These Little Piggies

Awe, here's cute little Conner when he was just 9 months old. Aint he cute? Lots of you who follow this blog have seen this picture before, but I bet you never looked super close at it. If you do you'll notice something is missing....

 

What?!? you ask! Where are his toe nails!?!

Here's the story...
After the crazy ordeal of Conner's birth the nurses took him to be weighed and measured, blah de dah, and then went to clean him off. As my Doc finished up with me the and the nurses tended to Conner across the room I heard one of the nurses say "Oh my, he's missing a fingernail....and he doesn't have any toe nails " Come again? My mind was so foggy and tired that that didn't really register exactly what that meant. Rusty rushed over to see what they were talking about and I just sat there stuck to my bed trying to wrap my mind around this new package of information I had received. At first I thought that they were joking. They had to be right? They brought Conner over shortly for me to hold and sure enough his cute little toes were about half the size of a regular babies toes and all except for both of his pinky toes were missing the nails and the tip of his pointer finger on his right hand was missing: no nail there either. My first natural thought was "will they grow ever?" I didn't voice that thought because as soon as I thought it I knew the answer. I asked if they knew why and they said "Sometimes these things just happen" aka "we have no clue."

As a mother you want your baby to be perfect. You picture this flawless little person growing inside of you, so you can imagine my shock when I found out that my sweet baby was not exactly like everybody else. The nurses were nice about it, even making it lighter by saying "It's a good thing he's not a girl so he won't be sad he can't paint his toe nails!" and Rusty joked that now we wouldn't have to worry about accidentally taking home the wrong baby. We all laughed a little and as I held my little baby it didn't matter. I loved him so much, nails or not, but I still felt a little sense of loss. Not for me, I knew that I would love my baby no matter what, but I couldn't help but think of how he would feel about it when he got older. Would kids at school make fun of him? Would it be hard for him to walk? and so many more questions of how it would affect (or effect? I never know) came to mind.

The next day when we were still in the hospital Conner's new pediatrician Dr. Horkley (HIIIIGHLY recommended for you Logan peeps who need a new ped) came in to talk to us and asked if we had any questions. Obviously we did. He said that it's not a very common thing but the diagnosis that he thought fit best was "Amniotic Banding Syndrome"  (which will henceforth be know as ABS because it is a giant name and takes a long time to type)

 

 

Here is a picture of his feet in my belly. not that you can see anything. They gave nothing away. but they're still cute:)

"What is ABS?" you ask? It occurs in about 1 in 1200 births. It's basically when really thin strips of the amniotic sac strip off to create what are called bands and the baby gets tangled up in them restricting blood flow usually causing the place that it is wrapped around to be amputated. Think of like a rubber band wrapped tight around your finger. If you left it on long enough your finger would probably turn purple from restricted blood flow and eventually fall off. It's even more likely to if the person it is wrapped around is growing at an alarmingly fast rate like a fetus. It has been know to cause complete limb amputations and is also a cause of clef lip if a band gets on the face. interesting.

here's a picture!!!
 

Aaaanyway, this is probably what happened to little Conner. While it's rare, it's not unheard of in the slightest. In fact my last night in the hospital a nurse came in to visit and show me that her finger was the same way! She had a beautiful set of manicured nails except for one pointer finger, just like Conner. She said that she heard about C and she wanted to see her baby hand twin. I thought it was really nice of her to come visit.
Since something had to go wrong I am SO glad that we got this instead of something much more severe. It never required a NICU stay, it doesn't require and additional doctor visits. It's purely cosmetic. I feel so blessed that his case is as mild as it is. just the toe tips and one finger. And if you know Conner you know that it for sure hasn't hindered his walking/running ability. And if it has I shudder to think about how fast and crazy  he would be with full sized toes! Oh and this is not genetic, just a complete fluke of nature and unless I plan on having 1201 kids (which I don't) it probably won't happen again (Sophie has no problems with this)

I hardly ever even notice Conner's little piggies and finger any more because it is just...Conner. The only times I notice it is when I have to trace his hand to make a turkey for Thanksgiving, or when he comes to me with an enormous booger on that finger and I'm impressed that he got that out without a finger nail, but lately I've been thinking about it a lot. For the past few months Conner's been coming into my room in the middle of the night for various random stuff. Sometimes he needs to go potty, sometimes his hands are cold, sometimes he has a booger he needs to wipe on a tissue. Fun things like that. A few weeks ago he came in and I thought "what is it this time?" But he was crying and seemed to be really distressed about something. I turned on the light and pulled him up onto the bed with me (this was during busy season and Rusty wasn't home yet so it was just me) and I asked him what was wrong. He was holding his hand and to hide his fingers and just cried.
"it's boken mommy."
 "What's broken?" I asked.
"My finer is boken." I tried to get him to let me see but he wouldn't let me. I knew instantly what he was hiding. After a minute he finally showed me his nail-less pointer finger and said, crying "my finer need to get a nail. Fix it mommy. fix my finer."
Well if that doesn't break a mommy's heart I don't know what will! It was the first time I had ever cried because of his finger and toes. I just hugged him and kissed the tip of his finger and told him that there was nothing wrong with it and it was how Heavenly Father made him and it was perfect.

He hasn't brought it up since but I know it's coming.  Probably when he starts school and other kids start asking him about it. It's hard to know exactly how to handle it. It's definitely uncharted territory for us. I don't know. I guess if he doesn't understand why we can just say that that he accidently ate his toes on his first birthday. oopsies!

So what does this mean for Conner in the future? Not a whole lot. We'll just watch him close. I don't know what we're watching for, but with all of our moving he's had a lot of ped's and they all  (well all except for the one who pretty much though I was on drugs while I was pregnant. gurrr) were not too concerned but said "we'll watch him" and make sure his feet don't blow up or something I guess? which so far hasn't happened. He seems like he is leaning more and more to being left handed. I'm not sure if it's just easier for him to do things with his left or if he was always going to be a lefty left. We'll never know. But one thing is for sure this has not caused any problems whatsoever in his life. He is super normal and super awesome and we love him super lots!