First time away

Work has picked up in intensity. This does not play well with spending time with the wee one. L is home all day with her while I work, and I tend to only see her nights and weekends.

So I'm on my first work trip since the child was born. I told them I would not travel until September. So they asked if I could travel on September first. I, of course considered this taking the piss. I ended up convincing people to come to London.

A few weeks later and I can no longer avoid it. So off to scandanavia for 3 (well, 2.5) nights away. I'm away for as short a time as I could get (they wanted another 2 days).I prepared by making an absolutely huge curry. It barely fit into the pot. I hoped it would feed L for at least a couple of dinners (she went out for din with friends one night).

That's all I could do to provide any help at all for L while I was gone. It just felt mean leaving her alone to care for the child. I'm not sure if there's anything I could do beyond finding a nanny to come in – and I doubt L would want that.

I've gotten used to being without L while on trips. Between SMS, email, VOIP and skype video being away is about as painless as it can be. But that doesn't work with the baby. I can't cuddle or change her remotely. The best I can do is watch her over skype (we set up an account for her). It helps, but, of course the hotel was having internet problems. So I got a few minutes of watching her (nice)before it just got a bit awkard.

I'm back home tonight. L has come down with something. So the annoyance of taking care of a baby alone is now the annoyance of taking care of a baby while under the weather. We have her immunisations tomorrow. So I'm going to try to take her myself so L can get a bit of rest. Which means doing early morning conference calls beforehand, then heading into work in the afternoon.

Sometimes I feel I have to take care of one baby during the day, and another (more cuddly one) at night.

We're trying something new

L has started rowing again. So we're seeing how this works as a family. We packed up the lot of us and headed down to the river. The plan: she spends some time on the water. I keep the baby calm and collected, fed and changed if necessary, until she comes off the water and can join us.

The reality: we decided to take the pram since we could carry all the various everythings in it. As an experiment we took the car seat attachment instead of the flat bad one. Which only took us half an hour and a few harsh words to put together. Bloody manuals which, for starters, you can't even tell if you're holding right side up. Let alone don't describe how to do things in any way which matches reality.

So we got out the door quite a bit later than expected. Fortunately London transit now publishes the bus countdown online so we knew we had 9 minutes to get the bus or we'd have to wait forever. BTW: this site alone has been changing my life since I discovered it. Mornings are so much calmer when I know when to leave the house.

It was our first time with a pram on public transport. We got it through the back doors on the bus. Turns out the wheels aren't very good at balancing the thing on the way in, so I've just been lifting it on both ends. Only a little awkward.

Transferring to the tube was easy since we only had a few stairs. Fortunately going early on Sunday morning meant things were not completely mad. We got a spot on the train to put the pram. I stood next to it, while L sat. I took pictures as a memento of her first tube ride. Halfway through the trip, L got out the babe and she fed up until we had to get out.

I'm writing this while she's sleeping on my lap in the clubhouse. She's dreaming that she's feeding and it's really cute. Much better than her brief meltdown when I started writing this. It's also really cute how she's startled every time anyone comes in the front door. And today is Open House day, so I'm enjoying lots of the cute.

The walk from Hammersmith was easy enough. We both bought coffees. I regretted not having a pram with a cup holder. I hate walking with coffee and spilling half of it on my poor burnt hand. Once we got to the club, the babe was cooed over – which is half the fun. I always enjoy people telling me what a perfect and gorgeous baby I have. I also enjoy all the smiles from perfect strangers. In a flippant way I do have to say having a baby is a complete chick magnet. In all seriousness though, I really do like how it breaks down barriers between strangers. It makes London a surprisingly friendlier place. I suspect I'll really miss it when she's older.

After all L's rowingmates finished doting, L got into the boat and rowed off. I took the babe out of the pram to show her her mother in action and waved as she rowed off.

