THE “NIPPLE CONFUSION”

The heading may look like a weird medical jargon to you, may be it is …but my thought while writing this piece was not a chapter I read in the Textbook of Pediatrics.
Walking down the street of Manhattan, marveling at my “Transformation” my eye caught the sight of this extremely beautiful child .She must have been 2 month old …lord my heart went out to her.
See when I say my Transformation, it’s like my “Personal Nirvana” this happened earlier this year …. I became a senior resident in Pediatrics and to my relief I didn’t have to slog hard like an intern anymore. What had changed was realization of the fact that as a person drawing a salary by wearing fancy scrubs and crocs, I had more to my job profile.
It was as if I had entered my “Mental Puberty”...my maturation into a doctor …
I am my patients advocate, because poor things can’t stand for themselves …
I unknowingly now surprise myself , by not being able to withhold my urge to go overboard in the care or play with kids , not just out of affection ,but my love for the branch , which was lacking earlier .
Pediatrics happened like a sweet accident.
Okay coming back to my “inspiration” ….there is this girl who is definitely daughter of a Caucasian mother, who probably is a single mom, and to sustain herself in the center of New York City is probably out for work. She has hired a nanny, who of course is a caring Mexican lady, I say caring because she unknowingly is exposing our lil sweetheart to the sun more than her mother would have loved, but as a blessing in disguise is allowing nature to strengthen the baby’s bone.
The sight of the baby hungry wincing to express her hunger was overwhelming…her smooth white skin was flushed red , eyebrows frowned to the most obtuse angles , her big green eyes filled with tears , and her restrained hands skewed demonstrating her struggle to break free… but what was most heart touching was the way she was moving her head ..trying to feel for the mother she doesn’t have the fortune to be with ...I pitied that baby … she had everything that would make her proud if she looked back in her childhood …but she is lacking the one component that I think helped shaped me ….
I always had my mother with me …nurturing me …
This baby accidently hit the breast of her nanny and was ferverently trying to make lip movements trying to suck on the breast, through the nanny’s shirt. The struggle of not being able to get the touch of her mother , the fight of missing the warmth , the absence of that love , will today shape this baby’s thoughts …. Subconsciously somewhere that missing nipple will one day, contribute, mom to spend a lonely Christmas 20 yrs down the line, in an old age home, crying about the ill stroke of fate.