First Family Weekend

A couple of weeks ago we went to our first family weekend with the Nova Scotia chapter of the Canadian Hemophilia Society. It was held at Brigadoon Village which was really nice. We met a lot of really nice people. Like, the kind of extra nice people who are more than happy to share their own stories and listen to ours. It was really good to feel part of this whole community of support.

Ty fishing at Brigadoon

Thomas was a great boy while we were there and got lots of hugs and kisses from his new friends. He's becoming such an amazingly good baby. He had a rough period from about a month and a half to three months but now he's just a pleasure to be around. Ty LOVED the camp, too. He had so much fun and it was such a relief to us to see Ty playing with the boys with hemophilia and to see that there was really no apparent difference between him and them. If anything, Ty was probably the most timid of the boys his age. Actually, there were a few boys very close to his age which made me think that if he had been born with hemophilia, he would have been lucky to know other boys locally. Thomas might not get that.

Sleepy Thomas and I at Brigadoon

As we were leaving, we realized that we didn't explain to Ty what the point was of the weekend. I told him on the way home that those boys he was playing with had hemophilia like Thomas and that's what everyone there had in common. He asked why he got to go and I explained that he'll always get to go to those things because he's a family member of someone with hemophilia. Sometimes I feel like I need to be careful to not make it sound to Ty like Thomas is special. I don't want him to somehow resent Thomas because he gets to do special things or has access to things he doesn't. It's kind of a hard balance to make Ty understand that Thomas is different without making it seem like Thomas is different... if that makes any sense at all! My hope is that hemophilia can just be a small part of our lives with Thomas not feeling like he's any different and Ty not treating him any differently. It will probably be something that will just naturally happen but for people with unaffected siblings, feel free to weigh in on that.

In other news, we've gotten through another round of immunizations. We did the exact same as last time, held pressure then wrapped little dressings around his legs and put ice on the sites for about 10 minutes. We had a late appointment so we left the dressings on until bedtime. When we took them off his right leg was bleeding just a bit. It was really superficial, just from the insertion of the needle but we wrapped it up again and left it for the night. It did end up bruising but nothing major at all.

Our next challenge coming up is our hematology appointment on November 3rd. He needs bloodwork which will likely be a disaster considering those roly-poly arms. He's 23 pounds now at four months old!!