If you’ve been to our house recently, you’ll have noticed in the kitchen that there’s a pretty-rough looking Reward Chart blu-tac’d to the wall, along with a page of heavy-Aladdin-themed Avery labels that are beside it, also blu-tac’d up.

These are my take on Reward Charts for Jack, and are pretty much my top-quality (read: so-so) handy-work in Microsoft Word.

The Reward Chart itself is pretty much a grid, with the days of a week labelled down the left hand side, with about five or six boxes along for each day.  The basic premise is, that when he’s been good, he gets an ‘Aladdin’ sticker, and if (read: when!!) he’s been naughty, he gets a Jafar sticker.  In case you haven’t seen Disney’s Aladdin, here’s who they are:

Aladdin: (He’s the Good guy in the movie.)

Jafar: (with Iago) (Bad… in case you hadn’t seen that one coming.)

I’ve made variation of the good/bad sticker, with some of the other characters too, as otherwise it could look a little odd on the chart.

Why Aladdin? Well, at the time of ‘production’ of the chart, Jack really liked watching the Aladdin movie and wouldn’t stop talking about it and asking questions about it.  So, I thought that I’d work on the good/bad theme in the film and see how this would work in practise.

To much of my surprise, and Claire’s too for that matter, Jack has been very receptive to it - We try to make a big thing about getting him an Aladdin (or Genie, Abu, Jasmine, Magic Carpet) sticker when he’s been good, and getting him to help stick it onto the chart, which usually results in a full-on palm-smack to ensure firm adhesion of the small Avery labels to the paper surface.  He also REALLY DOES NOT WANT a Jafar sticker (of three varieties – Jafar & Iago as above, ‘Old-man’ Jafar, or ‘Snake’ Jafar), to the point of when he’s being naughty or unruly, simply the mention of getting a Jafar sticker is enough to bring him around to our way of thinking. Sometimes even without a paddy first!!

More goodies:

Baddies:

In all, I had spent a hour or two on Google Images and found images that met my needs, whacked them into Paint.Net to crop and down-scale them to size and then used Microsoft Word to drum-up a labels document to match the sheets of A4 labels I had in the drawer and, hey presto!, instant stickers and Reward Chart!

It’s still early days with these stickers and the whole Reward Chart thing, as it’s more of a grown-up experiment on mind-controlling a three year old, but it’s fun when it works in either direction!!

Well, ‘school’ is a probably a little over-used in that title. ‘Pre-school’ may be more appropriate, but nonetheless, my boy has spent his first week at school!

He’s on a breaking-in session, whereby he attends the local primary school from 12:00 until 15:00 and gets to play, read, paint, cut-out stuff and basically do anything he likes, really! Much like home but without the mess. And the noise!!

The teacher at the school said Jack was ‘adorable’, to which Claire had to make sure that they were talking about the same child. This was confirmed by Jack physically being there, but I’m thinking it’s a common one-liner to new school kids’ parents to put them at ease. But, to be fair, they seem like good teachers there and look like they’ll keep him in line, as he does tend to get a little boisterous at times. Especially if another child has taken a train or truck off of him!

We’ve noticed that, over the past week, he’s been shattered at night times. To the point of falling asleep almost at tea times, which is really funny in one sense, but worrying in another, as we’re sure that he’ll be roaming about the house at 04:30 as a result of sleeping earlier.  We try to keep him awake, but he’s pretty much flaked out for the evening.

But he does seem to really like it there. Why wouldn’t he? The school was fantastic when they showed us around – filled with things to play with or to do, which really surprised Claire and I, as we didn’t get that impression from the nursery that he’s been going to, that we’ve been paying for!

I’m sure there’ll be more on this school topic for later – might have to add a ‘school’ category on the blog, methinks.

Yes, it’s true – the little man is three months old, there or there-about.

He’s past the stage of crying all the time because of wind (or colic) and is a really smiley, happy little boy. (honest!)

He smiles a lot now, which really is a nice thing to see. 

Claire also found out a little while ago that he’s ticklish and laughs with a big wide-open mouth and the occasional chuckle! I tickle him now and then, as you do, and he’s getting easier to ‘get’ each time.  Tonight, for instance, I was blowing raspberries on his tummy and tickling him and he loved it, which is great as I’m seeing a totally different side to him; Claire has been saying for weeks that he’s a happy, bubbly little boy, but when I get home from work, around 1800ish, he’s been grumpy and crying lots.  Coming home to that each night makes it more difficult to imagine the happy child, but, as I said – finally – I’m seeing what she means,

He’s getting to be a big, strong boy too – he’s able to hold his neck up and look around, which is good. He’s starting to understand about rolling over, but still needs big brother Jack to yank on his leg to make the centre of gravity change position. After that, he’s find.

