Before I Knew Enough To Worry

I began my foray into motherhood with very little fears. I felt my motherly intuition kick in as soon as Isabelle was placed into my arms. And somehow, I was fortunate enough that my intuition told me this little baby was going to be just fine.

So things progressed throughout Isabelle's first year without me worrying about much of anything. I happily stayed naive to all of the possible dangers.

And then when Isabelle was about 8 months old, we were at my parents house and my dad gave her a cheerio. A WHOLE cheerio. I took it away from her before she got it to her mouth. But my dad would have none of that. He told me to loosen up. He said cheerios were the perfect first food for a baby because even if they swallowed them whole, they had a hole in the middle so the baby could still breathe.

Now in my defense, this was my smart, all-knowing father talking. It seemed logical, especially coming from him. So I shrugged my shoulders and said: "Sure, why not?" And you know what? Isabelle did just fine with that cheerio, and with the 597,204 she has had since then.

Fast forward to 5 years later. Alex did not use a pacifier or suck his thumb, but he loved to put anything else he could find in his mouth. I first encountered this when he swallowed a penny. Fortunately, he got that out on his own. A few weeks later, we weren't as fortunate when he swallowed a large piece of glitter from one of Isabelle's crafting kits. I had to call 911 that time.

Once he began on solid foods, Alex proved to be a non-discriminating choker. He choked on toast, oatmeal, crackers...basically anything that made its way into his mouth was potential choking material. So I began to tear or cut his food into minuscule pieces. And I longed for the days when I didn't know better; the days when I believed my mother's intuition was invincible.

But those days were so far in the past and I now lived in fear every time I fed Alex anything. So the cycle repeated all over again with Olivia. Although she was not a choker like Alex, I just didn't have the guts to risk it. Eric had to gently force me to give the kids bigger pieces as they got older so that they could learn to eat like normal people. I'm just getting to the point where I can give Gracie normal sized bites.

Alex has gotten better, although we rarely get through a pizza without him taking too large of a bite and choking. But he's making progress, and I am too. I think back to those early, naive days of my motherhood with some wonder. What I wouldn't give to still believe that you can't really choke on a cheerio because it has a hole in the middle.