Little Baby Brent

This picture was taken shortly after I became a Mommy for the first time, right after delivering my first child Brent.  I labored 36 hours, 18 of which was considered "hard labor".  After laboring so long with my son the doctor FINALLY decided I was not going to have him on my own and wheeled me into the delivery room to use forceps to deliver him into the world.  I was never so grateful for anything in my life both for the delivery and the child.  Brent was 10 pounds 9 1/2 ounces and 22 inches long.  I was a little size 5 woman, and that was after the baby weight.  You know that size 5 was back when I THOUGHT I was huge.  He was so adorable with his little binky nose, olive skin, manly hands, blue eyes and dark brown hair.  In spite of my exhaustion I was so happy, I have always wanted to be a mother and here my life as a mother had just begun with the chubby little guy that had just worn me out beyond anything I had ever experienced before.
As family and friends came to visit and see my new little man I noticed strangers were stopping by my door and looking in my room, pointing and smiling.  I became a little paranoid and wondered what was going on so I shut my door until I finally asked the nurse if she knew what was going on when she was in my room checking on me.  She explained that people were coming by looking at who had had the largest baby in the nursery and that some of the nurses had passed around the information that the smallest patient on the floor had had the largest baby in the nursery so I had somehow become an oddity.  Brent, actually, was the largest baby to ever be born at that hospital at that time.  So, for the rest of that first day when people stopped outside my door I invited them in and talked with them and accepted their congratulations.  It was rather fun.  A note here is that Brent had to spend extra time in the nursery that first day since he had such a long delivery, he had a few little issues but he was fine within a few hours.  That gave people plenty of time to see the huge baby in the nursery.
One crazy thing that happened the day after Brent was born will have you wondering but have no fear, Brent is my son, the little rascal is mine for sure.  I decided that I would send Brent back to the nursery in the evenings since I was never going to sleep again once we went home (I am 58 and still don't sleep, lol).  I figured it would allow me to recuperate faster and therefore be a better mother in the end.  You know how the nursery will bring you your child in the mornings after they have bathed them so you can have them in the room all day?  Well that was what was supposed to happen.  I woke up and had my breakfast, had showered and was anxiously waiting for my sweet baby to arrive when the nurse began wheeling in an isolet.  She parks the little bed near the foot of my bed because that is the area left open for it.  I take my time getting off the bed because, well, you know, it's not so easy to do when you've just had a baby.  Once I make it to the little bed I reach down to pick up my baby boy and first pull back the little blanket to reveal the whitest white baby I have ever seen in my life, the baby even has white hair and is so tiny it cannot possibly weight more that 6 pounds.  I shriek as I realize this is not my child.  I press the nurse call button and she comes back in and finds me with a wild look in my eyes pointing at the poor baby in the bed like it is an alien yelling, "that's not my baby" repeatedly.  She checks my arm band and the baby's arm band and tells me that they match.  "Oh no they can't", I shriek again.  I continue to shriek, "that's not my baby".  I am about to have a nervous break down for sure.  I can't imagine what I am going to do about this.  How can this possibly be happening.  It can't, it simply can't.
Luckily, because of the unique situation of the largest baby in the nursery being born to the smallest woman on the floor and nearly everyone remembering that, it did not take long for them to find my child.  For reasons I cannot understand the mother who got Brent did not realized she had the wrong child.  My only guess was that perhaps she had a c section and had not met her child in a "sober" state and therefore did not recognize him (or her I didn't check) when it was brought to her.  Any way only a few minutes passed before the mistake was corrected and the little nurse that had bathed the babies was in trouble.  It seems that she had removed both babies identification bands at the same time and then took a guess when she put them back on the babies.  Well, she guessed wrong.  What if the babies had looked enough alike that the mothers had not noticed.  Crisis averted by the blessing of the biggest baby being born to the smallest mom and everyone being amazed by it.   Who would have ever guessed.  Not me, never in a million years.