February 2008

So 2008 was well underway....we celebrated Valentine’s Day with candy and small toys, and then went on a few days later to celebrate Austin’s 1st birthday. I could not believe it....Austin, a year old already. We kept the celebration small. Pizza with the family at my parent’s house, then with a chocolate cake to dive into and gobble up afterwards. What a crazy year it had been

We got home early from Austin’s first birthday party because baby Andrew was scheduled for surgery the next day. I have not mentioned it yet on this blog, but Andrew was born with Amniotic Band Symdrome. You can learn more about it at

While Casey was pregnant with Andrew, he at some point during his development got his right hand caught in the amniotic sac. The amniotic sac, which is fiberous in nature, wound around the middle, ring and pinky fingers on his right hand, causing a disfigurement. His middle finger is intact, and has full function, mobility and circulation, but looks a little creased at the base of the finger. His ring finger was heavily disfigured, the band having wrapped around the finger at the base and causing it to swell up and look like a small sausage. The ring finger, though, no matter what it looked like, also had full mobility and circulation. His pinky finger, however, was severed while inutero, leaving only the smallest of stumps in place of his finger.

So our task at hand was to find an orthopedic surgeon and come up with a plan to make Andrew’s hand a little more functional and a lot less disfigured looking. The city we live in has one of the top hand surgeons in the country, and we met with him and just love, love, love this doctor. We were given a number of options for little Andrew, and after a few months and making sure he was old enough and strong enough for surgery, he was scheduled for the first of several surgeries on February 21st.

The short version of a long story is that Andrew came through just fine. The surgery took a lot less time that I imagined it would, and he was such a trooper, laughing and punch-drunk from the anesthesia in the recovery room afterwards. That is, after getting his morphine. When we first saw him, he was beet red and ticked off! He wanted his mommy and daddy, not these strange nurses holding him. So after getting tangled up in his IV cords and nearly tripping and killing us both, I settled in for a soothing rock with my youngest. After about an hour of peace and quiet, they discharged him and sent us home, with my baby in a full cast up to his shoulder, to be worn for the next 6 weeks!

And I have to wonder who that 6 weeks was worse on...Andrew, being the one in the cast; us - his parents, watching him learn to crawl all hiked up with that cast; or his brothers, for being the recipients of many, many bonks on the head by their baby brother, wish his very own, built in baseball bat for a right arm!

Kids...making lemonda outta lemons, huh?