mamafulltext

Your Mama's a Failure and You ain't Thriving:
One Family Working Through a Failure to Thrive Diagnosis

By Lucie B. Amundsen
Attending well-baby check-ups was the highlight of the early months with my
infant daughter. There she occupied her place in the Sun --the exact middle
of the height/weight charts -- and as a stay-at-home parent, it was my stellar
employee review.
This kind of validation is rarely received from the non-verbal and the
incontinent, but here at the doctor’s office Baby Abbie was celestially backlit
and I was basking in the glow. All the rigors of what has been termed
“Attachment Parenting” and “New Momism” --reviving traditional ways such
as wearing one’s baby in a sling for the first nine months, extending nursing
well into the toddler years and co-sleeping as a family -- was demanding,
but paying off.
Until it didn’t.
At first it was a blip, a hiccup that dropped us to the 25th percentile in
weight. My doctor furrowed his brow but the visit ended uneventfully, though
without my ceremonial high. The next appointments revealed another drop
and then another, this time an alarming plummet to the nether-lands below
the chart. Typically the points on the graph make a pleasing, graceful slope
upward toward some nirvana while ours more resembled the cliff antics of
Wile E. Coyote.
I was made to come in more regularly for “situational monitoring” as though
suddenly in need of a child-rearing tutorial. The spiral hit bottom when I
began receiving questions along the lines of “How does it make you feel that
Abbie is so little? Do you like her being small?” and “Did giving up your
career make you feel resentful?” I replied with a smile, “I quit my job to
starve my daughter full time,” a sarcastic voice against the cold rain of fear.
My whirling brain clicked away names of senators, lawyers, and relatives in
Quebec against the horrible fantasy of child confiscation.
I clutched a slip of paper with a telephone number and “Failure to Thrive
Clinic” hastily written underneath. How could a caregiver not feel
catastrophic about a diagnosis that has the word failure right in it?
In the weeks leading up to the clinic visit, I was told to wean Abbie of my
breast milk and instead nourish her with Hershey Chocolate Bars and lard-
based frostings. These instructions were written on a sheet torn from a
prescription pad giving it a surreal validation. It struck me as utterly reckless
to deprive my daughter of the “perfect food,” and replace it with
unadulterated crap. I balked.
While having met the suggested one-year nursing guideline of the
American Pediatrics Association, I had my heart set on reaching the brass
ring of a self-weaned toddler. The premise of extending nursing is to
maximize connection in a disconnected world, which often means going
against the norms of the many to benefit your One. Many women embark
and few reach the standard; it’s the Marines of motherhood.
I buttressed myself against the established professional who lived to
undermine my parenting values. I was quipping facts like, “mother’s milk
contains immunities which benefit even older children” and “you know, there
is a real brouhaha over the validity of height and weight charts.” Most
disturbing was through sheer tenacity, I was able to stalk my way to
parenting guru and author Dr. Sears’ email. I regurgitated my daughter’s
situation, diagnosis and essentially tattled on my pediatrician to one of the
greatest proponents of lactation in this country. He emailed me back. It was
one line, devoid of capitalization or punctuation: “this is not a reason to stop
nursing.” I printed it, put it in my purse, made it my talisman and kept
breastfeeding.
In the next few weeks, food became our ruling star. Every morsel offered,
and most often rejected, was recorded into a journal. In my mind this
document would be entered into evidence for the defense in “The People of
Minnesota v. Lucie B. Amundsen.” (I knew in my heart that Canada would
eventually have to extradite us). A sample journal entry went along these
lines: “Consumed -- 3 peas, one half-teaspoon Häagen-Dazs; Rejected --
cheese, yogurt, chicken and slab of butter.” The ebb and flow of my world
was to put food on the highchair tray, and wipe the smeared, uneaten food
off the highchair tray; food on, food off --three meals, three snacks, every
day. This cycle became truly demoralizing to both of us yet seemed utterly
compulsory to show the medical community I was a good mother and
recorded this fact into my journal. Obvious to me, this would one day be a
matter of public record. Obvious to everyone else, I was watching too much
Law & Order.
My husband Jason and I sat tensely at the “Failure to Thrive Clinic” with
the cleanest, best-dressed baby in the waiting room. After examining our
toddler, who even we regarded as helplessly scrawny running naked around
the office, the endocrinologist won us over.
“It is your job to provide Abbie Belle with nutritious, wholesome foods, and it
is Abbie’s job to eat it,” she stated plainly.
My chest opened and I took my first unconstrained breath in weeks. While I
wasn’t quite ready to think we were safe, I at least felt I had a star witness for
the Amundsen defense team and I was certain the jury was going to love her.

