28 Days Later

The boy is 4 weeks old now. I'm now back at work. So I guess we've entered the 3rd stage of normality where this is what stuff will be like from now on.

Which isn't entirely the case. I'm still trying to find my new routine. I've been doing the doing the morning school run every day, which I wasn't expecting. So apparently I'm no longer that guy who gets in early to work. I am I guy who always stays late? Am I the person who's always working from home? I'm not sure yet, but I guess having kids forces you to learn things about yourself.

The boy is getting bigger. He started out quite big at 4.2kg, and has put on another 820g. So we're now into the next size up nappies. He's been wearing 1-3 month size clothes since birth and we're now on the verge of getting out the 3 month size stuff. We're in a hurry to get him in all the cute infant stuff we've got or else we'll never get a chance to use them. This is very different from R who was reasonably petite throughout her infancy.

Needless to say, I am constantly comparing the new child to my daughter. This is the same, this is different. Based on x, y should happen next. Etc etc. I found I spent more time with R just drinking it all in and living in the moment as if it would last forever. With the boy I recognise where he is and I am anticipating what comes next. Next should come smiles and hand control. That should be fun. But really, I don't mind if we just jump straight to walking and babyproofing.

We started EC from week one with the boy, and it seems to be working decently well. Whereas the daughter we started from month 5, so she had to unlearn using nappies in favour of the loo, the son was introduced to toilets as soon as we could and is managing a degree of bladder control. He'll fuss when he needs to pee, and if we get him there in time, he'll hold it til he's over the toilet. We've been catching at about 50%, so we're only going through several nappies a day instead of many-many per day.

Like with his sister we're putting him in disposables at night and reusables during the day. I'm finding the reusables we've got now leak far lass than they did with his sister. I can't tell if that's 8 years of nappy tech improvements or it's a boy/girl thing.

Birth plan and waiting

We actually got a chance to go over the birth plan with a midwife. Well... sort of. I held the birth plan in my hand, asked questions and made notes. The midwife had some practical suggestions for things to have on there that we'd not considered before.

The new birth plan is just a modified version of the one we had for R but never go to use. So we've deleted some of the parts we now know to be useless ("maximum possibility of enjoyment") and added some things we now know are useful ("fresh o batteries for Tens machine"). The midwife suggested some terribly practical things we'd not have thought of:

• 7 towels (why 7? does each have a specific purpose? Or do they know that if they ask for less they'll get none?)
• parking permits
• a hand mirror (for checking on progress without making L move)
• portable lamp (for the same reason)

Note: this is not a complete practical guide for would-be at-home parents

Also she gave us instructions for what to do if the baby comes before the midwives arrive. It's pretty much: call 999 so you have someone to guide you, then make sure to catch it and keep it cuddled til someone arrives.

So every few days we make some edits to the Plan, then print it out again so it's nice and legible. And repeat. In the end well have some well formatted and crafted thoughts about the birth, but I suspect it'll just sit on the clipboard in a corner of a room when the time actually comes.

In other news, every day at work I've been treating as my last. It's pretty much Bye. Maybe see you tomorrow. at the end of every day. So every day I try to have everything wrapped up as much as I can assuming everyone has to carry on on their own without me.

I'm getting lots of questions at work. I get a lot of Do you know if it's a boy or a girl? To which I always answer Yes. followed by nothing. It's fun to see the awkward pause expand til the person feels the need to say something. I always explain how we've got so much time after their born to fill their world with gender. It's nice to have these few months in advance of that to just be nicely gender neural avoiding gifts of bright pink or with guns and sports equipment.

The other question I get a lot is Are you excited? How do I answer that? I mean, not excited. Nervous? Apprehensive? I could just say that all the miscarriages took more of a toll on me than I thought and I'm still kind of numb on the inside. I want to be more excited, but not being excited also keeps away the spiraling disappointment of when things go wrong. But it's not a direction most people want that question to go. So, in reality, I usually either say Yes or, in the more unguarded moments It's been a long road getting here. I suppose it's like my stock answer to Do you want a boy or a girl?, which is A live birth. I'd just like to get to the point where things are ok and we can get on with being an expanded family.

Try try again

We've been talking about having a second child. It's a surprisingly hard decision. So many factors to weigh up, but in the end it's more an emotional decision than a rational one. After all, it's hard to beat the logical argument of staying childfree, getting all the sleep you'd ever need and spend your massive cash savings on doing every fun thing ever.

Which, of course, is not entirely true. There are plenty of logical reasons to have children. I'm pretty sure I've discussed it before.

So I think it's a given that I love my daughter. She's wonderful . So why ruin that by throwing a huge unknown into the equation? On the other hand, loving another wonderful person would be… well… wonderful.

Then again, it would be nice to sleep in 2017. I've mostly gotten sleep back. I don't want to lose it again.

But I remember how much I just drank up every second of time with my daughter when she was a wee baby. Of course, a wee baby grows into a person, so having a baby because you love babies is just not a good idea. But seeing the world through fresh eyes exposes you to things you never considered. It's like having a Narnia in every closet.

I hated being a younger sibling. It's fine now. I get along quite well with my brother who is only 18 months older than me. But the first 12 or so years were nothing I'd wish on anyone. I don't want to turn my lovely daughter into someone who can be so unpleasant. I just hope that with a larger age gap there will be less trouble between them, and they'll have more ability to get along. I hope.

