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.

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!

Lots of changes have happened in the past month or two, in relation to Jack and us as a family, in a positive way.  Hopefully!!

The big thing (previously unmentioned on this blog) is that Claire is expecting our second child in January..!  

Yes, yes… I know exactly what you’re thinking. “What is this going to do to the title of the blog..!”

The same thought had crossed my mind, and so I’m going to be adjusting the overall theme of the site to cater for both kidders. And Jack’s website, which is *way* out of date. And the photos website on SkyDrive.  (Just realised that I’m going to have to rename my folders of the 6000+ photos of Jack that we have. Nightmare!!)

Anyway, so yes, another child and it’s another boy! This is great news, as we don’t have to go and buy loads of new girly-looking clothes, as being a boy, he’s inevitably going to get the ol’ hand-me-down-clothes treatment..! To be honest, the relatively little amount of time that Jack has spent in any of his clothes mean that they may have been washed lots, but worn very little, so they’re still very good. And to be even more honest-er about it all, it doesn’t matter if they were thread-bare, he’s going to have them!! (evil laugh…)

Jack is really not how I expected him to be about all of this baby-lark.  Being aged 2 (ish) I was expecting him to be all mardy about sharing stuff with a new baby, such as his toys, books and even his mum. (Didn’t expect him to be bothered about me!) But, on the contrary, he’s being fantastic about it all. He keeps talking to mummy’s tummy, saying hello to the as-yet-unnamed baby and kissing it before speaking. Really funny to watch.

More stuff to follow shortly, I hope.

We just had to go up there to see Jack, as he was literally screaming his back teeth out.

He did this before about a month ago, but we couldn't work out then as to why he was doing it.  Our first thoughts were, and are tonight, that he has a tooth coming through, but the effort that he’s putting into it, makes me hope that there’s five coming through!

The problem is not only that he’s screaming at top volume, full bore, etc, he gets himself so wound up, that he’s an effort to calm down again.

We tried to give him some medicine that will help things, as well as help him to sleep, but he ended up throwing it all back up again.

Of course, having just been sick, he’s then a bit grouchy too.

He eventually calmed down, thanks entirely to Claire, but not before he needed a whole new set of pyjamas and bed clothes, replacing the sick-covered ones.  And in case you think it’s only baby-sick and not too bad, this is the same sick as you and I would produce! Smell included!

The joys of parenthood, I suppose!

Yes. It’s happened again. And this time, it was all over me.

It was probably my fault for making fun of it happening to Claire, but this time, my little saved his entire stomach contents for his dad. Thanks son.

We’re trying a new approach in giving him his milk at 19:30 when he goes to bed, rather than to put him to bed without it, and then wake him up at 22:30 to feed him, change his nappy and put him in his little sleeping bag.

So, as I’ve been at work all day, I took Jack upstairs to get his pyjamas on, and Claire get his milk ready for me to give him. No problems. Yet.

He drank about half of it, which wasn’t surprising, as he’d not long had his food. And dessert. And fruit. With more fruit, with vegetables too in places.

Most of the time, he gnashes through the food with the only teeth he has so far, which are at the front of his mouth, and then spits out the skin from the grapes, or the blueberry ‘shells’ and so on, so I didn’t really think that he eats a great deal of them. Until now.

After his milk, he tried to get up and wander around, but a little half-heartedly, as he was shattered from going swimming earlier with his mum.

Before he got really sleepy, I took him into the en-suite in our bedroom to brush his teeth as normal, but just as we got there, the eruption was imminent!

Within seconds, we were re-creating the final scenes of Pompeii. Instead of hot black ash and lava, there was brightly coloured pieces of recognisable food that he’d eaten a couple of hours ago, all mixed together and decorating the floor, the walls, the toilet and the sink. And the door. And of course, Jack and I.  As I was holding him in my arms before the point of impact, it was all over me, neck downwards.  And it was obviously body temperature, which is very not-nice!

Luckily, we were in the en-suite which has tiled flooring, making the clearing-up a lot easier than if it had happened on the carpet!

I think I must have moved him before allowing the milk to settle, but I sort of had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind that this might happen. If only I had paid more attention to said ‘niggling feelings’, I could have tried to get Attack Number Three over Claire instead of me - but hey, there’s anyways next time!!

(Seeing as this is the third time now, I’ve even added a new category to the blog-site about Mega-Yak.  Yes, I’m sad…)

Yes, it’s true – he can scream and very loudly at that.

The only thing that we can see is the problem, is that Jack’s teeth are causing him pain.  Because of this pain, he’s not only fussed about eating very much.  Because he’s not eating very much, he’s putting his nice little routine out and then he’s hungry in the middle of the night and is awake for a period of time. Being he’s awake, he’s then tired at different times in the day, hungry at different times, and it’s a struggle to know what to do and when, for the best.

Calpol is good, but it takes time to work and it does wear off.

If you haven’t got children, you may not necessarily know about this – basically, it’s paracetemol in liquid form, for babies and children.  That, coupled with Nurofen for Children, and MediSed can really help Jack sleep with his various growing pains.

We don’t really ‘keep him dosed up’ all the time – that’s a bit pointless, wasteful and is ultimately giving him medicine that he may not even need, which I think is a little backward.  The main times that we generally need to given him anything like that is at night times, but then it can be a struggle by yourself, as when he needs it, he isn’t calm and relaxed enough to take it without splashing it up the walls, or covering himself in it.

Jack is normally very good.  He’s well tempered most of the time and we haven’t had much problems in that respect.  However.  The last few days have been a bit… unusual.  At times, it seems like he’s cried for days and, occasionally, there’s no consoling him. He can be in a mood, tired and sometimes hungry and when he doesn’t get his way, the tantrums come out in full force!

The amount that he’s cried in the past few days, I’d hope that he’s got about 10 teeth all coming through at the same time!

But then, babies do cry. They do have sleepless nights sometimes.  Teeth do grow. So, I think that we’re seeing it as one of those things and taking it as it comes really.  Once he’s settled down and back to his routine, he’ll be fine again. Until next time…

Last week, I took Jack for his MMR jabs – only I forgot to blog about it!

Yeah, so, I took Jack to the local doctors’ surgery for his jabs, and I think that it could have gone a lot better.

Last time he had to have some jabs, Claire took him and was worried about his next lot, the MMRs.  I volunteered (foolishly, in hindsight!) to take him, booked the day off and that’s what we did.

Jack was extremely tired before we had even got there, and was ultimately, grouchy.  (He must take after his mum or something in that respect!)

Waiting in the waiting room was bad enough, as he didn’t want me to hold him, yet he didn’t want to go on the floor. To be honest, I was quite happy with that, as it is a bit grim in there on the chairs, let alone the floor; plus, all those sick people that normally sit there too, coughing and spluttering...  Not good.

Anyway, the appointment was for 13:30 and even though we were there in plenty of time, we didn’t get seen until about 14:15 and then it was straight into the nurse’s office.

I think Jack knew what was coming here – a bit like taking the dog to the vets, they just know it’ll result in a needle somehow. Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be good nor easy, and he was right.

The nurse started to tell me about what he was going to have, and trying to engage in conversation about life in general, which was pretty hard-going, as Jack was wriggling like a caught fish on lap as I sat in the chair.  I had to ask her to proceed straight to the bad stuff, which is when I asked how many injections there were going to be today.

“Two, but it’ll be fine.”, she assured me.

When I asked if it was possible to have two nurses, armed with a needle each to do the jabbing, she was quite surprised as though I was the first person to even suggest such a thing. A bit flustered, she talked me down, telling me that “it’ll be fine”, as she “does this sort of thing all the time”, despite me saying that Claire had a nightmare of a time with the second jab last time, as he tensed all the muscles in his little legs and kicked ferociously.

Anyway. I think that she might have quietly changed her mind after she couldn’t even stick him with the first jab, bearing in mind that I was already holding Jack still. She had to get the other non-nurse lady in the room just to hold his legs down, which proved to work…the first time.

The second jab, however, didn’t prove to be as ‘easy’ as the first, and he really made sure of that.

So. I’m sat in a chair, holding Jack as best as I can, bearing in mind that he’s not only thrashing his legs in protest, but also turning over to face me and then back around again. The opposite leg from last time is now rotating at a pace just behind his body, and she’s trying to get hold of his thigh with one hand, whilst the other is poised, ready to pounce on the target, once locked-on.

I really had to hold him tightly, the other lady clamped down on his little legs and, finally, the nurse scored a hit.

Jack was left sobbing and screaming at the same time, making me feel like a really bad dad for putting him through all of this.

We had to then wait back in the waiting room for 15 minutes, I guess it’s just to make sure that he didn’t have a reaction to the drugs.

After all of that, we came home and he slept for a good couple of hours, as he’s certainly worked for it!!

I now understand what Claire meant about last time. Strangely, I seem to remember my work cancelling all holiday for me in future where I have to do that again. (joke!)

As much as I don’t want to have to go through that all again with him, I’m sort of glad that I went, and sort-of saved Claire the ordeal.

I don’t know if it’s anything (food-wise) that I’ve given him in the past 2 days whilst he’s been in my care, but Jack managed to throw up the volume of three people’s stomachs last night, again, all over Claire!

A few months ago, Claire got back from work on a Saturday evening in time to get Jack to bed. Coincidentally, I was about to get ready to nip down to the local Chinese takeaway to collect our order. So, I handed Jack over to his mum and started getting my coat on to go – just as Claire got to the top of the stairs… Mega-Yak strikes! All over Claire, the carpet, everywhere. Nice.

Almost the same thing happened last night.

Claire got back from work and had bathed Jack and got him ready for bed around 19:30 as usual, when I was about to leave to get the Chinese takeaway.

This time, Claire had made it just inside the playroom when Mega-Yak II strikes! Claire just froze holding him, but managed to re-route all available energy to her voice-box in the form of calling me. Loud.

I made it from downstairs, up and into the playroom to see the last moments of Mega-Yak II making my wife’s white blouse… not white anymore. It was everywhere. Fair play to Jack, I don’t think he could have planned it better.  It was all over her hair, face, shirt, arms and certainly all over the floor in the playroom!

At the time, it was grim. Now, it’s quite funny thinking back, hence I thought I’d mention it here; as I’m sure that when Jack is old enough to find worms and mud funny, he’ll want to know about this!  :o)

I know it probably sounds like an odd thing to say, but Jack has developed his own little personality which has almost appeared from nowhere!

What I mean, is that he’s got his likes, his dislikes and then he’s got his own way of expressing his choices to us, all in a good way.

When Jack was a little baby, he cried, poo’d and then cried some more after a little bit of sleep. When we gave him food, he eat it. All. When we gave him his bottle of milk, he drank almost all of it, all of the time.

Now, if he’s not interested in something like food, or doesn’t want to finish his milk, he can be quite stubborn and not have it.  We try each time we feed him now to give him lots of food before he gets bored, and then change something so that it is different and so on.  With his milk though, once he’s had enough there’s no changing his mind.  Obviously a trait he’s got from his mum!! ;o)

But food and drink aside, it’s weird to see him do the things he wants to do, and also funny watching him throw a bit of a tantrum when he’s doing something he doesn’t want to do.

Like for instance, he likes watching the cars, lorry, etc go by outside the window, or when we’re driving along, he’s now tall enough to see over the passenger seat in my car and he’ll point out a bus at quite a way away.  Sometimes, we can even use this car/lorry watching as a means of calming him down when he’s upset or bumped his head or whatever.  He’ll happily stand on the window-sill in our bedroom, holding onto the window handle with one hand and the other smacking or prodding the window as and when he sees fit. And yes, we are always directly behind him, before you think otherwise!

The past few weeks, he’s been a bit more clingy than he’s probably ever been before – which means carrying him around all the time, which is ok for a while, but when you need to put him down to get his or our food ready, he can get quick upset, and quite quickly too. He soon gets over it if we try to ignore him, as there’s things that we have to do without him in our arms, such as getting food in or out of the oven, etc.  It’s then that the tears come out straight away, mouth wide open and the screams start! Literally within about 30 seconds, he’s seen a toy or something he wants to play with, or somewhere he can go and investigate and it’s as though he forgets what he was all upset about!

I’m really glad that Claire’s been making a massive effort with him in taking him to Sign And Sign classes – baby sign, that is. I think that you can already see in his face when he’s not happy about something, and if his baby signing improves further, then this might alleviate more problems down the line, or make them easier for us to understand what he’s after or trying to do. He’s already got a certificate for proving that he can wave his hands to tell us little things, which is what it’s all about.  If he’s able to tell us in a simple yet effective sign of his hands that he’s not able to verbally pronounce, then it’s great.

At the moment, he’s able to, basically, ask for more of something; this is what he got his first certificate for. If we give him a baby-biscuit, or a chocolate button or something that he likes, he uses both hands to sign the word for ‘more’ and then he points at what he wants. Simple.  Bonjella is a good one for that – he likes the taste of Bonjella teething gel and, if you let him, he’ll have the lot. (Except, that’s bad, as he’s only allowed 2 or 3 ‘shots’ a day of it!)

Good stuff though. He’s funny to be around and is always up for a game of peek-a-boo!

Jack spent his second-ever night away from us the other night, staying with my folks and… it was great!  The dog was at Claire’s parents’ too meaning that we didn’t need to get up early or in the middle of the night or anything! It was absolutely fantastic! The house was silent!

My parents really enjoyed having him over to stay for the night too, which was good.  My mum said how surprised she was at how well behaved Jack was, even after we had tip-toed out of their house Friday evening! She said he almost cried a couple of times when he’d realised we had gone, but he soon got over it with the prospect of two old grandparents to run around after him! It probably didn’t help when she’s showing Jack photos of all of us, saying ‘who is that?’… doh!

On a serious note, it’s really good that we’re able to leave him like that, that both sets of our parents are willing to have him, and that he’s good in their company. We’re really lucky in that respect, as some folks don’t have their parents close-by, or some people’s parents aren’t willing to help as much as ours, and of course, some aren’t willing to help at all.

My folks had moved to Wales not long after I was born and so had neither sets of parents within at least 300miles of them, so I appreciate that it must have been difficult. But then, I suppose, it’s a case of just getting on and doing what’s best really.

Claire’s drafted her mum to help a couple of days a week with Jack, as Claire being back at work, too, makes the normality from before we had Jack, come back into our new normal life with Jack.  Claire has always really liked working but really likes being with Jack too, so working a few days a week is good all round. It also means that I get to spend loads of time with him too.  All good fun.

A little while ago, I blogged about the flash-cards (part 1 and part 2) that I had made using photos of vehicles from the internet, and stuck them around the playroom for Jack.

Well, I’ve added to them recently, to build up his collection of modes of transportation:

I think I picked the obvious ones last time, and now to make it a little more interesting, I thought I’d add a few non-standard modes of transportation. Such as a tank, or dumper truck.

He’s getting really good at the ones he has already – he’s only a year old and so can’t pronounce the words properly, but he’ll look around the room for the one you ask him for and point very definitely at it.  It’s practise really, that’s all.

He’s got toys that are trains, a digger, a dump truck (Tonka Truck) and I thought he might like them.

But what’s next? Do I try and find more obscure means of transportation? Or do I try to specialise in each category? i.e. Ferrari, Porsche, etc?

Hmm. I’ll have to think about that and see how he gets on with these.  But I’m starting to struggle with more types of vehicles I can get him – any suggestions?

Yes, as mad as it sounds, Jack is already a year old.

I know that it was only a matter of time, but the time has flown by. Already, we’re packing him up for university, as that’ll be here soon.

Jack had lots of new toys to add to his growing heap of brightly coloured plastic in his playroom. So much so, that Toys ‘R Us are getting twitchy.

It seems that most of the toys for kiddies these days all require batteries, are filled with lights and make random noises in the night!  I don’t remember that far back, obviously, but I don’t remember having toys like that.  A better comparison, maybe, would be that I don’t remember younger cousins or family friends’ babies having such toys – instead, they were more Action Man-esque, in that they were figures or toys that you played with. Hmm, but maybe then I’m thinking of toys for older children. 

Anyway, Jack had a small family gathering on the weekend following his birthday, where I cooked the most of the meal… on the barbeque. Outside in the cold. In February.  Claire’s folks, my folks and my sister came to which the little sprog a happy birthday, making Jack the centre of attention yet again - something that he’s getting to enjoy.  He seems like pulling their strings by getting them to clap after he has – something he even managed to do the other day in Church for a Christening with the other attendees.  (He claps.  They clap.  He laughs. They laugh.  The Vicar notices.  I laugh.)

As with Christmas, he didn’t really get the point of it all.  We tried half-opening presents and encouraging him to rip the paper open, which almost goes against everything that we’re teaching him, such as how he handles books and not to rip pages, etc.  And then we give him brightly coloured boxes and show how to do it.  Madness.

He didn’t really get the whole ‘singing happy birthday in the presence of a cake and then blowing out a fire single-handed’.  Just to make sure he knew what we were doing, (and to get the most out of the ‘1’ candle) Claire and I re-lit it, and made everyone sing again.  Again, he looked bemused, but it made us all laugh when he joined in the clapping at the end.  We were all clapping that it was his birthday; he was clapping that we’d all finally finished singing!

One thing we tried, being that it was a party for a child, was to make the jelly component of jelly-and-ice-cream.  The only problem, was that we didn’t have any jelly moulds and tried at several places in town to get some.  I had a brilliant idea of using ice-cube trays and filling lots of them with different flavoured jelly and then serving them up together, by popping them out of the mould. Simple.

Well - Here’s a tip for you:

“Don’t try to use ice-cube trays as jelly moulds. It doesn’t work like that.” – Brett Rigby, 2010

We found this out the hard way.

After making six different flavour mixes of jelly, and chilling each of them to set in the trays, serving them (whole and intact) wasn’t easy and ended up scooping them out with a tea-spoon.  The result wasn’t bad, as we made the best of a bad situation, it just was not the ideal-world scenario that I had envisaged.  I think everyone liked it though, even my sister Emma who “doesn’t like Orange jelly”.   :o)

All in all, I think he really enjoyed himself.  We did. 

Whilst I think of it, I thought I’d mention the state of play with his walking, as people keep asking about it now he’s a year old.

He can stand up and sit down by himself, but this is only when he’s holding something, to keep him stable. Same, too, if we hold his hands, even if he’s got just one of our fingers, he uses that to keep himself stable whilst happily walking across the room.

But he seems to be aware that he’s not holding something, if we try and make him walk without.  Then, he’ll stumble a few steps, and then falls forwards, which I think is because his nose is too big and heavy, and pulls his head towards the ground.

Either way, as I say, he’ll do maybe three steps in succession, but either fall (and we catch him) or he gets worried and his knees collapse under him.

