Purple Hippopotamus

I pulled out the decorations this week and I saw it. The hippopotamus ornament. It's made of hot pink, stuffed felt with a wreath of holly around its neck. The hippo smiles, head up and eyes closed. I held the ornament up by its string and remembered Grandma.
Grandma was a hippo collector, of purple hippos in particular, if you could find them. But as most collectors will tell you, they rarely add to their collection themselves. One only needs to tell someone that they collect something and they will continue to be gifted with that thing until their dying day! That was how Grandma's hippo collection was built, on the gifts of family and friends and just about any person who knew that she loved hippos. There were dozens of hippo stuffed animals covering her bed, dancing hippo magnets on her fridge, and a purple, reclining hippo soap dish next to the tub. Hundreds of hippos scattered through out the house.
When the Alzeimers first started to take her, she started to separate things into boxes. She created a box for everyone in the family; her 8 children and each of their spouses , 10 grandchildren, and dozens of her friends. Even the hippos went into boxes, the collection divided up. The Alzeimers took her slowly at first, then suddenly it accelerated one summer month and she was gone.
A few weeks later, my grandpa came over to deliver our boxes. Each box was labeled with my grandmother's beautiful script, one for each of us. Inside my box, among other treasures, were the dancing hippo magnets and the pink hippo ornament. The ornament will hang on my tree this year, along with other ornaments that my Grandma had given me through the years; Clara from the Nutcracker and the collection of flocked teddy bears. And I will think about you Grandma and how you used to knit blankets and lopsided sweaters for the entire family every year. And how you would so carefully unwrap your Christmas presents, never tearing the paper and folding it up in a square to save for later. And how you would hold our handmade gifts as if they were the most precious things in the world. I miss you Grandma, but seeing your hippo on the tree helps me to remember.
"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas, only a hippopotamus will do..."

It started a year ago today; that unstoppable train of patience, contractions and eventually, labor. My baby boy was coming.
I woke at 5:30 and I felt the first twinge. I didn't think much of it, since I'd been having false labor pains already for nearly a month. I dropped Jacob off at school, then headed to work. I had an appointment with my Ob/gyn and then after that a kick-count test at the hospital. I warned my boss that I was having contractions and that if I didn't return back to work, that she knew the reason why! My co-workers laughed it off. They knew all about the Braxton Hicks and just thought I was "crying wolf" again.
At my kick-count appointment, the doctor assured me that things were "moving along" and recommended that I go home and relax until the time came. I picked up Jacob from school, now fully into contractions. Nick got home from work and "that time came" shortly after. We headed off to the hospital (for real this time!) and I was admitted at 5:30 pm.
The doctor broke my water and I staved off having the epidural until about 9 pm. However after the epidural, things intensified, making the contractions much worse. I'd heard stories from Nick's friends that they couldn't feel anything below the waist and that the nurse would have to tell them when they were contracting so that they could push. I had the worst pressure, like holding back an unstoppable force. I had to push, I just HAD to! But I couldn't, the nurse said I was far from ready. I lay on my side, tears squeezing from my eyes as each contraction waved over me, getting more and more intense and more frequent. I breathed slowly, taking a long time to blow out the air, chanting like a mantra, "don't push don't push don't push". It was an eternity of trying to relax my uterus, imagining my cervix opening up like a lotus blossom. Midnight came and went. My baby would not be born today. I wanted to push, damn it!! Finally I couldn't take it anymore. I cried out to Nick, who felt helpless to do anything. He ran out and grabbed a nurse. "Yes, go ahead and push." It had been over 2 hours of pressure and I could finally push!
The nurse looked and said, "It shouldn't be very long...his head is right there" My heart jumped. I had new-found energy. Perhaps she only told me that to keep up my morale because if she'd told me the truth, that I would be pushing for over 2 hours straight, I might have decided to give up right there. They tried different positions, lifting my legs this way and that.
Finally his head came to the surface. The nurse held up a mirror so that I could see. Dark swirly hair, just like I'd seen in my dream.
At 2:22 he appeared, quicker than a wink. I still can't believe how quickly he popped out after being stuck for so long. He was much smaller than they'd expected. I was worried about a 10 lb baby and here he was, so tiny at just 6 lbs 13 oz.
After the agonizing wait, when they took him to the table to clean him up and inspect the lip and palate, they slipped a cap on his cone head, wrapped him tight and brought him to me.
He squinted up into my face. I kissed that crooked, flat nose and touched the miniature notch in
his lip. I stuck my tongue out at him and he mirrored me, sticking his out too. Nick laughed. I tried to nurse right away and it was difficult from the start. Ian had a difficult time latching with the break in suction at the notch and the broken muscle where his lip had healed in utero.
The memories are so close still, though it's been a year. I have a hard time thinking of this toddler as the same baby, the one with the blood-matted hair. That curled-up, limp body is now the same sturdy one that staggers around the room. This face isn't the same one is it? Those puffy almond shaped eyes look so different than the enormous round eyes that look at me now. But yes, this is the same boy who nuzzles against me at night, warm and soft. The same boy I dreamed about before I held him in my arms. Forever my baby. Happy Birthday Ian!