And all the injuries, both sudden and chronic. Sciatica. Herniated disk. Upper back pain. Lower back pain. Shoulder pain. Pretty much all the chronic ones stem from carrying the child and working at a desk. But new babies are small and light, and maybe I'll know my limits better this time. And I know a good masseuse. But, I thought I was old when I had R. I'm five years older now. I can see 50 from where I'm standing. Am I mad?

And I think of all the arguments I have with my daughter. How stubborn and out of control she gets. But there's also seeing her do things I never could have done at her age. She's already more comfortable bugging the waitstaff for the bill at a restaurant than I've ever been.

And there's all squicky unpleasantness that comes out of a newborn. But, once you've been rather graphically defecated on, a whole world of eew gross just no longer matters anymore. Well, I guess I've got to clean that up and get on with it.

The weirdest thing is how different sex is when trying for a child. Recreational sex always has that undertone and fear of If something goes wrong this will change my life forever. It's so different when trying for child, especially a second one when you know more of what you're getting in to. It's not about the fear, it's If this goes well this will change the whole world forever. It's the butterfly effect in human form. This person will impact everyone they meet, who will impact everyone they meet, and then there's their descendants and their impact. Every single drop in the gene pool ripples out for the rest of history.

Holiday from EC

For some reason, for the past fortnight the girl has regressed in her toilet habits to where she was 6 months ago. A month ago she was wetting maybe 4 nappies a week – half of those in her sleep. Now she's going through that many in a day. She's no longer giving us any signals, and will deny that she has to go even when she actually does.

It's perfectly natural for an ECd baby to slip for a while. It's supposed to happen when they level up in other things, or when sick, or various other causes. She's done this before to a degree, but never so markedly.

The weird thing is she's really only missed at home. Well, she missed once at a friend's place and once at a pub yesterday, but for the most part, she's only missing at home. Admittedly she's home more often than she's out and about, but if she'd wet 4 nappies at home over the same period where she wet just one outside, clearly there's something there.

So I've had to regress along with her. Really watching her for any sign of change in behaviour, or interrupting whatever we're doing to take her too the loo. We've even stopped calling it the "loo" or "toilet" in favour of "bathroom" which is made up of sounds I know she can say – just in case she decides to tell us she has to go instead of her usual gesture.

Watching for subtle changes in her behaviour is hard. By the time it's clear that she's gone from normal play to uncomfortably-full-bladder mode, she's actually moved on to unhappy-pants mode, and it's too late. The problem is amplified by (my suspicion that) she's actively trying to hide the fact she needs to go. Today I asked her if she needed the loo (she was still dry). She babbled a bit and handed me a book, demanding I read it to her. Despite the abridgement where the little train could quite easily without much effort, she was freshly wet by the time I finished.

So I can only hope this phase ends soon enough and we get back to normal. In the meanwhile I just have to try hiding my disappointment and making her experience on the toilet as fun as possible, so she doesn't start making negative associations.

Falling down

The girl had her first A&E trip on Saturday. A momentary flicker in her stair climbing skills sent her down 3 or 4 steps and headfirst into a bookcase. I was in the nursery at the time when I heard the crash and various screamings. I ran out to find L holding the girl, her face covered with blood.

We took her to the bathroom to clean her up. All I could find were nappy liners to wipe away the blood. I was relieved to find what looked to be a flap of skin was actually the blood soaked on her eyebrow. Then L uncovered the actual wound – a 2cm vertical gash in the middle of her forehead. Again, a bit of a relief since a cut forehead I could deal with. L didn't see it that way and started to panic more since we clearly had to get to hospital. She suggested we call 999. I hesitated for bit, but the girl seemed to be getting worse.

After that is a blur. I remember talking to someone on the phone, and the girl starting to go into shock and droopy eyed while shaking, I don't recall what order things happened.

L sat on the toilet seat holding the baby's forehead wound shut with her hand, while trying to keep the girl still. I went downstairs to open the front door for the paramedics when they'd come. The doorbell wasn't working and I didn't want to miss them. Then I went back upstairs when I saw the drops of blood all over the floor. I don't know what part of my brain took over, but I used some of the remaining nappy liners to clean up trail of blood from the bookcase to the bathroom.

The paramedics arrived after about 10 minutes.
By this point, her shaking had stopped, and she seemed more alert. Less crying and more wriggling, making it harder to hold the bandage. Fortunately, most of the bleeding had slowed to a mild ooze.

The wee one clearly decided, Oh, company, stopped crying and started charming the paramedics. First thing, they taped a bandage to her head. Then many tests were given, checking this vital and that. The girl was clearly quite interested in what was going on. Playing with the monitors and lights when the let her.

Then they suggested we get shoes and phones and keys and get in the ambulance to go to hospital. I remembered enough to get the nappy bag, the sling and my travel card for when I had to get home afterwards.

I really should have brought a jumper. It got cold in the evening.

On the trip to hospital the wee one calmly played with the blood oxygen monitor, nary a peep. In fact, she'd not cried since the EMTs got to our place. All day, the EMTs and nurses and doctor kept saying how if they did x she would cry. She didn't not when they took her vitals, not when they cleaned the wound, not when they glued it shut. I'm not sure if that means if she's hardcore and can take it, or is just well dispositioned.

