So you want to know how it happened that Jake broke his leg when he was a baby. You can't leave it alone. You and every social worker and "concerned citizen" in California at the time!
It probably started before he was even born. He was a kicker. He played whole soccer games in my insides, even kicking Dennis if he got too close. After the game he would roll back and forth, back and forth, from one side of my stomach to the other. They must have had root beer for their after-game treat because he would have hiccups for hours on end. Just sitting in church with my maternity top bouncing around like I was covering up a pot on rolling-boil got to be pretty embarrassing. When he was finally born, legs and arms flailing about, fists punching the air, I looked at him and said "So that's what you've been doing in there all this time!"
As a newborn he wiggled, as a baby he bounced, and by the time he was eight months old he was almost impossible to hold. In fact, I had caught him by his ankles more than once when he pushed against me wanting to get down. I tell you all this to say, "IT WAS NOT MY FAULT!"
The nursery at our church was in a separate building. I was chatting with the lady at the nursery door before I dropped him off.....wait!....I mean HANDED him to her just like Good Mothers do every Sunday all over the world. There was a sidewalk; I was still standing outside the door. I had not even started to give him to her yet. You know how some babies kind of "buck" against you? This was Jake's move. By the time he was eight months old he had practiced this over and over. He straightened his legs out, pushing with all his might as he had done dozens of times before--And this time I didn't catch him.
The nursery worker threw out her arms, I made a desperate grab, and we both watched in horror as Jake fell to the concrete sidewalk. He screamed, I screamed and Dennis heard us from inside the other building and four rooms away. The California Institute of Technology may have taken note of a blip on their Richter scale. I was sure I had seen him hit his head. I called the doctor from the church office.
Since it was evening she said,"Watch him through the night, wake him every fifteen minutes to see if his eyes have dilated, and bring him in to the office in the morning." Yeah, right. He cried off and on all night long, no need to wake him. We figured he had a massive headache so we were very careful about his head. We grabbed his legs instead. Dennis set his carrier on the sink while he shaved in the morning and leaned against Jake's legs as he reached over him. Of course, Jake wailed. I lifted him by the legs to change his diaper. He wailed. When I dressed him to take him to the doctor, I looked all over to find an outfit that didn't pull over his head, Good Mother that I was, I pulled it over his legs instead. He wailed.
By the time we got to the doctor's office Jake had finally fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, leaning up against my chest. As soon as the doctor saw us there, looking like Madonna and Child, she knew he had not hit his head. She reached over and touched his leg. That woke him up! She sent us over to the hospital for x-rays. Sure enough, a fractured femur.
Then came the questions. This was 1976, just at the beginning of public awareness of child abuse. "Mrs. Carey, would you tell me again where you were when this injury occurred?' "Mrs. Carey, you say you were the one holding him when he allegedly fell?" "Mrs. Carey, how did you feel about the fact that he was wiggling so much? Did it make you angry?" Each person I spoke to at the hospital demanded details, then passed me on to someone else who wanted to hear, again, exactly why this child had the injury he had, and have me fill out yet another form. They did not give me any Mother of the Year awards. I was saved because there was a witness, the nursery worker, who had seen Jake fall. After many hours they finally let me go home with my baby instead of placing him in foster care.
An adult who had the same injury would have had to wear the cast for six months, the orthopedist told us, but being a baby, with an exceptionally Good Mother, he healed in just six weeks. During that time he even learned to crawl, although he crawled dragging the cast behind him. When the cast came off he still crawled with one leg behind. That's the way he learned. I couldn't teach him everything!
The cast was quite a conversation starter when we went out to the store or to the park Naturally, everybody who saw us asked "Oh, what happened?" to which big brother, Josh, three, would answer. "My mommy dropped him on the hard concrete and broke his leg!" Thanks, Josh.
You would think that child would want to stay on the good side of a mom who would do that to a baby.
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