Plague diary: Day 38 - back working

Day 3 of me back at work. The C-19 has subsided enough that I've been able to work, but I've been so knackered by the end of the day, that it's taken me a while to blog about it.

Day 1 of work went ok, beyond the drop in energy at the end of the day. And of course, I managed to sleep funny on the inflatable mattress. Getting out of bed was such pain I just had to sit on the floor for a minute or two. I got through the morning, but I had to give up in the afternoon. OTOH, my lungs were actually able to fill to the bottom, so, if it's not one thing, it's another.

Back in time a bit... Two weeks ago, the wee boy woke up in the night, and crawled off the bed. The baby monitor we were using (which we used when R was a baby) gave up giving us audio, so we didn't notice him deciding to roam around. After roaming off the bed entirely, and the crying that ensued afterward, L and I took action. 1) Barriers so he could not get out of his cot, and 2) a new, working baby monitor.

The barriers are working, but the baby monitor is crap. the camera gets up to 50^C just being plugged in, not even on. So we have to return it.

Back to the present. I've been calling every day since Sunday, being on hold, waiting for someone to answer, and finally giving up. Yesterday, instead of working with back pain, I lay down on the sofa, feet in the air, and pipe under the painful part of my back, on hold for an hour and 42 minutes. When they finally answered, I discovered I was asleep and had to drag myself into sentience. Despite the wait, they were very fast and efficient resolving my request to return it. In fact, they just picked it up and took it away 2 minutes ago, as I was writing this.

Given the inflatable had betrayed me, last night I slept in my own bed. It was lovely. I didn't sleep very well, but I awoke with no back pain, so that's really nice. Day 3 of work had almost practical levels of energy, so I could do things. Let's hope this continues

Plague Diary: Day 14

I've been feeling better over the past few days. I woke this morning with only a 37.2^C temperature. So I decided to try working from home today. I was fine until around 1230, when my lungs let me know it was a mistake.

I've pretty much reverted a week from just a few hours of work. Not sure how or why, but I certainly won't be fooled like that again.I don't know what about work hit me so hard – perhaps it's my authoritative voice? Perhaps it was listening and paying attention and making notes? I don't know, but it's not something my body can cope with.

I am not impressed with this virus

In other news, we've been doing more video calls lately. R, like most children always acts up on the calls. So we tried something different – turning off our side of the video. It worked as expected, at first. She didn't act up or make faces at all. Until after a while she burst into tears about not being able to see herself. That was a surprising side effect. but I will continue trying to just not show our side of the video and see if there's a way to make calls to family more enjoyable that way.

Plague Diary: day 8

Day 8 and the whole country is on lockdown. On the other hand we finally got our food order delivered. So we are no longer scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of what we can eat. That said, there was no pasta, so I don't know how R is going to cope.

We had two grocery orders. One, from Tesco that we booked ten days ago. The other from the local veg shop that we called in yesterday. Given the reliability of the latter, I wish we could get everything from them. But it's good to know we won't run out of fresh food.

Today R had her first Zoom conference call with the other kids in her class. Good thing I use this at work all the time. It was easy to install and show her how to use it. Then I just let her be for 90 minutes. It seemed quite chaotic and I did not have the energy to even watch.

On that note, I'm still tired very easily. Talking a lot, especially on the phone, really does me in. I had a couple of long calls today after which I just had to nap. I say I'm easily exhausted, but not at night when I try to sleep. Then I'm just laying in bed for ages. (Last night wasn't helped by R setting an alarm for 7am, which only I heard. So I had to hunt down where her iPad was so I could kill it.

Talked to the GP yesterday about my symptoms and Covid-19. She said it does sounds like I've got it – which does bring some peace of mind. She also says that since it's been a week I should start to feel better soon. Most people are over it after a week, she says, except some take a turn for the worse around day 8 or 9. Which implies that if things are still ok Thursday, I should be past the worst of it. Apparently the lung/cough issues should linger for ages – but that doesn't really give me an idea of when I'm no longer contagious. Nor does it give me a sense of when I'd be ready to work again, but I should be able to work that out for myself.

Plague diary

Day 6 of what appears to be covid-19. It's hard to tell since most of the symptoms are so generic and there is nearly zero testing in the UK. All I know for sure is that I've got a fever, some mild chest and throat symptoms and am exhausted all the time. The girl has a higher fever and is bouncing off the walls trying to find something to do. L and the baby are both fever and symptom free.