Then she melted down, of course. I had enough time to do a little bit of walking before I realised she was inconsolable and needed changing. I am so glad the club installed the nice new disabled loo with the changing table. It took forever even with all the facilities. She was all bundled up for the trip outside, and getting all that off, dealing with the reusable nappies, and getting it all back on – I'm just glad no one needed the loo. I must have been 10-15min in there.

She melted down again after I left the loo. Walking up and down stairs consoled her. I spent the rest of L's outing typing away on my phone while she slept. She started fussing when the men came in (not used to well built men I guess). L's coming off the water now. I'll go down and say hi.

We caught L while she was closing up the pontoon. I had a bit of a chat with L and her crewmates before they went off to clean up. About 2 minutes later is when the baby started bawling. I had to get out the emergency bottle and feed her. She almost made it all the way til L came back to feed her. But no. She went through all 100ml of the bottle before L came in.

After feeding and a bit of natter we tried to head home. My decision to get the bus to the train was terrible. The babe melted down while we were stuck in traffic. We were pretty sure she needed changing. We dashed off the bus and into a Giraffe, since we were pretty sure they had a changing table in there.

To cut a long story short, it tools us over 2 hours getting home with all the interruptions. I learned a number of things.

• Get on and off busses and trains backwards. The wheels work much better that way
• Any outing with a baby takes forever and will drain all your energy
• Whenever the baby does a huge bottle feed, that's one huge mass of milk stuck in her mum's breasts. If the mother can't pump, that's one rather uncomfortable train ride home
• I can completely handle her for a few hours if I have enough supplies.
• and finally, I will gush about anything to do with my child. Perhaps I should gush on this blog more so my real-world acquaintances won't have to put up with stories of the wonderful way she can hold up her onesie when she's being changed.

Life with baby

It's hard keeping this up to date. The child is using all my spare time. Well, all the time I'm not a work, paying bills, phoning utilities and councils to complain about things, etc etc.

She's 6 weeks old today. She's been practicing her smiles for a bit over a week now. It's the best way to completely stop me in my tracks – just pretend to grin. I'm sure they're not real smiles yet (called social smiles by baby books), but just her way to test out smiling before she actually means it. L said that she giggled in her sleep today, but I missed that.

The biggest problem is that she does not like being still in someone's arms. I have to bounce or walk or something to keep her from melting down or complaining. It means she hates it when I sit down at the computer. Almost all social networking I do these days is via the phone. But I'm not the sort who can compose blogs on the phone. Mostly the lack of spellchecker gets in the way (and yes, I know Windows Phone has a spell checker).

She's started to (more and more) be able to sleep in a cot. Which means I can do things without having to hold her, and at the same time that L does other things.

Which brings me to a story…

The night we first got home from hospital. We start preparing the child and ourselves for bed. We'd done loads of research on what to do about beds for newborns. Our investigation lead us to this cot that attaches to the bed. So it's open on the bed side, and walled on the other sides. So it's like co-sleeping, but without any risk of squishing the child, since she's in her own space. But there's easy access for feeding, etc.

We prepared the cot with the right sort of mattress, sheets, a cloth to go under her head to soak up the goo that comes out her mouth. We tuck her in with feet squarely at the foot of the bed so she can't suffocate under the covers. We tuck her in tightly so, again, she does not die. Everything we read in the books.

She screams. And screams. And Does Not Stop. This is the first time she's really done this since her screams after she was born.

We take her out, and she calms down. I look at L and she looks at me. We had no plan B. Nothing we read prepared us for and the baby might not be able to sleep in a cot – we just stood there, dumbfounded, with a child, wondering what the hell we could possibly do.

In the end, we slept with her in the bed. Either on one of our chests, or on the bed between us. We took shifts being awake, watching to make sure she was alright, and slowly going the road to chronic sleep deprivation.

She still won't sleep in the cot by the bed. No matter how we try. But we have another cot for the living room, where she will sleep during the day (of course, if we take it to the bedroom, she'll just scream in it and no sleep). And that's where she is now.

Birth story, part 5 (final)

5 weeks later and we're… doing as well as can be expected. She's at the point where she hates being held while I type. So it's really hard to do updates. So I'll take this moment of quiet to finish off the birth story.

