Cognosco

Dear Little Dude,

Time is flying. It freaks me out. It seems like I just wrote month three, and then I think about that fact that it’s been FOUR MONTHS since we had our little birth journey and I am astounded. I want to slow time down and savor it just a little, tiny bit. Especially now that being your mama has become so much fun.

I feel that I have to talk about sleep, because in general, I am ridiculously lucky. We started a sleep ritual with you at about 8 weeks that has grown into the following rock-solid pattern for us. First, you have a little bath. Then I feed you (or your daddy feeds you if I’ve had wine with dinner) while you’re still in just a towel. I love that part. There is nothing more divine than holding a naked baby. Plus, we get to make fun of your chub rolls…Then we diaper you and put on your PJs (actually a onesie–it is Phoenix). We give you your pacifier (you don’t wake when it falls out of your mouth–thank god) and swaddle you and put you into the cosleeper. We (or just one of us if the other is working) read you a story and then turn on your rain sounds. Then, we leave the room. And I’ll be damned if you don’t go to sleep on your own. Somewhere between last month and this month, we tried putting you down drowsy. And you fell asleep. And you’ve done it every night. In fact, if I stay in the room, you will resist sleep, thinking that really, the party must just be getting started. The bedtime story just started in the last two weeks, and you giggle and smile the whole time. It breaks my heart, it’s so damn cute.

And then there was another big change in the last week or so. I tried swaddling you with one arm out, and although you grunted a little more, you continued to sleep. Then we tried both arms out, so it’s really just a faux-swaddle where I wrap the sheet around your torso and tuck it nice and snug. The first two nights, you flailed a lot, but remained asleep. Now, you sleep through the night with no major drama. You no longer have a moro reflex and no longer startle yourself awake. Of all your developmental milestones, this one makes me proudest and saddens me the most. Because it was the last pillar of newborn-ness, and now it’s gone. You’re now a little baby dude, not a little newborn dude.

In the last two weeks you’ve determined that by god, your bedtime is between 8 and 8:30. At first I tried to fight it thinking you’d sleep later if you went to bed later. It just doesn’t work that way, does it? And now, I actually relish that time after you’re asleep. And you are pretty consistently waking between 5 and 5:30 to eat and then going back down within the hour for two more hours. So all of this is the good news. The not so good news is that your nap life is making me crazy. You’re a power napper through and through. But now, you are fighting even those. So, we’re in the process of developing a nap routine, made difficult by the fact that each day has a different schedule and you’re caregivers vary a little. Oh well. We’ll get it.

I’ve gone "back to work", meaning I have a teaching assistant position that involves teaching and I actually have to show up at assigned times and stuff. So, either your daddy or your nanna watch you for a few hours five days of the week. I’m glad for it, because I like that they get special time with you. It’s kind of nice to get away, but I miss you like crazy. It’s hard to be away from you, but good for me at the same time. And pumping sucks. Period. But it’s still worth it to know that I’m giving you the best food possible at this time in your life.

You’ve started to grasp and hold on to things and have developed a preference for certain toys. You have a blue bear blanket textured thing that you simply adore. I save it for fussy times and car rides and your eyes light up when you see it coming. I also give you a little frog that has a 4 inch x 4 inch little blankie thing sewed to his hand when you go to bed. You’re very texture oriented, and it’s small enough that I don’t worry about it suffocating you. I also bought you a Lamaze brand gawdy toy peacock that you adore.

When I showed it to you in the store (trying to get some feedback…) it prompted you to babble for the next half an hour. So I figured we had a winner. Oh, and you’ve decided that everything you hold must be immediately inspected by your mouth. Your mouth that drools constantly. And no matter how disgusting I have always found baby drool to be, it’s true that I actually find it cute on you. But the spit-up…not so cute.

You usually love tummy time…for about 5 minutes. Which is something. I am admittedly lazy about enforcing it, and as a result, you do indeed have some head flatness. So I bought one of those cute infant seats that helps you sit up. It’s supposed to be for babies up to 14 months. Yeah right. We could barely fit your thighs into it! I have to take it back. Which is a shame because you seemed to love it, but I was concerned that if one of your feedings made its way to your thighs while you were in it, we wouldn’t be able to get you out. So, I’m considering one of those exersaucer things instead. For the most part, you prefer to stand rather than sit anyway, so I figure you’d prefer one of those any way. The doctor asked if you were bearing weight yet, and I laughed, because you bear ALL of your weight (and there’s a lot to bear–over 17 pounds–you’ve almost doubled your birth weight already). I just keep you from falling over.

With regards to your talkativeness…you are still quite the talker. You have recently discovered "bbbbb" sounds, like a motor boat, punctuated by the occasional "bah". You are also discovering a wide range of giggles and squeals and squeaks and shrieks. Often, I can’t tell if a noise you make is happy or upset unless I look at your face or wait to see where the noises are headed. Sometimes, I don’t think you know either.

Oh, and on the breastfeeding front–in the last few days, you have finally advanced to needing no head direction from me to latch on to the nipple. This has brought you great joy, as you will unlatch, smile, and re-latch. It has brought me great joy as well. As my father’s girlfriend said when she found out I intended to breastfeed, "there is nothing in the world like the feeling you get when your baby looks up at you and smiles with a mouthful of titty."