I was coping with working form home for 2 weeks before coming down with anything. I decided to self-isolate when someone on the floor above me at work tested positive. Most of my coworkers decided the same thing. I have to say that our conference calls became much more chatty once they became nearly the sole human interaction we could experience.

I'm still not sure how I caught this. Could be anywhere. Looking back at the 5-14 days before I felt anything, I'd not gone out much, but since I've been on pills that make me immunocompromised, it appears it doesn't take much. And when it hit, it came on pretty fast. I started feeling a sore throat at around 5-6am. By 11am I was completely wiped out and dropped off the conference call, saying I'd be out for a while. Hung up and and went to sleep.

The next day R came down with a fever, so I've been sleeping on an inflatable mattress in her room. Which is much better than the tiny sofa in the office I had been using. Since then, everything has shut, including schools. We're slowing running out of food, so I hope out grocery delivery does not get cancelled (like our last one was). Beyond that we're catching up on a lot of old Deep Space Nine

(With R's newfound interest in all things Trek, we've already watched all of Next Generation, plus 2 of the movies and a little Picard)

Unfortunately I don't have an extra energy to do useful things like clean the place, or file away the mess of papers which have accrued. The one night I stayed up late dealing with bills completely wiped me out, and I won't be doing that again.

To keep R in the right mood, on Friday I read her The Masque of the Red Death as a bedtime story. She absolutely loved the description of the Black Room – It sounds so beautiful. And she said that maybe this could happen to the Tories, which means she understood what the story was about.

Annoyingly the pleasure of when I get better will be diminished by the fact I've no idea if I've actually got covid-19 or am just sick. So when we all feel fine again we'll still be stuck here uselessly quarantined until 2021, at this rate. I've already written my MP get universal testing, I suggest you write yours too.

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.

Level 2 normality

The boy was born 2 weeks ago today. We've now reached a steady state to the 2nd stage of normality.

For context, the first stage of normality was after the child was born, his grandparents came to visit. So we'd gotten used to having the baby around and seeing my parents or my in-laws every day. Our main concerns were what nappies to use, how and where to have meals with the family, and getting the daughter to school.

On Tuesday the last of the grandparents left and we've settled into the second stage of normality. School runs. Cooking dinner at home for 3 people. Laundry (unending laundry). Cleaning. You know – basic life stuff. Well.. except for work – I've a couple of weeks left of leave. We seem to be settling in to it ok. The school runs seem to nicely bookmark the domestic management of cleaning and whatnot. Once R is home, life descends into the usual chaos it's been for the past few years, except she's constantly asking to hold her brother – which has its own complications.

R can only really interact with or hold her brother when he's awake and not feeding. Now, as 2 week old spends the bulk of their time either sleeping or eating, the window of opportunity is much smaller than R would prefer. That plus R's stubbornness that she knows what she's doing has led to a few arguments. She's loving and really wants to be with her brother, which is delightful. When all is in order, it's lovely. She'll sing to him and hold him and rock him to sleep. On the other hand she'll advise me on how to settle him, and refuse to listen when holding him dangerously. Please just listen to the 2 people in the room with you who have actually gotten a child to survive infancy. A few days of experience does not make you an expert.
At least she means well

Next week we'll focus on getting ready for 3rd stage normality – me going back to work. The baby will need to go with L on the school runs, and I won't be around to cook dinner every night. That's going to be the tough bit.

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.

Now we are commuting

Recently we found ourselves in a predicament. It was half term and L had a morning meeting ending at 930. I had to be in at work for 930. A small but awkward conflict. R had to be somewhere, and school, being out, was not an option. Leaving her at home alone for an hour or so – well, that's frowned upon in the 21^st century, so we couldn't do that either.

The solution was actually quite simple. L's meeting was a 3 minute walk from my office. So R would go into work with me and wait there til L was done, and then go home with her. It was a plan.

I got up R extra early (earlier than she normally does for school) and she was dressed, fed and ready in less time than it normally takes her and in a much more chipper mood. I don't know if it's the single early day during half term that did it, or the walking up to Björk videos, but she was in a good mood, and that always helps.

