The biggest loser

One the last TV shows that Carolyn and I watched before our forcible removal from popular culture was a reality TV program called The Biggest Loser; obese people competed to lose weight, resist temptation and, this being reality TV, plot to destroy each other. The dramatic moments centered around the weigh-ins, where the week's biggest loser would be revealed. At the time, Carolyn and I speculated about emergency weight loss strategies that a contestant might use to drop the final few ounces before the weigh-in.

We're watching Max's weight with the same intensity that the audience watched those long-ago contestants' weights. In the way that everything in our life is a mirror image of reality as we used to know it, we are desperate to see Max gain weight, and we would be willing to use a trick or two to artificially inflate his weight around his weigh-ins, but the nurses and doctors know about the obvious strategies.

When travelling nurse J. came by on Friday, she found Max to weigh 15 lbs, 1 oz. Dr. J. felt that this was insufficient gain over the week, and asked to see Max after the weekend, i.e. today. Carolyn brought Max in to the pediatrician's office, where they found his weight to be 15 lbs, 5 oz. To me, it's a simple matter of measurement error: different scales, different people doing the weighing, and our floors aren't exactly level. But it seemed to satisfy Dr. J., who asked what we had done over the weekend to increase his weight 1.6 percent in three days.

I'll let you in our secret: we forgot to feed him. At some point last night, probably around 2 or so, his pump ran dry. Carolyn and I slept through our alarms and didn't get up to refill his pump until past 4:00 AM. Just think how much Max would have weighed if we had remembered to feed him.