Good fun trying though.  He doesn’t mind at all, but he’ll certainly let us know when he’s had enough of that!

Ok – so here’s the day’s events so far…

Jack didn’t wake up until about 07:45 and was in a really good mood as a result.  I was thinking that maybe he’d be a bit grumpy or something for sleeping so much, but no.

We got up, washed and dressed and then the plan *was* that we went to Rhyme Time – basically, lots of mums and the occasional dad with their babies and small kids sitting around going through nursery rhymes.  It’s a free thing, so they tend be packed, and held in the library in town.

I know Claire quite liked going to Rhyme Time before she went back to work on Thursdays, as it’s an opportunity to get out of the house and meet other mums in the same boat, etc. And, it’s all quite safe to let them roam around a bit. The worst they can do, is pull a few books off the shelves.

But anyway, we didn’t quite make it there this morning, as I we got to town a bit early and decided to go straight to the Church Rooms, where they hold the sessions to have the babies weighed frequently.  As we were pretty much the only ones there, we had the 1:1 treatment, and she was telling me what he can and can’t have, now that he’s a year old.

By the time we left there, time was getting on, and so I decided that rather than going to the library and being 20 minutes late for a 30 minute session, I’d take him to see his Grandma (at work)and Great-Grandma (at home)instead.  On the way around to seeing his Great-Grandma, we saw that Granddad's car was at home too, so we called into see him too!

So, busy day, so far.

We’ve just got back, warmed his milk and he soon fell asleep in my arms after it.  Peace and quiet for a little while.

Oh my word.

…

…

It’s finally here.

Jack is one year old tomorrow.  A whole year old, 365 days and all that.

I wanted to write something here about the fact that it’s his birthday, not because it’s his birthday, but the fact that it’s here, upon us.

He’s grown so much in the past few months, its unreal.  He now stands up taller than the side of his cot in the mornings when we go to get him up. He can even reach the drawers on the unit beside the cot and bang it shut when he’s bored! Little monster.

Some of his clothes seem to have shrunk too.  The older stuff I mean.  The clothes that he had several months ago, seem to be a bit tight, especially the baby-grow/jumpsuit type of clothes that go over his head and get his feet in too, stitching together between his legs.  However, the alternative is the newer clothes that are still too big for him that make him look like Maggie from The Simpsons, where her blue clothing drags behind her and trips her up every other minute – Jack’s just the same, as it’s his ‘feet’ in his new baby-grow/jumpsuit thing that are too long and drag behind him.

Claire and I were just talking about this being a weird year, and that it feels like a really long year in one respect, as we’ve had almost zero sleep, but then on the other hand, it seems like the days/weeks/months this year have literally flown by – once we’ve got home from work, had food, sorted out Jack and got him to bed, there’s a bit of time left to clean up, or in some cases, make his food, and then it’s midnight. Kapow.

But, as I might have mentioned earlier, tomorrow is indeed Jack’s birthday.  I have the day off work and we’re off to Rhyme Time in the morning and then off to see how much the little fattie weighs.

We’ve noticed that there’s a few photos missing from the SkyDrive photo collection and we’re in the process of uploading them.  Same, too, for the video clips on Jack’s website: my mum constantly has her digital camera set to video mode, and has helped in almost doubling the video clips that we have of him to process, and upload to YouTube, and then linking to the website.  I have days occasionally where by it’s great to do something like that, but at the moment, finding the several hours to sit there and vet them isn’t possible!

Oh, one other really important fact for me to record here, is that we have officially taken… 4806 photos of Jack in his first year, which averages out at about 13 photos per day!!  That’s quite worrying really..!!  But we’d rather have them and look at the occasionally, than to have not taken them at all and wish that we had.

So – tomorrow, Jack stops begin none-years old! Wahey!

I’ve just been upstairs in Jack’s bedroom helping Claire put him into a baby sleep-suit for the night after she had fed him his nightly milk, when Claire pointed out the size of our child, saying “Oh my God, he’s like a giant!”, claiming that “he must have grown… today!”.

Well, there’s a good chance that he has, I suppose, but whether he’s grown the inch or two that Claire’s making out since last night is a little doubtful! And thankful really, as he’s getting through clothes a bit quicker now that he’s growing!

Admittedly though, tonight he did seem to be a fair size, laying face down in his cot, with his arms to his sides and legs straight-ish, compared to the size he was when we first started using that cot with him; back then, he was all small, tiny and scrunched-up  anyway, but then he’d sleep in a sort-of vertical foetal position, laying on his front with his bum up in the air, with his arms and knees tucked in.  He still does that occasionally when we first put him to bed, but in the mornings, it’s quite random as to the position he’s laying in, let alone the orientation of the bed that he’s wriggled into overnight!

Aside from his height, he’s starting to get heavy too – picking him up and carrying him around the house, we’re starting to notice it a bit more very recently! Little fattie.

He’s getting more and more entertaining to be around recently.  He’s always been a bit of an attention-magnet, but he’s starting to do things, as well as trying to say things, that really make us smile!

Like today for example:

I’ve had a bit of a pants day at work, staying late to get some stuff done, which means getting stuck in lots of traffic on the way home.  When I got there, Claire and Jack turned up just minutes after I did, as they had been at a  swimming lesson.  From what Claire’s said, he should have been absolutely knackered tonight, as he hadn’t slept a great deal and had been splashing around in the pool. 

I went out to the car to help bring him in and he’s smiling away and jabbering away as is becoming normal, except he had no trousers on, as once Claire had dressed him, he crawled through a puddle in the changing room and got soaked! When I opened the car door, it was absolutely baking in there, as Claire was trying to make sure he didn’t get cold! She had put a dry pair of backup-socks on him, and wrapped a blanket over him, but he’s a dab-hand at getting socks off, and does so with a devilish look about him too, so he’s sitting there in just a jumper, coat and his nappy!

I brought him in and took him straight upstairs to get some trousers and socks on him and, standing him on the changing unit, he’s raised both hands and landed them on both of my ears, and then comes at me with his mouth wide open, trying to bite my nose off!

Luckily, I survived this time, but he’s getting quicker and quicker each time.  Apart from dribbling right down the front of my t-shirt, he didn’t cause any damage, but  I don’t think he’s doing it to hurt, but think maybe this is some sort of baby-affection?  Who knows.

Or maybe:

At the dinner table, he’ll be chewing away on some strange-looking carrot-based crispy thing, and he’ll offer it to you as innocently as anything and allow you to take hold of it, and then not let go as though he’s changed his mind, again with the devilish look.

It’s not necessarily that because he’s ours that I find some of the little things he does funny, but for a baby, he’s not half bad.

A year ago, things were starting to seem a little more… ‘real’, with regards to this whole baby-lark.

Claire was, by then, heavily pregnant and carrying the warning label that she could plop-out a baby anytime.

As daft as it sounds now, for someone like me that has had absolutely nothing to do with babies (ever), this was a shock waiting to happen.

Blissfully unaware of what would be happening from one day to the next, little did I know how things worked, when they would happen and the consequences of them happening.

I know that we had been to the antenatal classes and all that, but that was the driving *theory* lesson that I took before I started to learn to drive.  Knowledge? Out.  Learn by experience? Most definitely, in.

Everything turned out well though.  A year on, Jack’s doing great. He’s keeping us on our toes and although he does like a routine, nothing ever seems to be set in stone with him. Some mornings he wakes up early, around 5:30-6:00am, and then some mornings, like the other morning, he was still fast asleep at 7am, and had to wake him up so that we could take him to his Grandparents house whilst we went to work!

It’s good fun being a dad though. I can’t speak for Claire being his mum, obviously, but I enjoy it. Poo-y bums, I don’t. Playing with the toys and teaching him things, yep.

My folks still have our Scalextric set from when we were 7 or 8 years old (blimey, 22/23 years ago!!) but I’m not allowed to have it until our Jack (and any others we may have) are old enough to play with it.  Same for the train-set, but I wasn’t as keen on that as I was Scalextric. (I had a red Ferrari, similar to the one in Jack’s photo flashcard – coincidence? no.)

I remember when we were kids, my dad was always playing with our toys too. I’d build the Lego Forklift Truck that I had for Christmas or my Birthday, to wake up the following morning to find that my dad had “did an A-Team job” on it, making it an armoured forklift truck that was then 4x wheel steered instead of 2x.  I didn’t mind too much afterwards, but seeing the thing you’d spend hours building be ‘pimped’ like that wasn’t funny.  But it is now, and I' can’t guarantee that I won’t do the same to Jack’s Lego-equivalent!

It’s true what they say, though, in terms of your body gets used to a change in sleep patterns, and surprisingly, you can function on 4 to 5 hours sleep if you need to. That’s not to say that you’re not useless at work the next day, but hey.

In the first post about this, I said how we’d got the various photos from Google Images of a car, a motorbike, etc and printed them out on 7”x5” photo-cards, laminated them and stuck them around the playroom as flashcards.

Well, actually, he’s not half bad! And, that’s not me or Claire making it up. 

Here’s my proof that he knows what things are called, but not necessarily know how to pronounce their names.

If I carry Jack into the middle of the room and hold him whilst I kneel down on the floor, I can ask him where the car is, namely the bright red Ferrari  which is in the centre under the window.  Easy, really, as he knows these things that drive around outside are called cars, and that’s the one that most resembles a car.

But then, if I ask him where the van is, he’ll look around, seeing the motorbike and the double-decker bus that are to the left of the car, ignore them, swing his head around to the right of the car, sometimes looking around me, to see a white Ford Transit van on the wall perpendicular to the window-wall.  Then, you can see his eyes lock onto it, like a bird of prey seeing a mouse, and whilst his smile forms on his face, his hand is already up with his finger extending the best he can, pointing to the van.

Ok, I could have trained him to do that. So, he knows where the car and the van are, but then if you ask where the motorbike is, you can see his expression on his face change, as if to say, “ooh, I know that one… where is it?” and then scan the images again, looking for the Orange County Chopper motorbike photo.

Between the car and the van is the photo of the Land Rover Defender, which I’m calling a Truck, and he can find that too. To the left of the motorbike, is the double-decker bus and he can do that one too.

The others, namely the helicopter, aeroplane, tractor and Eddie Stobart artic lorry, haven’t had much attention from us yet.  But in terms of early progress, I think he’s doing great! Claire still gets confused sometimes as to what they’re called! (Joke!)

Admittedly, if you were to ask him what any of them are called, they’re all cars, but I’m working on that!

However he’s saying it, he’s saying it when pointing at cars. And vans.  Buses… and articulated lorries too.

But he seems to think that things that drive by outside the window of the house are called ‘cars’ and although he’s wrong on a technicality, he’s not a million miles away really.

So, as he’s trying to say words that he can’t pronounce, I thought I’d help him to be clear what we’re talking about with flash-cards of different vehicles.

Claire’s already printed out a load of photos that are laminated as flash-cards that Jack’s got in his playroom upstairs, but hers are of family members that he may not see everyday and that we can get him to point at, etc. I video’d him standing at the door-gate in the playroom, whilst encouraging him to come over and pick put his Great Granny from the scattered photos on the floor, and although you might not believe me here, he did exactly that. Straight over to her photo, no messing, from a selection of about 8 photos of other people.  He’s small and dribbley but he’s not daft.

Anyway, here’s the selection of different modes of transportation that I’ve selected, with the help of Mr. Google Images.

Obviously, one vehicle from each category, without straying into vehicles such as those two wheel contraptions that you stand on and lean forward/backward/etc.

I’ve printed them out in full colour, all on 7”x5” glossy photo cards and will laminate them ready for Jack to have in his playroom, maybe even stuck to the wall around the room. 

We’ll find out how he gets on…

Update: Car! Ca! Ka! Kar! Kah! – Part 2 here

We always tried to keep Jack in a routine, and haven’t always got it right the first time, but we’re new to this parenting too.

One of the things that we was taught in the antenatal classes before Jack was born, was that “babies need a routine”. I think I might have mentioned about this in the past, but here goes again, a little way down the line this time, as things have changed as he’s grown up a bit more.

Jack has slept through the night since he was about 11 weeks old, which has been fantastic. He started to wake in the night or really early in the morning because of illness, or teething.  But recently, he’s been back to ‘normal’ again and so here’s what a typical day might look like.

06:00-06:45

Jack wakes up and usually starts to jabber to himself and then he starts to realise that he’s on his own and starts to fake-cry a little bit.  One of us gets up and changes his nappy and cheers him up a little bit by playing with his toys or reading some of his books.

07:00

We’ll go downstairs and get some breakfast for Jack.  Recently this means that we make his breakfast whilst Jack pushes the chairs in the kitchen around the room, using it as a means of getting about without having to crawl.

As we've put the child-locks on the kitchen doors, his attention then turns to the dustbin, which then has to be lifted onto the side unit.  Claire’s put a stash of toys in the kitchen for him to play with whilst we’re in there, but these are a little different to his normal toys upstairs, as she’s put a selection of (new) kitchen utensils in there, which I thought was odd to start with, but when she explained that they’ve all got different textures, shapes, etc, it all made sense. But no, there’s no knives or anything dangerous, so don’t worry.

He’ll normally have one of a selection of baby porridges that we have for him, each with different flavours, fruit, etc that you simply mix with about 3-4oz of his plastic (formula) milk. After he’s had that, he’ll have some baby yoghurt. Or not, as the case may be.

I tend to leave the mess that Jack makes with his food, as well as his spoons and bowl, etc on the table for later, so it means that he’s not bored whilst I clean up.

07:30-07:45

After breakfast, we get Jack washed in the shower or in the bath. He really likes bath-times and can be in there splashing around for well over an hour before he starts to get bored.  He’s got all his toys in there as well, but he’s much rather play with the taps, or even yank on the chain, pulling the plug out meaning more water required.

Once he’s out, he’s fitted with a new nappy and is dressed ready for the day. Providing that nothing messy happens throughout the day, these are the clothes that he’ll stay in until bedtime at night. These are usually a white baby-grow with jeans and t-shirt over the top, with socks to boot.  These clothes instantly make him look like a grown-up, as even though they’re small and baby-sized, it gives the impression that he’s older than he is.

08:30-09:00

Assuming Jack’s not still in the bath, this is about the time that he’ll start getting tired; rubbing his fists into his eyes, and stretching his mouth for a good old yawn or two.  We get his milk ready and take him upstairs to his bedroom.  We’ve been doing this little routine of lowering the blinds and closing the curtains in his bedroom and telling him that it’s bedtime… I think it’s probably more for our benefit than his, but telling him isn’t a bad thing I don’t think.

Sleeping during the day can go either way; 45 minutes in the morning and then longer in the afternoon, or the other way around. Depending on what we’ve been doing with him in the morning can sometimes wear him out more and make him sleep longer first thing, which is good as it means that we’ve then got a good gap in the morning to clean up in the kitchen from breakfast, as well as have a breather generally. 

Once he wakes up, we carry on as before and play with his toys, but now’s the time that he’d be going to any baby groups with Claire, such as swimming, or Rhyme-Time in the library in town, etc.  Alternatively, now’s a great time to nip to Tesco’s to check out the “honey’s and the mummies”.  And possibly get a few bits too.

12:00-12:30

Lunchtime for Jack. Again, he’ll play happily on the floor in the kitchen whilst we’re zapping his food in the microwave. Claire’s still been making good, proper food for Jack and freezing it in ice-cube style blocks in the freezer. His food for lunchtime and evening meals would have been moved from the freezer into the fridge overnight to defrost in time.

They don’t take long to heat in the microwave, and that’s a good thing, as sometimes he can get a little hungry and present this in form of whining and fake-crying.  His favourite food at the moment tends to be fish-based; I know that when I open the pot to see what he’s got for the day and am faced with what literally looks like deep-green-coloured slime, (cod and spinach) he’ll love it and scoff the lot.

For dessert, again, more food prepared previously by master-chef Claire, but usually fruit-based.  Again, his current favourite is a blend of apples, pears and vanilla-pod extracts – it smells delicious. And again, he loves it and will usually have the lot.

12:30-13:00

Depending on how well lunchtime goes, this is normally the time that we’ll keep Jack in the highchair where he’s just had his lunch whilst we have ours.  Of course, he won’t just sit there and be silent, so we’ll give him some fruit to eat, such as grapes sliced in half, or a slice of a apple/pear/nectarine/etc.  Either way, he’ll chew his teeth into it, extracting the juice whilst simultaneously mushing the food to a pulp and spitting it into his bib that has a scoop-section to catch the falling waste.  Also, we might give him some pieces of a breadstick, or some of his special baby-biscuits or baby-crisps, (made from real babies).

From here on, we’ll play or do stuff around the house with Jack, trying to keep him entertained and, more importantly, quiet. He’s got more toys in his playroom that Toys 'R’ Us stock for Christmas, so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be busy.

14:30-15:00

Jack will start yawning and getting tired by about now, so the same process as before, we’ll start getting his milk ready and take him upstairs, close the curtains, feed him and put him to bed.  By the time he reaches the end of the bottle, his eyes are almost completely closed and he’s been rolling himself over on our chests to snuggle-in whilst we’re sitting in the rocking chair with him. Snuggling means ‘proper-whacked, get me to my bed’.

As I said earlier, depending on how long he slept for earlier will usually mean he sleeps the opposite this time.

15:30

If Jack is still sleeping by about now, we tend to get and gentle wake him up, as if he’s allowed to sleep a little too long, then he either won’t go to bed on-time in the evening, or will want to wake up at silly-o’clock the following morning.

Once he’s awake, we’ll carry on playing with his toys, or take the dog for a walk down the road and into the village.  When we do go for a walk, especially in this freezing cold weather, Jack’s got a sleeping bag-type attachment for his pram that keeps him warm even in arctic conditions.

17:00-17:15

Tea-time for Jack. Again, food that Claire’s prepared earlier is zapped, and served, followed by dessert. 

17:45-18:00

As before, we try to keep Jack in his chair whilst we have our meal, this time he’s given foodstuffs that might be a little more messy, such as strawberries or tomatoes and he squishes them and slams them into the table on his high-chair before sucking the guts out of them. And spreading them around a bit more. And then slamming them a few more times.

Whatever’s leftover is then dangled perilously over the edge (without even needing to look at it) and whilst he gives you an angelic-and-then-evil sort of smile, he simply releases his grip allowing the food to be pile-driven into the floor and discarded forever. Alfie, our dog, normally likes to check out what’s fallen and scavenge anything he can.

After food, Jack is usually a right mess. He might have strawberry or tomato stuck in his hair, certainly all over his clothes and all over his lap as it fell from his mouth after the mushing.  This is the time that we’ll carry him at full arm’s length upstairs to get changed and get his bed-clothes on.  As soon as he gets his all-in-one outfit on, he’s a baby again. But still the same little monster.

