Other stuff

Baby is being a bit active tonight. Not sure if that means we should expect her any moment, or she's reacting to the Vietnamese food we had for dinner, or she's just bored. I just have to be prepared to jump into action at any moment.

My mother is doing much better now and is all clear to fly, which is good. Spoke to her on Skype earlier and she's sounding rather excited about the whole thing (my father is, of course, excited too). She informed us that she was born 3 weeks late and only 7+ pounds, which isn't much more than the wee one is now. Which seems to imply already she is taking after her maternal grandmother.

Nothing new

We had the Maternal Foetal Assessment today. Which means we got another scan to figure out why the baby is still in her mum. They waved the magic scanning wand around and ticked off lots of measurements on the screen. Everyone seemed happy. The wife was all healthy. The baby was all healthy. Nothing to be concerned about, beyond her tardiness. In the end we found:

• Her head is 11cm across. The cervix dilates to 10cm. That will be fun.
• She weighs about 6 pounds 12oz. Which is a bit small, but more than I weighed when I was born. So I'm not worried.
• She has hair. The technician pointed it out to us on the monitor See that white stuff there. That's hair. Considering both the wife and I were born with hair, this should not be a surprise.
• She has a 66% chance of being born in the next 7-10 days, on her own, without intervention. Which would be nice, since we just finished the raspberry leaf tea today.

After that, we saw the midwife. She told us the baby's 40% engaged, so at least the progress bar is moving forward. They want to induce next Thu. If the inducement is insufficiently enticing for the wee one, they'll have to put the wife on an oxytocin drip – which means labour ward only, no birthing centre. So we're going to try to hold out till at least the 8th before accepting the induction. Everything is going so smoothly, I don't want to break the pattern just so the medical team can have nice looking numbers for this quarter.

On the trip home we impulse bought a new printer and a pint of ice cream. Both were cheaper than the new PC we actually do need, since mine is slowly falling apart. Off to test the hardware now.

Now we are 6 days overdue

I'm slightly surprised to have gotten this far after the due date. I know first children are usually late – average of 8 days I hear. Most of my NCT group has already sprogged. Only the wife and one other are left. Practically every day we get an announcement and a baby photo in the inbox. I don't mind. I'm enjoying the extra rest and lack of nappy changes.

I started my paternity leave today. So I might just have enough energy to post more than once a week. Or take care of the baby once she arrives. The past few weeks at work have been mad. The past few weeks preparing for the baby have been mad. The past few weeks of construction and repairs to the house have been mad. The past few weeks helping the wife submit her PhD thesis have been mad. But that's all done now. We just have to wait for the little bundle to come out. Perhaps then we can experience true madness :)

The in-laws are visiting. It's both nice and an exercise in patience. I'm a bit of a control freak so I'm uncomfortable when things are out of my hands. Like I come home to glasses put away in the wrong cabinet. I should really just appreciate the dishes put away in the right place and that I didn't have to do it. We're also having loads of problems with mobile phones. They've been through 3 so far, each older and simpler than the one before. The latest is 6 years old and really quite simple. It was working fine until they locked it and have been unable to unlock or use it since. It's currently off (how'd they manage to turn it off without unlocking it? it was on full charge) in their flat while they're out and about. I guess if the baby comes we'll just have to let them know via more traditional means.

My parents are still in the States. My mother's been ill and is waiting for an all clear to get on the plane and see her granddaughter. Perhaps the little one is holding off waiting for both grandparents to be around. That's awfully kind of her. That and it's awfully kind of her to have given her father a few late lie ins before she shows up.

And one more thing

I just remembered the thing I left out of my post the other day about stuff that is different now about... Googling your child's potential names. After we'd settled on what we wanted to call her, we sat down to see who else had those names in that order to see if it was anyone dodgy. Turns out, we're good.

If google were there 40 years ago my parents could have avoided naming my brother and me after Julius and Ethel's children.

In other news, the due date has come and gone. No baby. Now we begin the awkward wait.

Adulthood

The wife and I had been discussing the possibility of having a kid for some time, but it's always been some far off fantasy – like what we'll do when we buy that penthouse flat in Manhattan. We kept passing various milestones – my parents were 31 and 32 when I was born, they had their first kid at 30 and 31, etc etc. It was awkward at first. Somehow I'd imagined I'd have had a kid by 35. When I hit 35 I knew I wasn't at all ready. Now that I'm 40 I keep vacillating between it being ok or silly of me to have waited til now. Having a kid can't be that hard. I mean, every single one of my ancestors has bred. And most of those at a younger age than me.

A bit of background... I went straight from undergraduate uni to do a PhD without any real job in the meantime. Looking back, that did delay "adulthood" a bit – hardcore academia is so different from the real world, and being a student in the UK, one can get by without ever dealing with real-life stuff. Sure I was an expert on immigration, living cheaply, finding rental property, etc. But I'd no real idea about how the grown up world worked. It was fun.

