Letter to my infant daughter: I’m sorry we failed to thrive
KATHRYN DECKER
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published
Last updated
When you were born you seemed so tiny to me. You weighed six pounds and six ounces, but what you lacked in size you made up for in spirit. By that I mean you cried a lot. If you were awake, you cried. You cried yourself to sleep. You cried in your sleep. You cried so much I thought you might never stop.
I nursed you for the first six weeks of your life, but from the beginning nothing about it seemed to go right. A poor latch maybe? Not enough milk perhaps? We never really got to the bottom of it. Either way, you were hungry.
We visited the doctor every couple of weeks, and then every few days. With each visit your position on the weight-percentile chart dropped, and with each visit I became more and more desperate. Twentieth percentile; twelfth; fifth; second. It was as if we were writing the same test over and over again with a worse result each time.
I asked the doctor: “Do you think she’ll live to be one year old?”
She said of course and seemed surprised by my question, but I meant it. I couldn’t imagine you making it to your birthday. You were so fragile and so unhappy... See more
