Friday, December 2, 2011

What it means to be a Morris (and also to give birth to one)

I'm writing this blog entry primarily for my sister-in-law, Jess, who is in her second trimester with my little niece or nephew as we speak, er, write. I don't think it's fair to let her go into the delivery room without knowing what she's getting herself into. Or already gotten herself into, as you can't undo what's been done to her. Secondarily, I am writing this blog for entertainment value. Tertiarily (Is that a word? It should be.), I am writing this blog for my children to see, someday, what their giant bodies put me through. Seriously, they need to know.

I began thinking about this today because my sister-in-law by proxy, Whitney, gave birth to her first child, Jaxon, today at 2:28 p.m. Congratulations to her! She was induced beginning at six this morning and the labor went smoothly and Jaxon came quickly. Whitney is Jessica's sister. Jess will not be so lucky, as she is not married to a normal human being. She is married to a Morris.

In one of my past lives I carried the last name Morris. I was born with it and had it for many years. The point is, it's in my DNA (In fact, it makes up most of my DNA, I have very few physical attributes that look like my mother; though I love her dearly, I look very little like her.), so ANY babies I have using my own eggs come out, well, there's no other way to put this, gigantic. I'm not talking 8 pounders, here, folks. My brother: 10 pounds, 2 ounces. I was the small one in the family at 8 pounds 14 ounces. Mitchell was 9 pounds 8 ounces at 39 weeks. The twins were 7 lbs even at 35 weeks. The doctor said if they'd gone to 40 weeks, they could have easily reached 10 or 11 pounds a piece. He said there is no way my body would have held them that long, and there's now way I would have been able to deliver Harry vaginally because we Morrises come with another affliction that my sister-in-law has to look forward to.

The Dreaded Morris Dome. We have giant heads. My stepmother, who only had to deliver one Morris (she had it easy, and I can't remember how much my little brother weighed), coined the term after my half-brother was born, I think. Most of us are born with giant heads.

When I was growing up, my giant head caused me a lot of problems. Yes, my head is that big. You probably can't tell just looking at me because I have a lot of hair I use to cover it up. It started when I started playing ball in middle school. Middle school was something different where I came from. It was fourth, fifth and sixth grade, to give you an idea of how old I was. The batting helmets didn't fit. The ball caps I could order with the uniform weren't big enough. It was against regulation, but we had to order, on our own, an adult XL batting helmet and cut the padding out to make it fit on my head. I never asked, but I'm fairly sure my parents had to sign some kind of waiver. Small towns are different, and this was 20 years ago, so who knows. The cap story was different. We couldn't find one in the right color soon enough, so for the first couple of games, I had to wear it sticking straight up off my head. I couldn't go on the field without a cap because it said so in the rules. So I put on the biggest one they had and it didn't even come up past the middle of the top of my head.

I've had three different pediatricians of Mitchell's ask to measure MY head because HIS is so large. I don't know the measurements of my head. I know it's too big to buy a hat out of a store. I don't like wearing hats. So I don't care. The pediatricians were both impressed and terrified at the same time. Two of them told me they'd never seen a skull the size of mine in any medical training they'd ever undergone.

Hank's is much larger than normal, but his doesn't come NEAR Harry's. Harry is a true Morris. His head is in the 103rd percentile, I think, right now. It's stayed above the 100th percentile since he was born. His doctor and nurse have told me they've never seen a head that big stay that big on a baby and they told me to be thankful I didn't have to deliver him. I told them I did deliver one like him a decade ago, and I didn't intend to do it ever again, thank you very much.

You can tell a Morris as soon as it's born. It's long, usually between 21 and 22 inches (My twins were between 18 and 19 because they were early, but that's the size of a normal baby, so again, much bigger than usual.), and it has an enormous head and weighs about the same as a one-month-old baby. The nurses will be surprised, even though you will tell them going in that this WILL NOT BE AN EASY DELIVERY.

They will tell you they've heard it all, but they're professionals and it likely won't be as bad as you think. You'll say, no, but you don't understand, all the babies in our family... And they'll just hush you up. And then you'll just get really smug and say, ok, just wait and see. And before it's all over you'll be screaming in agony and they'll be pulling out the giant salad tongs and that machine that looks like a toilet plunger because you are REFUSING to let them push that baby's head back up inside you so they can perform a C-section because you WARNED them that this was going to happen so now they are going to have to LISTEN to you and get this baby OUT the way they told you it would happen at the beginning, by GOD.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it means to be a Morris.

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