No matter how many books you might read, how many after-school specials you view, or how many times “Look Who’s Talking” has been shown on TBS, there is no way to adequately prepare yourself for owning a kid. The costs are considerable, from the diapers to the diseases. And with every bill coming due is an opportunity to worry.
I don’t miss many opportunities to worry, actually. During slow times, I create my own reasons, just to stay at the top of my game. When I get in a groove, I do things like fail to introduce my acquaintances to friends for fear that I’ll mispronounce their names. I am the Tiger Woods of worry.
Until the water broke, my biggest worry about Carter’s impending arrival was financial. Most of my marriage with Amy has seen one of us out of work and trying to pay bills with pizza money. We’ve seen three pets die and just as many business opportunities follow them into the afterlife. We worked together to put Amy through graduate school. The jaunt to Bloomington was our fifth move together, helping give us a credit rating with enough flags to qualify as an armada.
The last year of the 20th Century was a good one, though, giving us just enough of a cushion to be convinced we wouldn’t have to have to give up our first-born child to pay for the second we’re planning. Pending taxes, another slew of Real World Creations invoices will restore our depleting funds in the spring. Still, we have yet to start replacing his clothes — Carter is still on track to be 605 pounds by age 18 — or his supply of diapers. And all of his food is gratis, costing only a few more sleepless hours a day.
When Carter came home from the hospital, my initial concerns dissipated almost immediately. Outside of one niece and the newborns of a smattering of friends, my experience with young humans was nil. Carter was so fragile-looking as he shivered and mewed like a lost lamb. I was certain I would break something by the mere act of holding him. The damage never presented itself, so I moved on to Major Fear #2 — Carter would hate being in my arms. I am pleased to say that Dad actually has a knack for calming the boy down, something that I now refer to as the Second Miracle of Birth.
We’ve been sailing smoothly through glowing doctor’s reports on Carter; His frail little body will grow into a 83-foot behemoth before we know it. But on the horizon are a new set of worries involving terms like “physical therapy” and “infection.”
On Tuesday, we’ll take our eleven-and-a-half pound baby to a local specialist to examine a click in his hips. Despite reassurances from Carter’s pediatrician, I can’t help but recall my own oddly constructed left leg and the metal braces my mother said I wore for the first year or so of life. I curse my gene pool for this imperfection and worry that Carter’s pro baseball career just got cut short, possibly replaced by one as the featured attraction in a circus. “Ladies and Gentlemen …,” the top-hatted carnie will bellow, “I bring you Carter Makice, the Amazing Hip-Clicking Boy!”
If having a completely correctable (but probably fatal and disfiguring) body glitch wasn’t bad enough, it seems I have also given Carter something called “Thrush.” (I must blame myself.) The years of neglect in his care are apparently starting to catch up with me in the form of little red dots on his butt, abdomen and throughout his digestive system. His mouth is sprouting little white dots, something I mistook for baby teeth until Amy pointed out that teeth don’t grow from the roof of your mouth. Immediately, we exchanged his first tube of toothpaste for some nystatin.
It has only been one month, and already we’re on a strict medication schedule and facing reconstructive surgery. My God … What are the other 215 months going to be like?
I am coping well under this self-induced stress by remembering two things. First, Amy is a walking encyclopedia. In between Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels, she ingests baby care and nursing books whole. By the time the little red dots appeared on Carter’s butt, Amy had already cross-referenced the recommended care by date, physician education and financial considerations. In three languages. She probably worries as much about Carter, if not more, than I do. The difference is she researches instead of entering the fetal position and rocking back and forth, my preferred panic response.
The other calming thought is provided by Carter himself. Today, when no breast was in sight and with a mouth full of pain, Carter helped his dad out by managing to fall asleep in my arms. We stayed like that for almost an hour until Mom returned home with some medicine. She left with him crying and came back to him … well, actually he was crying when she came back, too. But the kid toughed out the pain for the prior 45 minutes. All I had to do was hold him.