My big head child

I looked into the newborn room through the window. Even from a distance, I could easily tell which one was mine—he was the only Asian baby there. His face was wide, and his head looked big.

Next to me stood a white woman at least three or four times my size. A nurse held up her baby for her to see, and she smiled with joy. Then she looked at my big baby, glanced at me up and down, and gave a surprised expression.

“Is that your baby?”

I was embarrassed he was so big, so I answered in a small voice,

“Yes.”

“How many pounds?”

“9 pounds, 8 ounces.”

She looked at me in shock again, checking me out from head to toe.

“How could such a big baby come out of such a small body?”

“I had a C-section.”

“How much did your baby weigh?” I asked.

“6 pounds,” she replied.

My first child was the biggest baby born at that hospital that week. A nurse brought him to me and stayed by my side, watching me with worried eyes. Every time I tried to stand up while holding him, she warned me I might drop him and insisted I sit down to hold him instead. I guess she thought someone under 100 pounds like me couldn’t manage such a big baby safely. On the day we left the hospital, the nurse gave me some meaningful advice:“

You have to be the boss of your baby. Don’t let your baby become the boss of you.”

As the big baby grew, people started saying he wasn’t very tall. Of course, with both parents being short, it wasn’t a big surprise. But still, he grew up healthy. When he hit puberty, he became very self-conscious about his looks. He complained that he was short, his face was too big, his cheeks were too chubby, and his legs were thick. He blamed us, saying he inherited only the worst parts of both Mom and Dad.

By 9th grade, his face was covered in acne.

“Why do you care so much about your looks? Just focus on your studies,” 

I said, but he would grumble and argue back, more and more often.

All throughout his childhood, we had raised him with lots of hand-me-downs—clothes, toys, and more. But now, I felt it was time to finally use the money I had carefully saved up over the years. My child and I started researching everything we could find about acne online. I bought all kinds of acne treatments that people recommended. We got him braces and signed him up for the swim team. To shift his focus, I even sent him on overseas volunteer trips every summer.

One day, surprised by how much money I was suddenly spending on him and how different I was acting, he asked,
“Mom, are you okay? Are we going bankrupt or something?”