I’ve been playing on the bed with him, and rolling him sideways onto his tummy and then over again onto his back, which he seems to enjoy. I used to do this with Jack, too, which I guess was about the same sort of age.  I’d imagine that it’s a whole new world at that age, as he’s been either face up or face down in bed and that it! Now, he’s finding out that there’s a series of steps in between those poses.

He’s still not sleeping through the night entirely as yet though, much to mummy and daddy’s disappointment! In the past couple of nights (literally) he’s slept for four or five hours straight, which is the most he’s managed. Previously, it’s been as long as three hours and as little as thirty minutes, which sort of makes for a very long night.

But, we’ll see how it pans out. In terms of the holy-grail at the moment, it would be getting Oliver to sleep the entire night through. In his own bed. And not waking up until a decent hour!

I seem to remember saying that age-old thing about time flying past in another post, but this is different. But the same. Sort of.

Anyway, I swear, I have blinked, and Oliver is already nearly ten weeks old. It’s strange, as although he’s only been born this relatively short period, our lives have changed so much all over again, and yet it seems like this is our new ‘normal’.

Just before Oli had arrived, it seemed like we had ‘settled’ into a routine, with ourselves, with Jack, with everything. Straight after Oli came, the regular pattern of getting up, getting ready to go out, and so forth was blown to smithereens. I’m not blaming him directly here (much), but it did seem like we were on  top of things. 

Oli came, and as Claire’s expressing milk, it pretty much pins her to a chair for the duration.  Oli, being a baby, cries and she’s able to manage ok, providing Jack isn’t kicking off, or demanding attention. Not that he would. Much.

Jack is all over Oli.  It’s funny, as we really worried about it going the other way, thinking that Jack would resent Oli for stealing his mum away from him and so on. But he loves him. Maybe a little too much!! He always wants to be involved if Oli’s about, kissing him constantly and very nicely too.  He tells visitors that Oli is his baby brother and that he loves him.  Trying to remember the age that I understood that word, I’m guessing Jack is repeating what we’re telling him about ‘love’ but maybe he does ‘get it’ too. Who knows.  Either way, Jack likes Oliver. And, Oli likes Jack too. He smiles when Jack’s there, or when he kisses him, even if Jack unintentionally gets a little heavy-handed, as three year olds do.  But in all, Jack is sharing his mum with Oliver really well. He’s not too fussed about his dad, but hey-ho.  Although, Claire did say that Jack is getting a little funny about sharing his grandparents (on my side) with his first set of to-be cousins…! All good fun, I’m sure.

It’s nice that they’re like this, and hopefully they’ll learn to play games and toys together, despite the age gap. But when they’re older, brothers will be brothers and pick the occasional fights too, as we all have done, so that should be interesting to see, possibly.

Literally, this morning before leaving for work, I had about 30 minutes with Oliver, where he has been quite the happy chappie; it seems that he’s been quite uncomfortable with wind for the past couple of weeks and, hence, has been a right grump.  But today, he must have had a decent night’s sleep, and was all “coo’s” and smiles for me, which was nice.

He’s still sleeping in the crib next to our bed at night times, despite that I’m not in there myself in the week! His grunting and snoring is nowhere near as bad as I remember Jack being at nights, but Oli is not yet sleeping through the night, so Claire’s been doing a top-job of bottle-feeding him in the nights.  Only fairly recently has this been extended to the first wake/feed of the night coming in at 03:00 – previously, it was every couple of hours.  Weekends, I try my best to help. I have been trying,where possible, to let Claire get away from it all, and sleep in the spare room (aka my office) where I’ve been hiding/sleeping, and trying to keep Oli happy with the milk too.  Problem is, I don’t seem to be able to cope on as little sleep at the moment that Claire is getting; the next day I’m a right old misery. Hey, perhaps me and the new nipper, Oli, are a right old pair together already, him being grumpy and me being miserable.

I seem to remember that Jack was sleeping through the night from about eight weeks old, and was in his own room by eleven weeks. Oli may be a little behind on that yet, but a week appears to be a long time for these babies!! Lots of things could change in that time yet..!  We shall have to wait and see.

But for those that haven’t had (yet or otherwise) children, here’s a summary of what a baby of Oli’s age does, in no particular order:

• Cries.
• Smiles, occasionally, between cries. (Maybe wind?)
• Drinks only milk at this stage. Then burps. Smiles. Then cries for more milk.
• Generate copious quantities of poo. Then cries, to make a point that they want it changed.
• Wait until you’re at the exposed, critical mid-point of changing a nappy, before successfully recreating the Bellagio fountains with a range only a fireman would appreciate, followed by a suspiciously evil-looking smile. Then cries as his ‘nads are getting cold because the second half of the nappy-change is now taking considerably longer.
• Sleeps. Lots in the day time, random/patchy hours in the night time. Waking to cries. Gets milk. Snores, grunts and farts until in R.E.M. sleep mode.
• Makes the occasional ‘coo’ noise for everyone else, even less for daddies.

