ENP

Besides, obviously being strapped for time and energy, I’ve frankly avoided writing this entry, but, alas, it must be written. It is the entry about the Evil Nurse Practitioner (ENP).

We were told that we should take our baby for a medical check (having birthed him at home) before he was ten days old. A nurse practitioner was recommended to us and we made an appointment. Right about the time of our appointment, after the initial magic of the first few days – cloistered in my bedroom with my mostly-sleeping infant and my husband – and while my body’s recovery was still preliminary at best, I got my first hint of emotional upset – "the weepies" we’ll call them, experienced by most brand new moms. And so, physically limited and emotionally strained, I set out for the ill-fated appointment with our ENP.

Okay everyone, listen for the bell (ding!) signaling key phrases to send the new, emotionally fragile, and hormonally ridiculous mom over the edge.

We arrive at the beautiful home of our ENP and take a seat while she finishes with another client -a dark-haired boy crawls out of a room to our left and is hauled back by his dad. After they’ve gone, ENP approaches us and we make introductory small talk which includes me telling her it’s our first time out with the little guy. "Are you sure you have the car seat installed correctly?" she quips (ding!) How I reacted: I stumbled apologetically telling her hurriedly, "Actually, we have an appointment with the highway patrol to have it checked, but they couldn’t get us in until Thursday, and…" She leaves the room to file something. How I should have reacted: "What car seat? He’s a little jaundiced so we stuck him on the dashboard in the sun."

We are ushered into the room where the pastel colors and teddy bear rockers clash strongly with our scowling ENP. She stares down at the forms on her desk and asks us questions so as to better fill in the boxes. Eventually, we find ourselves at this point: "He didn’t nurse at all in the first 24 hours?!?" (ding!) How I reacted: "Well, um, no, I mean, yes, I mean, he tried, I mean, I’m not sure…" How I should have reacted: "No." (My advice to new moms besides not to listen to any advice would be to write everything down. You will have liquid brain. You will not remember anything and people will ask you many details about how much, how often, when and if.)

Then she weighs him. His birth weight was 6 lbs. 7 oz. ENP put him on her scale and announces: "He’s 5 lbs. 2 oz." (ding!) "That’s not possible." I told her. "I think the scale is wrong." She didn’t even look in my direction. She wrote furiously on her forms. Finally, this: "I know my scale is accurate." (ding!) How I reacted: (Crying). How I should have reacted: "You numbskull. It’s about the two different scales not being calibrated to each other. He has not possibly lost over a pound."

More form scribbling. "He’s now in the fifth percentile for weight." (ding!) "And if you aren’t feeding him…" (ding! ding! ding!) From there, the conversation spiraled continually out of control, including talk of electric breast pumps and videos to loan and return visits for future weigh-ins. I will have the image long-burned into my brain of this large, rough gruff woman clutching a stuffed monkey to her generous bosom in order to illustrate to me various breastfeeding positions.

While I continued to weep, she proceeded to move ahead with talk of vitamin K shots and heel pricks/blood testing as well as discussions of dire consequences should we decline them. I never really imagined someone could fit the phrase "brain damage" into a conversation with such regularity. This woman was good.

I don’t know exactly what "bonding" involves. I’m told it’s a process. And from what I can tell, I’m not finished with that process yet. However, I can say that if it involves uncontrollable sobbing and the desire to jump out of your skin when a stranger sticks your child with needles and squeezes blood from his heel, then on that day, the fifth day of my son’s life, in the office of the ENP, our "bonding" took a huge step forward – My husband would comment later on my uttering of the phrase "Give me my baby!"

Then there is discussion of nutrition. Our ENP, at least 80 pounds overweight, raises both eyebrows at my disclosure of a vegetarian diet. "Your diet," she lets me know, "will help determine the neurological growth and brain development of your baby." (ding!)

You know the old joke about adding "in bed" to the end of any Chinese fortune cookie fortune? Well, just add "because you’re a terrible mother" to the end of anything anyone says to you about your baby in the first month. "You have to stay hydrated when you’re breastfeeding. You haven’t been drinking enough!…(because you’re a terrible mother!)" "I’d love to come over and help out!…(because you’re a terrible mother!)" Anything at all can be twisted into a baton with which the new mother batters herself about the face and head.

Really, I should have learned something from this birth. The one overriding feeling I had during labor – the only intuitive piece I could muster in all nine months and how I knew I was going to be just fine – was the idea that this baby knew what he was doing. I trusted my baby. And here I was throwing all that away to buy into the ways of an ENP SOB.

That afternoon, I call all three midwives and leave desperate messages. They are all in a meeting … with each other … and I can’t reach them. They must hurry before my baby starves to death. Penny comes by and brings us dinner, saint that she is, but can do nothing for my baby who is minute by minute wasting away. She is still there when Maggie calls to tell me she’s out of her meeting and on her way to my apartment with her scale (the scale that originally weighed Isaac – the one that counts). She arrives. She weighs him. The world begins again to turn. I exhale. "You are radiant!" Penny tells me on her way out. She kisses my cheek and vanishes. I stumble to the bathroom, pass the full-length mirror. My eyes are nearly swollen shut from crying for seven hours. Keep those lies coming!

The next day I call the ENP. I calmly inform her we will not be coming back – that day or ever. I calmly restate these things when she began the litany of "It’s your choice, but…" I must have seemed a different person all together than the blubbering fool who’d slunk away from her almost-mansion with my waif of a child less than 24 hours before. She seemed genuinely taken back and (dare I say) humbled when reality set in for her. How I reacted: "Thank you. Goodbye." How I should have reacted: "Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea. On a good night’s sleep, I can take you out."