After being seen by the triage nurse and having the girl's vitals taken, we sat in the waiting room. There were 4 other children ahead of us. L first used the downtime to go to the washroom and get all the blood off of her. Then she fed the girl. That's when the wee one started crying. Turns out she'd bit her tongue in the fall, and it was still bleeding.

We got seen about 2 hours after the fall. The doctor came in, looked at her and said a nurse would glue her wound together. And rather than explain anything to us, he said we'd be given a So your baby had a headwound pamphlet on the way out.

Ouch!

After he left, a nurse comes in and says she's going to get the glue and stuff to clean her head, and that she wanted to take the child with her. I was a bit shocked that they though that it would be ok for someone I'd never seen before to come in the room and take my child away. I mean she was dressed as a nurse, but anyone could do that.

So I let her take the girl, but followed her, and was relieved when everyone at the nurse station said hello to her as she passed. There was no actual need to take the girl, so I really wonder why the nurse wanted her with while she rifled through the storeroom. Perhaps for a bit of a cuddle? I'm guessing so the baby got used to her before she did potentially painful things to her. I have no idea. But that was the part of the process that disturbed me most.

Anyway, the nurse cleaned her wound and applied the glue. It looked like Krazy Glue. Just a thin clear liquid that dried pretty much instantly. Given how well Krazy Glue bonds skin, I'm not surprised the finally came up a medical equivalent. They say it shouldn't scar, but I'm dubious. The cut looks huge on her forehead. Then again, when I hold my arm next to her and imagine the cut on my arm, I'd probably just put a big plaster on it.

We were out of hospital and back home just over 3 hours past the initial accident. So it all went pretty fast (we took the bus home, and were rather cold from the lack of forethought to bring jumpers). Ever since I've been treating the child very carefully. Avoiding having anything touch her forehead or anything get near her head that she could bump. That's going to be hard. I just want to keep her safe until the cut heals.

We've really got to come up with a better solution for how to get the girl to hospital. I'm not going to buy a car for the occasional emergency journey. A minicab probably wouldn't take someone screaming or bleeding. Maybe something like zip car? The bus is not an option. There's a direct bus to one hospital, bus it's far and takes 50 min. The closest hospital has no good way to get there. It's only served by busses that come every 15-20 minutes. I'm not going to take a wounded child on a bus. What do other people do?

.

The wife's cycle has started up again. It wasn't nearly has dramatic as what I'd read on various blogs. It was more Hey. I'm back. Just popped in to say hello.

The most annoying thing (for me at least) is the irregularity of it. It's weird after almost two years of this baby-growing process to have pregnancy scares again. There's just no way to know if it's late or there's a bun in the oven. It's not like the usual "sore breasts" sign works when you're already breastfeeding.

For the record, there is no bun.

The way I like to look at it, we've hit perfection with this girl. I don't need another child. My biological clock is content with what we have – which I'm rather grateful for.

Another, more cynical way to look at it is that, thinking back at all the stages we've gone through, to be honest I'm not that interested in doing it again. I'm happy with this girl and it's "cured" that yearning need I felt before. Somehow, with the biological clock out of the way, any thoughts of new babies always end up in logicland, where they prove to be impractical. I don't want to have to think of another set of names, or find a house with enough space for another person, or worry about cots and clothes and mediate arguments and worry about being hyper-fair.

It's hard to describe without sounding offensive to by daughter or just generally hypocritical. I'll just say she completes our family well and leave it at that.

Food

Dining is starting to settle down a bit. We're almost at a point I can live with. She eats with us, but she eats her own food. For L and I, I make the usual grown-up food. For the little one I usually roast some vegetables. No spices, just roasted at low temperature (125-150°C) for a few hours. I start the oven when I start dinner. Chop some combination of mushrooms (She really likes the mushrooms), onions, peppers, aubergines, celery, potatoes or whatever else we have at hand. Put it in a dish and take it out after we're done eating. Put it in the fridge, then dole it out over the next few days.

I have to say, the stuff tastes brilliant. I've never really had the patience for roast veg for meals before, but this works really well, since it's so little work and prepped in advance. It's hard for me to not pick at the food meant for her. Though I draw the line at not taking food from her tray.

My only concern is that it really does taste better on the day it's cooked. But it does still taste ok after being refrigerated a few days.

We feed her by putting a selection of stuff on her tray,and letting her pick it up. She's done when she doesn't try to eat anything new we put down.

Breakfast is less exciting – sliced fruits: Banana, orange, apple. Whatever else we have around – carrots, tomatoes. I do need to start having a more consistent set of breakfast foods around. Like toast.

We used to try to put her to sleep before dinner. At first she'd be in the moses basket we kept in the dining room. She'd often sleep for the first 10 minutes of dinner, then start crying. One of us would gulp down dinner and settle her, while the other would eat. Usually it'd end up with L feeding her.

After a while she'd sleep through dinner. She graduated to sleeping in her own cot. We'd aim a video phone at her and watch her over skype on the laptop. This often degraded to one of us bolting downstairs to collect the crying girl, bringing her upstairs til she was calm again.

After 6 months had passed we started baby-led weaning. Which started off very slowly. She'd take the stuff, put it in her mouth. Chew, sometimes completely masticating it. Then it'd just fall out on the tray of her high chair. I started with simple easy to grab food like carrot sticks, celery, sliced peppers and cucumber. It certainly helped her master grabbing things. She was holding between thumb and index finger quite deftly. But that was pretty much all she got out of it. This went on for a couple of months. It seemed any food she'd ingest was by accident.

