runlikejoy

Displaced Stay At Home Californian in rural N. Carolina

The Many Faces of Joy

The Many Faces of Joy

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Hell


Here is how I know that hell freezes over now and then. Something so extraordinary happens that it freezes over and then I suppose it thaws, thereby giving the residents a necessary reprieve from the otherwise fiery hot conditions.

Almost 8 years ago I gave birth to a beautiful little baby girl. She was perfect. She had 10 fingers and 10 toes. She had a full head of black hair that stuck straight up. She screamed mightily until she was bathed and swaddled and had that gooey stuff rubbed in her eyes. She came back to us in a bassinet and mewled now and then but spent the last 3 days at the hospital the nicest ones of her infant-hood. It was a beautiful experience if you block out the horrible experience of being told at 8 centimeters that the anesthesiologist is responding to another trauma and can't help you out with an epidural, and then shows up when you are 10 centimeters and tells you there is no time left. Like I said, it was beautiful.

Then we took her home. It took us until about 5:30pm to get out of the hospital, even though she came out of my body we had to have all these signatures and stamps to get her out of the hospital and so we were exhausted but happy to get home, see our dogs and have her all to ourselves. That is until she started screaming. She screamed from the time we got home until about 11:30pm at which point my sister miraculously appeared on our front porch and said she had a "feeling" that we would need help and had just taken it upon herself to drive over and see how we were doing. She couldn't have shown up at a better time, I was sweating, Gabe was sweating, we were screaming at each other, ok, not screaming but very close, the baby was screaming and nearly hoarse and turns out extremely hungry. My sister at this point should have been canonized or at least on a short list of people who are already living saints.

This beautiful baby then turned into the worlds pickiest eater. She was a picky nurser. And finding food to sustain her once she was able to eat food was a major chore. Baby food from the can would make her gag. Baby food made at home would make her retch. Rice, (the food her sister was raised on) made her gag. From the time she was 18 months old until she was 4-ish, she had 10 items she would eat, which were all white or off white in color. It has only been lately that she has added so many things to her diet that I sometimes wonder where my child has gone off to and who is this other one that has replaced her?

This was what was running through my mind tonight as she negotiated with my husband on how much wet dog food he would actually let her try because in her words, "Sally likes the food, so I know it must taste great. Please Daddy, can I try that much?" I didn't think she was serious until she came around the corner with a daub of it on her finger which she popped into her mouth and then smiled and said, "yummy yum".

Hell has frozen over.

2 comments:

Noctivagus the Blog said...

Naw, every kid tries and like cat or dog food. When they are kids.

hscopazzi said...

I just threw up............