I opened my mouth in surrender and closed my eyes, gripping the arms of the high chair in anticipation of the wretched purée. I could not see the expression on my nurse’s face, but I heard the coo in her voice as she said, “That’s a GOOD baby! Open wide!”
When I had finished all the food, she wiped my face with a wash cloth and got a chance to see what she had been feeding me. The labels of the jars had gotten turned around and I saw that the foul textured mixture was baby food! No wonder it had tasted so revolting! The very thought of eating that infantile mess made me feel nauseous! She removed the filthy gown from me and reached into the large pocket on the front of her apron to show me what was next on the agenda. It didn’t matter to me by that time what it was. All I wanted was something to drink and rid my mouth of the horrid taste of baby food.
At first the object in her hand looked like another jar, but when she removed the covering, I saw to my horror what they had planned for me to drink with my meal; baby formula!
“No! Please no! Anything but that!”, I whispered.
The nurse smiled encouragingly and said, “Oh, come on. It’s not as bad as all that! Here, let me get you out of the high chair and I’ll show you.”
She recapped the short baby bottle and put it back in her pocket before throwing the empty jars in the trash. Then she removed the tray from the high chair and lifted me out of the humiliating feeding station to put me on her lap. I looked up at her with an expression of pleading in my eyes as she withdrew the baby bottle from her pocket and removed the cover. Then she laid me back against her arm and proceeded to put the nipple into my mouth. I struggled briefly against my fate and then surrendered without a word being said. A few minutes later, I lay in her lap nursing at the bottle as if I had been an infant all my life and had never learned to drink from a glass.
I suppose it wasn’t all that bad, but I couldn’t tell. The taste of the baby food I had eaten earlier had destroyed my sense of taste and all I could feel was the cool wetness as I sucked minuscule sips of formula from the artificial teat and swallowed. After a minute or two, I found the correct rhythm to maximize the flow and I lay there on her lap with my eyes closed, determined to get enough of the milky fluid to wash the taste of the baby food out of my mouth.
I heard the head nurse’s voice say as she dropped by to see if my nurse was having any trouble feeding me, “How’s it going in here? Any problems? I see he’s taken to the bottle easily enough.”