After I graduated and got a real job, flat, relationship, etc etc, I still didn't feel grown up. I felt no different after any of those milestones. I once asked my mother when she finally felt like an adult. She said it was only after she'd had a child. So I'm kind of wondering how things will change for me after the wee one is in my life. I am already starting to see changes on how I view things. I've spent the past 9 months in a kind of instinctive look-after-the-wife mode, and now I'm entering the look-after-the-family mode. I can see my perspective shifting, and it's weird being able to notice it. It's actually brought the wife and I closer together. Not that we'd been having issues. It's just you hear stories about people having children to save their marriage. It never occurred to me there might actually be a relationship-enhancing effect of children (or at least pregnancy). We've been very happily involved for almost a dozen years now, and I'm rather surprised to see how some of our remaining rough edges have been smoothed in the process.

With regards to my parents, I now realise that my life is so different from them that there's no point using them as a metric. I'll take their advice, but I'll tempter it with my perspective and see what happens. After all, I find that by now I have a decent sense of how the world works. I know now that few people have any real clue about what they're doing and all of civilisation is held together with ossified strings and glue. Homeownership has done far more than anything else so far in life in making me feel adulter – partly because of all the repairs. Once you see a house taken apart and put back together, there's a lot of is that it? feeling I just never got as a renter.

Anyway, I am both ready and not ready for this. I'm pretty sure I can take what the world is going to throw at me. On the other hand, I know changes are afoot and I wonder if I'd have been better off the way things are now. I guess I'll just have to wait to find out.

98.7% cooked

We seem to have finished the last of the major house construction. All the curtains we can have up are up, the floors are under our feet, and roof properly over our heads. I really wish we didn't leave it to the last minute to do all this, but bad timing really conspired against us. What makes it worse is that I can't tell if the wife is in nesting mode if we've been doing house prep stuff for the past 3 months.

A co-worker of mine’s wife gave birth today. He went on paternity leave yesterday. When we heard, the whole team went to the pub to have a drink in his honour. I'm sure he appreciated it. I would have liked to go, but I had to get to the shops to buy baby things before it shut. At least I feel a bit more confident at having enough stuff for the first few days of the wee one being around.

Now all we need to do is pack the bag.

So very different

I was talking to my parents over Skype a bit ago and my father mentioned that things have changed since they were new parents. I agreed and pointed out that we were chatting overseas over video for free. Since then I've been thinking about all the ways things are so very different now.

Birth philosophy has changed, making it far closer now to how it was in the grandparents' time. Except there's far more washing of hands. For a while everything was clinical with mothers giving birth on heavy drugs on their backs and feeding the kids of this highly artificial but easy to store cow's milk product. Now we know on your back is probably the worst way. The coccyx just blocks the whole exit making things much harder. Birth positions are quite varied – under water, on a bouncy ball, leaning against the wall, etc etc. Drugs are still strong, but much more targeted to avoid affecting the offspring. Breast feeding is still a bit awkward in the UK, with about 20% of children still getting breast milk after 6 months – but at least medicalness and legislation is trying to make it easier.

Nappies. As far as I can tell, there are like 30,000 alternatives for nappies. At least we've got velcro now, and don't have to deal with pins.

Information is soooo much easier to come by. The wife posted a comment about how the baby seems to have engaged, and she got lots of replies saying things like my baby dropped 2 weeks before I gave birth and other really useful things. It's like having the joint experience of all your friends and relatives, and a few strangers on tap. I can hardly imagine how hard it must have been just not knowing and not knowing you didn't know.

We've known the sex of the child for about 26 weeks now. It makes picking names much easier. And we've already got a bunch of clothes. Not that getting unisex clothes would have been so hard – I have no idea what people used to do. Just do the bulk of the shopping after the birth?

I don't know what they did in my parents' day when it came to exposing children to music. Especially while they're still in the womb. Put on record after record? Put on the radio and hope for something good? The wife and I put together a playlist of 3200 songs combining our favourite appropriate contemporary music and a huge chunk of classical music. We just hit play and let it go until we need to turn it off. The other day work gave me an iPod nano as a baby shower present. Quite nice of them – I really appreciate it. I've whittled the playlist down to the 2500 songs that fit on it. We can now play it all day at a fraction of the power consumption of the PC we used to use. Plus UCLH apparently has iPod docks, so we we can have music for the birth without needing to being a laptop (no wifi, what's the point?).

Some months ago I made a list of things cultural things I wanted to export the kid to. A fair chunk of that was meant for when she's older and can read herself or watch TV, but one thing I really want to do is use Skype video and get her grandparents to read to her. I really want her to get to know them, and them living on another continent would otherwise make it hard. But as long as they're comfortable reading to a small camera… I just have to figure out where to position the camera so it looks like they're making eye-contact.