All. Good. Fun.

It was Jack’s 3rd birthday the other week, and Claire and I had been discussing what to arrange for a party for him and some of his friends.

Claire had the idea of renting the swimming pool in Peterborough that she’s been taking him to for swimming lessons for the past 2 or 3 years, which is at the Calm-A-Baby swimming pool – a fantastic, heated swimming pool for children’s swimming lessons.

Calm-A-Baby are on Facebook too, which is here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Calm-a-Baby/58803121893

The pool itself is warm, so even new-born babies can use it, without fear of them turning blue and shivering after 20 minutes.

We booked the pool for the Sunday after his party, and had invited a gathering of friends and family to join us. The schedule was to have the pool, entirely, from 14:00 to 15:00, and then half an hour of ‘Wiggle and Jiggle’ to help further wear-out any kids that might still be awake after an hour long session in the pool.

Wiggle and Jiggle is another group-type meeting that Claire and Jack have been attending only recently, held at the same place as the pool, but in an upstairs room.  Sarah, who runs the group, gets the gathering of children and gets them to be manic, whilst still under control; in that, they’re allowed to make a mess with a pile of stuffed toys, musical instruments and singing and dancing and so forth. Basically, far too much exercise for my liking, but the kids love it.

In the pool, we had a few of Jack’s friends from various other baby groups that Claire and he have been going to, along with, of course, their mum and/or dad, some of our neighbours and their children of the same age, in addition to some family members too, so a great mix of people and children in all.

The hour seemed to flash by! Both Claire and I were in the pool, one of us with Jack and the other with Oliver. Strangely, both sets of Grandparents managed to forget their swimming costumes, but there’s always next time!

To start with, I had Jack with me and even though he’s been swimming and playing in the pool for a few years now, he’s still a little unsure about trusting himself, and seems to want to hang on to me. Whether he does this with his mum, I don’t know, but of course I don’t want him to go under either, and so I am happy to help him.  I was trying to get him to swim/float/flap-n-paddle by himself and after about 10 minutes or so, he did! Admittedly, he did have a ‘woggle’ with him, which is a long, cylindrical float-aide that is bendy and flexy, or yellow rubber-ring at times too.  With the woggle tucked under his armpits and me not too far away in front of him (i.e. arm’s reach!) he was doing it!! Well done little mate! #ProudMoment

Claire and I swapped, and I took the newborn(ish) nipper, Oliver, out for a paddle; by now Claire had got hold of Jack and was diving down from the surface and swimming under water with him holding the arms of her swimming costume, sitting on her back! The other kids took a turn on riding on Claire’s back and being thrust underwater and they all loved it! Glad we didn’t have to pay Claire too for her entertainment work too!

As I said, the hour literally flew by. Everyone loved it in there, especially me.

After the pool party, we had a short wait until Sarah started the Wiggle and Jiggle. Jack was obviously shattered as he had started to show off a little bit and pick and choose when he wanted to join in and follow instructions. He wasn’t too bad, but everyone else was a little better behaved, shall we say.

They all banged drums, crashed symbols or blew flutes in a big chaotic mess, whilst all parents looked on in deafened-horror. Again, the kids loved it and had a whale of a time throwing things up in the air, or dancing around and the like.  Of course, I would have loved to have joined in, but I was designated to be the official photographer, so I was stuck on the safe side of the lens.

After all of this, the children had cooked finger-food and cup-cakes (provided by Selina's Tea Rooms, part of the Calm-A-Baby venue), as well as birthday cake.

Jack. was. shattered. Unsurprisingly, he slept well that night. And so did Claire and I, with the exception of Oliver waking throughout the night!

The whole party was great and much fun was had by all. The pool is a great place for these parties and we’d hope that we’d do it again there another time.  There’s lots of ‘little moments’ that I’d like to share about the party, but to be honest, I don’t know where to start in listing them.

We took a whole load of photographs of the day and if they’re not available on Jack’s website, they will be shortly.  If you came and there’s any that you’d like on a disc, just let us know.  During the swim, my mum had my camera and was taking pool-side shots, which have come out very well. (Well done, Granny Rigby!)

Jack: “Dad.” 

Jack: “Daaaad.”

Jack: “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.”

Daddy: “What’s up, little man? It’s getting late – you should be asleep.”

