10 WAYS I KILLED MY DAUGHTER WITHIN HER FIRST 72 HOURS OF LIFE

A HEARTWARMING SAGA OF LOVE, FATHERHOOD, AND SERIAL INFANTICIDE

Having your first baby is a joyous and unforgettable adventure, but one that can be compromised if you allow baby to die in your care. Unfortunately, the precipitous appearance of Baby tends to magnify the impression—at least among the inexperienced and unmedicated—that one has, rather by accident, killed him or her. This makes ensuing discussions with relatives awkward.

MOTHER-IN-LAW:	How is my sweet little lovey-dovey dumpling?
YOU:	Dead.

Good news!

Chances are, you have not killed Baby. Chances are, Baby is alive and well and merely plotting new ways to appear dead. I offer this reassurance from the perspective of a proud new papa who killed his daughter (Josephine Colette aka Peanut Almond aka Milkface McGee aka The Deceased) repeatedly in her first three days of life.

Death #1: Massive Exsanguination (Blood Loss)

Age of Deceased: 47 seconds

In an effort to prove my commitment to fatherhood, I insist on catching Baby. I do not catch Baby. No, Baby goes whistling right through my mitts in a fashion familiar to any Red Sox fan who has watched Bill Buckner attempt to play first base. This should be the initial cause of death (blunt trauma), but the ob-gyn, perhaps sensing my physical ineptitude, provides backup on the play.

Josephine Colette Almond, upon greeting the world, issues a single, stunned cry, then falls silent. She appears confused beyond terror.¹ The nurses swoop in to sponge the blood and mucus from her body, and she clasps her hands beneath her chin, like a tiny penitent. Her irises—the dull gray of solder—fix on mine for a moment, and my chest stings with the adoration.

The doctor reaches down to clamp the umbilical cord, which is dangling from her belly like a giant bluish strand of fusilli. “Do you want to make her belly button, Dad?” Before I can answer, she hands me a pair of scissors and gestures to a spot on the cord beyond the clamp. “Just cut here.”

This should not be difficult. I know how to operate scissors. I am, if you will, scissor literate. The doctor nods, and my thumb and forefinger come together and the blade bites against the spongy cord. Snip. My daughter is officially off the amniotic dole, severed from my wife, who is lying back against the pillows, breathing deeply, her cheeks still marbled with exertion.

The problem is the blood. Yes, there’s a trace of blood (which there shouldn’t be, given the clamp), and I can see now that I’ve cut too far down. In effect, I’ve stabbed my newborn in the gut. I close my eyes and watch red seep down her legs and stain the bedsheets. The small ration of blood inside Baby is gushing out now, and my daughter is draining to a chalky white.

“What have I done?” I whisper.

“You did a very good job, Mr. Almond,” the doctor says calmly. “You may let go of the scissors now.”

Death #2: Broken Vertebrae

Age of Deceased: 4 hours

In the maternity ward, the nurses tell us not to worry. They tell us to get some rest. We are both totally in awe of the nurses. If the nurses told us to bathe the baby in lye, our only question would be, Should we heat the lye? We hit the Help button every seventeen minutes.²

Erin limps to the bathroom, and, because I can think of no good reason to call for the on-duty nurse, I am for the first time alone with Baby, whom I was supposed to swaddle into a tight little burrito, though she looks more like a defective veggie wrap. As I set her down to sleep, she throws her arms up in the air and waves them like she just don’t care. Later on, it will be explained to me that this is normal, something called the Moro Reflex. For now, I am briefly convinced baby has a future in hip-hop.

This maneuver, however, manages to tip her from her side onto her stomach, which we have been warned by countless paranoia-inducing baby books is the Position of Death. I reach down to flip her over—carefully, because (as I also know from the baby books) Baby doesn’t have neck muscles yet. The thing connecting her torso to her head is just a band of fat with some tubes in the middle.

Baby reacts to this jostling by again waving her arms in the air like she just don’t care and kicking the plastic rim of the bassinet. Gravity—that first cruel joke—sends her tumbling off my hands and onto her shoulder. Her muscleless neck twists at a grisly angle. “Baby,” I whisper. “Baby!” I give baby a light shove. But Baby does not move.

“Baby,” I plead. “Please don’t be dead.” Baby, curled like a brine shrimp, remains dead.

I poke her in the tummy, probably harder than is appropriate.

Baby spits up on my hand.

Death #3: Cancer

Age of Deceased: 9 hours

The nurses instruct us to change Baby’s diaper every two hours. Erin has done the first three, so I’m up. I remove her diaper and marvel at her skinny little bowed legs and her abnormally long toes, which look disturbingly like fingers. Most of all, I make a determined effort to ignore my daughter’s gigantic red vulva. Her diaper is empty, but I decide to wipe anyway. A practice wipe. I hoist her up by the ankles and proceed gently unto the breach.

