What I Do Worry About

For the most part, James is your typical 9 month old.

He rolls over so quickly now that we both attend diaper changes to keep him distracted.  He crawls like crazy, and moves from sitting to crawling and back again in the blink of an eye.  He'll hold your fingers and walk a few steps, normally to catch the cat's tail or see his daddy.  He still loves his bouncer, and has recently discovered his voice.  He will babble at you, and try to involve himself in conversations if you aren't talking at him directly.  His first tooth is visible, and based on the slight fever the last couple of days I think we are due for the next one.  He has amazing posture when he sits, and has figured out all his toys and will play for hours without asking for anything if you let him.  If you give him something new, or just the remote or an iPhone, he doesn't try to taste it.  He turns it in his hands, examining every inch of it, looking for buttons to push so noises will happen.

Yesterday we got the call and confirmed he will have surgery to correct the cleft palate in May.  We both were a little emotional, remembering how the last surgery went, and how hard it was to turn him over to a surgical team.

During the call, the contact we have at the clinic and I reviewed if he needed to be seen by the team at the Cleft Lip/Palate clinic he has been going to.  I reviewed everything I listed above with her, and she said he sounded fine and that we would probably not have to go in until May, just before surgery.

The call ended, and I was relieved about her comments.

You see, in some ways, he isn't so typical.

Because of the cleft, he has a special nipple for his bottle that must be held in a certain position to eat.  He doesn't understand that, and there's no way to force him to hold a round bottle a certain way.  So, we have never encouraged him to do that.  We don't try to make him hold it, and while he does grab it, you can tell that he is quite content to just let us do the work.

The same goes for trying to teach him to use utensils.  Or feed himself anything too big.  The constant worry that he'll get something stuck in that opening and hurt himself has us in a state of wanting to show him things but not able to because of the outcome.

I know that after May he'll be able to do all that, and at the rate he learns things it will be a quick teaching process, but I still worry. And I know that A does as well.  Probably a little more for his little man.