We went through my morning commute together. Walking to the train, picking the best carriage that is the least walk when we get off but still has enough empty seats so we can be comfortable. We sat together on the train and chatted the whole time. We discussed the commute, what it's like to take the train every day, and so on. It was the nicest commute in I'd had, and for some reason it was much nicer than most normal travel with R. It was nice to have the company and nice to just be in the pleasant mood.

When we got to the office, I introduced her around, then showed her to the sofa where she got comfortable and got out her iPad and started playing on it.

Not everyone was in when we'd arrived. Just about every person to come in after that, once they noticed her sitting there, made the joke Oh, it that the new starter?

Not very original, but in their defence, a person did just start that morning.

L showed up shortly after her meetings, did the hellos around the office, then went off with R to play in the nearby piazza for a few hours. All sorted.

As an aside, I take R into school once a week. It's a short walk but I often take the bus in, rather than the scooter or her bike. The bus stops right outside the school and saves a bit of walking. It takes actually just as long as walking does, so it doesn't really save time. L always thought I was odd for even bothering. The word "lazy" has been used once or twice.

In reality it's not that. It occurred to me when we last did our microcommute to school that it's actually more fun to take the bus. When walking to work, R and I are different levels, it's always about nudging her past distractions and just keeping us moving down the street. It's all about herding.

On the bus, we sit next to each other and talk. Talk about what we see. Who we see. What's going to happen today. It's nice. It's like the commute on the train in miniature. I like it.

Marching on

Saturday is my first march with the daughter. We'll be going to the Women's March on London. It's not our first protest together. That was the Pro-Choice Protest in Bedford Square in 2012. She wasn't even walking yet. She was just all wrapped up in her sling and holding a little flag promoting choice.

On Saturday, she'll actually be walking (or scooting) and she'll know what the march is all about. We've explained to her that some people just simply have no respect for women and that the rest of us have to show that we will not stand for that sort of behaviour, no matter who it comes from.

I know it's an oversimplification, but we have to start somewhere, and I think that's as reasonable a distillation of the issues as any.

I am marching with her for the same reason I recently dissected a computer in front of her – to show her how it works. To make sure she's understands that it's not a mystery and it's not something other people do for reasons that are beyond her. She might not understand it completely now, but at least she’ll have seen it in action and when she comes across it again, even if she finds it complicated or unpleasant, at least it won't be intimidating.

I am also marching with her to show her that every voice counts. The more people who stand up to be heard, the more likely those in power will be persuaded to do their jobs and represent us. (Perhaps I can read her a copy of Horton Hears a Who before the March). Plus I'm hoping the raw enthusiasm for making the world a better place will rub off on her.

I have my own reasons to march. The fact that I have a daughter is incidental – I'd be out there regardless. Because women are people, and people are not property. Because institutionalised sexism hurts everyone. Being forced by threat of violence from my peers into a strict male gender role was the worst part of growing up, and made me a very bitter an unhappy boy. Women being forced by threat of violence by their peers into a lower paid professions or positions is worse, and makes for less than ideal working environments.

I am marching because my company cannot find female software developers. I haven't even seen a single CV from a woman in my 8 months there. I don't know if the agencies are filtering them out or the overall brogrammer culture of startups gives them shivers long before hitting Apply, or maybe the entire industry has too few women to spare even one programmer for a small size company.

I am marching because I am raising a child, and I want to be able to play a large role in her life despite having a job. I don't want to hear Can't your wife do that? when I need to meet with her teacher or do the school run or look after her during term breaks. I was lucky enough to be a 50% parent for most of her life before she started school. I don't want that to have been being lucky, I want it to be normal. I want careers breaks to raise children to be normal. I am marching so any parent can spend time raising their child without risking their own future.

In short, I'm marching because this matters, and the people we've elected should know better.

I've seen the future

One possible future. A future in which having a family doesn't mean giving up a career.

L and I recently met with a client. We have friends that work at the site, and a couple of them were willing to look after the girl while we did a demo session on our software. After we were done, we picked up the girl, had lunch and got on with the day.

This got me thinking, what if it were always like this?

Imagine childcare being ubiquitous and available on demand. You work from home and need to visit a client? Bring the child with and drop her off at the on-site day care. You need someone to look after your little ones while you're at work? Bring them in with you, leave them in day care and visit them during lunch and breaks. Spend your coffee break with your kid and your coworkers' kids in a little play and chat session.