It was really cute at first. She'd make a horrible face whenever she was introduced to a new food. This stopped pretty quickly, and the only food she's really reacted too since was a mushroom from a thai green curry. I suspect it was too hot for her. I recently tried feeding her a chunk of lemon (seeds removed) to see if she'd replicate the looks in the babies tasting lemon for the first time video. She ate it right up. Yum.

We got to the point where we were about to give up the baby-led weaning. We decided to feed her puree one meal a day.

Day one worked. She at an entire meal.

Day two, she started to be dubious about the puree.

At day 3 she was refusing the puree entirely. And eating solids. It's like she realised that if she did not get on with eating the real food we give her, she'd have nothing but this mush forever. Which, in fact, was more or less true. Or perhaps she finally figured out how to swallow. Which seems more true, but doesn't sound as nice.

So what's next? At some point we need to start feeding her more grown-up food. I'd like to be able to only have to make one meal. I also need to get more D and iron in her diet – since she's not getting much from milk.

The real downside here is the output. Her stool really smells bad now. And is much less pleasant to clean up. She's defecating far less now, and she's using the loo for most of it. But that just makes the dirty misses even harder to deal with.

Dadadadadadada

First off, the wee one is making a variety of sounds. One of her recent masteries is saying Dada, which I think it utterly brilliant that that is her first real word, even if she extends it too far most of the time, Dadadadadadadada.... I'm sure she does not actually know what it means yet, but I always turn my head to her and answer yes? when she says it, in hopes she'll get it in time. I always said I did not know what I would be called, and, conveniently, she seems to have decided that for me.

I'm pretty sure she is actually trying to talk, in general, but just does not have the muscle control to make actual words. When she says something short and a seemingly random combination of syllables, I do try really hard to figure what word she's trying to mimic.

In related news, the internet brought this article to my attention recently: At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns.

I have to say, yeah. True. Clearly. The little one knows her own name. Has for a while. At least she looks at me when I say it. When I say her mother's name in the exact same tone, she does not look at me.

Another case I discovered recently, to my shock, is how well the EC cue for urination works. She was fussing while I was trying to get her to sit on the toilet. I my frustration, I decided it might help to make sure she understood why she was there and what I expected of her by sounding the urination cue.

Turns out, she clearly knows what the cue means. She stood on the seat of the loo and promptly started peeing on my leg and the floor.

So… that article... obviously, and definitely spot on. Babies know more than they let on.

I'm sure if I paid really close attention could point out lots more cases where she knows what I'm saying. She knows that it's me on the other side of the little box when I do video calls on Skype. She is sentient, to a degree, even if she doesn't have the ability to clearly communicate it.

EC going well

The EC seems to be going rather well. I'm impressed how little effort and how much easier it makes life. The little one has taken to it like a duck to… well… not water, but perhaps the grass near a pond. It's not its favourite place to be, but it's content to spend some time there despite being a little awkward.

Anyway, it is a bit of a relief for us. While she still pees in her nappies more often than not, she generally only dirties her nappy on average once every two days. And considering that cleaning her bum after pooing in the loo is so much easier than after defecating in a nappy, I can definitely live with this.

It's not all smooth sailing. She's really good about the loo first thing in the morning, since she's been holding it in all night. That alone would make EC worth it. It's during the day we really have to guess when she needs to go. If she doesn't need to go she'll fidget and cry and generally try to escape – not the safest thing to do when sitting on the loo, even with the baby seat. She also tends to prefer when I'm holding her on the loo. I don't mind that at all, except for the fact that I'm not there during working hours, and disappear for a few days at a time at irregular intervals. I don't know if the relative infrequency is why she prefers me, or maybe I just have an easier time squatting in front of her on the floor (L's hips are still recovering from the pregnancy).

So… EC – definitely a success. I'll certainly be keeping this up.

Teeth and guilt

The nightmare in Germany of the incoming top teeth fever seems to be the worst of it. She's up to 5 teeth now, with a 6^th coming in any moment. These don't seem to be causing as much pain – she's clearly using them to chomp on fingers, and the occasional nipple. There's not as much fever, though she has been warm, and is the snotliest I've seen her. She's getting used to having her nose wiped without crying, though I have to say the snotsucker tube makes me sick just thinking about it. I've yet to come close to trying it. Or even watching while L uses it. I know I'm being a big baby and just need to get over it. But there's just this big squick factor I can't get over.

Speaking of big baby things... I had another business trip last week. Three days away this time, with a flight out at 7am monday morning.

I'm still sick from my trip last month (the one where the wee one got the fever). I felt utterly awful at 430 when I got up. I very nearly cancelled, but I went because I knew my only chance to get enough rest to beat the cold was being alone in a hotel. I still feel really guilty for leaving the wife alone to care for the child for 3 days alone. The 11 hours sleep I got Monday night alleviated the guilt a little, but I still feel wrong. Even worse is the fact that now that I'm back, the cold which was getting better is now getting worse. I can't blame the family. I mean, it's work's fault I have this bloody thing in the first place. And their new accidental policy of no working from home is certainly not helping (oops, we broke the VPN. We'll have it working for you again in at probably a fortnight). But, to be honest, I don't want to blame anyone. I just want to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without needing to cough out my lungs.

Waste matters

Toilet training is working. Or at least EC is. I've been told not to call it toilet training because people get their knickers in a twist over that.