It was during this euphoric moment that I must have let my guard down.
That breath of air left me giddy and vulnerable, and I was wholly unprepared
for the doctor’s next pronouncement: “Abbie Belle is a Nutritional Dwarf.”
This is the actual clinical term for children underweight from causes not
hormonal or biological, but who simply lack caloric intake. Couldn’t she at
least be some sort of “Nutritional Elf?” At least elves have better PR,
probably even lobbyists.
“Why don’t doctors just bitch-slap us and get it over with?” I demanded in
the car, my voice weighty from my running nose and burning eyes. I
imagined the unsettling stir this phrase would cause in the courtroom gallery.
Sitting in front of Abbie who was frantically performing the “all done” sign
language sign in her highchair, I dejectedly ate another chocolate bar with a
huge wad of vanilla crème slapped on the end. More weeks had passed,
Abbie had not gained an ounce, and we were coming up on another weigh-
in to determine if our Nutritional Dwarf required invasive testing. My normally
agreeable husband tersely announced we were done nursing --cold turkey,
right then and right now, let the weaning begin. Our child, who had been
subsisting only on breast milk for 15 months was either going to learn to eat
like the big kids or … “or what” we couldn’t contemplate.
My ire rose for a moment, attempted to burst into full flame, yet simply
sputtered out and died. I half-heartedly began with the statements of how ill
equipped we were for this emotional milestone but didn’t even finish. My own
weight had dropped to 113 and I was suffering from dizzy spells. Somehow I
could not connect the extreme nursing demands of an active toddler with
this adverse health change. It made me tired, all of it, and I simply yielded.
Jason walked over, kicked the plug out of the wall, and let me off Mr. Toad’s
Wild Ride.
I dusted off my maternal self-worth and began the long task of detangling it
from a heap of chart numbers, antiquated medical terms, and self-imposed
pressure to über-parent this child. I had allowed myself to be swept up – no,
I bodysurfed – on the wave of post-feminist “new momism” favored by many
stay-at-home displaced professionals. Truly I owe these courageous
parenting activists for the societal changes they have hammered out:
incremental acceptance of family co-sleeping, breast feeding credence and
legislation. However, along with their wonderful child-centered ethos, I
needed a little room for deviation in practice and the intrusion of real life.
I possess several character flaws that perfectly aligned to have allowed this
breastfeeding stalemate, even when it wasn’t really working for my baby
anymore. Having Abbie before Jason and I were married gave me something
to prove. This was an untidy period of life I describe as “living in the Green
Room of the Maury Povich Show,” so I was naturally inclined to seek
perfection in my parenting. Did leaving high profile work create a void for me
to fill with early childhood philosophy? Perhaps. Or maybe I simply
succumbed to the wholly quantified aspect of those tables and graphs -- a
competitive playing field I had not experienced since standardized high
school testing. In the end, I had to place my daughter over my ego, boost
her above my holistic child-rearing ideals and find uncharted middle ground
to honor her as an individual. (I really hated that).
The weaning process was cheerless and after three thorny days, Abbie
settled into her highchair and consumed a very little bit of solid food. Around
this time, I also took the advice of a friend and found a new pediatrician.
This was the first doctor to stop and take me in with a good long stare.
Here, in the middle of the continent, so many of the humans are fair, robust
and very, very tall. Perhaps my husband’s Norwegian last name had set me
up improperly, because really I am just a little French woman whose
Lilliputian family tends to top out a 5 feet 6 inches – and that’s the men. At 5
foot 4 inches, I am a giant among French women and should we gals form a
basketball team, I’d definitely be center. Football? I’m linebacker.
Dr. Gold, a spry woman with a no-nonsense wisdom that comes from years
of doctoring, took this all in. She looked at me, looked at Abbie, looked back
at me and said,
“You’re small, she’s small – I’m okay with this.”
for sure. She plays hard and eats when she is hungry.

Lucie Belanger Amundsen is a stay-at-home parent and writer. She can be
reached through her website, www.twowordy.com.

Special thanks to Meg Ferrante of Mamacoaster Zine for the loving edit.