One Froggy Baby

So Jericho is two months old, and he has started "social smiling." In the mornings, when he's well rested, I can perch him on my lap with my thighs to his back, and he will often smile at me. He doesn't smile on cue, but he does seem to respond to certain interactions. I haven't figured out what those are yet. I think when he's in a good mood and has something to smile about (he feels rested, well fed, not gassy), then he smiles. It's the first thing that babies really give back to their parents. Seeing him smile makes everything -- the sleep deprivation, the complete uprooting of life as I knew it -- worth it.

I've been unable to get a photograph of Jericho smiling, however. He'll be smiling away until I pull out my camera. Then it's glumsville. He reminds me of the frog in the classic Warner Bros. cartoon "One Froggy Evening." That frog, excavated from a time capsule in an old building, would sing and dance for the workman who uncovered him. However, as soon as the workman tried to get the frog to sing for anyone else, it would revert back to a glum croaking amphibian.

Here is a video of me trying to get Jericho to smile again, after he'd been smiling.



Here's the classic Warner Bros. cartoon.

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By the way, that cartoon is based on an old legend of the "toad in the hole" and also real reports of entombed frogs and toads coming back to life. Some consider it the best short film ever made. I'm in that camp.

But back to babies. I remember Jade smiling very early in life. At six weeks, she was interacting with people. They would smile at her, and she would smile back. She always was a flirt and a ham. Her dad and I took her to a neurological specialist when she was six weeks old, and the main observation the doctor made was of her beautiful social smile. My mother had made the appointment for us with a San Francisco pediatric neurologist because she was terrified that Jade had Crouzon Syndrome, like her father. I had no such worries, and I kept the appointment only to appease my mom. I was carefree, even though the odds of Jade inheriting her dad's serious genetic abnormality had been 1 in 2.

Those are much higher odds than they were for Jericho having a chromosomal defect of the sort that are more common with mothers in their 40s. With him, as well, Bryan and I chose to think positive. I did not get the amnio or the CVS, choosing to forgo an increased risk of miscarriage; however, I did get the noninvasive first trimester screening. Regardless, we decided that we would welcome a baby with Down Syndrome into our home.

Still, I found it ironic that Jericho's risks of problems were much lower than Jade's, even though I was 21 and healthy when Jade was born and 45 and diabetic when Jericho was born. Both my kids beat the odds. And like an entombed toad in the hole, my motherhood -- and optimistic outlook -- reemerged.