19:30-19:45

Bedtime! No ifs, no buts: Bed.  We’ll just put him in his cot like that and he’ll pull his legs and arms into himself with his bum sticking out as babies do.

Peace and quite for most of the evening, allowing us time to clear up the mess from his tea, as well as doing our our dishes etc.

21:30

We’ll go in and get Jack up to change his nappy and to feed him his last bottle of the day.  He tends to fake-cry when we’re changing his nappy, but that’s to be expected when you’re all asleep and then someone wakes you up.

Once the bottle is done with, we put him back in his cot, but this time in a baby sleeping-bag, which has straps over his shoulders and a zip down one side.  This will keep him toasty all night.

That’s it until the next morning, when it all starts again: Rinse and repeat.

The other morning, I managed to wangle a lie-in whilst Claire got up with Jack, as he was having ‘one of those mornings’ where he wanted to get up early.

I managed to sleep-in until about 8 o’clock in the morning, which for me at the best of times is a fantastic lie-in; When I got up, I wandered into spare bedroom, which has now transformed itself as Jack’s second bedroom/playroom, to find Claire and Jack playing quite peacefully. Although Claire looked quite bemused, thinking that I knew what had happened so far that morning.

It turns out that Jack had been a bit ‘playful’ earlier in the morning during their breakfast and had managed to reach up at the kitchen table and grab at the cloth placemat that Claire was using for her breakfast and pulled at it, bringing it and everything that was on it, onto the floor, including a plate of toast and a three-quarter-full glass of orange juice! 

As Jack’s toys were already on the floor from him playing earlier, these added to the carnage that I saw when I nipped down for a peek, as Claire couldn’t clean up properly, as Jack is getting quicker with his crawling.  It was as though Jack had been through the cupboards and smashed every plate going, as it looked much worse than it really was.

It has made us realise that he’s also getting taller and things that were previously out of his reach are now potential targets of destruction!

It sounds strange to say, but it really doesn’t feel like it should be December already.  The weeks and months have disappeared; Jack is now 10 months old and his first Christmas is literally just around the corner, adding weight to they “they grow up fast” argument.

So, what’s happened in the past month since I last blogged? Lots, but where to start.

Jack is doing really well.  He’s growing taller and filling out a lot more now, as he’s doing much better with his eating.  He’s still eating the food that Claire’s been making for him, which is great.  Despite all the work that making the food for him is, I think we’re both really pleased not only that we're able to do that for him, but also what he’s actually getting is exactly what Claire puts in the pan; no extra salt, preservatives, etc.

As he is relatively tall for his age, I think at one point we were a *little* concerned that he was a slightly under the weight-line on the graphs, but when comparing your little baby against a line on a graph, working in percentiles of the countries’ babies, it’s a little easy to get tied up in it all. Stats are just that, in my opinion and as long he’s not off at an extreme, he’s doing ok.

There are some areas of baby-life like this that make me wonder: Just how did people survive years ago without charts and averages etc? People seem to have managed without know what percentile their little bundle of joy is in, and they’ve obviously grown up just fine.

As I said in the last blog post, we all had a helping of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, which was nice.  We’re all good now and to be honest, I’m glad to see the back of it.  I hate feeling ill – it seems so… unproductive!! It’s not that we’re *blaming* Jack for us getting it, but he did have it first and managed to get rid of it quickly too…!

He’s not far from walking now, we think.  We keep sitting opposite each other on the floor in his playroom, and encouraging him to take a few steps towards one of us, and he’s getting there. He does try, but gravity is a constant force, and one that Jack hasn’t quite come to grips with yet!!  He’ll gladly scale the stairs if you let him. And fairly quick too, seeing as each step is chest-height and there’s loads of them, he doesn’t do too badly.

His crawling has improved also.  He’s been commando-crawling for as long as he could crawl, but the past week maybe, he’s been crawling ‘properly’, as one would imagine a baby to crawl.

What else can I think has happened?  Brain-mush.  I might have to post this blog item and get another one posted when I remember what else has happened, as otherwise, this will never get uploaded!!

Well, lots really, and that’s probably why I haven’t had much time to write much on here about it all.

Jack is getting on really well – he’s not yet walking, talking or voting or anything like that, but he’s getting there.

Walking – he’s now at that stage whereby he wants to push his baby walker around the house, rather than sit in it.  In fact, I’ve tried to put him in it several times over the last week or two and he just gets annoyed/frustrated, as that wasn’t what he wanted! He just wants to stand behind it, and push it until he runs out of house to push it to, then turns around and does the same thing again.

He’s getting more and more confident with his walking too – he’s now in ‘cruising’ mode, which means that he can stand up-right using against the sofa and use it help him along it to where he wants to go, but as far as proper steps are going, not yet.

Talking – he’s starting to say words like ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘kaaah’ (for ‘car’ as they go by the front of the house) but these words are currently all interchangeable, and it makes for a change to be called a car and the dustbin be called ‘dada’.  Claire’s dad is trying to get him to say ‘Thermostatic Radiator Valves’, but I think this might be a few more days off yet, Grand-dad.

Voting – Well, not in the sense that you’re thinking, nor that I probably implied, but in a way, he is trying to get his point across by waiving his hand/finger in the area as if to say ‘take me that way, peasant!’, but mostly it’s towards the Sky box, which he desperately needs to hit with his fist, and then push right to the back of the TV stand, whilst holding onto the Playstation.

Illness - He’s had his first proper virus – Hand Foot and Mouth disease.  No, it’s not the Foot and Mouth disease that sheep and cows get, but more the baby variety that extends to the mouth also.  And I don’t get why it’s called a disease, as when I think ‘disease’, I think like serious, proper diseases, not infections like this.

So, Jack had it first and then soon passed it onto his ma and pa for good measure.  Basically, it’s an infectious virus transferred through the saliva and poo, and results in a majorly sore throat and spots/blisters on the hands/arms, feet/legs and face around the mouth area.

Jack had it for a few days, and prior to the spots appearing, we honestly thought he was off his food because of another tooth coming through (he currently has the four front teeth), until Claire took him to the Quack’s to find out it’s HF&M. 

He was up crying a lot of the nights, but didn’t seem to take long before he was back to normal.  The spots are very nearly gone, and the only ones left are the ones that blistered really badly and was sore. The ones on his face have almost gone entirely with very little or no marking left behind.

As I said, Claire and I have both had it too, as well as my mum catching it too.  Claire had the spots and a bit of a sore throat for a few days – I had loads of spots and probably the worst sore throat I have ever had. It got to the point whereby I could only really eat ice-cream and Angel Delight, drinking only pints of Nesquik banana milkshake, as everything else felt like it was burning a hole in the back of my throat, and then came the pain of actually trying to swallow something. 

It honestly felt I had a ball of nails wedged at the rear of my throat for days.  I’m in day six of recover now and it’s the first day I haven’t need to rush for the pain killers.  The pain is still there and definitely on it’s way out, but I really hope I don’t come across that one again.  ‘Thanks’ Jack.

My mum came over one afternoon, picked up ‘the lurgie’ and also had time off work because of it!

“More Room!” - In other news, Jack has taken over another room in the house – we’ve ejected the spare bed and made way for his playroom.  It’s much better, as it means that all of his toys are based up there now, and we can have the downstairs back to semi-normal again.

Booby-Juice is no longer on the menu for Jack. Claire was hoping to slow this down just before she started back at work, but it turns out the well started to go dry by itself naturally.  He’s now on powered-milk, also known as ‘plastic-milk’, which is ok, but it smells really bad/different to anything else. He doesn’t seem to notice the difference.

Food – Jack has eating things from the real world too.  If we’re eating something that we think he might try, he has a bit of that.

The meals that Claire is making for him are probably better than the stuff we’re eating, as it’s all cooked fresh for him and contains absolutely no rubbish in there at all; all of the menus up until recently have come from the Annabel Karmel recipe books, but she’s also been scouring the internet for new recipes for him.

Actually, the meals that he has isn’t just baby-mush – they’re all using things like rib-eye steak, salmon, and fresh fruit, etc. If they weren’t all blended to a pulp before being frozen, you’d probably eat it and probably like it too. I do (occasionally), and I do.

I have mentioned in the past about the ease of taking too many photos with digital cameras.

Well, I have been busy uploading the past few weeks worth of photos to the SkyDrive account (free online storage) and it crossed my mine to check the amount of photos, to see what sort of disk space we’re consuming online.

On the computer in our house, there’s 10 Gigabytes of photos related to Jack. That’s 10,000 Megabytes – 12.5 CD-R’s full, or just over 2 DVD’s full of images.  In all, there’s 3833 photo of the little tyke. Admittedly, not 100% of the photos we have are online as, believe it or not, we do actually vet the photos before we upload them, removing

• any blurry or pointless photos
• any that make Claire or I look bad
• any that are almost exactly the same as the ten before it
• any with Jack’s tinkle in them

In terms of the online storage aspect, I’m not really worried at the moment, as I believe that Microsoft give you 25GB of free storage space these days with the SkyDrive accounts, which is up from the 5GB that I had when I first created the account a year or two ago. Maybe in another 8 months when we’re nearing the 20GB limit, we might have to look at creating another account maybe!!

Over the past week or two, Jack has taken to pulling himself upright using anything that will take his weight, such as furniture, toys, etc.

This is really good, as it shows that he’s growing and that it really won’t be long before he’s walking, I’m sure. On the other hand, it has also been a bit of a problem, as he’s now got in the habit of doing it in his cot…  if we put him to bed at night and he’s not particularly wanting to sleep, he crawls over to the side of the cot and literally uses his arms and upper-body strength to drag himself upright, whilst his feet are almost running in the same direction, aiding the cause.  Within seconds, he’s there, standing upright and beaming with glee, watching for that look of congratulation on our faces.  This might be all ok for him, but when he needs to go to sleep, and we need him to sleep, this defiance in him seems to be making this a little worse.  In the mornings also, he’s stood there, waiting for one of us to come in and get him out, but then it’s not so bad as his smiley face seems to make the mornings a little… funnier.

The problem is, that as this ability to stand upright is still new to him, he sometimes forgets to hold on at all times… and if you’re not quick to catch him, he falls down much quicker than he gets up!  I think that his fall is more of a shock to him than the pain of him falling, but I suppose that it’s been more luck that he’s fallen on something soft, like his bum.

Claire, Jack and I went away last weekend for the first time and stayed at Eye Kettleby Lakes in their Hazel lodge.

These ‘lodges’ are 1/2/3 bedroom luxury log cabins (of Switzerland ilk) and are fully kitted out inside with everything you need; kitchen, lounge, bathroom, en-suite, freeview tv and dvd player, and even now have free wireless internet access, if you so desire.

We went a couple of years ago to Eye Kettleby and stayed in the Holly log cabin there and really enjoyed ourselves; it’s such a peaceful place to stop and is just outside of Melton Mowbray and 15 or so miles from Leicester. The log cabins are all quiet private, each with their own hot-tub and bbq area. 

A few of our friends (Phil and Lucy) are from Melton originally, and when we said that we was going to Eye Kettleby (last time) for a long weekend, they laughed, wondering why on earth we wanted to do that… but this time around, they actually came over to visit, stopped for a Chinese takeaway and a dip in the ‘tub, and they really liked it!  they could see why we wanted to come back, and will probably go back again.

Anyway, the whole point was to have a bit of a break, just the three of us, before Claire goes back to work next week for the first time (properly) since Christmas 2008. AND, the other reason was to have some time together without a computer in sight, as I have been spending a bit of time on the computer recently (working on an ASP .Net MVC database app for someone.) [geek!]

We dordled around a bit over the weekend, and did exactly as we pleased – Jack was absolutely brilliant.  Even though he’s in the middle of teething (and therefore crying when it hurts) he was an absolute star. 

We also took Jack over to Twycross Zoo, in Warwickshire, which was about an hour’s drive away from where we were, but was told it was the best place to see lots of Monkeys, as well as other animals, such as Giraffes and Elephants – incidentally, they’re just had a new baby elephant there, hence the picture (from their website).

Admittedly, Jack was a little young to fully appreciate the day out, but nonetheless it was fun.

Also, they’re doing lots of work there, so it’s going to be much better in future. Go visit.

All in all, it was a very relaxing weekend away – with the minor exception that we pretty much took the entire house in the back of the car.  It was literally packed full with baby stuff, including toys, travel cot, bottle sterilizer, etc. To be fair, it was because we had more space that we didn’t have any reason not to take something… so even if we had bought a bigger car, it would still be packed to the rafters too!

…for Jack and for us!

For the first time in Jack’s entire life, we went out and left him with someone else. All night.

Basically, we left the dog and Jack with his Grandparents whilst we went out with ten pin bowling and for food with our friends, Phil and Lucy. 

Not-so-basically, it was a bit of a wonder if he’d be ok, as he’s been a bit of a wuss recently with regards to his mum.  Recently, he’s had a cold that some horrid person gave him (me), so he’s been sleeping badly too, as in he’s been waking up a lot and crying when he normally sleeps right through the night.  So, in the back of our minds, we weren’t sure if he was going to cry their house down all night whilst we slept in peace and quiet!

Plus, on the other side of things, we weren’t sure how we’d feel about him being out all night, as new parents ‘n all. So, as new as it was for Jack staying out, it was for us too.

As it turned out, it went really well, for all of us!

We left Jack at Claire’s folks’ house at 6pm, putting him to bed just before we left.  Claire left her mum a ‘do this at this time’ sheet, telling them when to feed him, when to give him his milk, etc in the following morning.  It might sound a little odd to do that, but it worked out really well, as it gave her folks a cheat-sheet to keeping Jack quiet/happy in the morning, from 6am onwards! Claire left me a cheat-sheet before when Jack and I spent the day together, and it makes it sooooo much easier to be expecting to feed him at a given time, rather than to try and ‘read’ him and see what he wants.  Claire’s definitely the expert on Jack and she really does know him and his moods, timings etc.  She’s dead good.

Anyway, we were almost putting bets on as to the time of the night that we get told that had woken up… but he’s been sleeping really well for the past couple of days, so in theory, he should be ok.

As I said earlier, Claire and I went out and met Phil and Lucy at the Bowling venue and later went out for a meal at a Beefeater restaurant, which was all good.  We still couldn’t be out all night (not that we ever did before, really) because Claire is still expressing Booby-Juice for Jack, so she had to do her pumping when we got back.

But, getting back to an empty house without the baby and the dog, was brilliant. It was almost like we had stepped back 2 years or so before all this happened. 

Having said that, it was more of a novelty that we were by ourselves; we did miss the fact that Jack, and the dog even, weren’t in the house and weren’t there in the morning, making the usual noise and commotion, etc.

Jack seemed happy enough and Claire’s folks enjoyed having him.  He did wake up at 6am exactly (which I’m still trying to work out how he knows what time it is!!) and they’ve been entertaining him all morning until Claire went over there at around 11-ish. (I had to go out this morning) but he seemed like it was ok and everything.

Good fun all round then?

Yes, that’s right.  Young Jack is able to get about under his own steam, which is a bit weird as up until now, he’s tended to stay where we’ve left him.

In the mornings, we have been laying Jack on our bed and one of us has been reading stories to him whilst the other gets showered and dressed etc. But now, the stories are a little broken up by the catching of Jack as he wriggles towards the edge of the bed!

He’s really funny to watch, as it’s more of a commando-crawl-under-barbed-wire-and-netting-on-an-assault-course than a run-of-the-mill baby-crawl-across-the-floor-towards-his-toys routine. Especially as he’s looking more and more like Bam Bam Rubble..!

Also, today, when I have got back from work, Claire made a point that Jack has been jabbering all day.  Not just the usual girly-sounding squeals that he’s always done, but total nonsense-waffle-jabber, as though he’s talking to someone. Which is strange how yesterday when I was at home all day, I don’t remember him doing anything like that, but today, he’s all motor mouth!  Must be a Rigby then…

No, seriously, Jack isn’t well, in that he has his first ever cold.  And yes, I gave it to him.

I don’t feel good about it, but it’s happened. It came on this morning; his nose just started dribbling as much as his mouth normally does, except this nose-dribbling-thing wasn’t normal.  He also started acting a little more grumpy than he does normally, not drinking as much booby-juice as he normally would, and not wanting any of the food that his mum has spent so long making for him.  Recently, he’s been having about 800-900 mls of milk plus food, but today, he was well down on that number, having around 550 mls by the time he went to bed, around after 6pm, crying, I might add.

He also has his first tooth looking like it might shine through, which might be adding to things.  He had a bit of pain-relief, but it takes a little while to work, so the poor little guy had to fight through it for a while.  Or fall sleep.  Either way, he had to stop crying, which he eventually did.

We decided that we’d wake him up to give him more booby-juice before the night was out, otherwise he could be a problem in the night. So, his mum went upstairs to try and give him a little more and he’s ended up drinking about 200 mls – much more that I thought he would…! So, he was hungry, and, since he’s calmed down (as he’s been asleep for a couple of hours and not crying like he was earlier), he was much more amenable to topping-up his milk levels. 

Hopefully, it’ll be enough to see him through the night, as if he wakes up, we’re waking up too, which I’m not looking forward to…

Just a quick post to say that it’s August 7th today, which means that the 4th August was Jack’s unofficial half-birthday! (as in, he’s now 6 months old!)

We didn’t have a half-birthday cake, nor did we get him to blow-out half a candle – we’ll save that for when he’s a full year old! - but, nonetheless, he’s still a whole 6 months-old already! Time literally has flown by! It seems funny to say, but it seems like a million years ago during the days when we didn’t have him. 

I know, I’ve heard new parents say that before, and I groaned when they said it.  The only benefit you have, dear reader, is that you don’t have to worry about me hearing you say it!! 

He’s doing really well though – he’s not crawling yet, but he doesn’t seem like he’ll be long at it! 

He’s also taken a shine to the Sky remote… not for it’s purpose in life of changing what noise-and-pictures comes out of the big box in the corner of the room, but more to press buttons (as the red light appears at the top of the remote) and shove as much of the thing in his mouth as he can. Claire was going through the ‘Planner’ on the Sky box, asking me about what tv-programmes that I had recorded – turns out, Jack had been having a go at recording things too… Shame it wasn’t anything interesting!!

Claire has been making Jack lots of different types of mushed-up food for the past few weeks or so now. She has been following the recipes from an ‘Annabel Karmel’ baby cook-book, and has been doing a fantastic job too!

