Wednesday, January 11, 2017

our little boy

Dear Little One,


Today we found out you're a boy! (We were quite sure of that, somehow, but the ultrasound told us we weren't crazy.) Dad was there to find out at the same moment as I did. He smiled at me and I smiled back. A little boy seems like such a nice way to start a family.

You're sixteen weeks old, a lanky fifteen centimetres long and you weigh 150 grams. The doctor showed us your arm and bent elbow, your leg and your wiggling foot. We got to see your heart pounding and your umbilical cord throbbing. We listened to your heartbeat, and he showed us how he could tell you are a boy. The only thing he didn't want to show us was your head, and we had to ask him, "Please, show us our boy's head."

He did, and we were sorry to see again that your head still looks like it stops above your eyes. That's not the way little boy's heads usually look, Little One. At least not the heads of little boys who can skip and throw balls and play catch and ride bikes. Not the heads of little boys who can bake cookies and run errands and read books and draw pictures. But somehow it's what the head of our favourite little boy looks like.

It was a strange mixture of happy and sad seeing you today, Little One. It should have been a moment of wonder and awe, to see you being formed in that secret place, and it was. But it was also a moment of sorrow and woe, because we kept thinking about what it means when a little boy has no skull.

You're still here, but somehow we already miss you, our little firstborn son.

Mom and Dad