Baby gets a curious look on her face. Her cheeks flush. Her eyes squinch up, as if she is bench-pressing another, much larger, baby. And then something very scary is happening: A thick, goopy substance is extruding from her tiny backside. My daughter is suddenly a tube of oil-based paint and she is being squeezed by the hand of some callous god. What comes out is a shimmery puce.

It is immediately evident what’s happening: My daughter is shitting out a tumor. Yes, my daughter has cancer, cancer of the stomach and the intestines and the heart; her insides are not red and healthy, they are ravaged and feculent. And puce. This too is my fault. I have managed to transmit my malignant humours to the poor child, and now she is pooping out her poisoned life force.

Erin, risen from the bed, stands at my shoulder. For a moment, we watch baby shit tumor together. “Hey,” she says. “It’s meconium!”

Yes, I am seeing Baby’s first bowel movement, a superconcentrated form of stool that includes mucus, bile, and (somehow—I refused to investigate the details) hair.

Death #4: Respiratory Failure

Age of Deceased: 19 hours

Baby has by now taken on a distinctly pugilistic aspect. Her face is red and puffed around the brows. She insists on holding her fists on either side of her chin and occasionally shoots out a left jab.

This is okay with me. I remind myself: Baby is alive. I have not yet killed Baby. Indeed, it has begun to dawn on me that Baby is not quite so fragile as she would have me believe. I have watched the nurses handle her, the brisk tossing of her body this way and that, and noticed that she remains alive.

Most of the time, Baby sleeps, and when she awakens she hits the local titty bar, which she attacks with such vigor that Erin yelps. I am the designated burper. I set Baby on my lap and pat her back. She tends to droop over and fall asleep without burping, then she throws up on herself. Baby is, in this sense, a bad drunk.

Chief Nurse Kelly (CNK) deems my burping technique insufficient to the gastric needs of Baby. “Put her ovah your shouldah and get her right heah,” she explains, in cheerful Bostonese. She demonstrates. Baby looks as if she were operating a tiny jackhammer. She burps almost immediately. CNK hands Baby to me and leaves.

I do exactly what CNK did, but Baby senses she is being handled by an incompetent. Her fingers wiggle nervously. Then Baby begins making odd noises, little suspirating yelps. Her diaphragm heaves. In my eagerness to mimic CNK, I have crushed Baby’s trachea. I hold Baby in my lap and watch her tiny death throes.

“How cute!” Erin cries from the bed. “She’s got the hiccups!”

Death #5: Aneurysm

Age of Deceased: 27 hours

Baby has somehow acquired a stuffy nose. Her breathing calls to mind Peter Lorre. This is a problem, as she must also feed, and Baby is not yet coordinating the two very well. The nurses have left us with a bulb syringe, which I remember their inserting in Baby’s nostrils just after birth to clear the mucus. I attempt the same thing. Because of a basic misunderstanding of physics,³ and specifically the concept of suction, I fail to deflate the bulb before insertion. Instead, I blow air up Baby’s nose.

The air travels up into the soft cup of her skull and pops the fragile balloon around her brainpan, which I am certain exists despite having no actual neurological expertise. The popping of this fragile “brain balloon” ruptures the frontal lobes, the synaptic nerve bundles, and every single micro-artery in Baby’s head.

Death #6: Intestinal Detonation

Age of Deceased: 39 hours

Baby has what Micki, the lactation expert, calls an “improper latch.” Mickey is a terrifyingly cheerful blond woman who has visited our room no fewer than seven times. Every time Baby needs to feed—which she signals by wailing in the manner of a deranged castrato—Micki bursts into our room and slams Baby’s mouth against Erin’s boob. She does this slamming at a number of angles, all the while saying encouraging things such as “She’s almost got it now! Good girl! Oh, wait, is that blood? Nothing to worry about!”

I stand by the foot of the bed with my Supportive Dad smile while Erin and Baby weep inconsolably.

“Good news for Dad!” Micki says. “Dad gets to do some finger feeding!”

Contrary to my initial understanding, this does not mean that I will be serving Baby hors d’oeuvres. It means she will be fed through a tiny tube taped to my finger and attached to a syringe full of formula.

“What about, you know, a bottle?” I say.

“Oh, no,” Micki says. “That would cause nipple confusion!”