Imagine if daycare spots weren't precious, closely-guarded resources only available to a select few at a great cost. But if they were cheap and plentiful enough you could just take advantage of it like a cloakroom. (Obviously not treating the children like coats, but the comfort you feel when you hand over a coat knowing full well it will be well looked after and safe and happy when you come back for it). Your child would be around when you were able to look after her and, when you need help, it's there for as short or long periods as you need. It's just there, easy and reliable.

I'm not going to even try to conceive of how this world could come about, let alone how the mechanics would work. It's just now I can picture what childcare in an enlightened world could look like.

And I'm jealous.

Now we are back

Given how my last posted ended, it does give the impression that the au pair moved in and murdered us with an axe in our sleep. Nothing could be further from the truth. As far as I'm aware she didn't axe murder anyone during her entire time in London – certainly not any of us.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I've just been too busy or too lazy to post for the past few months. I've a spare hour so I'll try to do a small catch-up.

The replacement au pair came and went. This one was a twenty year old from Italy. She was in London already on a course, so she decided to stay with us for six weeks as an extension of her stay. This was perfect since it was an extra two weeks beyond what we needed. She and the girl got along really well. We've even Skyped after she left so the girls could talk to each other.

While she was here our basic routine was... She got up at 8 and ate and tidied the kitchen. We got up with the girl at 10ish. She'd dress the girl and get get out of the house by 1030 or 11. Then they'd stay out til 3 or 4, back in time for the girl's nap. While they were out, we'd get whatever work we could done. When she was back, once the girl was down for a nap, her time was her own. She was taking a language course while she was with us, so she studied for that, or read, or Skyped to friends. She'd usually join us for dinner. Then she'd quietly go off to her room and eventually to bed, and L and I would work til 2 or 3. Repeat til the weekend, which she'd have off.

All in all it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. The au pair, while she didn't kill anyone, did manage to rip off almost all the childproofing in the kitchen. To the point that all my attempts to replace it have not stuck and at this point we're mostly using hope and strong language to keep the girl out of trouble. I know it wasn't on purpose, but it did irk me to have the childproofing broken. Moreso than the one time she put away the dirty dishes and I had to remember what was in the dishwasher and try to find it in the cupboards.
On the plus side, we actually got along – which is great since she was living in our house. She gave us space, often going out on weekends and a few other nights per week.
She took the girl out to parks and museums and other places, and was completely trustworthy with her. She even taught the girl to say spoon instead of foon, which was a lovely surprise.

We never went thought pasta as fast as we did when she was here. Or rice. I can eat a good amount of pasta or rice in a sitting, but the au pair would match me on that. Adding the daughter's increased appetite, and we went though a lot.

While it was good to have time to get work done, we were a bit tight on space for a while. We had to move all the girl's stuff into the office and our room. She slept with us and the au pair got her room. But four in the house went surprisingly smoothly in the end. And the house did feel huge once she left.

Well *that* was disappointing

I'm still a bit shocked at how badly that au pair worked out.

When I last posted here, I mentioned we'd just hired a 24 year old austrian girl to look after our daughter while we get work done. She started last sunday, and on Monday, after a weekend visiting friends in Brighton, she declared she'd quit and was packed up and gone in under half an hour.

All this a day before my daughter's second birthday, which just adds to the awkward

Here's the story as far as I can tell…

This was our first time doing anything of this sort, so we went into it with a few reservations. We didn't want to leave the au pair alone with the girl until we knew we could trust her. So the first few days had her looking after the girl in the house (nicely coinciding with some well-needed rain), where we'd be on hand, but working, in case we were needed, or with L going with the au pair and the girl to one of the many nearby parks, partly to show the au pair around, and partly to see how she'd treat the girl outside of the house.

By the 3rd day we felt comfortable enough for her to take the girl for walks alone. We seemed to get along well, I even cooked with her, and it all felt quite comfortable. In her off time, we'd share meals together and spend time with her to make her comfortable with us and in her new home.

The only problem I'd had with her is when she was supposed to join me at a park. Due to a confusion with bus stop names she foudn herself in the wrong park and ended up not being able to meet up with me before I left. Admittedly, she did try calling, but the local (o2) networking was dropping our calls, and the one which could have gotten through I ignored because it arrived at the same time as the girl face planting off a swing into a patch of mud (causing me to try to comfort her and find out of she was hurt or just messy and find somewhere toy clean her up (air dryers in a loo don't help clean up messes)). All in all, it's a pretty minor problem to have, but she did end up missing an entire morning's work.