Jack: “Dad…”, holding his knee with cupped hands.

Daddy: “What’s the matter? It’s late, you need to go to sleep.”

Jack: “My elbow hurts.”

Daddy: (smiling) “That’s not your elbow. Go to bed.”

Jack: “Dad! My elbow hurts.”

Daddy: “That’s not your elbow. Now come on, go to bed.”

Jack: “Where is my elbow?”

Daddy: “Here’s your elbow. Bed.”

Jack: holding his elbow and rubbing it… “Daaaad……”

Daddy: “Jaaaaaaaaack…”

…

…

Jack: “My elbow hurts.”

So, this is the fuller picture version of what has happened today.

As I sit here with a blank screen ahead of me, I haven’t pre-planned what I’m going to type, but before we start, if you’d rather not know anything too detailed, read the first part of this blog effort, which is Baby Oliver. (Actually, that blog post sets a lot of the scene anyway, so is worth reading first).

So, here’s what I want to remember for the future, which doubles up as a blog post for you strange people reading this waffle.

05:50 Claire’s alarm goes off and she gets straight into the shower to get ready. Not allowed the usual “breakfast of champions” that she’s had for the past x number of months, which is that of a bacon sandwich; today, Claire has to starve, as fasting is an important element of having the c-section.

07:15 We (Claire and I) leave the house. Jack is already at his Grandparents house (my in-laws) overnight, as we’d never make it out the door on-time! (Sorry Jack – you just don’t understand ‘urgency’ as yet).

07:50 We arrive at the hospital, check in at reception, and are promptly shown to the 2-bed/bay room in the Labour Ward, which is, rather nicely, empty. (All quiet, still very early in the day for the 13-year old mums to want to get out of bed to deliver their babies, waiting for Jeremy Kyle to finish, no doubt.)

08:15 Midwife Alison introduces herself – turns out, it’s the SAME midwife that was with us all day for Jack, nearly three years ago. Spooky, but not really, considering it’s the same hospital and all that.  Alison checks Claire over and does all the routine stuff that is needed before the operation, such as blood pressure, temperature, blood/sugar tests, etc etc etc. All fine, normal and so on. She tells us that we needed to wait for the doctor to come around to visit us to let us know what time of the day to expect to be done. All good.

08:20 Other couple arrive to occupy the other bay in the small and so far, private, ward.

08:40 Senior consultant appears. Don’t know why, didn’t want to be involved, other than to say he was in charge of the others that would be doing the work.

08:45 Doctor appears a little earlier than expected, visits other to-be mum first, comes to us, and tells us that because Claire had gestational diabetes, this put us (read: her) at the top of their priority list. So, finally, Claire having the headache of having to test her blood 4 times a day for the past several months has materialised into something useful!  The doctor is a big… no, massive bloke, Polish maybe; either way, he was very nice indeed. He spoke very good English and despite this, he didn’t mince his words, but instead described the day’s efforts as ‘I will be doing your … ‘ whilst simultaneously moving the flat of his hand from left to right, indicating a cutting motion that is to chop my bride in half. “I like him already”, Claire says, because “he didn’t mess around saying what he needed to say.” Fair point. Scores are good for him so far. Doc goes away happy.

08:47 The Anaesthetist appeared, asked many of the same questions that the previous chap did and went away happy too. All are now agreed that Claire is first-up because of this pesky diabetes thing, which is pregnancy-related in the first place.

09:00 Claire is promptly changed into her rather fetching surgery gown (the one with the join right up the back) and I’m changed into the blue set of scrub-clothes that I’ve been given, along with a pair of over-shoe covers (that, incidentally, no-one else wore!) and a sappy-looking yellow felt hat to top it. Meh, whatever; it’s not a fashion parade, and me in my XXXXXXXXL baggy trousers wouldn’t do well at either.

As an aside – these bloomin’ scrubs were ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE, I kid you not. The top was ok, but I could have fitted into the trousers and them asked Claire to get into them too, even with her oversized [pregnant] belly AND then still been able to tie the knot on the trousers! Who are they expecting to wear these things?? Giant Haystacks? (a WWF Wrestler)

09:20 And so, we’re off! Claire’s on-board the rolling trolley that Alison (the midwife) and another random nurse are pushing into the operating theatre for today’s cut ‘n shut operation.

Me? I am simply following behind. Can’t help to open doors or anything, as

1. I don’t know where we’re going

2. Some are locked anyway. So, I can’t get in without clearance.

Follow on, it is.

Straight into this operating theatre.

This… cold… huge room, with those funny spot-lights hanging from the ceiling, like you see on Casualty on BBC1.