Regardless, it is useful. First thing every morning after she wakes we place her on her Thomas the Tank Engine toilet seat (very odd choice of marketing there) and she does the full set of excretions with a very smiley face when we tell her how proud of her she is.

The best part is having fewer dirty nappies to change. If I time it well, we get to her before she has to go. And she knows now that when she's on the loo that now is the best time to go. You can see her putting effort into it. Her belly wrinkles and she taps her right foot sometimes – so cute!

The next best thing is that cleaning a baby's bottom after using the loo is soooo much easier than cleaning one after going in a nappy.

All in all I claim this experiment to have worked. We'll have to wait and see if there's any surprising long-term side effects. But for now, having the wee one understand there's and time and place for producing waste can only be a good thing.

Eliminating Communication

A few days ago L suggested we start toilet training the wee one. I was reluctant at first, but she made a very convincing case for it. She came across this idea called Elimination Communication, which is a pretty daft name for a form of toilet training. But I suppose DAUT was too obscure a backronym.

EC as a whole has a lot of pretty tweaked ideas, but at its heart makes sense – babies have to learn to defecate in their clothes, which they need to unlearn later. Take advantage of this before they get too used to sitting in their own yukky stuffs. The idea that the lass can be toilet trained now at 5 months is something I can heartily endorse. It could take months, but even one less nappy to change would be appreciated.

So we've been taking turns holding the girl on the toilet seat waiting for her to get the idea. As far as I can tell, so far she just thinks we're nuts and that she was perfectly happy going when and where she pleased. And why does she now have to sit on a cold hard chair, risking falling into a scary tub of water, while we sing to her and make excited faces encouraging something to happen. What. Do you want me to giggle? Cause, as far as I can tell, it's the only thing I'm doing that gets any positive response.

I bought a baby training seat for the loo to make the process a little less scary, but she's still not getting it. Well, plenty of time for her to warm to the idea. It's not like she's got any better places to be.

As a side note, this strikes me as yet another example of how the whole baby thing in our culture is just all wrong. Pregnancy, birth, feeding, transporting… the "normal" way of dong things seems to be the nearly the worst thing possible to do. So it would not surprise me at all if the expected way of doing nappies and toilet training is well off course.

Actually, I knew there was loads wrong about this culture before I even considered breeding. Why should common conceptions of childrearing be any different?

Scary illnesses

Yesterday the wee one came down with a tummy bug. It was really rather scary seeing it. I was at the grocery store with her in a sling facing out so she could enjoy the sights. Turns out, if I'm alone having her face outward is not a good idea. Beyond hearing her breathe and vocalise and holding her hand, there's no real sign to tell what she's doing.

So my first sign that something is wrong is she spits up and I rush to catch it with a muslin. But it soaks through and just doesn't stop coming. I turn toward the hand mirrors on display next to me, and I see her throw up again, this time out of her nose too. I get her out of the harness, sit her on the floor and clean her up. She's quiet, but not out of it. I can't tell if she feels nothing unusual's happened or she's upset and weakened beyond crying. I worry that, since it's cold out, I overbundled her and accidentally burnt her brain out.

I'm not putting her back in for the trip home. I just pick her up and walk quickly homeward. Her being sedate through the whole experience makes it worse. The world just cut out and there is just us, and blurry obstacles between us and home. 5 minutes and one panicked call later (she's not well, get the door) and I'm unbundling her on the bed. She seems fine. She's turned on her belly doing the cat pose. Then she surprises us by bawling unconsolably for half an hour. Something she's not done for ages.

L tries consoling her while I call NHS direct asking for advice. She falls asleep by the time I'm off the phone.

In the end, she throws up huge amounts two more times. I feel slightly better in that it's clearly not because I bundled her up too much. But worse too because she's clearly got something wrong. It's almost certainly due to her catching her mum's tummy bug (which we thought was food poisoning). They say it'll likely be over in 72 hours (40 more to go) and just make sure she doesn't dehydrate.

She did it again today while I was taking her down the stairs. Two very volumous vomits with stuff coming out her nose. That's still really weird to see – though it's also a good sign that something is Not Right. She seems to be coping better with it today – no 30 minute bawl session following the incident, just some patience while I run around shedding icky clothes, cleaning the girl, floor and whatnot.

So, it seems we just sit and wait and have towels at hand in case of more trouble.

The birth story. Part 4

Saturday, 30 July 7:05pm. A sense of reality starts to return a bit and the midwife mentions the placenta and having to wait for it or taking drugs to get it out sooner. L says she wants it to come out on its own. So they bring in a birthing stool (a chair with a hole in the seat) for L to sit on. I ask about weighing and the Apgar test. They say they can wait for the measurements and she's clearly fine so doesn't need poking or testing.

We look at the umbilical cord, which is a pale organic-looking tube – reminds me a bit of a pulsing sausage or something. It's nice to finally see it, having been so dependant on it working for so long. I wonder what it's providing to the baby now. Is it just topping up her air and nutrients? I mean, it was working full force just a few minutes ago, and it's clearly still running. The baby can't go long without oxygen, so it must be providing at least some of it, just in case the birthing takes a while. I'm just curious what it's doing and how the mechanics of it shutting down work.

