Tear out my heart

Why don't you.

Jack is having his surgery tomorrow for his talipes (clubfoot) - please, please, please no more delays. I'll be nervous until tomorrow when he sees the doctor for his final all clear. His cold is really just a crusty nose, so I'm going to give him a bath in the morning to clear him all out. We need to be there for 7.30am sharp. He's second on the surgery list so he should go down quite quickly.

I'm also nervous for the surgery. I would hate to put him through this and not have it make any difference. He's had lots of intervention since birth and a previous surgery on his foot, but no success so far. A lot of that may be down to extremely low muscle tone, also hindered by him having Cerebral Palsy on his left side, but if he has any chance of walking, we need to try. I can't even imagine his foot to be straight. But, this operation is the big one. His consultant told me this is all they can do for him and whatever the outcome, it is as good as it is going to get for him. It will be done in 3 stages. Tomorrow they will operate on his leg/foot/tendons/bone, etc and he'll get metal pins in his leg and casted (but his would will be open as since his foot is currently "deformed", the skin won't fit together to be stitched). He'll have this on for two weeks, come back for the second stage, a revision and his foot can then be stitched and back into another cast. I think this one is for 4-6 weeks where he'll have another revision and the metal pins removed? Then another cast for up to 4 months.

ANYWAY, the point of this post was going to be... since we're up for an early start tomorrow, it wouldn't be fair to Katie and Ben to have to get them up and ready, so they are staying with my mam overnight and for most of tomorrow while we're at the hospital and will figure out childcare from there. We took them over and were just playing for a bit when Ben decides he will try out *forward* motion, finally!!! Yes, I'm pleased I was there, I at least have that. He crawled 6 knees forward! He is good at crawling/pushing backwards or just twisting and turning until he gets where he wants to go, but this is the first time he's officially crawled. I'm going to be sad to miss this emerging skill over the next few days (they are going to have to be shuffled back and forward to different people, I'm going to miss them too). Maybe the next time I see him he'll be a fully fledged crawler and I'll miss all the wobbly figuring it out stage :(.

I never did get his 11 month pictures uploaded, I'll need to do that probably at the weekend, we'll be in hospital for a while. I'll have no access there, but will be coming home while other people visit Jack. The one consolation is that this hospital is only a 5-10 minute walk away.

Will try to check back as soon as I can. If that turns out to be early tomorrow morning, that will mean the surgery has been cancelled for whatever reason and I will be very upset!