A single, solitary bed (that looked so funky it’s as though it was intended to be sent to the MIR Space Station) in the middle of the room, surrounded by drip-stands, already hanging with bags of water-looking substances (hey, I’m not med-student – I’m a geek remember!).

A workbench along the far side of the room has a computer on top (albeit running Windows XP… pah!).

Random-looking trolleys are seemingly abandoned in the middle of the walking area in the room, later to be uncovered for our needs.

Oh, and about 7 people lurking around waiting, all in blue scrubs, but none that had the same-style baggy trousers as me. Hmm, interesting.

Add to this, Claire, Alison, the other trolley-pushing random-nurse and myself. Now this room is starting to fill up. 

Claire is sat on the bed in the middle of the room, and I’m given the only chair in the room, which is a red waiting-room-style chair cunningly hidden out of sight, behind this space-aged looking bed.

People are walking around going about their normal business, having a laugh and a joke with each other too, which all helped to take our minds away from the fact that someone that we’ve only just met is going to see something that a handful of people (including myself, I might add) have seen before. Namely, the blood and gut innards of my wife.

Being in this rather daunting room, really helps to remind me (for sure) that this is big bad-ass surgery going on here. As I said in the Baby Oliver post, the notion of c-section delivery method for babies is a commonly known process. A household name, if you like. But when you are actually in a room with what soon totals 10 working people, who each have their own specific job as a well-oiled cog in the machine that is to soon deliver a baby, it makes you feel a little worried. Seriously worried. This is cutting a whacking great hole into a perfectly fit and healthy individual to surgically extract a baby.  A BABY! One of THE MOST delicate and fragile objects that a person can ever hold, and this baby’s safe haven is going to be attacked and sliced open by the myriad of stainless steel objects that are uncovered from those random-looking tables parked strategically in the main flow of the room.  Yes, we’re talking scalpels. Scissors? Yes. Separators, tongs, levers, in their tens, piled high. Add to this, the still-packaged needles, bottles of fluids, bags of saline, blood on stand-by.  Oh my word, did I feel a little out of place.

09:25 The anaesthetist begins his magic and so fantastically crucial work of paralysing my wife from her boobs downwards, otherwise known as the Epidural.

Again. This needs a little more attention than an eight letter word to describe it.

Basically, a six inch needle is used and is inserted into the gaps in the spinal chord to apply drugs directly onto the nerve endings that connect and talk directly to the brain, causing the brain to no longer maintain control of anything that those nerve endings connect. 

Again, deliberately, and methodically PARALYSING someone is not a small task. This needed a local anaesthetic to mask the pain that this process itself caused!  When people have accidents and break their back or neck, it’s the spine that is the critical element, because of those ever-so-important nerves. And we’re going to temporarily recreate that process as pain relief?? Give me strength. To add to this, we was told that there’s so many independent factors to take into consideration here when squirting drugs at a bit of spine to numb the pain; too much drugs could seriously knacker the nerve bits and too little would mean that part-way through the show, the feeling could come back and leave Claire in absolutely excruciating pain when her brain re-connects those processes and realises that there’s a bloody great hole in the lower part of the torso. 

Anyway, we digress.

09:32 We get started. How do I know precisely? Because when I asked the time, the ladies behind me that were using the Windows XP computer (that was being used to log absolutely everything that went on) declared the time, the 12ft tall Polish surgeon announced that we’re to start. But not until the adjusted the Casualty-style lighting rig into exactly the right position and angle.

“Then, we begin.” He declares, as though it’s a safari or a trip through the wilderness. Made me smile.

And we were indeed off.

Claire is awake, but but this point totally numb from the boobies downwards. They checked this by spraying super-cold spray onto her arms (not under epidural) which she can feel and normally react to as being…. well, rather cold.  Then, they spray other areas, such as the legs, body, lower back and so on, looking for reaction from Claire.

None. Good answer.

Blue medical surface-draping is applied all around the new Ground Zero that is Claire’s massive belly sticking out perpendicular from her, as she is by now-laying down her super numb body on the space-bed. 

Not able to see anything at all, Claire only has me to look at (poor bugger, I know!) and the midwife who is constantly checking how Claire is feeling and trying to calm any undue nerves.

Me? Well, being the odd/interested fellow that I am, I kept peering over the deliberate drape-wall that they’ve made to shield Claire from what they’re doing.  I’m guessing that seeing your lower half cut, sawn, snipped, scrapped and sucked would probably mess your head up a little for a few nights in future. 

Of course, I can’t tell Claire exactly what I’m seeing, as they very much are cutting, sawing and scrapping parts of the anatomy. So, I simplify and summarise into the words that I can in the heat of the moment and end up with “No baby yet.”, to which she smiles and without saying it, shouts “no s**t, Sherlock” loud and clear.