• Broccoli and Potato
• Pea and Potato
• Carrot and Sweet corn
• Sweet Potato and Broccoli
• Apple and Oats
• Courgette and Sweet Potato
• Steak and Chips

Ok, maybe not the Steak and Chips, but I’m sure that’ll come soon!

Anyway – I (to be entirely honest) was quite surprised how she went about all this. Claire bought this fantastic little steamer/blender and it’s truly brilliant. 

First of all, she cuts up the food into small blocks and then filled the holder inside the blender cup – this not only has a blade in, but also has an inlet hole at the top that the steam comes in through to cook the food.

Once the food has been steam-cooked, the holder inside the blender cup is removed, allowing the food to sit directly onto the blender-blade at the bottom and is mixed with water to soon turn it to mush.

Then, these tiny little pots (which have appeared from nowhere) get filled, date-stamped and sent to the freezer until needed, all done in a factory-line style.

When the pots are out of the freezer, Claire leaves them to defrost overnight in the fridge and then zaps them in the microwave for about 10 seconds to warm them up.  Then, we have to wait 10 minutes for it to cool down again before we try to feed them to Jack, during which we mostly have to smile and laugh to him so that he thinks that the mushy, strange-tasting stuff in his mouth is ok, before repeating with the next spoonful.

The result?

Yeah, I think he like that one really…

As the blurb on the right-hand side of the blog site says, I am a self-confessed IT geek and through my geek-world, I know of a chap called Scott Hanselman who works for the mighty Microsoft.  Anyway, he made a free website/computer-application called ‘Baby-Smash’ for his kids and released it into the wild, and it is pretty much as it sounds…babies smash on computers for fun.

Here’s a few screenshots from taken from the Baby-Smash website:

So, as I started saying, the program allows for babies to whack keys on the keyboard and symbol appears on the screen in bright, funky colours.  Fantastic, if you don’t mind your keyboard taking a pounding.

Anyway, Claire had Jack on her lap, whilst checking her emails on her laptop in the lounge at the table.  Jack was happily banging away at the table-top with the flats of his hands, when the Baby-Smash website popped into my head.  The application soon installed (in no time at all) and within seconds, Jack had his slobbery mits all over the keyboard playing Baby-Smash, much to Claire’s delight.

Jack managed (somehow…!) to press the exact key combination (using both hands, I muse point out) that was needed to rotate the entire the screen on the laptop by 90° counter-clockwise!! By some sheer fluke of time, Jack’s milk was now warmed to perfection and I decided that he ‘needed’ his milk that second,  so I took Jack and the milk to go feed him and left Claire with a 90°-neck, matching the screen’s appearance. 

Of course, she asked like any other normal person, about how to rotate the screen back to normal.  And, as I was in the middle of something, I only had time to stand up, and lift the laptop onto it’s side making the screen correct but the laptop now perpendicular to the table!!

Oh, how we laughed.  No, seriously, we [all] laughed as though it was really funny, but of course it wasn’t really.

Up until recently, Jack has been having his regular feed of breast milk, a.k.a. “Booby-Juice”.  Nowadays, he has the milk as before, but with added foodstuffs on top, as I think I mentioned before.

Anyway. Luck has probably been on my side, along with working late and weekends at work for the project I was on, and so I haven’t really had to change many, if any, of Jack’s poo-nappies.

Before, Jack’s poo-nappies have been filled with a “whole-grain-mustard” type of poo (according to Ian at work!!), which is pretty much as it sounds, but I would add to that, that it is also a little watery.  This is normal/ok/dandy, as Jack was having Booby-Juice.

Now, however, I have very recently found out that his poo is similar to before, only much thicker in consistency and there’s about five times the quantity in one go!  Literally!

This isn’t really a problem, providing that he’s sat in a decent position when he does this ‘passing’ of the poo. Nappies do their job, and there’s nowt to worry about. 

Unless, that is, if he happens to be sitting in his Bumbo chair-thing, which is a soft rubber/plastic type chair (looks a bit like a high-sided potty) that allows babies to sit upright keeping their back straight, etc.  If he’s sat in there, not only do you get a major echo going on, that reverberates around the base of the chair and through into the kitchen units and floor, but it also means that the poo gets squirted at high pressure up his back instead of downwards into the nappy.

So, the Bumbo needs cleaning, Jack needs a new version of whatever he’s wearing, which pretty much means everything, especially if he’s quick and gets a few fingers down to his bum or back area, as he helps as best he can to spread it around onto anything else in the vicinity that isn’t yet poo-coloured.  When this happens, the job of holding his legs up in the air with one hand and using your other hand to clean him up, means that you need one more hand to hold his hand so that he doesn’t

1. spread even more poo about
2. stick the fingers in or near his mouth.

All good fun that most if not all parents have a t-shirt to show that they have been there.  But it’s the sort of detail that they don’t seem to tell you about in antenatal classes.  Nor when you’re in school learning about babies and sex and stuff.  Maybe if they did, there might be a few more clued up parents, and hopefully a few less 12 years old mums and dads.

Jack managed to sleep ALL night last night – going from 6pm through until I woke him up at 6am!

If there was ever any doubt that Jack was Claire’s son, that proves it.

We’re chancing our arm once more tonight and have already put Jack in his sleeping bag ready, in the assumption that he’s there for the night!

If anything, it was ME that was waking up looking at the clock wondering if he’s woken up! Claire, as always, was fast asleep and didn’t notice anything until the morning…!   Cheers m’dear.

Well, that’s the question.

Over the past week or two, Claire has been reducing the amount of milk that we give Jack for his 10:00pm feed. 

To reiterate what we’re doing, he has a full bottle of around 200mls at 6:00pm and then we’re putting him to bed almost straight away, after changing his bum first of course!

Normally, we’re letting him sleep until 10:00pm and then getting him up but not trying to actively wake him up – what I mean, is that we’re not talking to him, or letting him play with toys, etc, but merely getting him up and out of bed enough to feed him a bottle.  Then, once he’s had it, around half ten-ish, we’d put him straight back to bed where he’d sleep until around 5:45am-6:00am.

So, as I was saying at the very top of this blog-post… we’ve been reducing the amount that he is being given for his 10:00pm feed, right down to around 90mls last night.  It has meant that he has been making up for it during the day, as his drinking quota has increased enough to cater for it.  (Yes, we’re still writing down the amounts that he has! Yes, we’re sad. But yes, we know exactly what he’s had and whether he needs more, so are we really that daft? Maybe not.)

But tonight is going to be the first night that we’re going to let him sleep without having any milk at 10:00pm.  I am expecting to have to get up in the night to feed him, but we’ll see…!  He might be ok…  Last night, when I tried to give him his 90ml bottle at 10:00pm, he only drank half of it and even turned the rest away, meaning that he did the whole of last night on about 45mls, so is it really too much to expect?

Either way, if it doesn’t happen tonight, maybe in a few nights time, or next week?

I’ll let you know tomorrow evening, if I can.

So, yesterday, we had a few friends and family over to my parent’s house for a little barbeque.

Quite surprisingly, two of our friends said that they had already read the blog post that I had written earlier yesterday morning whilst waiting for my dad to pick me up and not only that, but one had even signed up to Twitter to read my tweets throughout the day…! The only problem, was that my mobile phone gets absolutely no mobile phone reception at my parent's house (thanks Orange!), so it put an instant stop to that, so I couldn’t send any Twitter updates, or even send SMS (text) messages to Twitter that way either! Doh!  (Sorry Phil!)

Anyway, the day itself went really well – It wasn’t long before people started to appear, the food cooking and the beers flowing. The weather had been a bit pants in the morning whilst we were setting tables and chairs out, but gradually throughout the day, the clouds turned from dark grey to white fluffy clouds and the sun shone through. There was a bit a bit of a wind throughout the day, which probably helped to mask the heat from the sun, as I did manage to get burnt!

We hired a bouncy castle for the day, for the kids of course, but Jack even made an appearance on there – one of the girls was holding him and bouncing on it and he really seemed to like it… and then threw his lunch up later! Maybe too much physical movement after having food! Doh!  The kids of all ages seemed to enjoy themselves – I went on there a couple of times, and was attacked by a load of the kids and wrestled to the floor. Nightmare.

I managed to take about 250 photos on my camera throughout the day, and we’re going to go through them before uploading to Jack’s website  (If you have any, however many or however good, send me an email and we’ll talk about how the best way to get the photos from you and onto the web too.)

Claire and I would like to thank everybody for coming, as well as say a big thank you for the gifts that we really weren’t expecting; so thank you very much indeed.

Jack has been a bit out of routine the last few days, as we’ve been over to my parents a bit in the last few days trying to get organised and everything, and he really did manage to get upset at times.  It wasn’t necessarily anything that anyone was doing particularly at the time, he just didn’t sleep when he normally did, or didn’t have as much food, etc etc.  So, if you were one of them, don’t take it personally!

So, today, we’re having a BBQ with a couple of friends and a few family members.

I was really worried about the weather, as last night and first thing this morning (around 7am), it looked really grim and wet – you know, the usual weather that appears when I bring out the charcoal!!

Anyway, at the moment, the weather is all sunny and bright.  There’s a few clouds roaming around up there in the sky, but as long as they stay as clouds up there and not magically transform themselves as droplets, we’ll be ok.

BBC News this morning said that the day will be really warm over East Anglia by 4pm, which isn’t too bad.  We shall have to wait and see.

Off to the butchers in a moment to pick up the meat and then on it goes!  (I found this picture –attached - on t’internet and thought it was funny enough to embed in this post…)

Also, I’m debating with myself whether or not to try and use Twitter throughout the day – I don’t really see the point, but just for the craic really… providing I can get network coverage that is!!

I forgot to mention that last week or so, Claire has been busy making up various small pots of food for Jack and freezing them for when he needs them.  When needed, she’s getting one small portion out of the freezer, zapping it in the microwave and it’s nearly ready in seconds!

Claire has been really busy buying lots of fresh fruit and vegetables (more than normal when talking about the fruit!!) such as sweet potatoes, broccoli, parsnips, etc. and then blending them down into a muchy sauce. 

Yesterday for example, Jack had a small amount of sweet potato and broccoli mixed together, which made for an interesting colour of orange-with-green-bitty-mush scattered all over his face, arms, bib and table area, let alone Claire and myself for trying to feed it to him. 

He seems to like it too, which is great; either that or he’s smiling at us congratulating him for having such stuff in his mouth and making it look like he likes them.  He’s not spitting it out, lets put it that way.  When he does, we simply scoop it off his face, bib and/or ceiling and serve it right back to him as if it’s fresh… he doesn’t seem to mind!!

By the way, Jack is still on his regular booby-juice as normal – this is an addition to that milk.

Today (Friday), he has had apple, again mushed to pieces, zapped and then served cold. 

We have tried to record it on the video camera, and I’ll see if I can get a link on here to it maybe.  (If not, the video feeds are definitely on Jack website, if you have access.)

But this is all a big credit to Claire – she’s been reading books and stuff online and busy doing mum-stuff too. I have literally helped in serving the stuff, whatever colour and smell, to Jack, but she has thought about each recipe and bought the stuff she needed and just did it.  She’s a star.

So – I haven’t blogged recently.

I have been having to work more for work to meet a project deadline, and so some nights I have either been staying late in the office, or working from home which isn’t as bad.  Either way, I have managed to clock up lots of time-in-lieu, and so I am currently ‘spending’ some of that time accrued this week, which is the up-side to doing it.

Also, the last weekend or so, as I have been away on a Stag Do in Spain, no less. One of the lads on the stag do co-owns a place in Cazorla in Spain, and so it was the place to have the bash! The windy streets of the town of Cazorla kept us all on our toes, and probably helped to walk off most of the beer consumed over the weekend. (Cheers to Ian for that, by the way - much appreciated.)

In total, seven of us went (two dads, the groom, myself and three others) and all seven returned safely without prosecution or hospitalisation of any kind, as I think I was expecting before we went.

The weekend itself was great – totally non-touristy, and so we even had to explain in broken-pigeon-English to the locals why one of us, namely the groom, was dressed in a pink spandex legs and a matching tutu.  (Isn’t ebay a wonderful place!)

Anyway, reason I mention  this stag-do, is because it was the first time I have been away from Jack and Claire – we pretty much moved Claire and Jack out of our house and into her parent’s house for the long weekend, and the amount of baby-related fodder that needed taking was crazy.  Everything that could be taken, was. Literally. The boot on our new car was put through it’s paces, as things were rammed in there.

I know her parents were there to help her out, but I did feel bad for abandoning her when Jack is still quite young and a handful at times.  Claire even admitted that she now looks forward to me coming home at night after work, as it’s a time when she doesn’t have to sing ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ to keep Jack entertained when he starts to flag. So me not being there obviously has an impact on her, but also that I haven’t seen my little baby for a few days. (I am reading into this and see the fact that prior to Jack not being here, Claire didn’t look forward to me coming home… thanks, wife!)

At my old job where I was the IT Manager for an international sports event management company, part of the job was to go away on the weekend projects and not only oversee the IT side of things, but I would also pitch in and help the work of setting up to be done, as well as helping to drink all the beers afterwards.  Anyway, the least I’d be away was around 4/5 days at a time, and part of the reason to leave there and work where I do currently, is because of the time away from home and from Claire, which takes its toll after a while.  Now with a baby in the frame, there’s another face in the back of my head.

The week just gone, I have had Thursday off work as my ‘work life balance’ (WLB) day – basically WLB is where I work extra hours in the office during a fortnight and therefore have the time accrued as a day off; a bit like flexi-time but more structured.

Anyway, I was off work and at home with Claire and Jack, at least until Claire suggested that I took Jack to Rhyme Time, held in the library at Chatteris.

Rhyme Time is a half-hour get-together for mums and babies/toddlers, where the group of mums involve themselves and their children in the activities…

Here’s how my darling wife sold it to me -

• “If you’re going to have Jack on a Thursday when I go back to work, you might as well take him to things like Rhyme Time…” 
• “There’s not many people there, it’s normally half full or so…”
• “…quite often there are other dads there…” 
• “…it’s just rhyming, you don’t have to do anything.”

Yeah.  Either way, I felt suckered into it, so I went, in the interests of Jack.

Here’s how it really was.

• It was packed.  There were more moaning mums per square mile than I have ever experienced before.
• I was the only male over 5 years old in the room.
• I could see people nudging each other and doing that pointing across the room with their eyes and nose, but without using their finger.
• AND there was group-singing, not just this ‘rhyming’ that I ‘didn’t have to do anything’.

Yep, thanks Claire. 

So, suckered I was.  Luckily, I caught up with Clare, Claire’s mate and mother of our God-daughter, Imogen.  She didn’t really have to do anything, but helped me to not look so lost in a sea of mums…!  She had her arms full with her two kids, and although I would have liked to have offered to help, but keeping Jack on my lap was job-enough!!

Anyway, my head is telling me that this session is 30 minutes or so long, assuming that of course Claire hasn’t spun me a good ‘un on the time-front too, and therefore it would literally be a shear matter of time before it was over.  How long can 30 minutes be?  Well, a lifetime it seemed at the time!

They all joined in with the singing of the rhymes, such as Old MacDonald, The Wheels On The Bus, and others I didn’t even know, and during the singing they were waving their babies arms and legs around and even flinging them up in the air in time too.

Did I sing?  Erm, no.  I don’t sing when I am made to go to Church for things such as Weddings, Funerals, Christenings, etc.  Not because I am trying to be defiant, it’s just that I suppose I’m a bit self-conscious that I sound like a spoon at the best of times, let alone with my singing voice!

Either way, no singing, but I did attempt the obligatory miming when I felt someone of some importance in the group was looking over (namely the Rhyme Time leader) – bit like being in Church really!!

I tried to make Jack have as good a time as I think that he would if Claire had taken him, but me feeling a little ‘new’ to the group and somewhat ‘lost’ amongst the sea of mums probably didn’t help much!  He fell asleep almost in time with the ending of the group, which gave me my ‘out’.

I’d like to say I enjoyed it, and that I’d like to go back again during my next day off from work, but I seem to ‘remember’ that I am no longer allowed any time off, ever, thus preventing me against my will, of course…  :o)

But, it did make me appreciated a little more the effort that Claire has put into the entertainment of Jack, as well as ensuring that she doesn’t go cuckoo being at home all day, everyday!!

(Carried on from earlier…)

Well, this afternoon hasn’t been as good as this morning…

I’ve check by Jack as I’ve walked by his room, and here’s how I have found him each time, all fast sleep.

The thing is, he gets that much of his leg through the bars, that when he moves his leg, it must hurt.  But then when he falls asleep like that, I try and push it back in which wakes him up and then he cries.  Nightmare.

My dad called in for lunch and said hello to Jack when he woke up.

Since then, he’s been a bit of a monster.  He was crying just before 15:00, and according to Claire’s list, he’d be hungry by around then.  So, I already had the milk warming for him, but he didn’t want any and then when I’ve got to try to get him to sleep again, he’s cried and cried. 

Now. Claire says that when I am at work, he’s a little angel. But now I’m here, he’s not quite as angelic as she makes out.  Is it my wife telling porkies, or am I doing something wrong here?

Either way, he’s still crying as I write this, and we had previously decided that we would leave him cry a little rather than keep going in and picking him up and getting him used to us doing that.  But this is a bit bad.  He normally does this in the evenings when I am home but it’s not even 16:00 yet…

:o(

(Carrying on from earlier…)

So, it’s 10:40 and I’m now on t-shirt number three (no joke!) – t-shirt number one took a hit for the team, proving that a few mouthfuls of baby-yak won’t stop it… much.  It gave out and paved the way for t-shirt number two to step in, but gave a relatively pathetic performance in the ring and was knocked out in about 10 minutes flat, literally, by a yak-filled hit to the rib-area.  (Under-arm sick isn’t nice.)

So t-shirt number three it is, and we’ll see how far that goes.  (Only problem is, this t-shirt is a polo-shirt and the last time I wore this, Jack threw up right down the front, underneath the open neck/button area.)  If it helps, Jack managed to get sick on his clothes too, so new all-in-one shirt for him then.

Incidentally, Claire laughs at me for changing my t-shirt saying, “it’s only a little bit of sick…”  - Right. Dribbled all the way from the collar to my waist, and stinking of yak and wet on my belly… nice. I’ll change, thanks.

‘Someone upstairs’ who is supposed to be asleep right now was crying a moment or two as though he was in pain, so I rushed up there to find him laying on the right-side of the bed (looking down), face down, with his right leg dangling between the bars again, right up to his thighs, stuck.  Freed him, flipped him over, he had a bit of a cry and he was out for the count in seconds.  If only I could fall asleep that fast, I’d be ok.

