Babies

Admittedly, I am not a normal person.  At thirteen, babysitting an ill, vomitting child made me want to have kids MORE.  (Fortunately, I still thought boys were icky back then.)  And I have to admit that I have never held an infant of any race or gender that wouldn't have been irrevocably mine within 5 hours if I were told I could keep them.

Thanks to the sacrifice of a friend--who kindly had a kidney stone just before my 40th birthday, leaving me to watch her 18 month old son with my own 24 month daughter--I am resigned to never having a third child.  (By the end of that day, I was rocking numbly in a chair, a screaming child on each knee, neither pausing in their shrieks except when one or the other took a really big breath to try to shove the other off my lap.)  I cannot, however, say that I am cured.  Yesterday I had four gorgeous babies in my office, and one tiny one so frail I wanted to wrap her up and take her home that minute.  And any one of them...well, let's just say I'm careful not to hold them too long.  It's hard enough to give them back as it is.

I mentioned something like this to an older patient of mine once, and she shook her head at me and smiled.  "Child, I'd have another now if I could--and I'm seventy!"