L tells the midwife to wait for it to stop pulsing before cutting it. I've no idea if the midwife did or not, but she eventually clamped it in two places and asked me to cut it. this couldn't have been more than 10-15 minutes after the birth. I specifically mentioned in the birth plan that I had no desire at all to cut the cord, but there I was, handed the scary scissors and in a state of massive suggestion. (now I know why the neighbour named his 3rd child after two of the midwives). So I cut the cord, and a splatter of blood comes out and onto the towels on the floor. The midwife asks if she can take the cord blood for testing. Again, yeah, whatever. It's there. Help yourself.

So the baby is finally free and her own entity for the first time since she was a bouncing ball of a few dozen cells trying to find a nice place to attach to. She doesn't seem to notice, so we don't make a big deal of it. We're just staring at her and smiling.

She's this wee tiny thing with an elongated misshapen head and greyish blue skin with a fine down of dark hair on her arms and back. Her head has dark hair with drying bits of goo in it. It's lighter than mine and L's, but not a lot. She's got a V-shaped widow's peak line of light-coloured hairs at the edge of her hairline which I still don't know what's going on with. Her nails are long and rather sharp. I guess she did get my nails in the end.

Her eyes are still a bit bulged out. She favours her right eye, and is not opening her left much. The blood vessels in her left eyelid are quite visible and I wonder if she scratched it in the womb or hurt it on the way out (turns out there's no persistent problem – she's using both eyes just fine now). She has golden eyelashes. Far blonder than the rest of her hair. Rather odd – normally people have dark lashes and light hair, not the other way around. So I can't tell if her hair's dark and going light or light going dark. With that combination people might think she dyes her hair :)

She has L's nose – I was right about the 22 week scan. (turns out, looking back at the 22 week scan, it looks just like her. We couldn't guess what she looked like at the time, but looking at the scan now, it's clearly her forehead and nose and lips and chin). Her cheeks and mouth and nose look a lot like a baby picture of L taken when she was 5 hours old. She's much thinner in the face, but the resemblance is clearly there (and has been getting stronger as her face fills in). I love the fact that she's me from the side and L from the front.

Around now, the original midwife comes back from her break. She's rather surprised to have missed it all: Wow. That was fast. I'm glad it was so easy. You should consider doing a home birth next time.

After some more gazing at the child the midwife points out that L's feet have turned blue, and asks if this is normal for her. No. No it's not. So she goes to sit on the toilet instead. They take this time to finally weigh the girl. I stand next to her while they put her on the scale. 3180 grams (7 pounds) and 49 cm long. They put a nappy on her (she's already passed some chocolately-looking meconium) and hand her back to me wrapped in a hospital towel. I hold her and stare at her and smile and walk around. She's soooo light, and the first baby that I ever held that didn't melt down after a few minutes.

I say she's very light, but I weighed over a pound less when I was born. L weighed over a pound more. So my family thinks she's a large baby and L's family thinks she's so very small.

I hear a plop from the loo and L says that the placenta has fallen out. This is 40 minutes after the birth – another textbook figure which encourages me. L comes out and picks up the camera and starts taking photos of me holding the baby. It's the first photos of the child and I'm beaming at her in all of them.

L convinces me to give her the baby back. I use the lull to tell a few people about the birth. I send my inlaws an SMS saying It's a girl, but of course you knew that already – what else could I say as tersely? SMS the sister-in-law to let her know she's an auntie. And I phone my parents (curse their lack of GSM phones) and am finally able to say yes, you are grandparents now (the answer to the first question out of their mouths every single time I've called them for the past month).

Meanwhile they check L for damage. Turns out she has class 2 tearing, which the midwife explains that class 1 is minor, class 2 is deeper tear and could need stitches. Class 3 is a nasty tear, and class 4… you don't want to know. Given how nasty she described class 3, I really don't what to know about 4. They initially want to stitch up L, but the midwife who comes on after 8 (when they change shifts) says it's better to just leave to heal as is – which L is fine with.

Things start to quiet down a bit. Around 10pm I start telling non-family people about the birth. I completely forget that we made a list, and just pick a few seemingly at random (a few days later I find the list and realise that I can't be trusted to do this from memory, since I'd still not told them). I joke with L that we should call the people who gave us a lift to hospital and ask if they could pick us up on the way home from the party.

I finally turn to the bag we brought. Three bags, actually. One an insulated bag of food. Still full of all the frozen smoothies we'd planned to keep L going though the long labour. I give her one – may as well not go to waste – and put the ice coffees I brought into the kitchen fridge. I try to eat some of the emergency rations I brought. Turns out they're terrible. Note to self: don't make emergency rations in a hurry, just make your usual tasty food.

It's cold in the birthing centre, so we dress up the baby in pyjamas and a hat and gloves and socks. L is very cold due to the loss of so much mass and fluids, so we wrap her up in blankets so she can doze off. Around midnight I take a picture of the baby and try to upload to Facebook, but the phone fights me and refuses to do so. L goes to sleep on her bed-thing, I lie on the fold-out futon and we put the baby in the cot between us, all wrapped up. I keep a hand on her while I sleep.

Stuff happens with L and the midwife during the night. Something about breastfeeding. But I am oblivious to it while I "sleep".

I wake up at about 5am, and finally get the other phone to upload the baby's photo (I've been carrying around two phones for a couple of months, with SIMs from different operators, just in case one has no reception or conks out or something), though it required ages of fiddling and some annoying app updates to finally get it to work (grrr).