Since last blogging, we’ve not done a great deal. Jack has had more milk at 09:00, according to the feeding list at the zoo.  We’ve been playing with his giant bumble bee that’s got crinkly wings, a mirror on his foot, a rattle in one hand and a squeak in the another – it’s great this, staying at home playing with kid’s toys all day…

Jack’s Granddad Garry (my dad) has been reading the blog already this morning and seen that I’m in all day, so he’s going to come over for lunch later.  I’m obviously a house-wife-in-training, in that I don’t actually know what’s in the cupboard to feed him, but Claire’s a bit more efficient that I am, so I can safely assume that there’s something edible in the house.

Incidentally, the dog, Alfie isn’t here this morning. Claire took him yesterday over to Jack’s Great Grandma Gert’s house for the night, as I think she thought I couldn’t manage with both of them – pah! Easy.  Erm… well, maybe not actually, as Alfie can be a nuisance as he thinks that he has to bark and growl at any one who has dared to walk past the front of our house.  He seems to know when Jack is ready to fall asleep and then barks in perfect timing, which can make things a little more complicated, and that’s when Claire and I are here.

I was just searching back through my blog to find the above link to the post about Alfie, and stumbled across this post, which means that this isn’t the first full day that I’ve spent with Jack… and that was back in April!

More later.

Well, things aren’t going too badly at the moment – It is 08:42 now, Jack is asleep at the moment and I have done some of the things that Claire has left me on the list of ‘To Do’ stuff, namely washing up the baby bottles and pumping apparatus, etc.

Claire left the house this morning at around 05:00 to get the train t’ ‘Big Smoke’.  I think I have mentioned this before, but Claire is far from quiet in anything she does, and me being the lightest sleeper in the world, I was wide awake at 05:45 and was already in and out of the shower.

Jack is normally awake naturally around 06:00, with the occasional lay-in some days, such as weekends. Today, however, I had to wake him up at 06:30, as otherwise, he could throw the day’s planning that Claire has also left, and me trying to work out times on-the-fly probably isn’t the best idea.  (I have to use the whiteboard in the kitchen when cooking, as I have to plan the times to put the sausages on, etc!)

Anyway, I got him up and checked his bum, as he’s usually full of poo first thing in the morning, but today I had a little dilemma, as he hadn’t yet poo’d, but his nappy was full of wee… “Do I change him now… fast, or do I wait and have his nappy erupt like a volcano?” 

Well, needless to say that I changed his nappy faster than a Formula 1 pit-crew, saving myself from having to scrape poo off of the carpet.  Which wouldn’t be nice.

Straight downstairs to find the bottle that Claire had prepared earlier for him in an insulated bag, and straight into the lounge to watch BBC Breakfast whilst feeding him, where he drank about 150mls from the 200mls that was in there. We’re still writing down the volumes that he drinks – might have to update that ol’ Excel chart at some point, but not today!

No major dramas there, so we milled around the house, and went to read a story on our bed, as this is normally what Claire would do in the morning whilst I get ready to go to work. 

We read some random story about a woman who had to make eleven shirts made from nettles to save her brothers…!?! Something about them being swans… Good job he’s too small to understand what I was reading to him, as that’s just weird!!

Jack then showed me (downstairs on the lounge floor) how he rolls over onto his front and uses his arms to prop himself up.  This is a trick that we’re now having to watch out for when we put him to bed, as he’s getting good at it now.  The only problem comes, like about 5 minutes ago, I went up there to check he was ok and laying on his back, but instead he’s laying on his side on the edge of the cot with the whole of his right leg dangling out between the bars.  Not quite a Houdini just yet!

I’ve just realised that it’s 09:00 and I am still wearing the same t-shirt that I put on this morning – no sick or dribble all down it yet… must be time for a t-shirt change soon!

He should be awake any minute now, so I’ll check back later when he’s next asleep. 

It appears that our little monster is beginning to fatten up a little, which is a good thing, of course!

Jack has always been on the tall side for his age, according to the charts that the NHS give you.  He’s not the tallest baby in human history, but he’s getting there.  Anyway, we’ve noticed that he’s been a bit thinner than some of the other babies that we’ve seen since he’s been born, but he’s not too thin that would cause a concern or anything.

The straps on his nappies have had to overlap in order to keep the nappy tight against his skin, otherwise the poo and wee will squeeze out like tomato sauce from a bottle.  But recently, the straps are getting a little further apart, indicating that his belly is getting a bit fatter.

His legs too are starting to fill out a bit – proper meaty little Rugby-player thighs already.

Just thought I’d share that with you.

Over the last few days, I have noticed something about Jack – he’s starting to appear, certainly to me anyway, like a mini-person…

I admit, that sounds like a daft/stupid/obvious/dad-like thing to say, but I’ll try to explain.

When we’ve been over to people’s houses to see their new babies, they’re exactly what it says on the tin… a baby.  As in, it cries and poos.  Lots.

But Jack has already started to develop his own little personality, making him appear more and more grown up each day.  When I say personality, I don’t think he’s developed a taste for a particular genre of music, or love of the arts, or anything, but more that he seems to have developed a ‘happy mode’, whereby he’s up for a giggle, or to be thrown up in the air and caught (gently!!) that he finds amusing, but then later he has a little mood swing, like we all do, and he’s hungry and determined to get some milk, almost like a ‘grumpy mode’, and we’re able to see when he’s in either of those and we are (I should say ‘I’ here, as Claire has been like this with him for ages!) starting to be able to expect and adjust his behaviour with how we treat him.

Hhhmmm, maybe I shouldn’t have tried to explain that, as it might sound like I’ve been living in a cave for the last 16 weeks and have been ignoring him, but the point is, that he’s growing and learning to do stuff and it’s quite an amazing process to watch in such detail.

He’s started to get a bit good with his hands and is able to use them to full force to tell us that he’s full and doesn’t want any more milk, but clamping his hands around either side of the milk bottle and trying to throw it directly away from his face to stop the milk-flow - this is in addition to using his tongue to purge any reside milk in his mouth that he doesn’t want. 

One last thing with regards to this whole personification thing going on in this blog post, Jack is getting to be a right little telly-addict…!  It’s easy to see why people seem to shove kids in front of the TV to shut them up, as he’s quiet in a second almost, even from the hurricane of all crying-storms!  Especially so when he’s watching one of his Disney Baby Einstein DVDs!  However, on the other hand, it’s a bit too easy to do that and then it’s a bit of a cop-out instead of playing with him and his toys.

Incidentally, Claire has just walked in the room after printing out a few more of the photos for her album and she’s just said that it’s amazing how much he has grown, compared to the wrinkly, shrivelled-up, yet hairy, little baby that we brought home from the shop.

On the bank holiday weekend, we went to my parents’ house for a BBQ, with my sister, Emma, and her other half, Vincent.

Before we left the house, Claire asked if I thought it was an idea to take my swimming trunks, as well as Jack’s swim-nappy and us both get in the hot tub over there. I’m not normally fussed about hot tubs, but it sounded like a good idea, as when Claire, Jack and I went swimming in Ely before, it wasn’t as warm in there as Claire had sold it to me.

We almost forgot about the whole thing, but I soon got my milk-bottle-white legs out and my not-so-hairy chest, and donned the shorts in true summer style… all for Jack’s benefit, of course.

Once we were in, Jack loved it in there, as it was already set to be about 38 degrees C, which was a stroke of luck – we normally run Jack’s bath to be about 37, so he probably didn’t notice the difference.

Actually, it worked out really well, as being a hot tub, it was plenty big enough for the pair of us (and there wasn’t any other screaming and crying kids in there distracting him, like there are in the pool) but it wasn’t too big that it was an effort. 

My mum had bought these little plastic toys that suck up the bath water and when you squeeze them, they shoot out the water, so we brought them along too, seeing as we’re technically in a bath.  Needless to say, it wasn’t Jack that found that they could reach his grandma sitting a good distance away.  Ahem.

The kiddies’ pool that Claire takes Jack to in Ely gets deeper towards the end, but even a short-wheel-based person could stand up straight in there, which is fine if you’re a nipper, but the adults all get cold, as it’s difficult to stay under the water so you get cold really quick.  Minor point, but… you know.

Anyway, My family assumed the role of the paparazzi in my absence and so I also got a taste as to what I’ve been subjecting visitors to our house with!!  Here’s a few of the shots they took of us splashing away.

(There are plenty more photos where that came from, and if you’re lucky or unlucky enough to have access to Jack’s website to see them, then go for it.)

The weather was just brilliant though – easily the warmest day we’ve had so far this year.  Just glad that it was over a weekend, and not during the week when I get to see how nice a day it is from inside the office at work.

Claire took Jack to the weighing station again today, and he’s now measuring 15 pounds and 3 ounces!

He’s also 15 weeks old this week, which is crazy in itself!

He’s getting funnier and funnier to be around and he’s really focusing his attention on us, particularly with Claire, and is reacting to things that you do.

Jack has also had two nights where he’s not screamed the house down too!  Amazing I know, and it’s a bit of a relief to see that he can have at least a couple of evenings without another war ripping out.  He’s been sleeping well once he’s quietened down, but the last couple of nights he has been happy through into the evening and has even been going to be before he’s fast asleep and has been getting to sleep by himself.

Having said that, I am also having to actually wake him up in the morning so that we can all get up and ready before I leave for work in the morning.  Our routine seems to go a little like this…

• 05:50 Claire wakes up and subsequently wakes Brett up whilst trying to be quiet.
• 05:50 Claire gets up out of bed to go downstairs to start expressing booby-juice for Jack.
• 06:10 Brett has been laying in bed for 20 minutes trying to work out what day it is.
• 06:10 Brett gets up and goes straight in to get Jack up.
• 06:15 Brett tries to change Jack’s dirty nappy, but Jack usually has other plans, including kicking his legs as though he’s on a marathon.
• 06:30 Brett brings Jack downstairs to the lounge where Claire is usually finished pumping by now, and has transplanted the milk into a baby bottle for Jack.
• 06:45 Jack has finished his milk by now and has a few minutes to chill-out and try to stop him from chucking it all up again (which he’s done a few times recently)

From here on, Claire is on-duty with Jack, leaving me to get ready for work.  Usually, I manage to leave on time, normally with Claire and Jack in the kitchen, him being in his bouncy chair running and kicking away sporting a great big smile on his face.

During the last few minutes before I leave to go to work, I can hear Claire singing some very random songs and nursery rhymes to Jack – so much so, I ended up having the words to ‘Row, row, row your boat…’ firmly fixed in my head again for the whole day, the other day.  (Including the extra verses that Claire has made up too…)

Speak to any parent and it seems that they’ll tell you that time flies by, especially when used in the context of their children.  Well, I suppose Claire and I can categorise ourselves as ‘one of those people’, as Jack is over a hundred days old now, which seems inevitable but almost unbelievable in some respects.

The round figure of a hundred days seems like a milestone that we weren’t looking for, but it’s one of those that appears when looking back – if that makes sense?  Jack is growing lots and putting on more weight as the weeks go by, but he’s also learning lots too and is smiling, laughing and interacting more each day.

Today has been one of those days for me.  I have been rushing around doing stuff, and the day has just disappeared!

Giving Blood: One of my first jobs for today was to go and give blood in Chatteris – I have been giving blood for a few years now and have clocked up my 11th or 12th bleeding-session now, which is good.  I do try to go every three months, but haven’t been for a while, as the last donor session was when Claire was overdue to give birth.  Despite what people think, it doesn’t hurt much and the sense of helping someone, somewhere is quite rewarding.  And, I managed my own personal best of just 4 minutes, 33 seconds to donate the blood.  Must try to beat that next time!  Also, I always manage to see someone in there that I know, which passes the waiting time considerably!  But I would really recommend making an appointment though, as turning up is ok but you have to wait!  I didn’t make an appointment this time, and really wished I had!

Jack’s Jabs: The next thing to tick-off on the list, was to take young Jack to the doctors for his second round of jabs!  I think Claire thought she’d get out of taking him this time, especially after the first round a couple of weeks ago!  We timed the waiting room really well, beating all other mums and dads in there, and ended up waiting about five minutes or so.  When we got in there, the nurse soon jabbed one leg, (loud screams) and then just as he calmed down, she jabbed the other leg (again, loud screams).  He was a really good boy, considering that the needle was literally about half an inch long and went straight into the side of his leg, which isn’t much bigger itself!  Needless to say, he cried a bit in the waiting room (we had to wait 15 minutes afterwards in case he yakked) but the car-ride home was… loud.

New Car: The last major job of the day, was to go to Peterborough to collect our new fun-bus! My dad called over to pick me up and very kindly drove me to Peterborough.  The car is great; better than I remembered actually. 

Note to self: when a car salesman says “yes, there’s enough fuel to get you home…”, slap him/her around the face with a large, wet fish as blatantly, there wasn’t.  The dash-based computer said ‘12 miles’ remaining, which disappeared quicker than I could drive the 12 miles to a petrol station!!

Claire took the car out for a quick drive herself when I got home, leaving me to look after Jack and try to burn cook food at the same time.  She was really happy with it, as this was the first time she had driven it.  It’s got some quirky little touches to it, such as the dome-shaped mirror that you can pull down from above the interior mirror, so that both the driver and front passenger can see all passengers in the rear of the car – fantastic.  And, there’s loads of little cubby holes, which is great for hiding lots of sweets or papers.

The other day, I said something to Claire about Jack’s new trick which is giggling when being tickled, but she didn’t believe me.  But then trying to make him laugh again that evening was a no-no.

Anyway, I got home from work today and Claire laid Jack on the bed upstairs and I was with him playing and tickling him and he suddenly burst into laughing!  I wasn’t trying to make him do it, he just did it!

He did it a few times when I was tickling him shoulders and around his neck!  Claire really wanted to make him laugh but couldn’t!

Made us smile anyway. We thought about trying to get it on camera to put on the website, but he’s asleep now, so maybe another day.

So, it turns out that Jack is much more like his mum than we thought!

Jack went into his usual 7pm crying session and continued to cry and cry, despite us both trying to calm him down.  We tried all of our normal tricks, but he wasn’t having any of it.   Bathing him used to be a good ‘un, but he’s become immune to that recently.

By chance, we found something that he finds… soothing!?!

Claire needed to do some hoovering around upstairs and as soon as Claire came anywhere near Jack’s room, he stopped crying and started to look at me through his teary eyes, as I was hanging over the edge of the cot trying to calm him down.

To test the theory again (in the name of science), we brought the vacuum cleaner into Jack’s room and he simply stopped – switched it off again, and he started to cry. Back on, and he stopped. Strange.

Claire, Jack and I all went swimming this morning together for the first time, which was great.

We went to the swimming pool at Ely, as there’s a baby-pool there which is warm (apparently anyway!!) and wasn’t too deep at any point. Jack was floating around with either one of us holding his head out of the water, whilst he splashed and kicked away.

At one point when we first got there, we think he fell asleep in the pool, as he looked comfortable enough! I don’t think he slept in the car on the way there when he should have, and was looking a little tired before we started.  And then later he got a bit grumpy, so we had to cut it short after about 3/4 of an hour in there. 

Our friends down the road turned up there too with our God-daughter and her little baby brother, but just as we was about to leave, which was a shame.  We saw them to say hello but didn’t get any splash-time.  Maybe next time.

It appears that my post about 'firsts' this week has missed out a few more 'firsts'...

Swimming

Claire took Jack for his first swimming lesson at Spring Common School on Wednesday. I was in trouble before they started, as I had Claire's car that day which meant I also had her sat-nav too! So, she got lost... on the Oxmoor..! Doh!

Claire was hoping that swimming would go as well as the baths that we've been giving Jack recently, as we've been bathing him in the proper 'grown-up' bath in the bathroom at home. From what I have been told, the pool is very warm, so it should be ideal for babies.  Incidentally, when we bath Jack here, we have a floating thermometer that tells us that it needs to be near to body temperature... how does that work in a baby pool?

Claire suggested I take Jack next week as it is my 'work-life balance' day from work until she mentioned that there were 3 Jacks in the group! How did she know this? They has to 'sing' hello to each other..!!

How do you teach a baby a baby to swim when, blatantly, they don't have proper control of their arms, legs or even heads yet! Well, good question, especially as all 5 babies are under a year old! Well, they blew bubbles and learnt to float, as well as going around the pool to see the steps, the drains (different noises), pouring water near the baby, splashing them, etc.

So - what did Jack think? Claire said he loved it. Apparently, he only cried once (and for about 10 seconds) when the teacher got too close!

Luckily though, Jack decided to leave poo-ing in the pool for another day, which is a shame, as the nappies haven't had a full and thorough testing as yet!! Maybe next week.

When Jack and Claire got home just after me that day, he was well tired. Claire and I were trying to get food ready and Jack just cried as his routine had been upset AND it was after 6pm, so he cries anyway.

Which leads me onto our next 'first'...

Jack's first DVD box set!

A few weeks ago, Claire had been on the internet armed with a credit card (again) but this time bought Jack a DVD box set from Disney's Baby Einstein range. The DVDs are marked as being 3 months onwards, but we thought we'd jump the gun and try the youngest age DVD of 3 months, expecting that the older age DVDs were into quantum computing or something. So we put Jack in the bouncy-chair-thing in front of the TV in the lounge, during the biggest screaming session ever and, within seconds, not only had he stopped crying but he was watching the DVD and paying attention too! He loved it!

It's a bit weird though if normal 'grown-up' people watch it, as there's toys on the screen for about 10 seconds (to music) and then it changes to another toy, in bright colours and captivating movements.  Some are executive toy-style objects, but some are bubbles , etc. It's really random, but it worked in keeping Jack's tantrums at bay.  Might use them more often!

 

So - how did we do?  Well, to be fair, I thought it was actually really good!

Before doing this today, I have been coming home from work and seeing Claire and Jack for just a few hours before bed and, normally, Jack seems to go into this routine of crying for about two hours solid. For no reason. He really goes for it too, and makes you think you're not doing something that you should! Anyway, Claire passes full control of the baby to me in the evening, as I haven't seen him much all day - fair enough. Except for this crying.

Well, onto today.

If I'm honest, I was fully braced for a day of non-stop screaming and crying as, recently, this is mostly as I've seen him. But he didn't really cry that much at all. As a result, the day seems to have flown by. I haven't had much time to do anything else, so I can see why Claire says that sometimes she has no time to do anything when she's at home with him all day, everyday.

So, what did we do?  Can't remember right now... I did have the best intentions of trying to write down what Jack and I got up to, for the purpose of the blog... it just didn't work out like that!

Claire and I had a chat the night before about what I needed to do and when.  I think that for some absolutely bizarre reason that I would forget to feed him, or forget that he's crying because he's tired, etc etc.  Well, I probably would have, if I'm honest, and I'm glad that she drew up a timetable of what we needed to do.  Here's what she left us with.

