rat #3

I’m pretty sure it was November 5th last year that Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I walked the six blocks or so it takes to get to the Ottawa General Hospital from our house. We were going for our 20 week ultrasound, our second one, the one that could tell us if we were having a boy or a girl, but we wanted to keep it a surprise. It was a bit chilly, so we moved briskly, passing the elementary school that backs our house. The sign out front encouraged parents to enroll their child in the school’s gifted program. “We’re going to have to put our little guy or girl in there someday!” we smiled at each other.

The ultrasound was routine. Or so we thought. In hindsight red flags should have went off when the technician kept insisting that she couldn’t get a good shot of the baby’s skull, even though I myself could see what she was apparently looking for. The long walk down a hospital corridor to a private room accompanied by one of the doctors on call confirmed our worst fear: something on the ultrasound didn’t look right, in this case the baby’s brain.

Suspected ventriculomegaly. Don’t google it; the search only yields ugly “what ifs?” and a scary “please God, I’ll start going to church, just please.” Suffice it to say it’s a condition where one or both of the brain’s ventricles is enlarged, possibly preventing normal cognitive development. Nearly a year later, anyone who has been subjected to pictures of the Babe ad nauseum on this blog will be shaking his or her head, saying, “I should hope that kid has a bigger brain than normal! Look at the size of the noggin it’s in!”

But we didn’t know that then. And so the next couple months were filled with more ultrasounds, even more worry, and the stinging possibility that things might not turn out well. For the longest time we weren’t able to let ourselves do any of the things normal mommies- and daddies-to-be like to do, like spoil their first child to the point of bratty-ness even before he or she is out of the womb. We would cuddle a cute teddy bear at the store, and promptly put it down, because no one wants to pack a room full of toys away when no baby has even played with them yet. But over time things got better. The repeated ultrasounds showed no growth in the size of the ventricle, which was a very good thing, and the shock of it all started to wear off. Enter a big ol’ bin of rats at IKEA, at $3.99 a pop.

Of course, because I am the type of person who loves bins full of cheap stuff, I got one. And it has since turned out to be the best baby toy in the history of baby toys. It has little arms and legs for chewing, and a long, long tail for tying the suckie to, so it can’t get lost. And whiskers for tickling, and a pointy nose for kissing. It’s perfect, and the Babe goes everywhere with it, earning him the nickname Rat Boy. The rat gets almost as many smiles as he does, especially from me, because that little piece of fabric and stuffing has done so much more than sop up my baby’s drool: it gave me hope when I needed it most, and represented a future in which everything worked out in the end. It made me excited to become a mommy, even when I wasn’t sure I would get to be one.

A month or so ago, another bin of rats popped up at IKEA. I bought five. Thank goodness I did, because we are now on to rat #3, the first having met a sorry fate up against Super Cooper, and the second losing his way somewhere in the cavernous aisles of Loblaw’s. Hopefully IKEA springs as eternal as hope does.