Bee-bo!

You may not know what Bee-bo means or maybe you've forgotten

It's just the tiny hippo way of saying ... BELLY BUTTON!

(from Sandra Boyton's Belly Button Book)

Patrick's belly button made its appearance today. I'm pretty happy - it was kind of getting stinky. I don't remember William's umbilical stump being that smelly just before falling off, but perhaps that was an inconsequential detail with everything else going on when we had our first 8-day-old-baby.

Sarwary asked what we did with the stump -- I said we just put it in the trash. After all, it's kind of gross! With William, I considered putting it in a baggie and putting it in his baby box, but Greg promptly vetoed that idea as disgusting. After all, who wants to look at an umbilical stump one or thirty years later?

Sarwary told me two things that some Indians do. I have no idea how wide-spread these practices are - if it's just amongst her small community or a wider cultural phenomenon. After all, umbilical stumps aren't exactly a common topic of conversation.

1. Rather than throw it in the trash, the preferred method of disposal is to find a mouse-hole and put it in there. I'm not sure why it's better for a mouse to presumably eat the stump than have it burnt in the trash, and neither is Sarwary ... but, nonetheless, she says that's what they did for her three kids.

2. Sometimes, a woman who is having trouble conceiving will swallow the stump (umm... yeah... didn't really want to know that!). Sarwary was very careful to explain that the woman won't chew it - you have to swallow it whole and to facilitate this it's best to dip it in honey first. Thankfully, I don't seem to have any trouble having children, so this course of action was deemed not necessary for me.

Also, umbilical-stump-related, Sarwary has said I can now eat peanuts. I didn't tell her I already had a peanut butter sandwich when Patrick was two days old before she told me I wasn't supposed to eat peanuts! She was so serious about this that when she made idli (rice cakes) the other day, she made coconut chutney for me and peanut chutney for Greg and William (Greg prefers the peanut over coconut).