Remaining NCT classes

I've been quiet for a bit. It's a combination of the job and getting the house ready. She's not popped yet. Anyway, I never wrote this bit up, so I may as well do this now while I have time...

The second NCT class was a few weeks back. It went well and was a reasonably productive use of time. It was unusually hot for England and I seemed to be the only one not boiling in the room. I don't see how they could all be hot and me not - though I was sitting under the air conditioning for part of it. None of the pregnant women seemed to believe me when I said it was the coolest spot and they could have it.

The updated expectation count is 2 known girls, 3 known boys and one guess of each. I'm a little let down that we don't have the drama all the books prepared me for. I can't see how any of these couples will break up between last week and next week – perhaps the people in the book took courses longer than 3 days over two weeks? We were supposed to have eight in the class, but one couple gave birth before the first class. I'm curious if their experience will differ from anyone else's. I mean, will going on the course have made a difference?

For one of the sections we split into preggos and partners. The partners' group focussed on fatherhood and the role we'd play. The women's group more focussed on squidgy things. One father mentioned his concern with gang culture, and how he was afraid of his son being drawn in. One of the fathers was a teacher and said that it was easy enough to stay out of the gang culture as long as you didn't actively try to be part of it – which is a mixed relief.

There also was a bit of discussion in our group of how to fix all the things our parents did wrong. One person mentioned his insufficiently affectionate father, and how he wanted to change that. I mentioned how my parents told me once they were trying to fix all the things they saw wrong with how their parents raised them. I, similarly, am going to try to fix all the things I see my parents to have done wrong. I said at the time Either we will slowly move to perfection, generation after generation, or, more likely, each generation will just repeat the mistakes their grandparents made.

One couple were both women. The non-pregnant one was convinced they were having boy, and was a bit worried about the impact of not having a male influence. I mentioned that it's generally not an issue and that there's plenty of cases of men raised by one or two women who turn out perfectly well. Or at least no more screwed up than anyone else. Every family is going to be missing some aspect of some gender role. You do the best you can between you, your friends and family. I'm pretty sure someone quoted a few lines Philip Larkin's famous poem at this point, but that may have been later.

I was reminded of Patrick Macnee who was raised by two lesbians in 20s and 30s, and spoke well of the experience. From what I understand, he seems to be reasonably well adjusted. That and I'm impressed that they managed to get away with such a relationship back then.

I'm glad to see that all the group pregnancy events we've been to so far has had at least one lesbian couple. Admittedly the Meet the ISIS Midwives event at UCLH may have just had two friends rather than a couple – it's hard to tell when there's no signs of affection between them. Anyway, it's nice to live in a place where the only issue is that the course leader has to remember to say partners instead of fathers.

The next weekend was the breastfeeding workshop. It was a more air-conditioned venue, but otherwise wasn't as nice. I learned stuff, but it felt rather rushed. The course leader wasn't as friendly or forthcoming with personal anecdotes. The most interesting part was watching the video of newborns being placed on their mothers' torsos and crawling slowly by themselves into place to feed. Instincts are nice!

On a separate note, the wife is getting close to the end. A bit irritable due to all the discomfort – swollen painful hands and feet, back pains, etc etc. I don't know if that means she'll go into labour soon, or it just means she's reached the end of her tolerance. We'll see in a few days.

How we got here

So for the past several years, the wife and I have been discussing the theoretical child. Not everything, but alot. The point was not to plan out the kid's life, but a whole bunch of what-ifs. The birth, raising, schooling, citizenship – all kinds of things, even whose body parts and traits it would be better off having. If we could answer them and come to an agreement then we knew we were closer to being ready.

We're control freaks. Both of us. Everything needs to be planned out. It's just the way we are. It seems to be working out for us so far.

We didn't talk about it with friends or family. Talking about it would make it too real. We felt that telling people would make it more concrete and force ourselves down that path whether it be a good idea or not. Or the opposite – sometimes discussing your plans means you're less likely to actually do them. We had to be really ready and really be sure we were doing this for the right reasons. So, to cope, it had to be our little secret.

We decided on names literally years ago. One name for a girl and one for a boy. Of course we won't tell anyone until she's born. Somehow we feel if we did it would make it less "us" and ruin the name. We may be control freaks, but we're not always rational.

A couple of years ago we decided on a code name for the kid. The wife did not want to use any of the standards - bean, alien, bump, bambino, etc. She suggested Willow. This was long before we even started trying to conceive. We needed it so we say things like Which room will be Willow's in the new flat? without feeling like we were committing ourselves to breeding. The name is based on an offhand comment my step-cousin-in-law made to the wife at the wedding, making a joke on my surname, Rosenberg.