We realise later that, while it's cold in there, we've probably overbundled the wee lass. So we remove the overlarge clothes and just plunk her down on my chest, skin on skin, and I put a towel over us. I have the cutest sweetest most precious thing in the world sleeping on my chest and I am in bliss. I lie there with her for hours.

The birth, part 3

Saturday, 30 July, 6pm. We arrive in the birthing centre, wind our way through the halls, luggage in tow, to reception. The midwife at the desk is the one we'd spoken to on the phone earlier. Rather chipper and likeable. I bitterly wonder why she hasn't been answering the phone for the past hour. We explained the situation and she immediately steps out for lunch. Or so the wife (L) tells me later. All I saw was that she disappeared just after I gave her the hospital notes.

At this point things get a bit mad so I may have a few of the details wrong. I asked L to edit this to make sure I got it right.

They put us in a room with an unmade bed while they prepare a real room for us. We slightly settle in for about ten minutes. Then another midwife comes along to check out L, so she's moved to room 4. I grab all the stuff and L shuffles in, the TENS machine still dangling from her back, and switch in hand. The floor's still wet, so we leave muddy tacks all over the floor. Great, that's sanitary, I think, but at least the midwife cleans it up. I help L out of her pants, and she lies down on the bed to be checked. I notice there's nothing to plug the iPod into. Great. They told me they had docks for those. Grumble.

They check her blood pressure and the baby's heartbeat, which are doing just fine and not noticeably different from that morning. That's one worry smoothed out for me – having just read a story about a woman whose baby went into distress from just the contractions (how annoying is that? I mean being distressed by contractions? That's what being born in all about). Then came the first big check – how dilated is she?

For me, this felt like the first real big moment. For those who don't know, the cervix is what opens up to let the baby out (or stays closed to keep the baby in for most of pregnancy). As a general rule, it opens up to 10cm slowly over the course of labour. When it hits 10cm, then there's enough room for the baby's head (the widest part of the baby) to come out (which is usually around 10cm across, though ours was 11), quickly followed by the rest of the baby. So when I say this was the first real big moment, I mean this is what determines how long the labour's going to take. If the cervix is closed or just a couple of cm dilated, then we're likely in store for one of those 20+ hour labours, punctuated with lots of helping L focus on getting the contraction muscles to work together. On the other hand, a larger dilation means baby comes sooner, usually a few hours of hard contractions. Given L and her sister's births, I imagined the latter (L's sister was born 5 hours after contractions suddenly started. L was born in an ambulance outside a petrol station 10 miles from hospital) and expected maybe 6cm dilation and maybe some notable birth and transition stages. I was wrong.

So, the midwife waits till the current contraction is done before sticking her fingers in and says something like I can't find the cervix. It's got to be in there somewhere, so it must be in an unusual place. So I'm going to guess you're about 8cm dilated. then she left to sort out the room. While she was gone L and I discussed how that was, of course, crap. L's cervix has always been in the usual cervical place – at the end her uterus. It was just so fully dilated that the midwife could find no trace of it. So now we knew. We were in store for a quick labour.

The TENS electrodes have been slipping over the past few hours. I've had to adjust them a few times, but at this point L is sweaty enough that they just keep slipping out of place. I'm wondering if they're actually doing anything for her anymore. The midwife asks would you like some gas and air to which L responds Yes, please or at least would have if she'd have had time to before covering her face with the mask and breathing deep. At this point we'd been in hospital maybe 20 minutes.

We're left alone again for a few minutes with L intermittently breathing the nitrous. I tell her comforting platitudes about how everything is going well, and she gets annoyed about how I'm just saying platitudes about how everything is going well. The midwife comes back and L she says she has to go to the loo. I know it's just the baby's head putting pressure on the rectum. The midwife knows it's just the baby's head putting pressure on the rectum. Even L knows it's just the baby's head putting pressure on the rectum, but if it makes her comfortable, what's the harm? So into the loo she goes.

She sits there around ten minutes. We briefly discuss getting in touch with family, at least L's sister, to let them know labour's begun. But things just got out of hand. The midwife comes back and says she wants to check the baby's heartbeat. She tries, but couldn't do it with L sitting there, so L comes back and lies down on the bed-thing, and the heartbeat is found (all good).

Quick aside. The bed-thing is a curved bed with a giant bean bag chair as the pillow. So it's not very straightforward to lie on.

At this point L points out to the midwife she has the urge to push. She's not very convincing in the it's coming now front. So the midwife interprets it in a isn't that interesting to note kind of way. L is lying on the bed, which is just about the worst position possible for birthing. L just can't get up – which is going to be a real bother for the birthing. I tell the midwife we'd like to use the birthing pool. She says it'll take an hour to clean and fill up. I don't bother mentioning that we'd asked for it when we came in. L and I just look at each other and share a knowing glance of we've not the slightest chance, do we? and L asks, with just a hint of futility, can you start filling it now?

Another aside. I don't know anyone who has successfully used a birthing pool in hospital. Everyone seems to be talked out of it or given some excuse for for why they can't use it. Why do hospitals bother having one? Just to tick a box?