Claire’s doing really well. Again, she’s voluntarily laid down in this clinical room with barbaric looking torture devices on the deck. Brave girl. Brave to beyond my means of describing.

I look up again moments after, a scalpel is used, put down and replaced in the surgeon’s hands with a pair of surgical-looking scissors, and he almost looks like he’s hacking away at his teenage son’s new hair-do or something. The look of focus and attention on his face puts me at ease and at worry at the same time, but I take solace in the fact that he certainly looks like he’s been in this situation before.

More brownie points to the doc at this point, as he’s already knee deep in blood that has very obviously come from Claire’s innards.

Claire’s eyes flinch, reacting to the tugging and pulling that they’re doing over there, as although she’s numb, she’s still able to feel someone apply enough force to a part of her body that causes other parts to move too.  I have no idea what he was pulling or pushing on, but this big bloke is putting some serious weight behind it and her whole body moves under the momentum caused.  She looks at me for reassurance, so I do my husbandly bit again, and look at what the bloke and his other surgeon-friend are doing. Again, I give the only response that I can, and that she can handle, which is “No baby yet”.  Claire’s not daft, and already she’s starting to see a pattern emerging here.

Hoses are sucking out fluid, whilst 3 of the other people in the room are monitoring the amounts to quite accurate detail. When I looked, the fluid in the transparent piping on the body-hoover looked clear with an ever-so-slight pinkish/reddish tint to it.  Claire asks if it’s her waters, to which I nodded, not being able to think of anything else it could be.

Grunting, heaving, and more snipping with the razor sharp scissors. If it is indeed a new hair-do, it wants to look fantastic for the amount of cutting going on.

I have absolutely no idea of the time, but at this point, it genuinely felt like we’ve been in there hours, whilst this mountain of a man is butchering someone I know and love, and occasionally demanding that the lights are repositioned between moments of swabbing blood out of from Ground Zero.  Incidentally, each time, I noticed, that he used a new swap, tool, or whatever, there was about three different people, independently watching, counting and returning that implement to the torture-device pile. Another person in blue scrubs records all and sundry on the very low-tech whiteboard in the wall, whilst the two ladies around the XP machine continued to type and talk about stuff.

Suddenly, I look up and see something being held aloft… it’s a spherical looking thing, skin coloured, but heavily dowsed in blood and gunk.

“Chord is around neck. Once.” The man-mountain exclaims and continues to do something which means the spherical looking thing that I’ve assume was my boy’s head, is then lowered back in momentarily, followed by the sighting of a small purple-coloured foot.  I recognised the foot, as I’ve got one myself. But not that small and not that colour. 2 + 2 = That’s my babies’ foot.

I tell Claire… “Now… there’s a baby!”, and with that, the man-mountain-doctor lifts a now-screaming child from the void that now fills Claire’s lower torso area.  A giant look of relief sweeps across Claire’s face, as though to say that knowing that the baby was out AND hearing it cry are two very good resulting points from this jolly activity.  I can see him being carried by the midwife to quickly check all is well with him, and actually go into detail with Claire about this, as again, she’s not able to see very much at all.

I am asked to leave the relative safety of the reception chair and come over to the side workbench and see the blood-stained, purple-coloured baby that has been lifted out and is wailing away to himself, and see for myself that he’s all ok. 

He’s dried off ever so slightly as to not harm his delicate skin, and the 12-18” long section of umbilical cord that the surgeons had removed from Claire, is still attached to the baby’s belly button. Alison clamps it and trimmed it down and announces that she’s going to weigh him, after counting toes, fingers, eyes and ears. “Nine pounds and… THIRTEEN ounces … AND A HALF! Wow, he really is a big boy!”, she says loudly for all to hear.

Everyone is pleased that he’s well and happily surprised of his size and weight, starting more mid-work conversations amongst the almost dozen people in the room.

I went back over to Claire to return to my seat to continue my job of reassurance to her that all is well. She replied with something along the lines of “That’s ok, as long as he’s ok, I’m happy.” To which I had to ask what she thought about being opened up and still laying on the table, and if that was an important job to repair. Daft question in the moment, I guess.

Alison the midwife asks about the name to write on the wristbands, and almost announces to everyone that Oliver is a fit and healthy baby boy, and is wrapped by warm and placed on the non-numb upper section of Claire’s body (i.e. above the boobs but below the chin) for her to start the bonding experience with her new baby boy.

09:45 At this point, I ask one of the ladies the time and they declared the time of birth. 

So, all that work.

All that effort.

The worry.

The bloodshed.

The looks on Claire’s face...

