Bo Bo

He came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly.

Towards the middle of last year, the Dragon and I decided to take the next leap and expand our family, to give Baby Chicken a sibling. While I have always wanted more than one child (my ideal was three), the Dragon at his advanced age was motivated by the desire to ensure that Chicken would have someone to accompany her on the journey of life were something to happen to her parents. I just wanted more kids. So, last June we abandoned all birth control and threw caution to the wind. As I had the first time, I got pregnant immediately. And I do mean immediately. The signs and symptoms were seemingly instantaneous - sore breasts and constant nausea. Suspecting that something was awry, the night before Dragon, Chicken and Dragon's mother were to leave for Vancouver for the weekend to visit his sister, I woke up in the middle of the night and did a pee test, the result of which was disappointingly negative. Given my age, I began to mentally prepare myself to ride the monthly roller coaster of trying to conceive.

I will never know what possessed me, two days later, to reach into the garbage can to look once more at that first pregnancy test. I was in the bathroom minding my business when a voice suddenly told me to reach in and pick it up. Much to my shock, when I looked at the test the second time, it indicated a positive result, albeit faintly. Figuring that the passage of time, perhaps the sunlight in the bathroom, some unknown chemical reaction because I swear the first time I looked at it that test was negative!!!!!, had skewed the result, I did not allow myself to get too excited. Rather, I waited for two more days, re-tested and, sure enough, received an instantaneous positive result. I was pregnant again.

This pregnancy was the antithesis of the first. I suffered from every pregnancy side effect in the book, most notably nausea and exhaustion. Fourteen weeks of it to be exact. I threw up every morning like clockwork as I tried to brush my teeth. My taste in food changed and I developed aversions to nearly everything I had enjoyed eating pre-pregnancy. No meat, no Chinese food. I survived on pasta and vegetables. "Perhaps this baby is a 'different flavour' than your first?" suggested my local Starbucks Barista.

Being somewhat of a hypochondriac, and having surpassed the magical age of 35, I opted this time to undergo amniocentesis to ensure that all was genetically in order. The test also had the added advantage of certainty insofar as the baby's gender was concerned. Being one of two girls myself, I hoped for a second daughter. As has been my mandate in life, I wanted to prove, to myself and to others, that I could raise two daughters in a healthy, happy environment, without them being pitted against one another. The Dragon wanted another girl because he simply likes girls. Imagine our shock and surprise when I was advised that the baby I was carrying was a BOY. A BOY. A BOY? A BOY?!?!? A healthy baby BOY.

We reeled at the news. My family history was not going to repeat itself. Baby Chicken was not going to have a baby sister. There wasn't going to be another baby girl to wear the mountains and mountains of adorable pink clothing that Baby Chicken had amassed. And while I am always up to the challenge of shopping, I just could not come to terms with the fact that *this* baby was a boy. As many second time moms-to-be do, I feared I would not love this baby as much as I loved Baby Chicken. I feared that I would not love him at all. Because he was a boy. Because he was not what I thought I wanted. Right up until I gave birth to him, I both harboured and expressed concerns that I was not going to love this child. Friends and family and the Dragon all told me I would love him, that I would love him just as much as I love her. One friend told me that there was nothing like the mother-son relationship. My sister suggested that that this was perhaps an opportunity for me to cultivate a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I remained skeptical and unconvinced right up until the very end. Or should I say the very beginning?

Giving birth to him was for me a very different experience in so many regards. Unlike when I gave birth to Baby Chicken, my relationship with the Dragon was far more established, far more serious, far more committed this time around. The Dragon and I barely knew each other when I gave birth to Baby Chicken. We had been dating a matter of months when I accidentally got pregnant with her. The months which followed were a scramble to figure out where to go from there. At the time of her birth, it was far from a given that we would be or stay together. You could have plucked a stranger off the street and thrown him into the delivery room, that was about how well I felt we knew each other at that time.

But this time was different. This time we knew, and loved, each other. Though we've had our trials and tribulations, the relationship had evolved and was one which we both chose to be in. This pregnancy was planned, we were a family and were choosing to grow our family and move it forward.

Physically and mentally, labour was different the second time around. Unlike the first time, I knew what to expect, something which both relieved and terrified me. When push came to shove (literally!) I knew to just bare down (literally!) and push through it, that the more focused I was, the sooner it would be over and he would be here. After fifteen hours of labour, the last three fraught with frustration and complications, my body and my baby kicked into action and, like the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where the giant boulder comes crashing down with people scrambling to get out of its way, my body and my baby kicked into action and he came barreling down the birth canal. I knew when it was time to push before the doctors told me and push I did - he was out of there in six pushes, arriving at 12:04 a.m. on April 7, 2010.

Unlike when I was pregnant with Chicken, I had not this time had a 3D ultrasound to see what he looked like. When all was said and done, I wanted something to remain a surprise. I think everyone, myself included, assumed that with the generally dominant Asian features, he would look just like his sister. We were all wrong. He looked just like me. Rather, my side of the family - my estranged father and my deceased grandfather to be exact. Oh, the power of genetics!

B2 came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. My doubts and second guessing had clearly imprinted themselves on him. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly. Completely and totally, head-over-heels in love. He was slow to reciprocate, and understandably so, having literally grown in such an environment of uncertainty. He was sad and sullen, he woke up crying. Never had I seen a grumpier little man. He looked like a grumpy old man whose little shoulders bore the weight of the world on them. We started to call him "Grumpy". My sister put an end to that, chastising me not to stigmatize him with such a negative label. We stopped, I stopped and the difference was instantly palpable. I described it as follows in an email to my sister the following day:

Most important about our conversation last night, and what I took most from it, were your wise words about O. and not stigmatizing him. Your words obviously took affect (sic) and impacted my approach to him because this morning - for the very first time - he woke up and..... just woke up!!!!! No crying, no screaming, no pouting. He just opened his little eyes and looked around. I know in my heart that it was because of my internal shift. So I thank you for that.

The Little Man is now just over ten weeks old. He is starting to sleep through the night and I am starting to emerge from the "newborn fog". There are no remnants of his former unsure, grumpy self. He is a happy, beautiful baby boy who is welcomed, accepted and loved by all, even his older sister who has given him the moniker of "Monkey Bo Bo" or "Bo Bo" (which in Chinese means treasure) for short. My Bo Bo he is as I could not imagine our lives without him.