It’s amazing how a baby can show so much personality when they are only days old. Not only did Brady show us his awesome little personality right away, he also showed us which parent he took after right away. That’s right, his daddy.
I hear women complain all the time about how they carried their baby for XX amount of weeks, only to have their child turn out exactly like dad. I felt the opposite. I was THRILLED that Brady was just like Jeff.
I knew pretty much the moment I saw him. When he was first born, they put a little hat on him, so I couldn’t see his full head of hair. However, once they removed the hat, you couldn’t miss it. I’ve always been jealous of Jeff’s amazingly thick head of hair. It’s a shame that amazing hair always seems to be wasted on boys. In Brady’s situation, him having hair seemed even stranger. Remember that Brady was growth-restricted – he was the size of a small 23-weeker at almost 27 weeks gestation. His little body wasn’t able to grow at the right rate from the messed up placenta, yet his body grew him a lush head of hair. Huh? Jeff and I joked that if he would’ve had a full 40 weeks in there, he probably would have come out with some pretty sick flow. We’re thinking it would have been a full head of hockey hair.
Jeff has this tendency to position his arms in the weirdest ways when he’s sleeping. Like, under his head, above his head, draped across his body. You name it, Jeff has positioned his arms that way while sleeping. Typically, they like to keep little premature babies all tucked in and comfy in their isolettes. His nurses said that little babies tend to keep their hands snuggled up by their faces. Of course, our kid would be the weird one who would have none of that. His arms were always flopping and flipping all over the place. The nurses tried their best, but there was no way Brady was going to allow them to tuck him in all cozy.
And then there was Brady’s nose. For this one, I’m just thankful he didn’t get mine. All joking aside, that little button nose of Brady’s was a dead ringer for his daddy’s. Though Brady’s little face was always covered with tape and his nose somewhat smooshed to keep his breathing tube in place, there was no mistaking that his nose was all Jeff. Or Jeff’s nose is all Brady, whichever you prefer!
Finally, there were his sweet baby toes. I totally recognize that Brady’s toes are all tiny, I get it. The funny thing was the ratio of his big toe to his other toes. In comparison to his tiny other toes, Brady’s big toes were gigantic. Jeff has similarly proportioned toes – giant big toe, normal-sized other toes. This was another thing we noticed right away and always made us laugh. Once Brady passed away, I had the option to have a necklace made with his tiny handprint or footprint, and I chose the footprint to always remember those funny feet of his.
I couldn’t be more proud that our little man took after his daddy in so many ways. I mean, I married an amazing man, how would I not want our son to be just like him?