All happened in next to no time at all. What I mean, is that you couldn’t cook a pizza in that time, and yet a man has hacked his way into a human body and pulled out a baby, through various layers of tissues, muscles, guts and gore. Amazing.

Last time, at this point, Jack and I went into the other room, when the the surgeon finished up and put Claire’s inner organs back into place, but this time, we waited with her until the surgeon (who had just scored more points for finding and retrieving the baby) had continued to remove the placenta and begin ‘closing up’. More hose sucking, little more pushing and pulling but it was soon done.

10:00 It was around this time that the Polish mountain-man downed tools and declared the mission a success. The midwife complimented him on the very neat residual marking on Claire lower stomach, namely the wound that will form the scar from the operation.  Anything the vaguely saw the light of day in the operating theatre was meticulously counted and recounted again, by at least two people at any given moment.  Luckily, all seemed to be accounted for, which was… nice.

Claire is slid off of the space-age-looking table that she’s just instantly lost weight on, and onto the ward-bed that seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and is soon driven back to the Labour Ward for several hours of recovery, before we’re even able to think about doing anything else.

11:30 seemed to be here in a flash – surprisingly, this relatively quiet part of the day disappeared whilst watching Alison show Claire how to get Oliver to begin feeding. Nothing else happened in this time, and I was absolutely mystified with the fact that a baby feeds from his mum.  I had just watched the bloodbath from the front-row seat and that was fine (gruesome in places, but still fine) and then when I saw Claire’s face light-up that our new baby had actually started to breastfeed, I actually started to well up. I didn’t cry or anything like that, but it was almost like a compounded ‘thing’ from thee years ago, about Jack not wanting to feed and now that Oliver was, it was sort of magically in a very odd way.  I’m not saying that Oliver will benefit from breastfeeding and Jack didn’t – to the contrary, Claire had expressed milk for seven months for Jack to have, and we were able to heavily monitor his quantities, almost to the extreme.

So, that’s it, coupled with the Baby Oliver blog post.

What a very, very surreal day it has been.

Absolutely and most positively... mad.

But the best outcome, is that Oliver AND Claire are both amazing and in good health.

Hats off to all of the team that helped to deliver Oliver today. I don’t know what some people did, but they obviously did it when needed, I assume, as nothing was missing, out of place, or not done. A very big “9lb 13 and a half”-sized thanks to you all.

Well, as the title implies, we have a new noise-maker in the Rigby family, previously project name Jester, but now a more sensible non-geek name of Oliver.

Background – Oliver’s due date from way-back-when, was the 5th January 2012.  Probably poorly planned on my behalf to even contemplate having a child within close proximity to his/her older brother, Jack, but truth be told, we probably weren’t doing much thinking at the time!

So – As Claire had to have an emergency caesarean with Jack (mostly because of cord being tied around his neck, etc) the consultants were talking to Claire about having an elective c-section, something that Claire was quite happy about, if we’re being honest here.  Last time, it was a gruelling day in labour, and that was just for me; Claire had the baby inside of her that wouldn’t emerge, and then toward the end of the day, she was told that Jack was to born by the good ol’ cut ‘n shut method.  Having this after a full day of failed attempts of labour was a bit of a strain, but she did an absolute marvellous job, and bears the scars of it to this day.

With all of this in mind, them booking a c-section for the due date sounded great, but with the caveat that if normal labour were to take place naturally beforehand (as sometimes these packages get delivered early), then she’d have to go down that road instead, and see where it took us.

We’ve been keeping our senses at high alert over the 2011 Christmas and subsequent New Year, making it a very sober affair in case I had to drive her to the horse-piddle.  Claire wasn’t drinking, but hasn’t really stated her reasons thus far. Something about a baby…

Each day went by. Nothing.

My parents each picked one of the few remaining days left and stuck a virtual tenner of their nominated day, with Claire gunning for the 5th. Maybe it was because she thought that there was money involved that Claire somehow managed to drag this whole thing out, or maybe she was hoping/planning/praying for the knife job. Who knows.

Either way, as booked a while back, on the 5th January 2012, we drove to the hospital to begin the process.

Insert: I’ve been moaned/whined at about the depth and detail that I went into with Jack’s blog post about his birth. So… to silence my critics, and to also get some content up and online asap, I’ll split this into the basic story, for the simple-minded, non-graphic-loving people and finish this blog post as such, with the extended, director’s cut in a further blog post. Why not?

So, Oliver was born today, 5th January at 09:45, weighing a whopping size of 9lbs 13 and a half..! Thats almost exactly a 1lb heavier than Jack was when he was born, and they said that he was a ‘big baby’.