Things I have learned:

• Eventually, the baby really will sleep without being swaddled.
• Time really does speed up exponentially once you have a child.
• The best way to be well-rested is to rethink sleep. 6 hours of sleep with a 2 hour nap still equals 8 hours. If you’re that lucky.
• Pumping really is a pain in the ass when you have to do it to replace feedings. 
• Oversupply issues don’t last forever.
• Minivans really are great vehicles for motherhood. The baby has its own air vent. You can change diapers in the back. You can feed or pump in the middle seats and no one ever notices.
• You will always wish you had gotten more pictures of any given age or stage. Especially professional pictures (which we have yet to do)
• No matter what you think prior to having a baby, you will leap on any chance to show someone pictures of your darling.
• Motherhood really is "all that". And more.

So, we went to a pediatric surgeon yesterday for Dude’s umbilical hernia. The good news is that it’s totally no big deal unless it sticks around until he’s 4 or 5 years old. Did you know that those hernias are measured not by how far it sticks out or how wide it sticks out, but by the actual abdominal hole itself? His is too small to even put a finger into. Did you also know that it is the only type of hernia that is self-repairing? Fascinating.

However, when the surgeon undid his diaper just to check for abdominal tenderness, he said, “Has anyone talked to you about his penis?”

I’m pretty sure that particular conversation starter never goes anywhere good.

When Dude was born, the midwife noticed that his foreskin was “different”. Never having had a male infant, or spent a lot of time inspecting uncircumcised penises, I didn’t know how it was different. He could pee fine, so what did I care? The family doc looked at it and said it’s “within the range of normal”. Which is what I said to the surgeon. He said he begged to differ.

Turns out, the foreskin is no big deal. It is a “hooded” or “incomplete” foreskin. So it doesn’t totally cover the head and there’s basically not a lot of it on the underside. But, as it turns out, this particular foreskin appearance is often associated with something else that the surgeon looked for and discovered right away—hypospadias. Go ahead. Google it. I dare you.

The short version is that his pee hole isn’t where it should be. So, that area at the tip of the penis that looks like a pee hole actually has no hole. His pee hole is at the base of the head on the undersize.

This is not a conversation I ever wanted to have or a topic I ever wanted to blog about.

Now, I had sort of noticed that there was a little dot there when I bathed him, but assumed the family doc would have noticed if something was off. And never having really noticed where he peed from, I didn’t realize we had this hole discrepancy. And deep down, I didn’t want to look at that little dot too closely, because I thought it looked like a pee hole, and then thought, “No. It couldn’t be. The doctor would have noticed.” Had we not went to this surgeon for something unrelated, I probably wouldn’t have realized it until he started standing to pee. I had noticed he sort of peed downward, but didn’t realize why. Apparently, the family doc didn’t actually look under his penis. Or maybe it was still too little to tell the hole was different. But Jesus, there have been other doctors there who have inspected his penis because none of them seem to ever notice that the newborn exam has been done. And yet, none of them noticed. WTF?

So, if it was a more severe form, as in lower on the penis, surgery would be a no-brainer because it would make his penis curve downward severely, give him painful erections, and make his little member dysfunctional. Painful erections are a definite argument in favor of surgery in my opinion. Oh, and he probably wouldn’t be able to pee standing up. I am all about not circumcising, but by god, given the choice, my boy should be able to pee standing up. Because seriously, I could see how that would totally suck for a dude.

However, this is a mild form. So, it’s not likely to make his penis curve. He’s not likely to have painful erections. But he may have to “aim at the ceiling” to properly hit a urinal.

Because it is a “mild” form, surgery is much less risky than for the more severe forms. It is also less necessary. The primarily consequence of no surgery is psychological.

We asked if he would have to be circumcised. The doctor said it makes the surgery easier, especially since they use part of the foreskin to reconstruct the pee hole. And, as his foreskin looks now, he looks neither circumcised nor uncircumcised, doubling the whammy that his penis is “different”. In the moments right after we learned this news before we had recovered enough to wonder if surgery was the decision we would make (surgeons have a sneaky way of making you assume it’s the decision you’ll make), Hubbie said to Dude, “Your mom tried so hard to protect you.” Because I absolutely refused to consider circumcision. And it seemed, at that moment, that this surgery and circumcision were the only option.

Oh, and the doc doesn’t have a circumcision bias. Neither of his sons were circumcised.

I can’t believe I’m writing all this. Too much information, I know.

So how much should the psychological aspect matter? As much as I can be critical of the penis as the central body part in the male psyche, the fact that I have been agonizing over this news like you wouldn’t believe is only a further testament to its importance.

I’ve heard the “psychological” arguments in favor of circumcising, and was able to chalk them up as bullshit because it seemed so easy to explain to a little boy, “that’s what you were born with and we didn’t want to chop it off because it’s barbaric and we love you”. But this seems a little different…

And, I’d like to say I could wait and he could make the decision on his own, but the best time to do the surgery is 6 to 8 months. Which totally makes sense. Less scar tissue. Less memory of the event. Less mobility. Quicker recovery, etc. So, if I don’t do it, will he hate that we left his penis to be so different? If I do the surgery, will he feel like his penis was so “messed up” we had to “fix” it? Will he hate that we didn’t just leave it alone?

So, we’re definitely going to seek a second and possibly third opinion, because that’s what you do. Right? I will say that this doc was actually pretty good about making it clear that this was a decision we should mull over. But he’s a surgeon. His bias is towards surgery.

If I could have one wish at this moment, it would be have a time machine to go to the future and ask him what he wants us to do. Because his father and I are at a loss here.

As M the wise midwife always says, “It’s a parenting decision”. But that doesn’t make it any easier.