a fifty-percent chance for survival. Of course, I didn’t die. I lived. Can you imagine if I died? Well, I wouldn’t be here. This story wouldn’t be told.
Dad says my failure to thrive at birth explains a lot about who I am today. Mom says it explains nothing. I think they may both right.
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