Head Case

When I took Baby to her first doctor’s appointment at three months, it was a much Bigger deal than I had expected.

“Everything looks great,” my doctor said, reviewing Baby’s statistics at the end of the check-up. “Her height is 52nd percentile and that’s perfect! Her weight is 48th percentile, and that couldn’t be better! And head circumference is, uh, well it’s 98th… Okay, any questions?”

I had no questions. I had no words. I was in shock. You’re telling me my perfect little baby’s head size is very nearly off the charts!?

My mind flashed back to second grade, when my class was given instructions to make Indian headresses for the Thanksgiving assembly. Each of us was handed a strip of construction paper to wrap around our head, staple, and decorate with paper feathers. Holding my strip up to my forehead, I quickly realized the construction paper wasn’t long enough and raised my hand for another piece. As I started to tell my friends that we were going to need two strips, I noticed everyone else in the classroom had already stapled their strips together and put them on. I gulped. I gasped. I burned with an unfamiliar shame as the full realization hit me. I had a big head.

Back in the doctor’s office, I stared dumbly at my little Bighead, sleeping peacefully in her carrier. She had no idea what she was in for. Would she, like me, have her own Thanksgiving Day of Reckoning? Would she one day try on her Daddy’s hat and realize it fit her much better than any of the women’s hats she had been attempting to cram on her head? Would she be lucky enough to go to school with a girl whose head was so immense that she earned the nickname “Fetus Head” (and Fetus Head, I hope you’re not reading this now because unfortunately, nicknames are never forgotten), thus allowing her own X-large noggin to go unnoticed? And would she eventually discover that she was attracted to bigheaded men?

“Well, she takes after you!” I announced that evening when Hubs got home from work. “Her head circumference is 98 percent!”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “Your head is ginormous.”

“It’s not half as big as that cranium you’re luggin’ about!” I countered.

“Oh, at least my head could never be compared to a watermelon!”

And the finger pointing has continued ever since.

Of course, I accentuate the positive… I’m pretty certain that little Bighead’s brain is much larger than normal and that’s why she’s so very smart. But some days, it’s been hard, like the time I got a phone call several months ago from a certain mother of mine who shall remain nameless.

“She’s not walking yet?!” mom shrieked. “Well, she won’t for a while either!”

“What makes you say that?” I said skeptically. “Her sisters both walked by eight months.”

“But her sisters’ heads are so much smaller,” my mom said knowingly. “It’s going to take her a while to figure out how to balance that big head on that little body. You had the same problem. You didn’t walk until you were two.”

“What?!” I gasped. “You never told me that!”

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I used to have to put you in the infant room at the church nursery. There were all these little babies and then you, just sitting and blinking in the middle of the room.”

My disbelief was justified. Two months later, mom gave me my baby book and beside “Baby takes first steps”, it read “14 months”. “Baby walks well: 14 months.”

And just like me, Baby was walking at 14 months, big head and all.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m coming to terms with Baby’s balloon-sized bean. You know how they say great minds think alike? Well, hopefully Great Heads do, too.