We need a backup to get L into a better position. I ask if we can get a birthing ball. That the midwife can do. So she leaves to get it. I have no idea if she even tries to get the pool cleaned and ready. While she's gone L lies on her right side and tells me to hold her left leg up. The TENS electrodes are still attached, clearly all migrated to the wrong positions. L has the gas in hand to hopefully take the edge off the pain, but I can't recall how much she's actually using (and she has no idea if the gas actually helped. At times it just made her nauseous). Then I see something coming out of her. I just think WTF is that? Is that a placenta? a millisecond later I realise I'm really stupid and that is a gooey matted bit of hair. Before my eyes can pop out of my head I exclaim She's crowning! to L and dive for the call button. Maybe 20 seconds later (though it felt like much longer) the midwife comes back into the room with the deflated birthing ball. well, that's not going to be of much help, now is it? I don't say. Instead She's crowning! comes out of my mouth.

The midwife replies with simply Dear sweet jesus christ!, puts down the stuff, fetches a coworker, starts putting on the blue gloves, and settles in at L's business end.

At this point the midwife says to L In a second I'm going to tell you to pant and not push, and starts adjusting L's bits to not break when the baby comes out. Then the head starts coming out for real this time and L says It burns!

The matted hair is visible again. On an elongated alien head. Which kind of answers the how can an 11cm head come out of a 10cm opening? I was asking the day before. Another contraction and the head is out. It's grey – something I was a little prepared for by all the BBC documentaries on birth I'd been watching. But it's still weird. I look closer and I say That's my ear! On the side of the baby's head is clearly my ear. I'm astounded.

Then the grey torso slides out at the next contraction. There's a face and a body. With limbs. In one move, the midwife scoops her up and onto L's chest. It's less than an hour after we got to UCH.

She's breathing – I can hear her breathing. Several breaths later she cries. Not for very long, but enough to make it clear she's ok. She settles back down to gentle breathing again. She's belly down on L's chest and L is cooing at her and telling her she's so sweet.

I ask the midwife It's a girl, right? I'd not seen the baby from the front yet. Just her face and back. She quickly checks and says, Yes. I've known it was a girl for about 30 weeks, but still, part of me didn't entirely believe it.

The midwife takes a towel and starts brushing her off, she claims it'll get the blood flowing to the skin. I say leave the vernix on, which she promptly ignores and says I am, even though she's clearly not. Whatever. The baby is safe and here and clearly alive and well in L's arms. I'm grinning like a madman. At this point I see the midwife taking note of the time and writing it in the notes. I'm distracted when I look at my child's feet and say to L I know those toes! Those are your toes!

To be concluded...

Breastworks

I didn’t even know a pregnant woman could get mastitis. Turns out anyone can at any time, male or female. The wife came down with it a few days back. Just a small lumpy red spot on a breast. All the details sounded like mastitis (which a new-mum friend of ours has right now, so I'm a bit up to date on the symptoms), but I thought, no way – you can only get that when lactating.

We looked it up in the Pregnancy Bible. The photo and description matched, but I was still dubious til the wife came home from the GP saying Yup. Mastitis. 5 to 7 days of stinky penicillin will be my friend. (Or something to that effect, she doesn't really talk like that). And that's when she explained that anyone can get it, or, more specifically, I could get it, it's just most common in lactating women.

So the antibiotics seem to be having an effect. And since she noticed it very early, there's been very little pain and discomfort. It's better to have it now than after the kid is born, since her breasts are only in casual daily use, rather than hard-core dietary use. But I do worry that this just means she's prone to more mastitis later.

But, it turns out, that is part of my job – to worry about absolutely everything that can go wrong so she does not have to. We both have our burdens – she has to grow and stretch and keep her armoured uterus safe. I have to imagine everything nasty that can happen. Let me tell you, it's not the funnest job, and if it weren't for the little one's reassuring kicks, it could get depressing. It has its plus sides, since I occasionally do know what to look for, like with the mastitis, when she gets it. I hope this prepares me sufficiently for the actual birth. Or perhaps I'll just be terrified of all the unlikely things I know which can go wrong, like I was the first time she had surgery. We'll just have to see.

Breaking things

The following may be considered TMI and is not for the easily squicked. You are warned.

It occurs to me that the whole reproductive lifecycle of women is about breaking things. First there's the hymen. Then there's the water breaking at the start of labour. Then there's the vaginal tearing at birth. I can kind of see the point of the water breaking, but the rest just strike me as permanent body modification triggered by incidental events. Why should the body irrevocably change based on something that it's supposed to do? I mean after a period, the uterus heals up again to prep for the next one. It doesn’t just fall out, and there! no more uterine lining for you!

Men just do have anything like that. Body changes are gradual. Hair (for most men) doesn’t all fall out at once in clumps – it just slowly thins. I don't have anything personal to compare to, so I have to rationalise the whole thing. I have to build a model in my head of how it works so it makes sense (curse my academic background).

I can kind of see the point of the vaginal tearing — in a State of Nature kind of way. I mean, women don't really need their bits to be able to pass a baby's head until they're actively reproducing. So if it tears enough to not be able to heal on its own, it just leaves a wider hole for future use. It makes a kind of sense, though it doesn't sound very efficient. I don't see why the bits can't just prepare and stretch in time for birth, rather than just breaking when push comes to shove. The cervix is polite enough to dilate before birth. It doesn't break open. Why can't the perineum become all elasticy in the last month or so? I'd think stretch marks on the undercarriage would be sufficiently acceptable alternative.

Perhaps, as a male, I just don't get it. Perhaps women are used to all the breakings and tearings and bleedings from their genitals that all the breakings around birth is just one more thing for them.