We bought a flat almost a year ago after searching for a very long time. We'd always "known" that this would be the place where we'd have a baby. That thought went into our evaluation of every place we saw. In the worst case, we'd just end up with extra space if we chose not to breed. It did end up with us having to come up with lots of on-the-spot rationalised avoidance of questions when people'd ask Why do you need 3 bedrooms? or Stoke Newington? Is she pregnant?

We didn't decide for sure to sprog until last year. The wife had a completely irrational pregnancy scare. There were no real signs, and the maths didn't work out. There was no way she could be pregnant – but she got in her head anyway that she was. So, being the rational/irrational creature she is, she sat down and figured out how we'd handle it. She came to the conclusion that we could handle it, and it wasn't such a bad thing after all. A month later we started trying.

It's a year later now, and we're just over two weeks from the due date. Willow could come at any moment. We have, I think, everything we need. It's just not organised enough – it's all in piles on whatever random flat surfaces we can find. Plus our home is still in a state, with curtains needing to be put up and furniture moved to at least the right room. And the bag. We need to pack the bag. And by the bag, I probably mean 2 or 3 the bags with just-in-every-possible-case stuff for all of us. In the meanwhile, all parts of our lives are coming to a mad peak. All we need to do is get past it and ride the waves down into whatever familihood awaits us.

Baby shower

I had my baby shower on Sunday. Well, it wasn't a normal baby shower. Besides the fact that I'm male, of course. It was closer to a low intensity stag do. A few of us went out for drinks and bowling. The basic concept was that it was my last night out before knuckling down and preparing for the birth. After the bowling, the wife came to join us for a few hours of random natter. Definitely fun, though my bowling is terrible. I really must get better before I take the kid bowling – she has to believe I'm wonderful at all things.

Or maybe not. I have promised myself I will try my best to not lie to her. It's hard. Adults have a really hard time not lying to kids. They're just so willing to believe anything. I've caught myself at it a few times, and I'm conscious of it. It's really hard to stop, even though I know that it's just wrong. It must be hardcoded in or something.

There are a number of things I promised myself I would not do, but since I've been doing all kinds of reading on the subject I find that there a logical reasons for a lot of them. Like why people talk to babies in baby talk. However, I am firmly of the mind that babies should be imitating you not the other way around. But it seems that some mimicry is just easier for them to process. So we'll just have to see where I draw the line on dignity.

On that note, I've decided that the baby shower will be my last night of any but the most trivial of drinking. If the wife can pop at any moment, I want a clear head to be always at hand. After the shower we had a little scare that she might be in labour. My reaction was simply Holy shit! I'm not ready. Turns out she wasn't and that this was a known effect of the raspberry leaf tea. But at the time we didn't know, so I had to go around and prepare things. I found that after all those G&Ts that I could not keep more than a single instruction in my head at time. The scare only lasted half an hour, and afterwards I was able to stop panicking. But I realised that I needed to be constantly on the ball for the next month, since I'll have to have some working brains at a moment's notice. It's an interesting lesson to have learnt.

Why have a child?

A friend of mine asked me why I was breeding. Not in a confrontational kind of way. She was honestly curious. She likes kids just fine, but has no desire at all to have children. She wanted to know how to recognise the urge when it presents itself. When and how did I feel the need to have a child?

It's very hard to explain. Alot of it is purely chemical. That much is obvious. You just feel a need for it. As I explained to her "you're just a bag of meat that thinks it's a person." Your body just slowly, over a bit of time, kicks in with all this need and this undirected love that just needs to go in this direction. It's completely different from the love and need that drives you to get involved with someone, though parts of it feel similar. It's clearly something inside that drives you.

It's not just chemical. If it were, it'd be easier to resist. I wouldn't do it if I couldn't justify it to myself. There's a part that reverses cause and effect. It's hard to explain, so I'll just put it in the words I told her...

I love being alive. It's really great. I think it's just wonderful. And it's the best gift I could possibly give. I love my child so much, I want to give her the most astounding thing I can think to give. Yes I know there's a paradox: I love her because I gave her this gift, that I gave her because I love her. But there it is. She didn't ask for it, She might not want it. She might not appreciate it. But it's a gift, and I hope she enjoys it as much as I do.

Defensive

I find I get rather defensive when in public around the wife. I stand between her and traffic, crowds, etc. There's a bit of intent in there – I do consciously consider that she doesn't have a good feel for her size, and people won't think to look for where she ends in her middle. But it goes beyond that. I find once I start I can't intentionally stop. So I find myself slightly leading her when walking. I'm not quite ready to throw myself in front of a car to protect her, but I am ready to do something. I dunno – maybe gently push her back? It's weird and hard to tell when I'd do. Odd when instincts take over like this.