I have not had too many new mama panic attacks. I didn't call 911 because my breastfed baby's poop is mushy and yellow, as a paramedic friend told me a mother in his district did. I don't weigh all of his diapers, as I heard a friend of a friend does. I've been relatively sane and balanced about this whole brand new parenting thing. Except...for those moments when I'm not.
About a week in, Axel developed a pile of yellow crust around his left eye. Yellow crust! That's not good, I thought. I watched it for about a day, and then decided the situation called for immediate action. His eye was infected and if I didn't do something soon, it would probably begin to fester and swell and soon fall right out of his head, and then he'd be the only baby on the block sporting a glass eye. We called the pediatrician, went in, and found out it was nothing but a clogged tear duct. A clogged tear duct that would likely work itself un-clogged and would not result in permanent damage, much less require a glass eye. The physician's assistant who saw us was very kind about the whole thing, which I'm sure he must be used to.
The subject of my newest freak out? His size. Axel is not such a big kid. In the grocery store, a woman asked how old he was and, after hearing three months, said "Wow! My son is three and a half months and he's so much bigger!" A friend of ours keeps talking about how much bigger her sister's kids are than Axel. On the phone, another friend whose daughter is a month younger than Axel said, "I bet she's so much bigger than he is! She's a little piggy."
None of these people mean any harm - they're commenting on fact. Axel is small. At his two week appointment, he was in the tenth percentile for height and weight; by two months, he'd moved up to the twentieth, but was still wee by any standards. Eighty percent of babies his age are bigger than he is. Usually, I can be rational about this - he's growing out of clothes. He's clearly getting bigger. When we were kids, my brother and I were in maybe the 5th percentile of height and weight. I've got to stretch to be 5'2", and my husband is a lean 5'10". It was a two churro day when I was finally tall enough to drive the cars in Autopia at Disneyland. It's highly unlikely that any child of ours will end up being 6'6". Of course Axel's on the small side.
This morning, though, I could not be rational. I stood on our unreliable scale and, apparently, Axel weighed a half a pound less than a few days before. Note that this scale is so unreliable that I can be one weight and, not a minute later, weigh two pounds less. I like that about the scale - don't like your weight? Just try again! - but it doesn't inspire confidence in its numbers. Note also that I was not exactly in the most reasonable frame of mind, after being weakened by the stomach flu. My husband came home to find Axel and I both crying - Axel because he needed to burp, and me because I'd decided he was wasting away and that he would never grow out of his 3-6 month clothes, let alone be tall enough to ride a rollercoaster. After getting sustenance in the form of water and Ritz Crackers, I was able to calm down and keep myself from making another panicked early morning call to the doctor's office. That is, until the next time I freak out.
