The Changeling

Books and movies, the ones that are full of shit, love to depict the instant bonding between a mother and child. They'd have us believe a postpartum woman immediately switches from a groggy, exhausted laborer to a love-filled mom. And the chaos of the world rights itself; Ta DAAAH!

The first time I met my baby outside of the womb, I was still shrugging off the anesthetics and dazed from my gradual return to consciousness. Mr. C was, in fact, two hours old before I got to see him. As I was wheeled to his incubator and a mob of nurses (Mr. C's and mine) gathered with Bee to watch that first introduction, I was still in a state of overstimulation. I couldn't focus on any one thing, but was dimly aware of everything: the pain in my uterus, the eighth-of-an-inch pothole the gurney wheel had hit on the ride over, the damn 20-watt florescent lights overhead (it burns, it burns!). My gurney was deposited by Mr. C's incubator, and a hush from the assembled masses slowly pushed its way through the other stimuli in my brain to cue me that something significant was happening. After a moment of intense concentration, I finally realized they all expected me to look at my baby. So I carefully raised my head.

It's probably a good thing I was still so drugged-up, because that gave my brain permission not to register a fact that would normally have sent me into hysterics: I felt nothing for this child. It was a tiny, wrinkly mass in the middle of a harshly-lit plastic box. I wasn't even sure it was human. Staring at this thing, I was dispassionate about my lack of passion, but I did manage to entertain one alarming thought: how do I know it's mine? This could be anyone's baby. Neither Bee nor I were consciously in the room when it was born, so what was to stop the hospital staff from replacing (accidentally or otherwise) our child with someone else's child? Or with a capuchin monkey?

As the months went by and I had more time to watch Mr. C grow, I began to recognize traits he shared with Bee. His body proportions, for instance, and the shape of his nose. And the fact that he, too, finds potty jokes hilarious. So I grudgingly accepted that he probably was my child. Unless Bee had had an affair and then secretly implanted the embryo into my womb the night he got me drunk on those StrazzleBerry wine-coolers.

I sort of forgot about the whole “Is This Really My Child?” debate until yesterday. That is when I came upon the scene depicted in the following photo:

That would be Mr. C in front of the television, intently fascinated and thoroughly entertained by the credits. The kid is so hypnotized by TV, he can't tear himself away from movies even when they're over.

He is so totally my child.