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Big Baby


 I’m seven weeks old in this photo. The Husband thought I was about a year old. A huge baby, was I!

Mama said she ate a lot of French bread while she carried me. Could that be why I like crusty bread so much? Cookies? Cake? And all things floury and sugary?

Years back I found my birth announcement in our local newspaper. It was on the front page. At the time, the county population was around 14,000, with more than a third of the people living in Hollister, the county seat. I figured the publisher needed something to fill a one-inch gap, because why else would my birth be on the front page rather than an inside page or the back page like every other newborn’s. After all, the birth of a farmer’s helper’s daughter wasn’t important or relevant to anyone but my family.

Flash forward to 2021 (although only last year, it seems so long ago). While doing research on gestational diabetes, I came across an article about fetal macrosomia, a condition in which a newborn is larger than average at birth. Medical experts today define that as babies born eight pounds, 13 ounces. Some scientists estimate that about nine percent of births in the United States are big babies.  I was born eight pounds, 1.5 ounces in 1953. Still quite big, especially for Mama, a petite, slender woman. Look at how small she was in the photo. That’s her perched on Ninang Deling’s lap on the far left.

Fortunately for us, I was a caesarian birth. Natural delivery is risky for big babies, who may come out injured or not at all. When I read about the risk, I wondered if that was what happened to my older sister, Mama’s first daughter, Valentina, who died at birth. Mama said that the doctor told her Valentina was a stillbirth. Was she dead in the womb or died due to complications during delivery? So very sad either way.

I came along two-and-a-half years after Valentina’s death. Welcome, Big Baby!


Comments

  1. The woman holding you does not look happy about it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is the first time I noticed nobody smiled with teeth showing. How funny. Maybe big baby me fidgeted too much for her, hahaha

      Delete
  2. ...our 3 children were all premature,, tiny little things. You should see them now!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting post. These family photos become precious as the years roll by.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Linda. I’m trying to figure who I can hand them off to.

      Delete

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Thanks for the good cheer. :-)

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