• 13:00 Feed Jack
• 13:30 Get Jack to sleep
• 16:00 Feed Jack
• 16:30/17:00 Walk
• 19:00 Feed Jack

And throw in about a million nappy-changes, and you're done.

Claire left around twelve-ish, leaving Jack foolishly in my capable hands.

13:00 came around fairly quickly and I had to feed Jack.  Claire has been expressing milk, aka booby-juice, and so the milk is stocked up in the fridge as needed. Except now, Jack has a taste for having warm milk, as we have been giving him milk fresh from the... Claire.  And of course, it's warm, whereas he's been having milk straight from the fridge before - the midwife in the hospital told us that if he'd have it cold, give it to him like that....so, we did.  So, now, I had to warm the milk using a little single-bottle warmer, that takes 5 minutes or so to heat up. 

The milk went down no problem, and by the time he had finished it all, it was pretty much near 13:30 and he's already getting sleepy.

He had about 45 mins asleep upstairs in his bedroom (where he spent his first night last night) before he's awake again.  He doesn't seem to wake up and scream, like I think I would have expected (not knowing much about babies as a whole), but instead he lays there and looks at his cot mobile, that hangs over his bed and gurgles at it.  I heard that he was awake and so I nipped up there and switched on the mobile, so that it spins round whilst playing Bach, or Mozart, or someone.

Here, he sort of reminded me about myself when I was little, as I would wake up in the morning and play with my toys by myself and keep myself occupied.  Incidentally, I would also do this when Russell, Emma and I would all be fighting or bickering with each other as we would, and we'd all get sent to our rooms; but this didn't really bother me, as I would then spend the next couple of hours playing Lego or something by myself, to the point whereby my parents thought I was actually enjoying my punishment and would chuck me out of my room!!

Jack and I then spent most of the afternoon playing with his toys a little and generally messing around a bit. Jack had an unscheduled nap at about 15:20, which sort of threw me a little, as I was looking at the notes that Claire had left, and not expecting him to drop off in my arms whilst half-way upstairs!

So, now my 16:00 food was slightly put back a bit, as Jack was just waking up again. Lazy ol' boot. He ended up having food and we played around with his toys a bit more.

At 17:00, I was determined to get out of the house and go for a walk with Jack and Alfie, the dog. I put Jack in his harness, and he hung in front of my chest, as per the photos in a previous post.  Whilst dangling away, I got Alfie hooked up onto his lead and we started going for a walk, but Jack wasn't comfortable and there's something in the field that scared Alfie a few weeks ago and so you really have to drag him sideways across the field.  So, the baby is upset, Alfie plainly doesn't want to be there and I am trying to fight them both off, determined to at least reach the first gate in the field...! So, I turned around to come back, which now means that Jack is still waving his arms and legs about, but now Alfie is pulling really hard on the lead, trying to rush to get home! Nightmare.  So much for a quiet walk!

Jack and I dotted around the house a bit more until Claire got back around six o'clock-ish.  So now, it was Claire's turn to walk in on Jack during his routine crying hours.

So... all in all, I think it went well. But went you sit down and think about what else I have done today, 'not much' springs to mind.  I had some stuff I was trying to do on the computer throughout the day, but it was really fragmented, as I would just sit down to start doing something, and then Jack would wake up or the dog started barking at someone who dared to walk past our house, or something.  So, it was five minutes here and there throughout the day, which wasn't a problem as I had nothing urgent to do, per se, but trying to get it done in a day would be nice!

What else did I learn? I want to mention here something about Claire doing this all day, everyday. I think it's re-confirmed what I already knew about her, in that she does have a lot of time and patience for Jack (more patience than she does for me, for sure!), and I don't mean that just because she's with him all day.  What I mean, is that I know that when Claire is at home all day with Jack, she's with him as much as she can be, and when they're doing 'stuff', it's doing things that he's learning - she's always trying to read to him, or keep his mind entertained by focusing on different toys around the house so that he doesn't get bored. So,despite Claire saying in the past that she doesn't have that much of a creative imagination, I beg to differ, as today I found it tough to keep changing my battle-plan with Jack to keep him amused and entertained, and I would have said I have a good imagination for things like that. 

So, my hat is off to my wife Claire - Jack really is a little diamond (when he's not screaming the house down in the evenings!!) - it seems like he's learning something new all the time and sometimes he just smiles at you when you're not expecting it, and you can't help but smile back and be involved with him. He's great and she has obviously been a significant catalyst in the learning process.

I might have mentioned about Claire's internet shopping habit, namely the spending part, but pretty much everything that we have for Jack is here because Claire has looked into things and thought hard about things for him and has bought stuff as we went along and might need them. He's not even old enough to know what a book is, yet he already sits on Claire's lap and listens to her intently reading to him - maybe when he's old enough to understand what it actually is that she's reading to him, maybe he will already understand the concept of reading a book and will hopefully enjoy it a lot more and not put up a fight about it. Who knows, but she amazes me more and more.  She does all this and still has time to wash my socks and keep me in-line.  Thanks, wife.

First of all, my apologies for not blogging for week or so. I'll try not to do it again, but the problem is that time literally just disappears!

Anyway, good news!! Jack slept in his own room last night for the first time! Claire had mentioned about when we do put him in there overnight, but I think we both just fobbed it off, as though he wasn't ready for such a commitment, but I got home from work yesterday and Claire mentioned it again, and so after his 10pm feed of good ol' booby-juice, we put him in his sleeping bag and put him in the nursery. And that was it!

He only stirred twice in the night; the first time he had a bit of a cough around 04:45, so I tiptoed in there to see if he was ok, half expecting him to be wide awake and grinning like a Cheshire cat as normal, but he was asleep. Later, he must have been dreaming or something as he made a bit of a noise and so Claire went in, again to find him sparko again.

He didn't even wake up until around 07:00 either, so he's definitely got Claire's knack for sleeping sorted at such a young age. 

In other news, whilst I was at work yesterday, I received a text message from Claire to say that Jack had managed to roll himself onto his side for the first time too! This means that we're going to have to be a bit more careful where we put him now, especially as the baby-changing mat in his nursery is on the top of the chest of drawers!!

Not for this week to be a week of 'firsts' or anything, but today is the first day that I am solely responsible for the well-being of our son and heir...! Claire has gone to a hen-do for one of her friends, and has [foolishly] left me in control. I'll let you know how this all goes, but right now, it's 12:15 and Jack is asleep...!

Not that I am trying to tempt fate or anything like that, but Jack's sleeping appears to be getting better and better by the week.

Originally, he was waking at least once a night but recently, he's been surprising us by sleeping through the night without waking for his nightly-feed..! Claire has had to rock the crib to keep him asleep, but he seems to have a bit of a dream, murmur a little and then he's off again.

This morning, I even had to wake Jack up so that we could get us all ready before I left the house to go to work this morning, as ol' sleepy bones was fast asleep, despite Claire's banging about the house in the morning!

Jack isn't doing this regularly enough to call it normal as yet, but it looks promising. 

Claire and I both have our own cars, and Jack’s seat has been fitted to Claire’s car, a 2002 Volkswagen Golf, as hers happens to have Iso-Fix fittings behind the rear seats ready for fitting child-seats to.

Iso-Fix fittings are basically u-shape fittings hidden on the metal-work behind the rear seats, where the seat belts emerge from. Iso-Fix car seats are car seats which have special locking hooks that clamp onto these u-shape fittings. Once clamped on, the car seat is held fast to the car, meaning that if there was an accident, the car seat shouldn’t move away from the seat. My 2004 Ford Focus doesn’t happen to have these, but I have heard that all cars as of 2007 should be fitted with Iso-Fix fittings, but don’t quote me on that!

The Quinny Travel System (the pram/buggy we have) that we have fits snuggly in the boot of Claire’s Golf, with little room to spare. This means that if you take Jack shopping at Tesco, then the only space in the car for the shopping is on the rear seat, where Jack isn’t sitting of course!

Anyway, Claire has decided that the car is too small and that we needed a bigger one and so went out for a day’s worth of car-gazing. We looked at different types of cars:

• Kia Sedona
• Ford C-Max
• Ford S-Max
• Vauxhall Zafira
• Vauxhall Meriva
• And even looked at a Mercedes B150 although the prices of those are a tad higher than we had budgeted.

We did question whether or not we actually needed a massive A-Team van to move the family around with, and whether we could do with a bigger car, or even an estate. We looked at several estate cars on our journeys, but none that we liked particularly. During this period of pondering, we stumbled upon the Volkswagen garage in Peterborough where we found a VW Golf Plus, which is basically a Golf but with more head-room, etc. (Ford does this with the Focus, making the C-Max and with the Mondeo, making the S-Max.) The Golf Plus was in the newer shape Golf to ours, which is good too.

After the salesman started working his magic on selling us the car, we put the seemingly hugh bootspace in the Golf Plus to test and tried to flat-pack the Quinny buggy into the back... but it didn’t fit! The salesman tried to move the seats in the back of the car around to make the buggy fit, but the truth was that the newer shape Golf Plus actually has a smaller boot than the Golf that we had!! This is a shame, as for a few years Claire had mentioned that when we had kids, she’d like a Golf Plus, as she really likes the one that she has, and that it looked quite cool and funky too. (Probably the colour more than anything, but either way, she liked it.)

Just as we were about to leave, we were talked into looking at a VW Touran, which looks like a small, fun-packed mini MPV-type thing. It looked good inside, felt comfortable to drive, but didn’t feel as big and intimidating as the S-Max did. We had to leave sharpish, as Jack needed to get back home for more booby-juice, but came away thinking that the Touran was certainly an interesting choice...

We have just started the process of trying to sell my Focus (me putting a ‘for sale’ sign in the window), rather than to trade it in, but if anything more happens about buying a newer car, Touran or otherwise, I’ll keep you guys posted and let you know of our findings with it.

In one of the free sample packs Claire received whilst still pregnant, there was a free packet of Huggies nappies inside. As we were hoping to use the Bambino Mio nappies mentioned earlier, we didn’t worry about getting too many more, but we did decide take them to the hospital as Nicki, the NCT teacher, advised we do so for the first round of poo to come out of our new-born baby boy, as the first poo is usually black, potent and sticks to the nappy like ____ to a blanket, so to speak.

We started using the Huggies nappies and continued to do so, assuming that nappies were nappies and were all the same, more or less. Or so we thought until we had another free sample of nappies, but this time they were Pampers. Not knowing anything about nappies, we assumed they were the same, until we used them and found them to be a bit useless and seemed a little flimsy. So, we quickly ruled out the Pampers brand and went back to buying Huggies nappies. That was, until my sister called around after seeing my parents and brought back with her a pack of Pampers nappies that my mum had bought for storing at her house, in case we needed to use them. She realised that the nappies are made according to the size and weight of the baby and so the nappies were nearing there ‘expiry-date’, as Jack is getting bigger each week and is already outgrowing some of his clothes.

So, we decided to try the Pampers nappies once more, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Although the two brands differ slightly in the type and quality of sticky-fixers used to keep the nappies together on the child, the Pampers did appear to have redeemed themselves, if not appearing to be the superior of the two. The fixers on the Pampers don’t appear to be as good as those on the Huggies nappies, but despite this, they seem to be really good.

As I said earlier, both nappies are sold according to the size and weight of the baby – we’re still on the newborn range, but each brand number the nappies, starting with ‘1’ for absolute smallest nappies and going up accordingly. I just thought I’d mention this, as the stacks of nappies in supermarkets can make a purchase for a new mum or new dad a bit daunting. And heaven forbid that a certain new dad should go into a supermarket alone and emerge with the wrong size, or wrong brand!!

Before Jack was born, Claire had been online and seen a baby-harness that looked quite interesting, so... she bought it.

When Jack was old enough, we tried it out on me and I had Jack strapped to my chest and we all went for a walk across the fields behind our house.

Here’s a couple of photos of me wearing the harness, with Jack fitted into it. In the photos, I am honestly pretending to not like it, but it’s actually really comfortable to wear and Jack loves it in there! At the time of the photo, it was quite cold but despite that, he was quite toasty, as he is sharing my body-heat to keep him warm, even though he was wrapped up appropriately anyway.

For new-born babies, the harness is used so that the baby faces into your chest, but as they get older and bigger, you can turn them around to face forward so that they can see what's going on too.

Since I have been back to work, Claire has been using the baby-harness herself and using it to carry Jack whilst walking the dog. She has found that once inside the harness, Jack falls asleep almost immediately! Brilliant. Much better than trying to drive the baby around town trying to get him to sleep!

So, it turns out that my son is remarkably good at projecting his poo across the room.  (I kid you not.)

Claire was already downstairs expressing when I got up this morning at 6am and so I picked Jack up to change his bum and take him downstairs to feed him as normal.  Jack was still a bit sleepy, but this wasn’t anything unusual, so I carried on regardless.  I took his nappy off and began wiping off last night’s poo when all of a sudden, and in a split-second or less, wholegrain-mustard poo erupted from this angelic little boy’s bum and spread itself far and wide across the room.

In terms of the distance covered, we’re not talking a few inches here.  We’re talking about 4 foot away, possibly more.  All over the rocking chair, the floor, the wash bin, the pooy-nappy bin and all the way back to the changing mat that he’s sat on.

To make matters a little worse, he then obviously needed a wee, but forgot to raise his little hand and ask to go to the loo, so he got a little wet too.  But this is all much of a nothingness really, as yellow-brown colour poo is tinting the room.  All I could do is call for immediate backup.  By the time said backup arrived, I had managed to clean him up, get him dressed and wipe up the wipeable bits. 

I was trying to imagine the pressure needed to have built up inside a little baby that could recreate such effect.  Whilst on the way to work this morning, I even contemplated trying to recreate the scene (in the name of science, of course), using a squeezy tomato sauce bottle, but only reconsidered after realising that

• a) I don’t have a squeezy bottle and
• b) Claire probably wouldn’t like it anyway.

Having said that, he later sat with me and he drank around 200ml of milk - more than he's ever had in one go before.  I know what you're thinking... what it's done to the graph?  I'll see about updating the milk chart and post an update here over the weekend maybe.

Today is of course Mothering Sunday, Claire’s first which is strange in a weird sort of way, as Claire and I have never been on the receiving end of this yet (well, to be precise, I haven't either yet as Father's Day comes later in the year)

According to the wonderful world of Wikipedia, Mothering Sunday is:

“Mother's Day was created as a day for each family to honour its mother, celebrated on various days in many places around the world...”

“In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Mothering Sunday falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent, exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday. It is believed to have originated from the 16th century Christian practice of visiting one's mother's church annually, which meant that most mothers would be reunited with their children on this day.”

Living close to both sets of parents means the obvious that we cannot be in two places at the same time, so we ended up splitting the day into two and seeing each set for food.

Part one of Mothers Day came last night when my parents came over to our place for a Chinese takeaway from our regular haunt, which was good.  Every time my parents have been over to see Jack, he has either been fast asleep or has been screaming his head off whilst being upset about something.  But they came over before both of these things happened and managed to spend a bit of time with them when he was wide awake and happy.  My dad even fed him, which meant that he had hold of Jack for a little while and it was enough time for me to do my paparazzi impression and take about a million photos.
 
Part two of Mothers Day was today, where we went to see Claire’s family for a Sunday Roast.  We got packed up with almost everything that is baby-related in the car, and headed off down the road before I realised that I had forgotten my pap-cam, so didn’t manage to get any new photos from there.

In other news, Jack has been getting better at smiling over the past week or two and now returns a big whole-hearted smile if you smile or look happy at him.  He’s getting good at sticking his tongue out which I might have mentioned earlier, but Claire is trying at present to take this one step further and getting him to do kisses in the air, which he’s getting slowly, but it’s a bit more involved than simply just sticking your tongue out.

Yesterday, Claire, Jack and I went to meet the other new parents from the same National Childbirth Trust (NCT) class that we attended in December 2008, in Ely, Cambridgeshire.

John, Emma and their new son Matthew played host to us and three other couples:

• Chris, Julie and baby George
• Becca, Matt and baby James
• Ben, Clare and baby Evan

Nicky, the NCT teacher, and her two girls also came along, which was really nice as her two girls love being around babies. It was at the end of the NCT classes in December that Nicky helped us to arrange a meet-up, and it was yesterday.

As I said in an earlier blog post, I think that Claire and I would be totally lost without the help of the NCT antenatal classes that we went to, as the NHS classes were a total waste of time, as nothing significant was learnt there at all.

When we first got there, all four of the guest babies were asleep and still pinned into their car seats, which was really weird, but one-by-one they all started to wake up. Chris and I said we should have a quick wager on which of our babies would cry first, but luckily (or should I say unluckily) for me, Jack started first!  Great, thanks lad. I was a little worried that they'd all set each other off and room would be filled with crying poo-machines on top volume, but to be fair to them, none of them really cried for much, and there was only really ever one going at once, which was a relief!

It was really weird to see everyone all with their new babies – we had spent quite a bit of time together at the classes before Christmas, but at the time, all the women were carrying a heavy bump in front of them. This time, they are all holding their very own little baby, all aged within weeks of Jack, but connecting the two now seems a little odd, if that makes sense?

As it turned out, all of the babies were boys; the odds of which Matt had worked out as being 1 in 32. I say that, as some of the new parents in the group chose not to know whether they were expecting a boy or a girl, and you would expect at least one couple in five to deviate from the norm.

Emma and John had served up enough food for the British Army to polish off after we had finished, which was really good of them.

We had to leave early, as we made the mistake of only having packed one bottle of 'booby-juice' for Jack and so had to make the dash home before he started to get grumpy about not having it, but before we left, someone suggested a group photo of the babies together. So, we all piled the five babies on the sofa, allowing everyone to take photos of them.

You know that scene in the opening of the movie ‘The Matrix’ where Trinity jumps up in the air and before she kicks the police officer in the chest, the camera pans around her in ‘bullet time’..? Well, I reckon we could easily recreate that style of cinematography, but with some much slow-moving babies...

People I speak to at work are a little dubious about the NCT-style of classes, in that there's the underlying aim in making friends out of your classmates, but I personally don't see the problem with this.  People who haven't had children aren't really interested in the gory and the gooey stuff about babies - I know, because up until very recently, that was me. But on the other side of the coin, people who have had children want to tell you about their babies experiences, etc etc. (Pretty much what I'm doing here on this blog really.) But the guys and gals at the NCT class seem to fall into a slightly different category to that in my view, as we all met before our lives 'changed considerably' and we've gone through the same process, albeit slightly different routes, but achieved the same outcome, namely, a sprog. So, I'm glad that we went to the classes and learnt about babies; I'm glad that we have met these people as they're all very interesting people anyway, aside from the whole baby thing; and I'm glad we agreed on meeting up like this, as we've got a significant part of lives in common. If only Chris would arrange a dad's drink...

