Andrew

The picture at left is one of my favorite pictures of my baby, Andrew. My little bugger. My sweetykins. My babycakes. It was taken last summer, when he was still a rolly polly 7 month old. Currently, he is 15 months old. And much leaner and much more active and talkative.

When I first learned I was pregnant with Andrew it was hard to believe I was capable of loving another human being as much as I love my first born, CJ. As I’ve written before, my relationship with CJ is still different, but during a recent conversation with my mother on the topic, she explained to me that there is no lesser love you have for your second, it’s just you’ve had a longer relationship with your first, so it feels different. And perhaps that is true. Because when we’re alone, and I can devote all my attention to him, my heart melts with joy and love that once before I never knew could happen before he was born. I’m an old pro with him, and he has not had to suffer through the bumblings of early motherhood that CJ has since weathered so well. You know, your first is always your “practice baby”, right? I think that’s what I might have meant when I said in my other post about my relationship with CJ as being so much more “raw”. Things have been swifter with Andrew, and that has nothing to do with the level of relationship, but with the fact that I actually knew what I was doing and life is much easier now than it was 5 years ago for me and my husband.

Andrew seems much less the people pleaser type than CJ, too. In fact, he is still not walking, and when you hold him up to make him try, he looks up and laughs at you as if to say, “You want me to do what? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Physically there is nothing wrong with his legs, which has been confirmed by his pediatrician. And he never crawled either. He “scoots” around on his tush. He moves around quite fast, and it amazes me that he has developed this alternative method of movement, since I had never seen a baby do that before. My baby’s a genius, you know.

(Hehe. Just kidding….sort of.)

So this post is about Andrew today, my happy go lucky, doing-it-my-way, daredevil-type that we lovingly refer to as Bam-Bam, because tomorrow he will have to endure something that as parents, you never want to see your kid go through. I’ve hesitated blogging about this because it’s not like I need the whole world to be privy to the personal information of my boys, but he was born with a hypospadia at birth and tomorrow is the surgery to correct it. He does not have the severe form of the condition, although it must be corrected, as it is more than just a cosmetic issue. It’s a 2 hour procedure that will take place at the hospital. When he was born, I went through the standard grieving period during which time I scoured my brain for all possible reasons he could have been born this way, and what did I do to him while he was in utero, etc.? After being assured by his doctor that this is not as traumatic as it could be, we went on with our lives and began to wait until the time when his little body would be ready to handle the surgery, as well as the recovery period. And so tomorrow, at 15 months, his little body is ready, whether he knows it or not. I decided to blog about this because I do not know anyone in my offline world that has any experience with this. Does anyone in the blogosphere care to share any experiences relating to this condition that you know of either indirectly or directly?

There could be worse things wrong with your child, I’m aware of that. I’ve always been thankful to have given birth to 2 healthy boys. It’s just dawned on me today that this day is now upon us, after which we’ve done an excellent job these past several weeks of forgetting about the day growing near during all this house hunting. And when Andrew was first born, we knew any impending surgery was far into the future. And so the future is now. I don’t know what to expect during the recovery period other than what the Doctor has prepared us for. Wish him luck.