On Friday, day 5, we asked her to join us for a friend's birthday lunch. After which she'd head off to her friends in Brighton for the weekend. She was supposed to come back Sunday night for dinner with us, and work again on Monday. I cut short lunch, skipping the pub part, to head home and get some work done. That was pretty much the last time I saw the her, or at least the her I thought I knew.

On Sunday we exchanged a few text messaged which amounted to just this:

Are you joining us for dinner

No, I'll be back Monday at noon

Eh? We kinda need you here for morning

I won't be able to make it before then, I'll explain later

We were a bit annoyed at that, but we assumed she was having a life complication and it'd just be a bump we'd get past.

Monday noon comes and goes with not a sign or peep for the au pair. In the end we declare the day a waste and start to consider if we dock her wages or ask her to work on the weekend. I finally give up waiting and decide to pack up the girl and get out to the shops to buy some food for the girl's birthday lunch the next day. As I'm waking out the au pair comes in, bringing a friend of hers with. I'm a bit dubious about the stranger in my house, but, as the place is her home too, I couldn't complain. So I just say Hi. I'm off to the shops. I'll see you in a bit. L is upstairs. To be honest, after her being so rude to just show up hours late like that, I didn't want to talk to her.

I get the next bus out and 3 minutes later I get a call from L saying the au pair has just quit. I'm shocked. I get off the bus and get the first bus back home. When I get there, the au pair is in her room, with her friend, behind the closed door. L is working in the office and just tells me that the au pair had said that she was working far more hours than she was willing to do, and she would quit immediately and move out. The friend she brought was there for support, but as far as L could tell, was just there to be rude to us.

L brings me up to date for a few minutes then I go to talk to the now ex au pair. I catch her just as she's leaving, and bring up the fact that we had a contract and she could not just walk away with no notice. To cut an unpleasant interaction short, I'll suffice to say voices were raised and doors were slammed and that's it she was gone. She never even said goodbye (or anything for that matter) to the girl before she left.

The whole thing left me feeling just betrayed. I mean, I felt I could trust her and she goes and throws this in our face. I'm still puzzled about her claim she was working 12 hour days. Unless she counted time spent conversing or eating together as work, or the time she spent exploring the neighbourhood as work… I can't see how she's arrived at anything like that figure. A number of her final complaints, like how we were working from home, we told her about in her Skype interview. She never complained once about anything the entire week she was working. One of her references warned me about her taking on too much work and letting it get to her. Turns out, that was spot on, but I didn't expect it to come to a head so quickly.

It come across as her quietly seething against us the whole time, which doesn't strike me as true, since she did honestly seem to be having fun with us.

The only thing which seems to fit all the evidence I see is that when she visited her friends, they just talked about the parts she didn't like which spiralled out of control. Kind of like how when you explain the problems you have in a relationship to someone who doesn't know your partner they just quip Leave his sorry arse without knowing anything really about the situation. And given how rude the friend who came with her came across, this seems credible. So after a couple of days of egging her into it, she's turned the whole thing in her own mind into to a lost cause.

It's all supposition regardless. It doesn't really matter.

Anyways, this all means we're back at square zero. Desperately trying to find another au pair or childcare solution and still get the work done we need. All in all, over that one week we got maybe 3 hours of work in the same room the whole week and we generally wasted that on catching up on stuff that accrued while getting the house ready for the au pair. And now we have the added bonus of the girl asking where the au pair is. We've had houseguests before, so we're hoping the girl treats it like that and not anything traumatic. So we just explain that she went home and is not coming back. L and I try to not mention the au pair's name to avoid reminding the girl, though she still says go home on random occasions which we think is a reference to the au pair.

What I've been doing the past 7 months

This story will be long, so please pack a bag lunch and make yourself comfortable. We'll make a pit stop part-way through in case you need the loo.

I don't talk about work much here, but it's relevant now, so bear with me. I left my job back in October. I got a bit of cash from the redundancy so the wife and I decided to throw caution to the wind and start our own business.