Before Jack was born, Claire and I decided to look into a range of nappies called ‘Bambino Mio’, which have flushable and washable segments of the nappy that should be environmentally friendly, as opposed to the ‘norm’ of using nappies that you use once and then throw away.

Although the Bambino Mio nappies weren’t cheap initially, they did work out to be almost the same price when spread over a long enough period, like 25 years or something (joke!), but more importantly, they are a lot more environmentally friendly than their counterparts, as the padding part of the innards is washable, and the soft tissue part nearest the skin is flushable. The main outer is a soft plastic finish decorated with colourful patterns.

However, Jack’s newborn legs were too small to fill the leg-holes of these Bambino Mio nappies and so we have had to use a regular brand of ‘land-fill’ nappies until he’s a little bigger. But this has opened my eyes as to the amount of nappies that a baby goes through every day.

Now, I’m not hell-bent on saving the planet, but I do like recycling rubbish when we can, doing our bit and all that, but if they reckon that 12 nappies a day is the average for a baby to get through, then no wonder the landfill sites are filling up, as they’re filling up on millions and millions of poo and plastic-filled disposable nappies; ones that’ll be around for between 200 to 500 years.¹

Having said that, I’m sure that if I had to store and then wash a day’s worth of washable nappies, the smell must be quite rancid and it must make your stomach turn having to handle them, but that’s why God invented the washing machine. (And sanitising powder to add to the wash!)

I suppose it’s part of the culture that we’re in – throwing stuff away and getting new instead of fixing or, in this case, washing and reusing. But up to 500 years per nappy...? That does make you think.

More reading if you're interested:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1287722.stm
• http://www.energysavingsecrets.co.uk/ReusableNappiesVsDisposable.html

(¹ According to the BBC in the link above.)

So – what’s happened recently? Well, Jack has had some bad nights and some good nights. The bad nights have been where he’s cried until fairly late and then ‘grizzled’ between crying. The good nights, or should I say ‘night’ in the singular rather than the plural, was night whereby Jack went to sleep around 10pm after a feed and only stirred around 12am but stayed asleep until 6am when I had to get up and go to work. 8 hours straight! Blimey – he’s 4 weeks old and already sleeping longer than I do!

Jack is also 4 weeks old now – it seems like he’s much older than that when we look at him, but then looking at the calendar it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, we were bringing him home from hospital! When I got back from work on the Wednesday that made him 4 weeks old, Claire had dressed Jack in a pair of black/grey/white urban combat-style jeans and matching t-shirt, as opposed to the baby-grow outfits that he’s worn every day so far. The jeans and t-shirt combo instantly made him look more like a person than just a little baby.

I have the whole week off work next week, which is great in one sense, as time off always is, but Claire is actually looking forward to having a few nights that I can look after the baby when he cries and wants feeding! Doh! To be fair to Claire, she has let me sleep whilst she tended to Jack in the night, as I have been going to work. During the weekends, I’ve tried to help.

Swaddling – Claire’s read in a book that as of around 6 weeks old, babies shouldn’t be as tightly swaddled at night to sleep. At the moment, for those of you that don’t know, we ‘swaddle’ Jack, which means that we lay him on a triangular shaped blanket and tightly wrap his arms in towards his body, which not only keeps him warm at night, but it stops him flinging his arms about in the night, which tends to wake him up in a state of panic! I kid you not. But as of around 6 weeks, there’s the worry that they’ll overheat, and so the swaddling can carry on, but only half-swaddling, as his arms need to be free. I just hope that he will have grown out of the arm-flinging thing!

Watch out other drivers, Claire is back on the road! Claire called her insurance company (as they’re not paying me for an advert on this blog, I am therefore not going to tell you who her insurer is!), and they told her that providing her doctor had not said that she is unfit to drive yet, they’re happy for her to do so. So, Claire then booked an appointment to see her doctor, and must have flashed a little leg or something, as he’s allowed her to drive again. Being cooped up in the house must be bad enough, but when there’s a car outside doing nothing but you’re not allowed to drive it, must be like being a 17/18 year old lad again who’s not allowed to drive their parents car!

When we were in hospital, the midwives instructed us to keep an eye on the quantity of milk that Jack has and to take note of them, as at this point, he wasn’t breast-feeding properly. Well, take note, we did. I say ‘we’ in the lightest of sense, where I clearly mean ‘Claire’, as she ought to take the credit for doing it. Either way, we have a notebook that is located near the fridge where the milk is kept, and, after Jack has finished with the bottle at the time, we note down the time and quantity under a heading for that day.

Well. This was fine by itself for a little while, this notepad. Innocently collecting data about the child’s feeds... until the other day when I had to type it up into Excel.

I thought about getting this all typed up whilst driving home one day from work, with the wonder in my head as to the running total that Jack had consumed, but also that Claire had produced, as only on Jack’s first day did he have formula milk.

The typing took about half an hour and I can confirm that as of Jack’s four complete weeks outside the womb, he has drunk over 16 litres of milk. 16 whole litres, or 16,000 millilitres, fed initially at 40 millilitres, going up to the 125 millilitres that he’s having at present. Now – it’s easy to play this quantity down, saying it’s only 16 litres of milk, but it’s actually 16 litres of booby-juice that Claire has produced and has only produced it because of Jack... what I mean, is that this milk has come from Claire and is, I believe, the best stuff that Jack could have, compared to formula milk or anything else that you can buy at the supermarket.

That’s almost half a tank of petrol in my car...! If that was 16 litres of petrol instead of milk, I could get to work and back on that for over a week, and yet this white 'milk' stuff is coming in quantity from my wife, to be lapped up by our baby. Madness.

Now – what computer geek would I be unless I had drawn a few graphs? Not really being a whizz with Microsoft Excel, I have tried to draw a couple of graphs showing the times vs. quantity that he’s had and it’s fair to say I’ve fluffed it a little, but it’s there in essence.

Incidentally, we are able to know how much milk that Jack is having because of Claire has expressed it and we’re able to measure it in handy feed-sized bottles with markers on the side. How people who breastfeed directly are able to know how much milk a baby has had at any given time, is beyond me. How can they draw fancy Excel graphs!?!

If you're able to do something a little more constructive in Excel and you fancy drawing me a better graph with the data, drop me an email and I'll send over the Excel file - if your graph is better or more colourful than mine, I might just come back here and retro-fit it into this post!

Well, the baby is very definitely here, as is very evident from our house! Every room seems to have been attacked with baby stuff, ranging from piles of clean clothes and stacks of nappies and sterilising equipment. But more importantly, Claire, the mother of our baby is back again to be interviewed about things post-birth. See part one here.

BR: So, wife. Jack is home and three weeks old already. What do you remember about the birth? Good stuff, bad stuff, any pain??

CR: Feeling like I wasn’t there. You rambling on during the birth and me thinking I needed to concentrate. Then hearing them say about the cord wrapped around his neck and then hearing him cry soon after. Everything else went in really fast-motion, as it seemed like it was happening to someone else.

BR: Well, I was trying to take your mind off things, or to try to ease your nervousness. What do you mean about it feeling like it was happening to someone else?

CR: It was like I was watching it on telly, rather it was me that they cut open to get a baby out.

BR: Was it like an out-of-body experience?

CR: No, like... this isn’t me.

BR: Who else would it be? Explain.

CR: I don’t know... It was more like being in a state of shock and not knowing what was going on. I was tired, worried and all that.

BR: Well, to be fair, it was a really long day! And, you were having the contractions earlier in the day which seemed to take it out of you on a regular basis.

CR: Not for long though, as I had the epidural at about 10ish, didn't I?

BR: So you’re a believer in epidurals? They work then?

CR: Yeah! Really good. People had said about them in the past, such as at the NCT classes but it’s not the same as feeling it first-hand. First the pain was there, and then the next minute when the epidural kicked in for the first time, it wasn’t there!

BR: Did it hurt when the anaesthetist was putting the epidural in?

CR: No, didn’t feel a thing.

BR: I couldn’t see any of it, as I was facing you as you were curled up on the edge of the bed. Do you remember what you were thinking at that point?

CR: Don’t have a contraction, because I would have moved and was worried I’d be paralysed or something

BR: Right... but once the pain relief was working, I knew you couldn’t feel anything when you glanced over at the machine and saw that the monitoring machine was drawing lines to suggest that you was having a contraction but hadn’t noticed. But during the operation, was it really that good?

CR: Do you not think I’d would have been screaming and crying when they came at me with a knife??

BR: Okay – good point. The fact they were sticking pins in your belly to ‘test it’ made me smile. So, tell me about once they had cut you open what could you feel? Anything?

CR: Tugging, that was it.

BR: You mentioned about when the surgeon counted the number of times that the cord was wrapped around his neck – what was going through your head at this point?

CR: I don’t know – relief I suppose, thinking that I was glad that he wasn’t born normally, as things could have gone really wrong.

BR: To be honest, I didn’t know what to think at the time either – she seemed quite surprised and so did the rest of the people in the room. Anyway, it didn’t seem like long before he was lying on your upper chest, all smelly and slimy...

CR: ...covered in poo...

BR: Yeah – didn’t she say he looked like an alien when she had pulled in out, as he was all green because of the poo?

CR: (shaking her head) – I don’t remember much of that bit... probably wasn't paying much attention.

BR: Hmm maybe not. Ok – what about after the birth, but before you came home? What was the stay in hospital like after the birth compared to before?

CR: I was in a different ward, one where everyone had a baby, including me!

BR: I don’t remember there being much noise from other babies?

CR: Er, yeah there was! You wasn’t there at night times, as I can assure you that there was!

BR: Yeah, yeah - so you say. Did it seem like forever that you was in there?

CR: Because I was awake day and night, it felt like a lifetime, and because I hadn’t seen the outside for days!

BR: Yeah, you missed all the fun with the snow... the country was at a standstill, roads were closed, new dads couldn’t get there and you were none the wiser.

CR: Well, it stopped you getting to see me and Jack until a bit later in the day, so it did have an impact on me a little bit!

BR: I know. But I got there in the end though. I’m just glad it was the day AFTER you had given birth, as I would have been gutted if the snow had come down the day before, as guaranteed sod’s law says it would have been that day that Jack was to be born...! Anyway, was about the drive home – was it good to be free again?

CR: Yes, but with an overwhelming sense of responsibility. We had a little baby to bring home forever.

BR: What about the first night at home with Jack in the house?

CR: Best night’s sleep I had had in a week!

BR: Even with us both getting up each time he rolled over?

CR: No, you did. You seemed to react everytime he moved! 

BR: I know, I know... I’m getting used to ignoring him as time goes on. You seem to sleep ok though... to the point that I have to nudge you and tell you that he’s crying...

CR: He doesn’t need picking up each time he cries, you just need to rock him to sleep sometimes, and he’s ok...

BR: ...and I think that’s the bit I struggle with – in the night, when he cries, I wake up thinking that he has been crying for ages. And the fact that I am now awake, I suppose my first reaction is to try to get him back to sleep. Does he do that in the day too, when I am at work?

CR: Sometimes. Sometimes he goes back to sleep straight away, sometimes he needs rocking and sometimes he just wants a cuddle and then he’s happy again.

BR: So, he’s feeding ok now?

CR: Well, yes, he’s putting on weight so he must be feeding ok.

BR: I meant in terms of the booby-juice production.

CR: I am still expressing the milk for him, but as long as he’s having it then it’s ok.

BR: And a bit more convenient too, as we can bottle it and store it in the fridge until the minute he wants it. Is it 48hrs it can be kept for? Have you got to the point of making too much and throwing it away?

CR: Only once, as it had been in the fridge for just over two days, and we had plenty.

BR: And he’s drinking lots – about 100mls each time, and about 9 drinks a day?

CR: Give or take.

BR: Projectile vomiting is good too, eh? He’s got good range for such a young lad.

CR: Yeah..

BR: ...must be from your side, as I don’t remember ever throwing anything up... Actually, don’t answer that. Anyway, three weeks on, two weeks of which I have been back at work. Are routines emerging from all of this already, or are we still in random-mode?

CR: No, I think we’re getting a routine going. It’s a bit more difficult in the morning when you go to work, as I need to express [the booby-juice] and if he wakes up, I can’t pick him up properly. Once he’s fed and had his nappy changed, he’s ok for a while, leaving me time to do things in the house.

BR: Is the baby monitoring working out ok?

CR: It’s good, as once he’s asleep, the parent-end is wireless and I can carry it with me into different rooms.

BR: Have many people been over to see you both?

CR: Yes, lots of people and they’ve all bought us lovely gifts for him. Being here, it has helped to pass the days when I am here by myself with Jack, as the day can be quite boring, as I am used to being at work 40hrs a week.

BR: Has Facebook been a ‘must-have’ like they said about in the antenatal classes?

CR: Don’t get a chance to look since he’s been born!

BR: Have you managed to catch on lots of good recorded tv shows?

CR: No, not really, the only time I watch telly is when I am expressing – I’ve got a baby to entertain!

BR: So - I have got to ask. How do you think I am doing as a new dad? Bearing in mind that you are my prize witness of seeing how I was before with other people's babies...

CR: (She's thinking about it)... You’ve... suprised me.

BR: Uh? What does that mean...!?!

CR: You seem very comfortable with looking after a baby

BR: Any hints, or tips? Maybe an area of baby-world that I’m not particularly good at, or need to improve upon? Maybe I am doing something wrong and it makes you cringe but not say anything?

CR: You go through too many changes of his clothes! If his clothes are even slightly dirty, you put new ones on! The washing machine works way harder over the weekend when you’re here! Other than that, perfect.

BR: Well, I don’t know about that - I’m still learning and I’ll be the first to admit that. But I think my confidence with him has significantly improved, especially compared to when I first held him the hospital as that was more scarey than anything.

CR: You still look a bit cack-handed with him at times, but I’m sure he doesn’t mind too much.

BR: Speaking of which... we had better call this a night, as our young man will be waking shortly! Thanks for doing this second interview, wife. Hopefully, my interviewing technique will get better one day...

CR: Hmm. Maybe...

 

My current working arrangements mean that for my 'Work Life Balance' day, I get a day off every other Wednesday, which is great as it means that I have a bit more time off, especially now that Jack is here.

So for tomorrow, we’ll be in weekend mode, as opposed to school-day mode, and I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast the two types of days that Claire and I appear to have generated since Jack has been born.

(The only thing common to both of these days is the night time feeding/changing nappies/screaming/crying/etc.)

School-day mode

First alarm goes off at 06:00 for Claire to wake up and get expressing milk for Jack later in the day.

Second alarm goes off at 06:30 for Jack and I to get up. If Jack is still asleep, he is carefully relocated to his sleeping quarters downstairs, namely the pram top resting on a rocking Moses-basket stand. If he is awake, then I can feed him, change his bum and try to get him settled down whilst Claire is making booby-juice.

I then rush off and have a shower and shave (if need be – i.e. only every other day!!) and get ready for work, hopefully before Claire is done so that I can swap roles and keep an eye on Jack whilst she has a quick shower. Ideally at this point, Jack is having a quick nap, making the mornings a little quieter, as well as quicker.

At about 07:15, I need to have left the house in order to start work at 08:00.

What happens from here on in is anyone’s guess as Claire and Jack are left to their own devices. I guess that there’s a bit of crying, pooing and a nappy change or twelve during the course of the day, as well as a little mum-baby-bonding-time.

I get home at around 17:30ish, traffic depending, and have time to annoy Jack if he’s awake. Today, incidentally, he’s not and so I have left him asleep in the lounge in the pram-top.

Aiming to have tea at around 18:00 seems to mean that we’re still cooking at 18:30-18:45 and eating at 19:00. Whoever feeds Jack at this point avoids doing the washing up. (Make your own mind up here...)

In the evenings, I try to spend a bit more time around Jack, unless he’s asleep, as:

1. I don’t get to see him during the day.
2. It gives Claire a bit of time to do her own stuff for a few hours.

Sometimes Jack comes and helps me on the computer, laying on my legs and normally playing the bum-trumpet a few times too. It's at this point that I seriously hope that his nappy holds and nothing leaks either side of his legs!

We have been trying to get us all ready and in to bed at around 22:00 – 23:00 each night, with the actual time depending on the time we’ve managed to feed him by really. If we feed him and then get him to sleep straight away, he seems to only wake once in the night mostly, which is good. In School-day mode, Claire gets up and sees to him, so in theory, I can stay asleep in bed. Well, seeing I am not a heavy sleeper and Claire has absolutely no concept of noise-control in the middle of the night, not a lot of sleep actually goes on!

Weekend mode

The last weekend or two, I have been waking up around 07:30 - 08:00, coincidentally the same time as Jack. Normally for me, 08:00 is an extreme lay-in, as I hate wasting the morning in bed sleeping when I can be up doing stuff. Jack and I sneak downstairs, leaving Claire in bed, fast asleep. 

At this point, Jack has been waking up and within minutes wants food... well, a drink, namely milk.  So, providing I can get it into him, he can have his booby-juice, as well as change of nappy too, depending on how recently anything happened in the night. He then seems to need another nap but this point, which is fine, as I can then get myself sorted for a drink and some toast or something.  If he has managed to fall sound asleep after having his bottle, I tend to not bother waking him, as he tends to be in a bit of a grump and is more prone to screaming the house down in a mini-tantrum.

The day from here on seems to disappear in big chunks. The next thing I know its 11:00, Claire is awake and instantly pumping milk into bottles on an industrial scale and I’m still wandering around in my dressing gown. So, as soon as Jack gets a nap in, I can get washed and dressed.

Lunch appears to have been moved from 12:00 to around 14:00, as this is the time that we seem to eat after sorting Jack out. He sometimes sits in the high-chair with us in the kitchen whilst we eat, and sometimes one of us needs to eat one-handed whilst the other hand holds the baby. When I say ‘one of us’ I mean Claire, as she does it so well.

The afternoon drifts into the late evening, with anything that we’re trying to do being constantly interrupted by having to come running to waking and crying baby, or feeding, changing nappies or trying to rock him to sleep.  That’s not meant to sound negative at all, it’s just strange how the meaning of the day has changed.

Evening comes along – the food setup is similar to the lunchtime efforts, namely a little later than normal, partly because of Jack, but probably due more to the fact that we have eaten later for lunch.