All told, the birth went off quite well. No real complaints from me – only minor ones. I really liked the fact that our midwife, after it was all said and done, told us how much she appreciated and was just plain honoured being there at this very special moment. I found that to be be rather sweet and made up for any of the minor grievances I had. And I really appreciated it, since she got to find out the child's name before anyone, including her grandparents. The staff were certainly good at what they did, and I've no complaints about their skills. The only real issue I had was them not understanding/believing when we told them it's likely to be a quick birth. Given how rare that is, I'm not too surprised.

The birth plan

I'll end this chapter with a record of what we'd planned and what actually happened. Just an aside, this is my first time re-reading the plan after the birth.

Turns out, anything that actually followed the birth plan was more coincidence than actual design. I don't the midwives think ever actually read the plan, but I don't really blame them too much, since I'd much rather they did the really essential bits of ensuring the baby came out properly than memorising our wishes – which they could (and sometimes did) ask us about at any point.

First off, we'd planned for a mutual friend and experienced mother to join us at the birthing centre to make sure everything went smoothly and to keep us company during a prolonged birth. The tag-team concept came from experience with tattooing. It seems to help distract the tattooee to just have conversation they can drift in and out of, rather than involve them directly. A friend and I did this with L's last tattoo, and I did that a couple of weeks before the birth with another friend. I figured, long continuous pain is long continuous pain – how different can a tattoo be from labour?
Well, the baby was born the one weekend our tag-teaming friend couldn't make it – she was camping out of mobile reception. So all plans involving extra support were out the window. But, then again, the birth can hardly be considered prolonged, so the help was thankfully not needed.
Outcome: inconsequential fail.

Please knock on door before entering — I have't the faintest idea of they did or not. I don't recall ever being surprised at someone walking in.
Outcome: incidental win.

In case of unexpected problems calm and full information with time to make choices — the only thing unexpected was L started crowning while the midwife was out of the room. It was more us not providing them time to think.
Outcome: win by circumstance.

Pain relief of TENS, breathing, massage, birth pool, gas and air — All except the birth pool, which means we hit that on the head. That said, there was no time at all to get any stronger pain relief if even if we wanted it.
Outcome: accidental win.

Call hospital in advance, request birthing pool — No answer when we tried calling before coming in. They finally understood we wanted the birthing pool maybe 5 min before the birth started.
Outcome: full on fail.

Notify immediate family on way in — oops. We did tell the in-laws after the water broke at least. Perhaps I should have read the birth plan while in the waiting room.
Outcome: fail.

Lighting as low as possible — I don't think the room even had a dimmer.
Outcome: hardware fail.

Music system set up — no iPod doc as expected. Turns out there was an unused one in room 2, where we'd spent 5 minutes after we came in.
Outcome: facilities fail

stay as mobile as possible — she ended up giving birth lying down.
Outcome: failure of possibilities.

Offer father to feel head as crowning — Oops. I forgot we'd planned that. Well, I've cuddled her head enough since then, so I don't see any loss only behalf. L got to feel the crowing head though. I was too busy finding and hitting the Call button.
Outcome: fail.

Foetal monitoring without lying down — nope. The last monitoring of the baby was why L was lying down for the birth – she was unable to get up after that.
Outcome: fail.

Keep vaginal exams to a minimum — Just the one (the can't find your cervix one), so that at least was followed.
Outcome: win.

cord not cut till done pulsing — I'm pretty sure it was pulsing a little, but I've no real basis for comparison,
Outcome: probably fail.

