I mean, this is different degree of tired. I thought I would be fairly immune to the late nights given my earlier lifes penchant for all nighters and late night partying. Trouble is, you could always catch up on sleep after those. Turns out with a baby not so much!
Anyway, Joshua James Ian Cockburn arrived in spectacular fashion by way of an emergency C section on the 21st June, after a 24 hour labour. I loved him from the moment I set eyes on him. Talking of eyes, something weird happened to mine, as when i saw him my own peepers leaked. Was a very strange sensation and I'm sure someone could explain what happened as I'm at a loss!
Looking upon JJ's face for the first time was a mixed bag of excitement and worry. Im not going to lie here, I was nervous about meeting him. What if, for example, his cleft was really bad and I didn't like the way it looked. What would that make me, as a father, if I thought my own sons facial defect was bad?
What if I felt I couldn't deal with his condition? What if I couldn't be strong enough to help him through his lifes journey with it? What if this, what if that?
You might be reading this thinking "how could you even believe you might think that about your own son?". Well I don't think I'm the only parent in the world that has ever thought this and therefore I certainly wont be the last. Turns out all your worries are rubbish, so for those in a similar boat You needn't even waste time stressing about it.
I genuinely didn't even see the cleft for the first 10 minutes or so. I was so overwhelmed with pride, love and amazed that I could help create such an perfect little person that the last thing I saw was the cleft. I saw a little guy, yelling his lungs out to all that would listen, and the sudden silence that came on him when he was passed into his mothers arms. I'm not a man to be moved very often, but this shook my foundations and was one of life's true game changers.
When I got to hold him and he opened his eyes and did what looked like, staring into mine, well, my heart melted. This is what I was put on his planet to do. To look after this little dude until the day my own time is up. Love isn't a strong enough word.
When I did suddenly focus on his cleft lip it dawned on me that it wasn't a full cleft as previously diagnosed. It didn't go completely into the nostril but only half way. I remember my first thought being how cute he looked with it, like he was born to sport one, like some sort of strange genetic fashion accessory!
After the doctors checked him over they also told us that he has a partial cleft of the hard palate (roof of mouth) and a full cleft of the soft palate (soft part of roof of mouth, bit at the back).
So what does this mean exactly? Well in the immediate future, he cant suck like normal babies, it would be a bit like you and me sucking lemonade through a straw that had a hole in it. So we have special bottles that we are able to squeeze when feeding him so that he can get his fill.
One of our worries was that he wouldn't take to this, but again he proved us wrong. The guy eats like some sort of starving Gannet. Since his birth he has been eating above his target every day. So yet again he proved my fears wrong.
In the long term, it means that he will have to have a palette repair as well as a lip repair and chance are he will need a speech therapist to help him along with his talking. You need your soft palette to pronounce certain letters you see.
Anyway all that's along way off and we will deal with that as it comes. If JJ continues to allay all my fears in the fashion he has already then I shouldn't even worry about it. But I will. Because I'm his Dad and its my job.
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