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Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Belly Button Boy

On Saturday I went to a cousin's bridal shower with my mom and Rosie. And Alexander, of course. Zoë wasn't thrilled about being left behind but she was even less happy with the idea that I'd be taking the baby—her baby—with me.

"Take my baby," she said, shaking her head at me. "No, Mommy. No."

As sorry as I was to disappoint her, I told her that Alexander was coming with me. End of story.

So I took the baby and we left for the bridal shower only a half hour after we were planning on leaving (getting ready with a newborn takes forever).

At the end of the shower, the hostess'/my cousin's children came home from their grandparents' house and little Everett watched with horror as I prepared to change Alexander's stinky bum.

"That's hurting your baby!" he said, pointing to his umbilical cord stump.

"Oh, that doesn't hurt him at all!" I assured Everett. "It's going to turn into his bellybutton!"

Everett's eyes got wide and he shook his head at me.

"That's hurting your baby," he repeated.

"It's really not," I said and tried again to explain the wonder of the umbilical cord/belly button to him. He did not respond well at all. Soon others in the room joined in the effort to soothe poor, traumatized Everett.

"Don't worry," his dad told him. "In a couple of days it will fall off and..."

"FALL OFF?!!" Everett repeated, now cowering across the room from that icky, icky umbilicus.


"Sure," his dad said. "Lift up your shirt a little bit and look at your belly button. You used to have a little stump like that, too, but it fell off and now you have a beautiful belly button!"

Everett firmly pulled his shirt down to his lap so he was in no danger of revealing his belly button.

"I don't have one," he said seriously.

The poor kid was completely freaked out.

On Sunday morning when Alexander woke me up to nurse (again) it was clear he was in desperate need of a diaper change, so I unswaddled him, unbuttoned his pyjamas and...out flew his umbilical cord stump, revealing a ginormous (but beautiful) belly button.

I thought it was funny that he'd lose his cord the day after traumatizing his little cousin with it!

Only a week old and Alexander's already a prankster!

But back to the size of his belly button because, honestly, it's huge. I don't know if it's because the rest of him is so tiny or if his belly button really is that large. Right now it's definitely an outie.

We discussed innie vs. outie belly buttons during Alexander's bridal shower diaper change as well and some were in the camp that the cut of the cord could determine the innie/outie-ness of a belly button but, honestly, having recently seen the baby/umbilical combination, I doubted this theory. See, the umbilical cord looks nothing like the baby. The baby is there, all formed and covered in skin, and the umbilical cord is a pulsing, silvery, shimmery...tube. Not at all baby-like.

The cord shrivels up and falls off (or, as I joked with the kids, the baby falls off the cord)—the whole thing—leaving behind just the baby. Whatever skin was growing around the umbilical cord determines the innie/outie-ness of the belly button (basically) and from the minute I saw Alexander I could tell that he had a lot of skin around that umbilical cord.

But I'm sure he'll grow into it.

At any rate, we're all excited to finally have a belly-buttoned baby because those umbilical stumps are a little freaky...

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