Now for the last four years I was working there I'd been at risk of redundancy something like 4 or 5 times. I lost count, it happened so often. Each time I considered if I were better off leaving or better off staying. Usually it was met with We're buying a flat, we kind of need the income, or We're planning on having a baby, the security of a job, even if I don't like it is a good thing.

It's hard trying to make major life changes when work is in turmoil. It all boils down to Can I afford to do this, and when the source of income is in doubt, everything else which seems clear becomes more dubious. And you end up holding on to maxims like I've a kid on the way, I can't leave, when you should be focussing on things like There's never a good time to have a chid, just get on with it. Jobs come and go and people find ways to get by. If you can't plan beyond the next big unknown you're not going to plan very far.

So… When the redundancy fairy visited me I came up with three options.

1. I'd just move on to another job somewhere else. With luck, I'd find something I'd like
2. L would get a job and I'd stay at home being a full-time father. I liked this idea a lot. It was really tempting.
3. Start a company with L and we'd both work from home, splitting the child care 50%.

We settled on the last one. Which clearly was the hardest of the lot. But, when else would we ever be able to do this? I felt I could not use the baby as an excuse. L and I had been talking for years about going into business together – our skills are nicely complementary and we both have Visions of how to make things Better. And when else would we get the opportunity? Between the redundancy pay and a small business grant I got, it was now or never.

The grant specifically stipulated the money could be used for most any business expense, but Not childcare. So the one real barrier we have to getting the company off the ground, the grant would not support. I cannot stress how annoying this is.

And, besides, no other option would let us both have such an active role in the girl's early life. We'd both be there, even if one of us was locked in an office, the other would be around, and we'd switch the next day.

Since then we've been trying lots of approaches to work. First we tried shifts. In each shift, one of us would work while the other would look after the girl, and when she'd nap or be down for the night, we'd work together. I'd do 4 hours, then L'd do 4, then I'd do 4. Then next day we'd switch.

That didn't really work. If the girl had trouble getting to sleep, it'd bugger the whole schedule. Plus I personally found it was time to switch every time I'd get on a roll. I guess it's the way I work – start off with something simple to get me in the mood, then get to something really hard which requires hours of thought and effort. Which usually would begin around hour 3.

We tried a few other failed options till we settled on switching days. One of us would work 3 days in a workweek and other works 2. Weekends are up for grabs, depending on what we'd planned. Whoever was not working would look after the girl. Except for breastfeeds which all required L. And by this time the girl stopped being able to be settled by anything other than breastfeeding. Which meant that even if L was working she'd lose about 3 or more hours of productivity a day. So all the time we'd planned to be able to work together would just be spent me working instead of her.

Time when we could work together was really productive, but got really rare. We'd occasionally get a sitter in to look after the girl for half a day while we'd work. Which gets expensive after a while, especially since the grant would not cover it as a business expense. This was especially troublesome with client meetings. The girl was young enough at the first few to come along with us without getting in the way, but now she's far too active to sit still for that long without taking one of our full attention. Now, either one us stays at home with her (which is not ideal since L and I sell ourselves best when we can tag team), or we have to arrange childcare.

That carried on for a while until L got a hard deadline for her thesis corrections. After waiting for like a year for comments she finally got the details she needed to do the corrections. This came with a two month deadline. there's no way she could do that, raise a child and run a business. So we panicked and decided this was a problem we could throw money at, despite not having any income yet. We'd put the girl into childcare.

Daycare is impressively expensive. It'd be a huge chunk of money over just the two months we needed. L discovered that getting an au pair would be much cheaper and more convenient. L had been an au pair for a bit once upon a time, so she was more comfortable with the idea than I. Over the space of the next few days we searched for and found a decent match. So we'd committed ourselves to a couple of months of feeding and housing (and paying) a 24-year-old from Austria in exchange for her looking after our daughter.

What followed was a couple of weeks mad clearing out the nursery and turning it something fit for being a grown-up's bedroom. Plus there was the moving the girl and her cot into our room, and tidying the whole flat so we'd not embarrass ourselves.

The au pair arrived on Sunday. We met her at a train station and took her home. She's settled in pretty well so far. I was initially anxious… well… terrified, but it's working out ok. I feels a lot like having a house guest. Except one I never met before that I don't mind asking to look after my child. It's a situation I never expected to find myself in and I guess I'm just taking it in my usual whatever happens happens, get on with it manner.