I want to tell Micki that the child is likely to inherit nipple confusion from me anyway, but the baby has gone Pavarotti on our asses now. My finger is quickly taped and syringed and Baby affixed thereto. Micki’s beeper beeps and she rushes off. Erin, bone-tired, bloodied, falls into a deep sleep. Once again I am alone with Baby, who is sucking formula from my finger. Every few sucks she pauses to breathe and lets out a pleased sigh. The first syringe is gone in half a minute. Baby devours a second syringe, then a third. Midway through the fourth syringe, Baby’s eyes droop shut. Formula rills down her chin. I am bursting with pride. I have fed Baby! Baby sleeps.

When I wake three hours later, Erin is hissing at me. “What did you do to her? She’s all bloated! She’s not breathing right!”

I stumble over to the bassinet.

Baby’s tiny belly does appear distended. Her face is the shade of a winter plum. A memory comes to me, unbidden, of a film my parents forced me to watch when I was young. It was about Swedish immigrants, all of whom were—as is the habit of Swedish immigrants in depressing films—starving to death. Then this one little girl finds a giant cache of cereal and eats so much her stomach bloats up and eventually explodes.

“How much did you feed her?” Erin demands.

“A couple of syringes.” I set my hand on her hand, in the cautious manner of a father who has yet again killed his infant. “She was hungry.”

“Didn’t you hear Micki? Her stomach is the size of a walnut!”

“It could be the hiccups,” I say, and hit the Help button.

“She doesn’t have fucking hiccups,” Erin says.

Nurse Tina appears. “What’s the problem?”

Baby closes her eyes and releases a bowel movement of volcanic magnitude, a shuddering liquid outburst of the sort that will soon come to be known in our household as the Hot Mustard Explosion.

Death #7: Asphyxiation

Age of Deceased: 43 hours

As a rule, the nurses have no patience for us dads. We are clumsy, luggish, good for nothing. We have purchased our proximity to the miracle of birth with a thimbleful of sperm, and the bargain strikes them, perhaps appropriately, as outrageous.

Mostly we stay out of the way. We gather in the common room and stuff our mouths with muffins and murmur things like “Scary shit, man” and “Way to go” and “Yeah, we did it.” We do the stiff-armed man hug. We promenade our babies up and down the halls when they’re cranky and nod to each other wearily, like we’ve just been through hell and back and boy aren’t our vaginal canals sore!

The fact that I am finger feeding grants me a certain measure of maternity cred,⁴ and I make it a point to flaunt my role. “Do you have any spare syringes?” I say loudly, whenever I pass by the nurses’ station. “Yeah, I’ve got another feeding just now. I’m going with the index finger this time around. The pinkie made her a little gassy.”

Following the Hot Mustard debacle, Micki has explained to me that I must keep the syringe lower than my finger, so as to force Baby to suck against gravity and prevent her from gorging. But I am already conducting my fourth feeding, which naturally means I know more about the process than anyone else on earth. And thus it should be taken as no problem at all when I lift the syringe quickly, in an effort to scratch my neck, and it comes to rest a foot or so above Baby’s mouth, meaning that she is—with no actual warning—shotgunning formula.

Alas, Baby is not used to shotgunning. Baby has not even pledged a sorority. She signifies this by promptly sputtering, gagging, and reverting to her fallback asphyxiation shade (winter plum). Baby then vomits, which seems encouraging, except that I have failed to turn Baby on her side, so the vomit funnels back down her throat.

I have Jimi Hendrixed my daughter to death.

Death #8: Poison

Age of Deceased: 51 hours

The nurses have begun openly to hate me. This has to do not just with my regular and tiresome fears of having killed my daughter, but the fact that I have begun stealing unreasonable quantities of hospital property: diapers, formula, syringes, blankets, waterproof bed pads, petroleum jelly, hospital gowns, socks, bagels.⁵ The nurses watch from their station, flabbergasted, as I ferry the goods down to the parking lot in bulging plastic sacks. They are too embarrassed to stop me.

Why am I doing this? For one thing, the other dads have encouraged me. They have indicated that absconding with items is standard protocol. I have simply taken the practice to a new level, a level perhaps best described as grand larceny.

The truth is, having been relieved of finger feeding duty (see Death #7) I am bored. Thus I am trying to prove myself useful. I am—by a rather loose definition—hunting and gathering. It might also be conjectured that I am somewhat nervous about leaving the hospital with Baby and am therefore attempting to take a significant portion of the hospital home with me.

Nonetheless, after two days, a frightfully young pediatrician appears, examines Baby, and hands us our walking papers. Chief Nurse Kelly does not say, “We’re sorry to see you go!” She does not say, “Do you need anything else?” She does not say, “What a cute baby!” She says, “I assume you’ll have room in the cah for your daughtah.”

We arrive home and place Baby in the fancy frilled bassinet Erin managed to secure from friends.⁶ We stare at Baby for several minutes and wait—as do all parents in such circumstances—for a detailed instruction manual to float down from heaven and land in our hands.

