I read something last week that made me cry.
Something that brought back the fear—the cold, cold fear—that Rob and I faced the first few months of Graham’s life.
It was an exquisitely written blog post by a young mother concerned with her baby’s developmental progress and it made me cry because I have been there. I have clutched my sweet baby to my chest, blinked back hot tears and thought, “Let us alone, he is perfect just the way he is,” even as insidious tentacles of doubt slid over the edges of my heart and squeezed.
From the moment my water broke the circumstances of Graham’s birth proved that fate laughs at probabilities: I was eight centimeters dilated before it was determined he was arriving butt first. When he finally arrived it was with an irregularly-shaped head which protruded markedly out the back—like a football. We were told it would probably resolve itself in a few days and that the anomaly was commonly referred to as a prominent occiput.
Except a prominent occiput isn’t that common, not really. Not even for babies who spend the whole time in utero in the Frank breech position like he did. Or babies who lose more than a pound in the days after their birth and fail to regain their birth weight for almost a month like he did.
At Graham’s three-week check-up, the midwife weighed him and then examined his skull with a grim expression. He was probably fine, she said, except …
Except that his prominent occiput was unresolved. Except that Graham wasn’t gaining weight like he should be. Except these things could be symptomatic of something bad. Something very bad.
He could be fine, she said. But if not—if not—I would need to learn to manage it as soon as possible.
I left in a cloudy haze of tears, clutching a referral for a pediatrician specializing in neurology and leaning on my mother who could only hiss indignantly: There is nothing wrong with this baby!
Oh how I wanted to believe her. We went home and I remember crawling into bed with Graham and sleeping for hours, waking only occasionally to nurse and weep, my tears falling one after another onto that dear, misshapen head.
