Make that +1

Apparently there isn't a true consensus on the number of organs in the human body. The balance teeters on what defines each piece and parcel.

Whatever the number is, I've discovered it's +1 once you become a parental-figure to a single petite edition of our species.

Back in Salt Lake City, five days after Quinn surprised us with her choice to be a Utah native, I caught myself clinching my chest as I galloped down the stairs to get to the hospital in time to just maybe touch her for an extra moment while changing her diaper. Even though I packed on the pudge during pregnancy, I had stayed relatively fit, yet the pain in my chest felt like something serious.

On the drive up to the hospital, a game of delayed rationalization consumed my thoughts: "If I still feel the pain by the time I reach that third set of lights, then I'll think about mentioning it to someone else.... Ok, it still hurts, maybe worse. Um, alright... Maybe I'm still acclimating to the altitude, so if I hold my breathe maybe my lungs will relax..." None of my tricks worked; all pointed to something potentially grim. So I folded my cards and went down two floors to the ER to get checked out.

At the time, the concern was that I might be having a pulmonary embolism, which is something akin to having death on call-waiting.

The doctors hammered this home when I suddenly reneged having an MRI after learning I'd have to toss out what milk I produced for several days afterward because of the radiation involved. Since I was still producing the liquid gold "colostrum," and not much at that, there wasn't a chance I'd throw it out rather than feed my little girl, since that is all she was being fed. (You knew it had to come back to that darn breastmilk, didn't you!?! Surely a new postulate in algebra can be boiled down to: Breastmilk = Root of all evil for J).

Long story short -- the doctors made me sign a stack of forms, including one that was handwritten, all of which stated that if I croaked the moment I left the ER it was all my own doing having been so thoroughly warned.

Admittedly, it was monumentally dumb to risk my life in exchange for some breastmilk. I realized that then, and now, with all the troubles it's given Quinn, I feel of notable stupidity.

Yet, I couldn't shake the feeling that the pain that radiated throughout my chest wasn't caused by anything physical so much as by the yanking of the strings and threads on my heart pulled like a puppet by the well-being of our little girl.

That's when I became attuned to this new organ.

Whether a kid finds shelter behind your own cage of ribs, or if that kid comes to you by a means other than birth, that organ hatches before that baby ever touches your arms. Tentacles from this new organ replace the severed umbilical cord, and trump it in reach and strength.

They reach back into past moments of anguish, as well as into future pangs over the child's first skinned knee, her first undeserved affront, or her heart's first break... And they extend through generations, as grandparents feel old pains all anew.

That gripping chest pain returned to me moments after we thought Quinn might have NEC. The lingering guilt for my foolish disregard of the doctors' concerns finally vindicated and assuaged, was quickly replaced with trepidation that this pain might have fostered permanent roots in my heart.

Today, a tinge of that pain resurfaces as Quinn will undergo an ultrasound, and possibly a Barium swallow, to see if her digestive problems are more than an intolerance for mother's milk. She doesn't get much, but some breastmilk every day to infuse her with those properties no man or manufacturing can ever replicate. Still, she is not able to stomach much of anything in terms of volume -- without promptly returning it -- and continues to writhe and thrash from deep discomfort with what her stomach keeps.

We are hopeful that the outcome quickly puts both her belly, and our hearts to rest.

All the belly and the best from,
the Murphy Tribe