The Weekend My Daughter Had Maple Syrup Disease

The problem with being a nurse is, after a while, you see things. Weird things. Things you never learned about in nursing school. Things that get tucked away in the back of your mind, never to be thought of again, until one morning you wake up. Catch a whiff of something unexpected. And panic.

Why? Because that unexpected scent can only mean one thing. Your baby has maple syrup disease.

Who’s making pancakes?

That was my first thought one cold Saturday morning as I slipped on my robe and trudged down the hallway. Unfortunately, I knew the answer. Nobody was making pancakes. My husband was still asleep, and the only other person in the house at that time was our five-month-old daughter. Though she’d become a pro at sleeping through the night, she had yet to master the skill of whipping up buttermilk pancakes to serve her mother in bed.

I opened my daughter’s door and sniffed. So why did her room smell like pancakes? Strange. I sniffed again. Actually, it didn’t smell like pancakes. More like….maple syrup. I nursed her, changed her diaper, and couldn’t stop sniffing. Yeah. It totally smelled like maple syrup. So weird. 

By the time I finished getting her dressed, the scent was lodged in my nostrils. I couldn’t stop smelling it. “Something’s wrong with our daughter,” I told my husband. “I hate to say it, but I think she’s got the maple syrup disease.”

He patted my head. “You’re cute.”

“No. I’m serious. I had a patient a few years ago with maple syrup disease. It’s a thing. He had to take a certain medication or his urine would smell like maple syrup.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It also caused developmental delays.”

Now I had my husband’s attention. He lifted our daughter and sniffed. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Her diaper’s dry. Smell the next one, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.” 

We spent the rest of the day inhaling the aroma of our daughter’s wet diapers, and of course, nothing. No pancake smell. No maple syrup. My husband thought I was nuts.

Until Sunday morning, when it happened again.

I threw on my robe (because my husband keeps the thermostat exactly one degree above frostbite conditions all winter long) and followed the scent of warm maple syrup to our daughter’s crib. 

“Smell that?” I asked my husband when he stepped into the room a short while later. 

He leaned over my shoulder as I changed our daughter’s diaper. His nose wrinkled. “I don’t know that I’d call it maple syrup. But yeah, I definitely smell something. Hmm…” He cinched the belt on his robe with sudden determination. The man wanted answers. And there was only one place to go. “I’m googling it,” he declared and marched straight to the computer.

“This says maple syrup disease is usually diagnosed when babies are newborns,” he hollered from the other room. “And that they’re usually lethargic and have seizures.”

I looked at our babbling five month old. Her bright blue eyes hardly appeared like those of a lethargic baby on the verge of seizures. Although they did seem to display some mild concern over the obsessive nature her parents had with her diapers.

“Does google have any other ideas?” I shouted back.

More tapping on the keyboard. “She might have diabetes.”

“Diabetes? No. That doesn’t make sense. Do healthy babies get diabetes?”

“I don’t know. You’re the nurse.”

That’s right. I was the nurse. “Well…google if healthy babies get diabetes. Then google if nurses should know whether healthy babies get diabetes.”

After further googling, we still didn’t have any answers, and it was time to get ready for church. We’d just have to wait and see how the rest of the day played out. And like the day before…nothing. No weird scents. No sudden lethargy. No bouts of tonic-clonic seizure activity. She seemed perfectly fine. So what was with the maple syrup smell every morning? It had to mean something.

We decided if it happened again, we’d call her doctor’s office. So Monday morning, after I pulled on my robe and raced down the hallway to turn up the thermostat and could already smell the same odor wafting from our daughter’s bedroom, I told my husband we needed to call. And by we, I meant he. I had to leave for work.

“That’s so weird,” a nurse said to me after our shift started and I told her everything.

“Isn’t it?”

“And you haven’t changed anything in your diet? You don’t think it could be related to breastfeeding somehow?”

“No.” I shook my head and thought back to everything I’d consumed in the past week. “I pretty much eat the same thing most days. After I have my coffee, I—” My mind paused. “Oh wait…” 

Coffee. 

I held up a finger. “I need to call my husband real quick.” I ran into the break room and tapped his number. “Please tell me you haven’t called the doctor’s office yet.” Thankfully he hadn’t. “Are you still at home?”

“Yes.”

“Go to our bedroom closet and smell the right sleeve of my robe. Does it smell like maple syrup?” 

“If by maple syrup, you mean that weird gross smell, then yes.”

“It’s not gross. It’s coffee. Southern pecan flavored coffee.” Which to me, always smelled a bit like maple syrup. 

I had forgotten that on Friday morning, when I sat down on the couch with a mug full of coffee, one of the cats had jumped up and startled me. My coffee sloshed over the rim, onto my robe. But by that point in motherhood, I was so used to wearing spit-up like an accessory, what was a little coffee on the sleeve? 

“It smells gross.” My husband has never been a fan of coffee in any way, shape, or flavor. “Wash your robe.”

That night I did. And wouldn’t you know, our daughter has been in remission from maple syrup disease ever since.