I curse the fact that I can always eat. The average person when depressed or stressed loses weight, not me -- I gain it.

I do not blame my weight on a “slow metabolism,” rather I embrace the horror. I just love to eat. At the end of a bad day there is nothing like a treat, salty or sweet; I am fickle and can be tempted to go either way. Unfortunately this carnal desire has contributed to my life-long obsession with those 20 pounds that stand between me and a size 10.

I surmise that there is some evolutionary advantage to this wanton ability to eat. I tell my self it is some genetic vestige from the days when we hunted bison, and not a sign of gluttony. Sure there are fast food and grocery stores mere minutes away and my fridge is well stocked, but theoretically famine could happen and if it does -- I am prepared.

When my babies were born four months premature, one of the biggest challenges I was told was their ability to eat. While suckling is a reflex for babies born after a full nine months, premature babies lack the coordination and strength to eat and so are fed by a tube down their noses for months.

The stress of being so sick this early in life seems to slow the eating process down even longer and so many babies go home with these feeding tubes. So problematic is this inability to learn to eat that most babies in the neonatal intensive care unit do not get to even try a bottle until they are close to four pounds.

When I heard this, I laughed. “Nonsense,” I told the doctors. “I have raised eating to an art form and I am quite sure it is genetic.”

My husband also shares this ability, competitive or sport eating it is called in our dining room, so my boys would be doubly blessed I surmised. “My boys will eat,” I said. As I am a doctor, these physicians humored my long-winded anthropological theories, but I knew they secretly thought I was delusional from lack of sleep.

As I pestered everyone incessantly they gave in a week before they normally allow a baby to even try a bottle. Every nurse and doctor warned me not to be disappointed. “A few sips will be great progress,” they all agreed.

My heart was beating like a drum. Oliver was first and I held my breathe when he wasn’t quite sure what to do at first and then a look that I know so well, called chocolate euphoria, came over his face when the first drop of formula hit is tongue. “What were you waiting for?” he implored with his tiny features and promptly downed the bottle. His brother, Victor, as predicted, did exactly the same thing.

The others’ reactions were stunned disbelief. But I had known all along that my boys would out perform in this area.

Tonight Oliver raced into the kitchen screaming “yummy chicken!” when he heard the roast come out of the oven and after eating both drumsticks voiced his displeasure that chickens don’t have three legs.

The competition is getting stiff already.

By Jennifer Gunter

Labels: Jennifer Gunter

Stumble This Post