The birth story: Part 1

Now that things have settled, more or less, I figured that before I start forgetting the details it is time to write up the story of the birth.

We were late. We'd refused to be induced early, which bugged the doctors. And when we finally did give in and got a sweep, there was still no baby. The home birth team was getting skittish about L's advanced maternal age. They would just say that while we still can have a home birth if we wanted, the risks keep going up and up.

Note that the statistics they use are based on everyone of L's age, but take nothing else into account. So, despite L having given birth successfully before and being a fit and healthy athlete, very active, even in the 9th month, she was lumped in smokers and first time mothers of the same age. It's the only data they have, but it's not very fair to paint with such broad strokes

When we left off in the real-time updates, I'd just started paternity leave and we'd had two sweeps. Every night we'd decided to sit down and watch a relaxing TV show or movie. And in each case, R would throw a fuss – she didn't want to watch with us, and she found the light sit-coms chose to be unwatchable (she can't stand the "car crash in slow motion" situations). And somehow every night would end up with us more stressed than relaxed. It's no surprise nothing happened.

On Thursday morning we'd scheduled the midwife to come so we could make plans and do another sweep. To keep things chill for the visit, R went over to a friend’s house. With an overnight bag, just in case. The midwife arrived around midday, and we discussed our options. In the end we agreed we go to the hospital Friday morning for an assessment, and if there was still nothing, Saturday night at 9pm we scheduled a full-on chemical induction.

Of course that would be a logistical nightmare. On the plus side, that would put the birth to most likely be 1 Sept, and after the school year cutoff. So I had to make calls and organise things.

First, to the family looking after R, I arranged her to definitely sleepover with us picking her up on the way back from the assessment Friday morning. Next I had to arrange with my parents, who still had a few hours before getting on the flight, for them to have R spend the night in their hotel room while we're doing the induction. With all that set in motion, we were set. We’d made a plan and had time to just sit and relax for a bit.

Why don’t we watch something?

More Jeeves and Wooster?

No. How about Firefly?

ok

We sat on the sofa and watched. Interrupted only by me making dinner. With R not there, I decided to make a birth-inducing spicy aubergine parm, but without the cheese, since we didn't have the right kind. It was delicious.

To be continued

The next generation

We finally got R to watch Star Trek. It’s been about 5 years since we first tried and 3 years since the last attempt. But this time it seems to have stuck.

It all started out Saturday morning when listening to Underground from Labyrinth. I had an "all the things you like are connected" moment. Did you know that, for Labyrinth, David Bowie did the music, George Lucas produced it, Jim Henson from Sesame Street did all the goblins and creatures, and Gates McFadden, the Doctor from Star Trek, did the choreography.

The last bit L was unaware of, so after a quick check of her filmography online, confirming it was true, L suggested We haven't tried watching Trek for a while. Maybe she'll like it now.

Even R was up for it. So we agreed that, since it was clean-the-house day, we'd watch some episodes, clean a bit, and watch some more. In the end, we got through 8 episodes of The Next Generation and made a dent in the mess that just spontaneously generates in the house.

We started with episode 3 of season 3 because that was the first DVD we could find. It turned out to be a good place to start since that and the following 6 episodes were all self contained and needed no knowledge of who any of the people were or what the overarching story was. The most memorable episode to R was Who Watches the Watchers. She really identified with the primitive race being covertly observed and their leader who gets to tour the Enterprise (She says Nuria is her favourite character so far, even more than Data). Which makes sense because it really sets the scene of what's important in the series and from the viewpoint of an outsider.

At one point R had a wow moment when L pointed out that actor who played Picard was the Narrator on the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.

Since then she's been asking to see another episode every day. Which is nice since it's always good to expand her horizons. I've seen the series enough that I've been bored of it, and it's also good to see it through fresh eyes with her. It's made me appreciate some things which I found very dull first time around.

Assorted highlights

How can she be 100 years old? Oh! She must be an alien!

They're all aliens. We knew she was an alien. It's got to be something else

... I think we'll catch the Romulans with their pants down...

With their pants down? What does he mean?

With their pants -?

A metaphor... goes on to explain it so we don't have to

After seeing Riker die in an alternate timeline Will is dead? Does he not appear in any more episodes after this? ... Wait... He's not dead. What happened?

No. He didn't die. dreading having to explain the next bizarre time travel episode

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.

Now we are four

The baby was born at 615 Friday morning after a sleepless night of labour and Firefly. Home birth has its benefits. We are now in the company a surprisingly padded baby who is the same size his sister was at a month old!

He's been very good at giving us opportunities to sleep so we're not completely wiped out. That said, I'm going to bed the moment I post this.

I keep looking at him and wondering who he looks like. I see small flashes of me and the wife, but more in common with his sister in her first week than anyone else so far. He's very much in the newborn mode, so it's far from how he'll end up looking.

I'll post the birth story when I get the time. Until then I am going to ponder how a raging feminist can raise a boy. I've already got lots of ideas.

Paternity leave

I started paternity leave today. No baby yet, so now we have an unspecified countdown to the birth and a 4 week countdown til I'm back in the office.

Last time, with R, I started my leave on the due date and took 4 weeks off. My plan this time was to start on the day L went into labour, so I would get maximum time with the newborn. Turns out, that was impractical. Since the baby did not come over the bank holiday weekend, I went back to work on Tuesday. I won't say it was a mistake, but I did find between the monitoring and inducing and actually getting work done, I was spread too thin to be useful. So I tied up all the loose ends I couldn't resolve last week and said goodbye to everyone. And that was that. All that's left is to figure out how to turn off notifications on the various work apps on my phone.

Labour hasn't started yet. We've had 3 sessions of 20 minute monitoring in hospital (which, for some reason takes 4 or 5 hours end-to-end) and two sweeps. The waiting game we're going through now is how long can we go before we go for stronger intervention? And how long until we've can't do the planned home birth and have to do full-on labour ward?

On the other hand, this child seems much more interactive in the womb than R was. She would push and kick as usual, but this one seems to do things like responding to rubbing legs by moving feet. Perhaps we're just better able to recognise body parts through the uterus, but it does make it more like there's a real baby in there.

Induction

We've gone with the sweep. It's the most innocuous induction method on offer. L got swept yesterday. So far nothing beyond the sudden desire to bake a cheesecake. Clearly it's having some effect, though no birthing yet. Which means I'll be back at work tomorrow. Which, in this heat, might be a good thing. We'll likely got for another sweep tomorrow.

In other news, R is tired of the indirect attention. Are you excited to be a big sister? used to meet with silence. Yesterday, she just got up and walked away when asked. Today she just rolled her eyes as far as they would go. Why not ask her something that she hasn't been asked 10,000 times already? Like What toys would you like to give to your sibling?, or something like that. Asking a real question goes get R involved in the conversation and she'll think and give an honest answer. It's good to know it's not just me that's done with the more monotonous questions.