WubbaNub: An $18 pacifier with a tiny stuffed animal attached.
We have nine WubbaNubs—NiNe, $18 pacifiers, 4 of which are awaiting surgery. Thankfully, the 431 other pacifiers we own came free with our $10 million NICU stay.
The first Wubbanubs were a therapeutic purchase. The girls’ mouths weren’t even big enough for a standard pacifier, but I was desperate for normalcy and retail therapy. The twins couldn’t wear clothes, and you can’t purchase a baby hat from Amazon for a kid whose head is roughly the size of an apple, so I settled on two Wubbanubs: an elephant and a llama.
By the time the girls could use the WubbaNubs, they had been dropped and washed so many times they looked like they belonged to a three-year-old who just can’t quit. I was so thrilled that we were using WubbaNubs and wearing clothes that there was a tenth of a second where I forgot we had been living in a hospital for three months.
The other shoe dropped, as it often does in the NICU, and Margot went from a WubbaNub-using, breastfeeding beauty to sedated and intubated. Since she was resting, and the nurses kept telling me I needed to rest to, I went home. That was my first mistake.
In the morning, Dear Husband (DH), went to rounds at the hospital where he found our beloved llama had been De-Wubbed. I believe his text message said, “someone cut the llama.” A mother who truly loved her children would have gotten in the car marched up to the NICU and demanded someone answer for the crime, but I went back to sleep. I deeply regret that.
When I finally made it to the hospital and saw the scene of the crime—the body of the llama still laying in bed with my daughter—its Wub severed—I understood the severity of the situation. “Who did this? This is an $18 pacifier. Who did this?” was all I could muster before dissolving into sobs.
People stared at me— a grown woman sobbing over a pacifier—for a long while before the nurse who committed the grievous offense fessed up. “I thought the pacifier was detachable. I’m so sorry.”
Who doesn’t know that a WubbaNub pacifier is not detachable? I am clearly an unfit mother and even I know that. I thought. The whole point is for your kid not to separate the pacifier from its holder so she can’t shove the pacifier so deeply between the couch cushions it can only be found by the person who picks the couch up from the curb 12 years from now to rehab it.
My mom must have heard my sobs all the way from her house 5 miles north of the hospital because she called and immediately asked what was wrong. I managed to get the story out with enough composure for her to understand. She managed to hold back her laughter and tell me—her 34-year-old daughter—that it was going to be ok. She would fix the pacifier.
This is how my mother became a surgeon.
Her first surgery was grueling. It took hours of YouTube videos, a thimble, and a very fat needle. Her hands ached and her eyes itched, but she emerged victorious. Since then, she’s done half a dozen surgeries on elephants, bears, ducks, and even a penguin.
Some people have asked why I didn’t go into surgery like my mother. When I put it all into perspective, $18 is just not that big of a price to pay to avoid something as invasive as having to stick a two-inch needle through a llama’s tongue.
Epilogue:
Despite my efforts to wean our daughters from their pacifiers, we recently added a unicorn, narwhal, and flamingo to our collection. We just can’t quit.
Full disclosure: the nurse who cut the llama was so nice about the whole thing. She heard the llama went to surgery, so she bought it a friend, and I felt like a real asshole for melting down over a pacifier.