Maybe It's A One-Legged Guy

(What? What's that you say? My mommy is insane?? Well, thanks for the warning at least)

Those closest to me -- as well as anyone who has known me for longer than approximately 23 minutes -- know that unending optimism is not one of my strong suits. It's not even one of my weak suits. Frankly it's a suit that's not even in my closet, which is REALLY saying something, because there sure as hell are a lot of other things in there. Despite the fact that orange is my favorite color and I do bounce around with the relentless energy (some would say ADD characteristics) of Tigger, in reality, my moods are much more in tune with Eeyore. Right down to the fact that my butt is also always in danger of falling off, like Eeyore's tail, although irritable bowel is not (at least as of this writing) curable with a little button-on tail that seals the hole back up.

Editor's note: To know me is to love ALL of me, even my dysfunctional ass which dictates much of my existence. Please do not call me anal retentive. Oh, I WISH that were the case.

Anyway, butt-issues aside, nothing made my gloom and doom demons come out with more vengeance than the premature birth of our daughter, Molly. I promise that at some point I will regale you with that bit of drama, but here are the basics: despite a very healthy uneventful pregnancy, wherein I cut the Cokes back to 1 or 2 a day (down from about 17), sort of exercised (well, ran to the bathroom faster than usual), didn't get any additional tattoos and refrained from punching the little cretin inside me back when she was pummeling my bladder during executive meetings, she still decided to show up 9 weeks early (at 31 weeks gestation, for those of you i.e. MEN who have no concept of how many weeks/months/agonizingly painful swollen miserable hemorrhoid-ridden hours go into a normal pregnancy).

Since the moment she was unceremoniously schlepped out of my innards via C-section (during which, did you know? they talk about you like you aren't conscious -- WHICH YOU ARE!!! I clearly recall my doctors talking about their weekend plans one minute, and the next, explaining to some hapless intern "Now, we're just going to take the bladder blade and move that over...that's right, now if you could just hold up this strand of intestines..." "HELLLLLLLLLO!!!!!" I shouted. "I CAN HEAR YOU!!!! I COULD DO WITHOUT THE PLAY BY PLAY THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!" At least, this is what I thought I was saying. From what my mom later told me, as she was the unlucky soul seated next to me trying very hard not to puke on my head while patting my arm in the least convincingly reassuring manner ever, what actually came out of my drug-addled brain/mouth was "I CARRRERRYA! HA HA, BLAAAAAADDDGGGE.")....where the hell was I ?? Oh yes. Since the moment she came into this world I have been, as my husband puts it, "waiting for the other shoe to fall."

She was 3 lbs 1 oz at birth, and only 15 1/2 inches long. My husband eats philly cheesesteaks bigger and longer than this on a regular basis. Although she was so early, they gave us pretty good odds on her being pretty darn OK. Her Apgar or Agpar or whatever those stupid baby scores that they dole out up on birth to assess their color, size, ability to shatter glass with their screeches, likelihood of one day playing tight end for the Packers...her scores were 7 at 3 minutes after birth and 9 at 5 minutes. Those are pretty darn good, even for a full term baby, but in my "what do you MEAN I GOT AN A-MINUS??? I DO NOT ACCEPT THIS!!" brain, I wanted TWO TENS, DAMMIT. My stupid, incompetent, claustrophobic uterus was a failure from the beginning in my eyes.

When she was first born, she squeeked (it's cuter if you spell it that way) like a very sweet mouse rather than cried like the babies you are programmed to expect by watching a hundred and fourteen thousand episodes of "Maternity Ward" on TLC. I actually recall sobbing as I begged God and whoever else was listening and might be able to put in a good word or two that "I wish she would cry louder! SOB!!" (I didn't actually yell "SOB." Maybe if I did they would have upped the morphine. Have to keep that in mind for the next one).

"She's FINE, Mel," Dan and my parents and his parents and our doctors and nurses and everyone else who came into contact with us would tell me 100 times a day. She started off needing a feeding tube that they would insert down her throat, let food flow down, and then remove. Considering the many, many preemies who need full time feeding tubes, surgeries, and a host of other aids to help them eat, everyone saw this as a great sign. I, however, saw it as Baby Armageddon. Surely the end was near. She had trouble learning to breast feed, and because like a good pregnant mommy I had read every book on the subject and knew that BREAST IS BEST GODDAMMIT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU CRAPPY-UTERUSED-FAILURE?!?!? I took that as a huge slap from God too. Nevermind that we set up a breast pump, which you would think would have cured me from my fascination with cows VERY QUICKLY, having been mechanically/electrically pumped a gazillion times a day for weeks; she was getting breastmilk and that was great -- to everyone else but me. This was not how it was supposed to be!!!

She quickly graduated to taking pumped milk via tiny little bottles, and at first, could only take down 2 or 3 cc's at a time. If you can't fathom how much a cc is, it's about enough to sustain a baby flea. While everyone else rejoiced as she moved from 2 to 3 to 10 to 20 ccs per feed, I panicked every second of the day that she would be eating pureed grilled cheese out of a medicine dropper when she was in grade school.

For every routine test they ran on her, for vision, hearing, brain development, etc., I answered each "amazing -- she is just GREAT" with an array of questions I had educated myself with from the University of the Internet. "But...what about...did you test for...couldn't she have...what if she doesn't..." And Dan would just repeatedly tell me to stop waiting for that "other shoe" to drop.

I couldn't let it go. We finally got her home, taking 4-6 oz bottles of milk and doing everything a normal newborn should be doing. However, I became a slave to "What to Expect: The First Year" and literally made checkmarks in the book for the things she could do and panicky little question mark thingies next to the things she couldn't. For every doctor that told me she was progressing fantastically well, I countered with the story of a friend or a friend of a friend whose 1, 2, 3 or whatever month old child could already roll/eat solids/speak Portuguese, and OH MY GOD, IS MOLLY BEHIND????

Finally one day, and I wish I remember when it was because I would have written it in her milestone book, Dan turned and looked at me during one of my "well I REALLY think she should at least be able to do basic sign language by now" rants and said:

"You know what?? Maybe it's a one legged guy."

Understandably, I looked at him like he was a few crayons short of a full box.

"Huh?" I retorted with remarkable wit.

"The other shoe. It's not gonna fall. Maybe it belongs to a one-legged guy and there IS NO OTHER SHOE!!!! So WILL YOU JUST LET HER BE A BABY AND GET OVER IT?!??!!?"

Didn't cure me, of course, but it did help temper the crazier bouts of pessimism. For the record, she can now screech at volumes I did not realize were possible without the aid of Dolby Digital SurroundSound equipment; uses about 49 letters of the alphabet to talk in a language so advanced that weird marsupial beings on some other planet must SURELY understand her, is learning to walk, can crawl like lightning, and oh yeah, eats anything that's not nailed down (at least tries to. usually spits it back out, but hey, it's the thought that counts).


So please, everyone -- keep reminding me that in this case, maybe it really is a one-legged guy.