Claire did a truly sterling job of it all.  Bearing in mind, that a c-section, as common as it might appear in the back of your head as they are now almost routine procedures, are in fact MAJOR BLOODY SURGERY.  I kid you not.  Why people opt for this means of delivering a baby, I have no idea. “Doc, cut me in half, surgically remove this alien life-form from my stomach and stitch me back up in time for supper.” Or, “Maybe I’ll try and do what the vast majority of human beings have done since they managed to reproduce, and squeeze it out me bits.”

Anyway, Claire – Drugged up as she was even afterwards, she kept her calm and even managed to get little baby Oliver to breastfeed. From her breast. Try as we (read: she) might, Jack simply was not interested and we (read: she) was forced into providing his milk served up in a convenient bottle-shaped container. Which, I might add, also means that the dad can help in the middle of the night, so thanks for that, young Jack! Grr.

Oliver took about 10 minutes to work out what he needed to do with the huge boobie stuck into his face and got on with it.  We were told that he had to have three or four consecutive post-feed blood/sugar tests of 2.5 whatevers or above. This was actually the only way that we were able to know that he’d been getting boobie-juice out of his mum, by the simply logic of

Poor blood/sugar result = no foodstuffs taken

Good blood/sugar result (of 2.5 or more) = unquantifiable amount of foodstuff taken.

Easy? Yep. Stick boobie into face, aim nipple into mouth and shove back of tiny palm-sized head until mouth is sharing the same cosmic space as boobie. Mouth opens. Natural instinct, somehow, takes effect, apparently, to suck the hell out of it. And he did. Many a time. Well done, my little man!

Incidentally, this whole breastfeeding lark – I can only surmise as ‘grazing’ – lots of little meals throughout the day. Someone’s going to be porker. Oh, wait, at 9lbs 13 he is a big child already.  Carry on.

All in all, I’ve left Oliver and his mum at the hospital, due to the major abdominal surgery that she had (did I mention this?), where she won’t be allowed out until she’s recovered enough to wash dishes and scrub the floor.  Claire’s been able to eat and drink stuff, which is a really good sign. Bit of sick here and there, but she’s doing great, so again, top job by Claire.

If anything, I felt like such a spare part that was constantly just in-the-way.  The most constructive thing that I’ve actually done today, was to fetch jugs of cold water and to bin soiled nappies. Oh, and push the trolley (that Oliver was laying in) out of the operating theatre (used for the major abdominal surgery!) back into the ward and park it up. Then it was in the wrong place. Shan’t bother going next time, if there were to be a next time…!

Well, I’ve looked back and noticed that my last blog post was back in August, which I am both shocked and appalled about. Hey ho. I’ve been busy, but will try to fill in the blanks.

There’s been loads that has happened, but I’ll try to segregate them into various topics and blog them individually.

In short, Jack has grown. My god, he’s grown loads. He’s such a bright, intelligent little boy with a fantastic imagination. I think I’ll write about that individually.

What else?  Christmas – Jack’s first proper Christmas where he was not only aware of what Christmas is, but also who Santa Claus / Father Christmas is, and why you have to be good, etc.

Jack’s been helping the midwife check-over the lump (read: baby) in mummy’s tummy.

And something else… slipped my mind for the moment…  Oh yes, the baby was born today, and was named Oliver. More details in that blog post, methinks.

I’ll get writing these posts now, but this was just a quick summary of the things to come. I’ll even come back and and the links and whatever to this post. Maybe.  Maybe next August, who knows!

When Jack was under-construction, en-womb, I applied a little computer ‘geekness’ to it all and assigned a code-name for the new project, which was that of ‘Juniper’.  The name itself was always intended to be non-gender specific, as at the time, we didn’t know whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

This was always planned on being a gender in-specific name that we could use rather than ‘the baby’, or more to my dislike, just merely ‘baby’ which is how the nurses, midwives, etc all refer to a unborn child, which, to me being a newbie around babies, always felt a little… strange.

So, moving onto the new little Riggers in production, between creative-Claire and I, we’ve mustered up the codename of ‘Jester’ for the new sprog, which will be his project name until birth where he’ll be assigned a name for life, this time of my picking. (Again, evil laugh).

So, yes. Jester.

Why Jester? Well, Claire’s sums show that as the baby is due in January 2012, counting back 9 months means that Claire and I must have ‘gotten jiggy-wid-it’ in April. To me, April is a fairly flat and boring month and the only memorable thing in April is April Fools. April Fools turns into Fools, and Fools leads my little mind on into ‘Jester’. Jester, to me, isn’t really a boy’s name nor a girl’s name, and it starts with the same initial letter as Juniper. Spurious, nonetheless, but…!

And we couldn’t think of anything better. Which is a much better reason. So, Jester it is really. A name until we decide on… a name!