The change in his face

My son doesn't look the same as he did when he was born. It's not just because he's almost a year older, but because he had plastic surgery when he was just 4 months old.
My husband and went to our first sonogram full of excitement. We were going to see our baby for the first time; to find out if we would be decorating in pink or blue. I had already had a dream about my baby, a little dark haired boy. In the dream, as I nursed him after birth he turned into a cat. Was this a prophecy? Cats have the same drawn-up lip like my son was born with...
It took the sonogram technician a long time. He was trying to get a full shot of the baby's face, but the baby's thumb was in his mouth. After about a half hour, he went out to get the assistant of another technician. She got the shot he was looking for and then they both left together, to show a doctor the pictures.
"Something's wrong", I said to my husband. "I don't remember hearing anything about a doctor having to look at the pictures". After about 20 minutes, the technicians returned, followed by a doctor and another woman, who I would later find out was a Genetics counselor. They bunched in the small room, me still stretched out on the table, shiny belly exposed. The doctor explained that they had seen something on the sonogram, an abnormality on his face that they believe to be a cleft lip. They asked if I had anyone in my family with a cleft. I knew that I had some distant relatives. We set up an appointment with the counselor and everyone shuffled out. The technician handed me a towel to clean my stomach.
"Can we still find out the sex?", I said hesitantly. "Oh, of course...I'm so sorry. It's a boy".
After an eye-opening meeting with the Genetics counselor, my husband and I left, completely devastated. Our minds were spinning at the thought of our son with a cleft lip, possible cleft palate, and more. The counselor had told us that a percentage of children with cleft are also born with other birth defects, that something else in his body that developed at the same time as his mouth might also be deformed. Also, that cleft is often a marker for mental disabilities.
I cried for days, just thinking about the sweet little body curled inside me. I thought about that little imperfection and I was angry. Why did Nick's friends wives, just barely out of their teens, have perfect babies. They didn't even take care of themselves during their pregnancies. Jacob's mom did drugs right up until the day before she delivered and Jacob was perfect, not a flaw on his angelic face. It wasn't fair that my boy was going to have this.
And then I was worried. Had I caused this to happen? The counselor had explained that the cause of cleft is unclear. It seems to run in families so it can be genetic. But cleft can also be caused by influences in early pregnancy, like drinking alcohol, smoking, or doing drugs. I had not done any of these things, but I'd had an ear infection at 6 weeks and had to take antibiotics. The thought that I might have cause this sat in the back of my head.
We had a few more sonograms during the pregnancy. The doctors were trying to get a better idea of what we might be facing. The results were inconclusive. We met with the Cleft team, a group of doctors and counselors to discuss possible scenarios and surgery schedules. We saw before and after pictures of newborn babies with split-lips and of year-old babies with lumpy scars. I had come to terms with the fact that whatever it may be, I was ready to take it head-on. We could deal with anything because this was our son, our baby, the one we had been waiting for.

He was born on Dec 9th, 2003 after 21 hours of labor. A group of doctors were there for the delivery and they swooped up my son and took him across the room as soon as he was born. I strained to see him on the table as they cleaned him up and inspected him.
Nick shouted out, "Julie, it's barely anything! It's barely anything!" After 15 long minutes, the brought my blanket-wrapped baby over for me to see.
Nick was right, it was barely anything. The doctor said that it looked like the cleft had started to heal in utero. My son, Ian Lawrence, had a tiny notch above the left side of his mouth and a white scar that ran up into his nostril. A miracle, they said. They had never seen anything like it. The cleft had started to close and heal into itself, something they said would never happen.

After many meetings with the plastic surgeon, Ian was scheduled for cleft surgery, just shy of 4 months old. The cleft was recut, all the way up into his nostril. The surgeon sewed each layer together separately, the inner lip, the muscle, and then the outer lip was closed with a special glue. His left nostril was corrected and opened, as the cleft had flattened this side and it dropped about a quarter of an inch below the other nostril. After the cleft surgery, he also had surgery on his penis for hypospadius, a condition in which the urethra does not continue to the tip of the penis, but rather stops half-way up the shaft. A bit of his foreskin was used to create a teeny-tiny urethra. The surgeries lasted over 3 hours total.
The nurses let me go back to see him. He was laying flat on his back, wearing a tiny surgical gown and had tubes running everywhere. He was wearing his velcro-arm retraints. We had to "practice" having him wear them for a month after the surgery, so that he would get used to them. The nurse had me scoop up his limp, sedated body and try to arouse him. The inside of his lip and under his nose was criss-crossed with thick black stitches. A shiny purple glue covered his entire upper lip. This was a new technique, the surgeon had said, and would minimize scarring. Ian started to stir and a scratchy cry broke from his throat. Tears jumped to my eyes at the pitifulness. I tried to nurse him. He had a very difficult time latching on with his lip swollen three-times it's regular size.

The healing was quick. The glue peeled off after about a week, leaving a bright red scar. All that remains in its spot now is a faint pink line and two dots under his nose from the stitches. Most people don't even notice that he's even had surgery. I know a lot of people would be embarrassed, even stigmatized, about having a baby with a birth defect, but I'm proud of it. My son is beautiful now, just as beautiful as he was before he had the surgery. To be honest, I miss kissing the little notch in his lip. Now I just kiss the scar and that newly-straightened button nose. I love him all the more for the imperfections.