Instead, we are left to fend for ourselves. Baby continues to latch improperly. I am placed back on finger feeding duty. The single item I failed to steal from the hospital now becomes apparent: the tape used to bind feeding tube to finger.

Is it wise for me to use duct tape instead? I suppose it is not. But when you are face-to-face with a hysterical newborn at three in the morning, your judgment clouds. And the duct tape works like a charm. Baby chows down, making her endearing Viking slurps and, toward the end of the feeding, producing a Mustard Explosion so prodigious it blows out the edges of her diaper.⁷ Only later do I realize that Baby’s power suckling has stripped away a portion of the duct tape from my finger and that Baby has thus ingested a good deal of the adhesive.

Baby appears to be sleeping peacefully, but I cannot shake the fear that this adhesive is toxic and that Baby will soon begin foaming at the mouth. I tiptoe over and stare down at her in the dim light. Her breathing seems shallow and hurried. I scurry to my computer and Google “duct tape” and “toxic adhesive.” There is a wealth of information about sealants and thermal insulation, but nothing on whether I’ve killed my daughter. I return to the bedroom and hover over Baby for the next twenty minutes.

“What’s the matter?” Erin murmurs. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” I say. “How much do you know about duct tape?”

She rushes over to the bassinet and reaches for Baby, who jolts awake at her touch and throws a drowsy left jab.

Death #9: Heat Stroke

Age of Deceased: 59 hours

Issues have arisen as to heating. Erin would like the house at 70 degrees, so as to avoid freezing the child to death. I would prefer the low sixties, arguing that we can dress Baby in layers. After a brief discussion involving the possibility of separate dwellings, the thermostat is set at 70 degrees.

Owing to the general decrepitude of our home heating system—which appears to operate by means of a small British orphan shoveling coal into a burning sock—it is determined that 70 degrees is not warm enough. I drag my ancient portable heater into the bedroom. A few hours later I awaken, bathed in sweat. We are on the brink of dawn, the pink hour at which the room should be chilliest. It is a sauna. I have forgotten this crucial fact about the heater: It is an extremely badass piece of equipment. And now I realize, with sinking dread, that I have placed this monstrosity right next to Baby’s crib and that (therefore) its supercharged heat quasars have been blasting Baby for the last four hours straight, a fact that explains her uncharacteristic silence.

I have boiled Baby’s blood.

Unlike the many other forms of distress I’ve inflicted on my daughter thus far, heat is a silent killer. No coughing. No crying. Just a moist descent into coma, followed by the noiseless simmering of internal organs. I throw the blankets off, rip the heater’s cord from the wall, and stagger to the foot of the bed. I burrow my thumb under Baby’s onesie, searching for her tiny poached heart. When I feel the flicker, I drop to my knees.

Baby stares at me with her fuzzy gray eyes and yawns.

Death #10: Grief

Age of Deceased: 77 hours

Baby is crying. Baby will not stop crying. We have tried everything in our limited repertoire: food, a new diaper, rocking. We have run through all five of the measures recommended by the creepy doctor in our Happiest Baby on the Block video. We have even blasted the eerie amniotic horror music at the end of the DVD, a very bad decision for all involved.

Erin is becoming panicky, so I send her downstairs to do laundry.

Now it is just me and Baby. I walk her from room to room and whisper my secret vows of love, and Baby yells and weeps and chokes on her tears. Her face appears frozen in a gummy frown. Her ears are tiny red seashells. There is a hot momentum to her misery; she is speaking in tongues, an ecstatic.

It is her right as a citizen of earth, this aria of sorrow, this abject declaration. She puts everything she is, every ounce of her, into each shriek. Her breath is so sweet I want to climb inside her mouth. I kiss her cheek and she cries harder.

And as I watch her, as I listen to her crescendo, as I feel her muscles tense against my chest, I begin to recognize the source of my own terror. The world will kill this child, day by day, wish by wish. I can do little to protect her, almost nothing. The very love I inflict on her will only sharpen her disappointment in the end. She is a part of the great cosmic joke now, the daily lamentation of a species born into pain. Baby is only telling me the truth: It hurts so much right now I could die.

This is when it happens a final time. Baby seizes up. Her throat catches. Her body, with a culminating exhalation, falls limp against me.

Erin appears with a load of warm blankets. The house has gone still. It smells of garlic and burned sugar. A half moon hangs over us. The silence sounds now like the warm echo of the creature I am holding. Erin sets her hand on the small of my back. She rests her forehead against my chest. She stares at our baby with a love so dumb and fierce as to forgive everything.

“You got her to sleep,” she says softly. “Nice work, Papa.”