Tiny T-Rex Arms - Baby Maverick

Tiny T-Rex Arms (Memories of Mav)

One of my earliest memories of Maverick my Grandson is a nickname we gave him: Sandbag.

We stopped using it fairly quickly when we realized it could be interpreted in ways we never intended, but the reason behind it was simple. Maverick couldn't hold himself up. He couldn't support his shoulders, couldn't take much of his own weight, and because he was in pain so much of the time, he spent long periods being carried. When you picked him up, he would simply drape himself over/down you like a little sandbag.

At the time it felt like one of those family nicknames that appear out of nowhere. Looking back now, it was actually telling us something.

Another phrase I had never heard before Maverick came along was Failure to Thrive.

My daughter taught me, F F T Failure To Thrive. (how Victorian a quote) In a modern day?

At every check-up she took him, verbally constant , it seemed to appear on forms, abbreviated to FTT. The box would be ticked again and again. Failure to thrive. I had never heard this abbreviation before, and now it was becoming the norm.

The words always felt harsh to me because when I looked at him, I didn't see failure. I saw a beautiful little boy fighting harder than anyone could imagine. His body was using every ounce of energy to heal, to support damaged lungs, to recover from surgeries, and to keep going despite everything it was carrying.

He wasn't failing.

He was surviving.

Maverick was also, quite unexpectedly, a little T-Rex.

I never noticed it myself. To me he was perfect. He was gorgeous, funny, stubborn, vocal, and determined. Yes, he screamed a lot because he was in pain. Yes, he wanted to be held constantly because he was rarely comfortable. But I never stood back and analysed him.

Then my daughter mentioned his arms, upon measuring and regular ST George check up's they had noticed.

They weren't growing in proportion to the rest of his body.

Suddenly I saw it.

His little arms looked tiny compared with the rest of him. But because they were usually hanging down at his sides, and because he couldn't properly support his shoulders, I had never really noticed. They were simply part of Maverick.

Tiny T-Rex arms.

The thing is, those little arms told the same story as everything else. His body was directing its resources elsewhere. Growth wasn't the priority. Survival was.

The wonderful part of this story comes later.

Once the surgeries were behind him, once he had fought his way through the operations on his lungs and started to recover, his body finally seemed able to catch up. Gradually his arms found their proportions. They lengthened. They looked just right.

The tiny T-Rex arms disappeared.

And I always find the irony rather lovely.

The T-Rex was one of the most powerful predators to ever walk the earth, famous for having the smallest arms.

Maverick was the biggest fighter I've ever known.

And for a while, he had the smallest arms too. ❤️

Footnote - Maverick was born during the Covid restrictions , C section to have a lung collapse. They had known since Molly's second scan that he had CPAM, the worst case St George's had seen in sixty years.

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