Back again

I spent a fortnight without the family last month. L took the girl off to the States to help L's sister give birth. I stayed at home putting in exceptionally long days trying to get work done. All the while I learned a number of things.

• Wow. Sleep is nice. But when you're alone in bed, it's really quite slow to warm up. I took to sitting on the duvet an hour before bedtime so that I'd not have to sleep with a jumper on.
• Without anyone else here, I never spend any time in the kitchen/dining room beyond actually making food. With the family here, I spend good chunks of my day here (where I'm writing this now), eating meals, playing with the girl, etc, etc. Then maybe I didn't spend as much time here because L took the laptop with her.
• Cooking for myself is easy. I can use as much spice and salt as I want. Though I have lots of trouble judging what a portion size for one is. I think I overate alot.
• I gravitate to later hours. By the time the family came back, I was keeping EDT time rather than BST. Dinner at 11pm, bed by 5am. Which meant we were all jet lagged when they returned.
  We'd Skype once or twice a day, which is what led me switch time zones. Chatting with L after she ate dinner was usually around 3am or so my time. And chatting in the morning so I could see the girl was around 7am or so her time (on a good day when the girl didn't wake her at 6am when the sun came up in their curtainless room).

While they were away I was able to make the flat slightly more liveable. I replaced another 3 bulbs (we have lots of those GU10 halogen bulbs, most of which have blown out. We're slowly replacing them all with much more expensive LED ones. It seems that the only place I can find with decent bulbs is ordering then online on Amazon, but 1 in 5 are dodgy and have to be sent back. Sigh. So we're just lacking now on the dimmable bulbs, which are really expensive and often have a rather dodgy definition of what "dimmable" means) – I bought 4, but one was bad. But we've now got one more room which use tens of Watts instead of hundreds of Watts.

I tried to do some DIY, but I just did not have it in me to drill holes in our nice walls and counters. So I left that for L and just settled on cleaning the stuffs with all those noxious chemicals I don't like to use when the girl is around. That said, I didn't manage to clean and seal all the floors since, 1) no one likes a neighbour who hoovers at 10pm, and 2) to really clean all the floors, I'd have to move an awful a lot of very heavy furniture.

I even got to work on my physio – something I just can't seem to do with the girl around. My right arm has been some degree of dodgy for several months now. At least now it's not debilitating, but it's clear I've lot lost a lot of flexibility and buggered my posture a bit (I bend down a lot). At least my extensors pollicis longus have had a chance to heal. They take the brunt of the weight when I lift up the girl, and have been getting ouchier and ouchier over time.

When L and the girl came back, they flew into Heathrow. I took the tube down to meet them. Their plane was delayed a bit, and it took what felt like ages for them to get their luggage and come out. It was a surprisingly teary reunion. Well... on my part. The girl was just a bit confused and clung to her mum, and didn't really pay much attention to me. Not as exciting as I'd hoped, but I was far more choked up by the whole thing than I expected to be.

Since then the girl has been really clingy to her mum. It's harder to settle her, and I can barely put her to sleep at all. We've not had a single night where she's slept by herself the whole time. I think she's still getting over all the chaos of the past month, with all the new things she's been doing and places she's been staying. Well, we have a month at home before going anywhere else. Hopefully she'll get used to hanging out with me again. We've already had a few pleasant days out, and I've planned a few more. So, even if things are not the same, it'll still be fun.

By the way, their trip to the US was successful and I have a new niece (that I've only seen over Skype).

Turning into my father

Somehow I've managed to find myself on a plane, for work, 3 of the past 4 weeks. I had in mind, when the child came, I would work from home a day or so a week. Rarely travel. How did I find myself working from Europe far more often than I was expecting to work from home?

I'm travelling more often than I was 10 years ago, when I thought I was travelling loads – once week out of every 8 on average. And back then L was fully self-suffcient. And by that I mean I have made commitments by being a parent that she now has to pick up the shortfall for. Back then the only comittments were household chores and pleasant company – something that she could safely do on her own or live without.

My father spent a fair chunk of my very early years working from another city. I just remember him leaving for the week and coming back... on weekends maybe – it's hard to remember. I don't resent him for it, and I didn't resent him for it. I just did not want that for myself.

These things just sneak up on you.

It irks me that somehow I ended up on a path I did not want.

