How Soon Does it Start?

Flashback 6 months. I’m with my daughter (err… let’s call her Ruth) at her regular 18month well-baby visit.

Our family practice is a teaching practice. Yay for new docs learning about family practice. Yay for them learning about rural medicine. I’m all for it. Young resident doc who’s never seen Ruth before is concerned. “She’s below average for height and weight, we should keep an eye on that, and make sure she’s growing”. Some bizarre spirit of timidity comes over me. I fail to look at him dumbfounded and ask, “you know that about half the kids are below average, right? That that’s, in fact, what average means?”

Instead, I dutifully book a 2-year well-baby check-up. Although there are no scheduled vaccinations. Although a local doc shortage means that our family doc is almost an hour away from home. Although this busy practice is often overbooked, and there are actual sick people who could benefit from getting that appointment. Although she is healthy, and happy, and I have no cause for concern.

Flash Forward.

2-year-and-a-few-weeks-old Ruth is seen by our regular family doc. “I’m not concerned” he says. “She’s always been right there, in the ‘normal’ range, a bit below average. She’s following her curve.” He could have stopped there, that would have been cool.

But he goes on to say, “I’d rather see them in the lower part of that range anyway”.

GAAAAH!

Too small is bad. But smaller is better than bigger. There is always a better size than the one she happens to be.

And this message has begun at her two year check up.

Screw that. Sideways.

My daughter is perfectly Ruth-sized. She has been since I first laid eyes on her (yeah, ok, she seemed really really big just moments before that). She will be perfectly Ruth-sized when she’s 5, and when she’s 8, and when she hits those awkward early adolescent years when ‘perfectly Ruth-sized’ means ‘with arms an inch longer than they were yesterday”. She will be Ruth-sized the day she chooses her wedding dress, and at all the fittings, and at her wedding. She will be perfectly Ruth-sized every day of her life.

And from now on, anyone who tries to tell her otherwise will find themselves dealing with perfectly mommy-sized me.