Father to catch baby — forgot about that one too. Oops. I was too busy staring in astonishment. I can't believe I thought I'd be on the ball enough to manage this. I'm glad I didn't – the midwife was very good about the catch-and-put-on-chest motion.
Outcome: fail.

skin to skin immediately after birth — got that one spot on
Outcome: important win.

no wiping or cleaning off of vernix — nope. We'd read shortly before the birth that a study showed that leaving the vernix on means the baby is less likely to suffer dry/peeling skin shortly after birth. turns out the only parts where the vernix wasn't removed, the hands and feet, are the only ones that ever really peeled. No idea if it's a coincidence or not.
Outcome: fail?

no interruption of contact — yup. they were very good about leaving her with us non stop till we left. She was out of our hands for a few seconds while being weighed. Then for a bit while she slept overnight (a few inches from my hand). And once more when the doctor was checking her out.
Outcome: win.

…intervention… — nothing to intervene.
Outcome: win.

placenta to come out naturally, no pulling — "plop" it fell right out. No special convincing needed.
Outcome: win.

Oral only vitamin K — they did try to use scare tactics to get us to take the injections. But it's such a tiny chance of needing it, and generally only if there is a traumatic birth or bruising. So we at least stuck to our guns on this one. I'm still dubious it's needed at all. Regardless, we finished the last oral round a few days ago, and she's still alive.
Outcome: win.

No observing students — I suppose they were all in the labour ward, which was completely full that day.
Outcome: win.

…induction… — she came out nicely on her own. No inducements necessary.
Outcome: win.

avoid formula — she managed to latch on during the first night, so no need to provide other food.
Outcome: win.

All in all, it seems there are more wins than fails. Though most are more wins due to the complete lack of complications to sort out. As I was told, a birth plan just gives the midwives something to ignore. The most important thing is we gave things some though in advance, and that nothing in the birth process came as a shock to us. Well, except (ironically) the startle reflex...

Sunday, 31 July. Most of that morning was spent doing incidentals like holding the girl and taking pictures and sending SMSs and announcements online. And drifting and and out of sleep. My plan of taking chilled coffee and storing in the fridge proved to be a brilliant idea – ice coffee kept me on the ball nicely and let L recover a bit while I watched the girl.

We got though a couple of nappy changes (chocolate-coloured meconium is surprisingly innocuous looking, though rather hard to wipe off), and puzzling at the right level of clothes that would keep her warm, but not too warm. We settled on a onesie and swaddling blanket. Eventually they told us all that was left was the paediatrician and then we could go. So we packed our stuff, readied the girl and waited. Like four hours. Which we spent taking photos, sending more SMSs, and arranging with my in-laws for take-away dinner at the flat.

Apparently the paediatrician saw everyone on the very full labour ward before seeing the two people in the birthing centre. At just before 6 the midwife took us to see the paediatrician. She asked is there anything which concerns you? – something I wasn't quite ready for, or I'd have made notes. She did a bunch of tests. She even checked to make sure the left eye (which I was curious if it was alright) was responding to light ok. Then she did the startle test, which involved her dropping the lass a tiny bit (over the cot) and catching her to make sure she reflexively stuck out her arms – which she did perfectly. The paediatrician told us she was the first infant that day to not cry at this – which made us quite proud of our wonderful child already outdoing her peers.

That and the startle reflex is really neat to look at. I still really have to stop myself from trying it. I'm sure that would be a great way to make the kid hate me.

After the paediatrician, the midwife handed us a shedload of pamphlets and paperwork, including the red book, which is the born-baby equivalent to the pregnancy notes they kept (we made a photocopy of them in advance since we knew they'd not let us leave with them).

L wrapped up the girl in a sling for the trip home. The midwife, in a bit of security theatre, then walked us out of the building, telling us security'd stop anyone with a newborn who wasn't accompanied by a midwife (which I doubt, but I appreciate the chat and company on the way out).

The walk from the exit to the taxi rank on Tottenham Court Road was the longest it had ever been. Such precious cargo, and every step a sort-of first for us, and certainly a first for her. L waited outside the Sainbury's while I looked for an available taxi to hail. A few minutes later we were on the way home. The driver dropped us off and congratulated us on the newborn, which made us both smile.

We arrived back at home at 6:45ish. Fifteen minutes later, we had barely just enough time to settle in before the in-laws showed up with chinese take-away. And thus began the wonderful madness of living with our baby girl.