I came home last night after a 3 day trip and the wee one smiled and slowly crawled to me across the floor.

She wasn't doing that when I left.

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.

The business trip

Work has asked me to spend more time at our office in Germany. This is clearly not easily compatible with spending time with the wee one. So I hatched a plan I'll, go, but the family comes with me. They agreed. I decided that we'd just try it for a single week, to make sure this was remotely feasible.

To cut a long story short – I won't be doing this again.

The trip over was filled with annoyances, which I won't go into since none were related to the child. She only started being problematic when she started bawling in the rental car from just outside the airport for the next half hour on the autobahn. That and the car's transmission was buggered and try to rev out of control every ten minutes or so.

We escaped that death trap and arrived at the hotel to find that the room work booked for me was not actually a double. Why have someone do bookings for you if they screw it up? I'm competent enough to make my own mistakes – I don't need help getting a booking wrong.

The good part about cosleeping is that you don't need to worry about travel cots or anything of that nature. What you do need to worry about is the destination having a bed big enough for even two people. This hotel does not have the concept of beds bigger than a single. So we had to try our luck with the bed legs bound together to try to keep them from eating the child.

The first day worked out well. I went into the office and got useful stuff done. L stayed at the hotel with the child, away from household distractions and got things done herself. In theory, if things kept on like this the trip would have been fine.

That evening the wee one started feeling poorly. Dinner was awkward with her being quite fussy. We suspected a fever, but, due to a I thought it was already packed error, we had no way to check it. We ended up getting the hotel to call us a doctor.

Note to other new parents in the UK: Get yourself an EHIC card now. It takes 3 minutes to fill in the forms on the web site (or six if you have to fill it in from scratch after mistakenly filling in the child's details first) and will save you trouble in the end.

Doctors comes shortly after and tells us 3 things.

1. She's a very well-behaved baby (always good to have you baby professionally assessed as wonderful)
2. She does have a fever – alternate baby paracetemol and baby ibuprofen to keep it in check.
3. it's not meningitis or encephalitis or anything worrisome. It's all teething related. No need to be concerned unless she stops eating.

Good to know.

So we get very little sleep that night with a fussy pained baby. And we fill the prescription first thing the next morning.

She does not eat all day.

Well, not more than a few sips here and there. But she's clearly getting more and more dehydrated. Stuff comes out, but nothing really goes in. At 4 in the morning L and I finally start discussing the logistics of taking her to hospital.

She latches on for a full feed half an hour later.

She starts getting better and is fine by the next day. My ability to deal with humans continues to degrade. Work ends up with several heated conversations by the end of the week. I decide that while the comfort of having family makes the trip much more comfortable, the strain of having family makes the work much harder.

So no more bringing family with with on trips. Or at least not until the baby can promise to stay healthy the whole time.

Now we have tooth

The little one's first tooth has started to peek through the gums today. This comes as rather a bit of a shock being that she's not even 4 months old and we're not supped to be getting those till 6 months.

She's been showing the classic signs of teething for almost a month now. Chewing on things. Especially my fingers. And. So. Much. Drooool. We thought this would last for a while, creeping up in intensity till teeth popped out. But no.

I worry most for L's breasts. I'm hoping the wee one shows some restraint and does not start chomping. I've heard too many stories of women giving up breast feeding after the first teeth came in. It's too soon to stop now, and there are downsides to having to bottlefeed her (like having to have bottles of milk at hand whenever you leave the house – breasts are so much easier to carry around with you).

L and the baby met me for lunch today. I've been offsite away from home for 2 days, so to make up for lost time, they came to see me in the office. To my surprise, L dressed her in an outfit I wore when I was about 5 months old. It fits her perfectly. Too perfectly – was I a small baby at 5 months? or is she large at 4?

It was all rather sweet. After work, when I got home I took out the camera and started taking pictures of her in poses I'd been photographed in as a baby. Cheesy, but I had to do it. I don't mind dressing her in the intense 70s fashions of my or L's clothes. After all, my hindbrain associates childhood and new parentness with 70s fashions. I have to actively try to seek out sane styles and colours for her to wear.

After all that, Life on Mars came up on the playlist. I joked with L about feeling like DCI Sam Tyler meeting his baby self in 1973. All the while, I swayed with the little girl in time to the music till she slowly dropped off to sleep by the end of the song.

Lovely.

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.