Ten Two

Dear Hagen,

After your first few visits with Dr. Hoover, it was becoming apparent that you weren't gaining weight as fast as you should. You seemed stalled at 8 pounds, 6 ounces. In every other way, you were the picture of health (with extra credit for a charming personality), but you needed to add some heft.

We had this same problem with Laney when she was born. Back then, it caused me to lose a lot of sleep and shed a lot of tears. I was failing! My baby was starving! etc. etc. When you have two kids, you don't have the spare time required to wallow in self-doubt. Instead, I pretended you were Rocky Balboa and it was my job to prepare you to face off with that scary Russian dude in Rocky IV. I fed you raw eggs and made you jog in the snow. I mean, I fed you more.

Feeding you in general was stressful, because you'd spit everything up - and I mean everything. I'd do an extra load of clothes each day just thanks to this little quirk of yours. This never ever happened with your sister; she didn't get to be in the 99th percentile by kicking stuff back. After a week of experiments, we figured out that if we fed you while you were upright, and then kept you upright for half an hour and never ever touched your stomach, you could keep everything down. Your dad and I are getting smarter with each new baby. If we had the time, money, patience and inclination to have another 18 children, we might finally get it all figured out. We also might score our own series on TLC.

Where was I? Ah, right: Yesterday, I took you in to Dr. Hoover's to have you weighed, and you weighed 10 pounds, 2 ounces. You had gained exactly twice as much weight as we'd been hoping. So your dad and I took you out for pizza to celebrate.

What's the moral here? Well, if I had to pick a take-away lesson, it would be this: Give a Southern woman two weeks, and she can increase your body weight by 17%. I know. I've seen me do it.

Love,

Mom