After food, we try to have a normal evening, watching television, checking emails, me writing these blogs, etc., and whilst we watch television, Jack is asleep in the pram-top in the lounge with us. As I said in an earlier post, it sort of has something to do with us wanting him to sleep through the noise, but also it is so that he’s with us in the same room, so if he cries, we can rock him back off to sleep (hopefully) – if not, we can pick him up and do stuff until he goes back off again.

Bed time is pretty much as before, us trying to get to bed before midnight. This sometimes works, but there’s not much of a rush during a Friday or Saturday night, as I haven’t got to go work then.

During the nights, this is my turn in getting up with Jack when he cries and wants feeding. This seems to take us about 30-40 minutes to do, to get about 100-110 millilitres of milk into him, give him a go at burping and then try to get him back to sleep quickly.  This is all hopefully done before he throws up over everything..!

But hopefully, you can see that the days and nights are quite different from those from before Jack came along.

Whilst we were at the NCT Antenatal Classes in Ely, one of the 'games' there was to try to imagine a day in our lives before the baby and a day after the baby. Let's just say that the day that we had imagined the 'after' was going to be, is a little different from how we had planned it, but a lot more fun and happiness than we could have imagined with him.

Last night was just awful. Jack simply did not want to stop crying - in that, I don't suppose that he wanted the stress of screaming his head off, I mean I was unable to stop him.

*Normally*, I would hold him over my left shoulder and gently bang his back with my right hand which normally soothes him to calm down and sometimes makes him fall asleep. (It even took Claire a while too, so at least it wasn't that he realised who I was and decided to vote with his voice!) We don't know why he was like it, as we'd ticked all the normal boxes of what to do. He really has been good up until that point, as when he's cried it's been because he was hungry or he was sitting on a mountain of yellow baby-poo. Either way, we've been quick to sort it out and return Jack to his non-volatile state, i.e. asleep. But last night, no chance.

Once he was finally asleep Jack later stirred a couple of times in the night; I got up the first time but he fell asleep in my arms and then Claire got up with him the second time and fed him. He ended up sleeping until 7am, which was ok, and so I got up and fed him and left Claire to have a bit of a lay-in. Having said that, she was up not long after, as she's still having to express 'booby-juice' for Jack, which means regular pumping or the build-up of pressure in her boobs will cause a violent explosion. Honest.

I am still a bit not-right about this whole baby thing. I thought my sleeping patterns would have settled down a bit by now, as I still keep waking up to see if the baby is ok, which he is, and there is absolutely no reason for me to keep waking. Maybe I am just crackers. I suppose last night was Friday night and I knew that I didn't have to get up and go to work in the morning and so I was trying to do a bit more of the feeding of Jack so that Claire could sleep.

Generally speaking, I am getting used to feeling a bit more tired than normal, so it's ok. And I am also getting used to not being able to be selfish and do my own thing when I have wanted to, something which Claire has already found out about over the last few weeks and months. Until very recently, if I wanted to play around on the computer for a couple of hours, I could and would. Now, I still want to, and still can do, but it means that I am constantly coming away from the computer when Jack wakes up and screams down the baby monitor.

Jack and Claire are doing well. Jack seems to just sleep and poo all day, whilst Claire is running around the house when he’s asleep trying to do the jobs that she can’t do when he’s awake. Like eat and wash.

Jack is part of the furniture now it seems. It’s as though what we’re doing now is what we’ve been doing with him for ages now, and even the thought of looking down the line to only a couple of months seems like a lifetime away.

Anyway, this blog was originally supposed to be about me and my experiences of becoming a dad for the first time, so... what’s happening and where are we at?

I might have mentioned a little while ago that I am a really light sleeper. Something else I might have failed to mention, is that I can occasionally get a bit ‘zombie-like’ when I get too tired... no, really. When I was at University, I’d come home to visit my folks as well as come to get my washing done of course, and whilst at home and in my own bed, I’d ‘wake up’ in the night and not know where I was; the most rational decision at the time was to wander around the room feeling the walls looking for light switches that weren’t there, whilst stumbling over all sorts of things I wasn’t awake enough to see or to even remember that I had put there in the first place! I would soon wake up, realise what I was doing, where I was and get back into bed and drift off again. I would only do this because I was a little over-tired, as well as experiencing the confusion of waking up in a different place to normal. (Well, that’s my excuse!!)

Anyway, this wandering has returned of late. The other night, I sort-of woke up to find myself rocking a pillow that was holding in my arms, thinking it was Jack. But as I thought, but possibly dreamt, that I had woken up, I realised that that the baby wasn’t in my arms any longer... just a pillow! And then, imagine my shock and horror, as I am frantically looking for our newborn baby, to find Claire fast asleep in bed and not at all interested in my worry or her baby! But not long after that, I look across and can see Jack asleep in the crib to other side of the bed, and realise that he’s ok. Claire had woken up by then, to find me in cold-sweats, still holding a pillow under my arm and with a panic look on my face, and simply told me to get back in bed and to go to sleep. Dream/nightmare over.

So, why am I feeling tired and looking a bit more rough than normal...? No idea, but I fully blame Jack!!

It’s seems like the last two weeks have either flown by, or have blurred into each other; whichever way it’s gone, Jack is two weeks old tomorrow.

He’s already made a big impression on our lives – he’s got us running ragged around him, he’s got us up all hours of the night and even has us worrying about him when he’s fast asleep! What can you do? I suppose this is parenthood and now I’m on the other side of it, it’s a bit different to when I was a care-free kid.

Jack has had a few follow-up visits from the community midwives - I don't really know what they've done or said mostly, but I was here when one of them weighed young Jack - he came in at 8lbs 9oz, which means that he's only lost 4oz or so. Apparantly, new babies can lose up to 10% of their birth weight in the first couple of weeks, but as he's only lost a little bit, that means that they're happy with the quantity of food he's having, and he's doing well.

The cards and presents that we’ve had for Jack over the last few weeks have been amazing. Just when I thought we had received a card from almost everyone we know, a few more arrive! Claire and I went to her parents for food the other night and there was literally a pile of presents there waiting for us to open! Everything we’ve had from everybody has been absolutely fantastic, and we really are humbled by it all. So we’d like to thank you all very much.

Yesterday afternoon, the whole department at work of about 50 or 60 people crowded around the area of desks where I sit to present me with a card and some presents..! I didn’t know what to say and was really glad not to be pushed for a speech but, all the same, my face went a brilliant red colour.

The fact is, we have had to use many of the clothes already, as Jack is really good a managing to get wee, poo or sick on his clothes, despite the hindrance of a nappy. Not only that, but he has managed to get me caught up in this - all over me, my jeans and several t-shirts. Thanks, son.

So, I have now had both weeks of my paternity leave from work already and so, come Monday, I shall be back at work whilst Claire gets to stay at home and look after Jack.

• Paternity Week One
• Monday - Claire goes into hospital for 'straight-forward' induction.
• Wednesday - Jack is born in the operating theatre after a long day in the Delivery Suite.
• Sunday - Claire and Jack come home from hospital.
  
• Paternity Week Two
• All days of this week appear to have blurred into each other. Some people came to our house to visit and I remember sleeping here and there.

Over the last week, Claire and I have found that looking after a newborn baby is a bit more involved than we had expected – when Jack is asleep during the day (which is a lot of the time at the moment) there’s the usual stuff around the house to do, such as food to cook, finding time to eat it, wash-up etc., but in addition, there’s the milk bottles to wash and sterilise too. Once they are sterile, Claire can then use them for the milk that she’s expressing for him; our fridge is awash with bottles filled with ‘booby-juice’, all of which are marked with its production date and time, as we should only store each bottle for a maximum of 48 hours. Claire has been looking after this side of things, whilst my job is to try and get the milk into Jack and keep it in there, without him throwing it all up!!

As Claire had a caesarean, she will be unable to drive for around 4 to 6 weeks whilst the wound heals. We’re told that if she can convince her doctor that she can perform an emergency stop in the car, she’ll be allowed to drive at 4 weeks, providing that her insurance company are happy too.

It’s happened. For those of you who joked about me blogging about the middle of the night feeds, etc, well... this one is for you.

Last night, by my standards, was a bad night’s sleep for me, although Claire still reminds me that bearing in mind we have a week-old baby, last night wasn’t too bad at all!

I got up with Jack at silly-o’clock in the morning, to change his nappy and feed him. Fine – no problems there. It was the gallons of sick that erupted from my little son’s gut that got me. All over him, his bib, me, the chair, the floor and I wouldn’t be surprised if I found some on the opposing wall. Being the ever so caring husband too, I thought that Claire would like to join me in this lovely and memorable moment, but more importantly, she was my only option and so was call out for help, waking Claire to come to my rescue (bearing in mind, at this point I was hold Jack with my left, and supporting a sick-filled bib with the right). Claire wanders in, only just awake, armed with tissues ready to save me and the child. She wipes up, cleans up and then vanishes off back to bed in a flash. Saved.  Feel rough as hell now though. Look quite rough too.

Other than that, I haven’t had a big throw-up session with Jack. He’s been ok so far, but I just thought it was funny to mention it.

I’m still in that state of worry that there’s a real-life baby in the house, let alone sharing the same room as us. Not so much during the day, more when I wake in the night, as I always look over to see if he’s ok and if he’s still moving and breathing etc. I can see him from my side of the bed, as we’ve got the nightlight from the nursery in our room on constantly. It’s supposed to be a light to drift off to, but you could quite happily perform major surgery under the light that it emits!

I’m hoping that this constant waking and checking routine will fade away in time. Not saying that I don’t want to know if he’s ok, but more that I’ll learn to trust that he can sleep well and that if he wasn’t sleeping well, we’d still know about it.

Also, we’ve created and ordered the birth announcement cards yesterday from a site called PhotoBox.co.uk, not forgetting to go through Quidco first, of course. Basically, the PhotoBox website has an online [Flash-based] version of Microsoft Publisher, allowing you to select and create the card or other item of your choice, and personalise them using your own photos, messages, etc. When you are done, simply pay for it and wait for the postie to deliver. They should be here soon, so posting these will give us something to do when we’re waiting for Jack to wake in the middle of the day.

Claire’s parents have been looking after Alfie, our Westie dog, whilst Claire has been in hospital, and Claire’s brother brought him back last night, which was a bit of fun...

Alfie has always been Claire’s little shadow – he’d follow her off the end of a cliff. He only wants to be in my company when Claire isn’t around, and even then it’s because he wants things, like food or a walk.

Anyway, he came home last night and it was difficult as we needed Alfie and Jack to get on, but we didn’t want Alfie licking Jack’s face, or anything grim like that. But it is fair to say that Alfie is curious, but cautious about this new ‘baby’ thing in the house, especially one that is consuming all of our attention at the moment, leaving him with his nose put out of joint. And, to make it worse in time to come, some of the dog's toys are brightly coloured soft toys that have squeekers in them. Coincidentally, some of the baby toys we have for Jack match that description too! Watch this space...

But it was really strange when he first came back, as Alfie seemed to have grown – I don’t mean that he’s put on weight whilst at the in-laws’ house, but I mean that in one of those optical illusion ways, that by us looking at and focusing heavily upon a very small baby, and then seeing Alfie after a week made him look.. bigger? Or maybe it’s just me. 

Also today, we also went for our first walk up the road as Team Rigby; Claire, Jack (in the pram) and I walked Alfie up into the village, only to the post office and back. This is the first time Claire’s been able to test-drive the pram properly, as she has wanted to do that for months since it arrived! Saddo.

When I said that I was expecting it to get worse, well, I think that happened last night!

No problems or anything, but both Claire and I have been the ‘wandering zombie’ in the middle of the night... Head Chef Claire was busy preparing the gourmet meals for our son for the course of the night (i.e. milk production and storage) and I fed Jack twice; once at 01:15 and the other at 05:15. On both occasions, he was much easier to handle and deal with than I had imagined it would be, as I think I had a picture in my head of him screaming all the way downstairs and not stopping until I had fed him, changed his nappy and got him back in bed. But in fact, he stopped crying as soon as he was picked him up and didn’t cry any more after that, which was good, and didn't put up a fight about his nappy either, which was even better.

During the night, it was really strange having a baby in the room, as I was conscious all night that he was there, and kept looking over each time I stirred in the night, being a really light sleeper myself. He had a mini nose-whistle going on too – you know, the one where your partner is completely unaware as they sleep that each time they exhale through their nose, a single toned whistle is made. Normally, I’d [softly] nudge Claire or turn over myself, which causes her to stop doing it without needing to actually wake her. (I haven’t yet needed to use the last-resort tactic of attempting subconscious surgery on her nose to stop the whistling.) But with Jack, it didn’t seem to matter too much - and I certainly didn’t contemplate wedging my comparatively huge finger up his hooter to pick out baby-sized chunks of dried bogies to stop it!! (Maybe one day...)

Last night, we made the decision not to sneak around and whisper while Jack was asleep, as this would mean that he’d only sleep in the quiet and the slightest noise or disturbance would wake him later on.

Quite a few years ago, we went to visit our friends' and see their new baby girl, and when we got there, she was asleep... in the living room, to the side of the telly... which was on! But they said exactly the same thing about the noises and sleeping, etc., which might sound more than obvious to anyone who has had children, or very small brothers or sisters, but as the profile about me says on the blog site, I have had zero experience of children up until last week. So, not knowing you could do this, and then seeing a baby in a crib near the telly in a room with all of the lights on, with people talking at normal volume and doing normal stuff, seemed... weird – until I asked and they explained. And then it was fine.

This morning, Claire got up to go and get more food ready for the new boss of the house, and I stayed in bed until just before 09:00, but sleepyhead Jack stayed there until about 09:30! Lazy ol’ boot. But even then, he’s woken up and had a look around and then dropped back off again, without making a noise or anything. Marvellous.

Apparently, we’ve got the community midwife coming out to visit us today. I’m not sure when, but it will be one of the midwives that Claire might have seen before she went into hospital, as now we’re back on their turf, it’s their role to ensure care after the birth.

But I’m certainly glad that they are both home – Claire said she’s had a fantastic night’s sleep, as trying to sleep in a ward of five beds, with four other mums and four new babies, each crying and screaming individually is bad enough, but when they all let rip together, it must be a nightmare!

After a bit of convincing, the midwives at the hospital decided that Claire and Baby Jack are ok to go home, after 6 days of being there. It took a bit of convincing, but it mostly seemed to boil down to the fact that Claire had already bought a breastfeeding pump, which she will be able to use herself at home, in order to produce the milk that Jack will have.

He’s still not feeding off of her directly, as he goes on there ok and gives up after a few goes. He’s still making improvements and Claire is determined to keep trying, as we’re told that he may one day just do as he should. Until then, Claire is expressing the milk using the pump, which goes into bottles and we go from there without a problem, it seems.

Having the milk in convenient bottles means that I can feed him too, but more importantly, I can help feed him and get him settled down in the middle of the night, and leave Claire to sleep in. I can’t help but think that she’s got one over on me with this, and I’m slowing starting to figure it out...

But we’re home. We’ve been home just a few hours and managed to feed him and ourselves without a great deal of fuss. I say, or type, this rather tentatively, as I am expecting things to get a whole lot worse before we can declare some normality in all of this!

Before leaving tonight, we took 3 boxes of chocolates in for the midwives and care assistants in the Lilac ward and in the Delivery Suite, where Jack was actually born, to try to show our appreciation for them all in their efforts over the past week. I know it’s their job, but they could have done it without being pleasant and extremely helpful. So, anyway - enough about them and how good people they all are.

As I write this at 21:20 – Claire is trying to get a couple of hours sleep, as she didn’t get very much at all last night, and Jack has had his milk and is sleeping in the pram attachment on top of a crib-rocker, sited just outside my office door so that I can hear him if he stirs but not dazzle him with the halogen lights inside here.

After several nights in, Claire may finally be released tomorrow, along with her partner in crime, Jack. They've done their 'stretch' and the midwives have spoken.  They are allowing her to come home after being in since Monday evening (to be induced), all being well in the morning, of course, as they run through some leaving day checks, it seems. (We'll find out about them tomorrow.)

Claire has recovered much better from the caesarean than both of us had expected that she would have done by now, which is absolutely brilliant. Don't get me wrong, she won't be running any marathons for a few months, but she's up on her feet, she can pick Jack up when he cries and hold him without hurting herself.

Young Jack is still wearing his breastfeeding 'L' plates, but he's getting noticably better and better each day. They're hoping that he'll just work it out himself one day and just do what he's supposed to do without thinking about it. He's not starving in the meantime; he's getting enough food to keep him going, so that's good.

I have fed Jack twice today from a bottle, which is great as his eyes are fixed on my face as he's drinking from the baby-bottle, watching my reaction to him necking the drink that Claire took ages to produce!

I have also changed his dirty nappy twice too - not totally on my own, as I think my poo-nappy 'L' plates are still highly visible, but I'm getting a bit better each time. The smell really isn't anywhere near as bad as I expect each time I've done it, and the colour we find in there is different too! We're now in the unusual yellow/green colour poo, in case you were interested. We've had black, green and apparantly the grainy-mustard colour too, but today it's a sort of mix of a few of them, but apparantly, as he's having breast milk, his poo changes a different colour to formula fed babies.

So, yes, Claire and Jack might very well be coming home tomorrow, which will be when we get to learn how the three of us live as a family, rather than it being just the wife and I. Also, more worryingly, this is my last night at home by myself in peace and quiet, before I have months of sleepless nights. Oh well.

Last thing: Jack has been learning to stick his tongue out at me again today, as I mentioned yesterday - he's done it a few times, but each time it's when Claire has been looking the other direction, so it looks like I'm making it up! Although thinking about it, this probably isn't a skill that will help him get a job when he's older, but nonetheless, something that I'm already proud of him for.

As I might have mentioned, Jack has been a bit of nuisance in the feeding department - he's not too bothered about feeding from the breast, so they're saying that he's simply been a bit 'lazy'. But today, Sue (another brilliant midwife who has spent lots of time with Claire over the last couple of days in helping her to try having Jack laying on her in different positions to try and help him feed better), was asking questions about the epidural that Claire had, as well as any other forms of pain relief, as there is a good chance that he could have been still be up on something that Claire's had. Either way, he has needed a bit of a formula milk as an essential 'top-up' in order to get him going, so that he's strong and awake enough to try to feed properly himself.

The midwives have said that they'd want to see Jack feeding properly (breast or formula) but regularly too, before they are allowed to return home, which I am pleased about really, as:

1. It shows that they are interested and concerned enough for his health
2. It gives Claire more time to heal properly after the caesarean
3. I get our bed all to myself again for another night

All valid concerns, but today he has done much better than before, and he's learning that he's got to 'work' for his food, as there ain't no such thing as a free lunch in this world. It was really great to watch and see him already trying to re-use a skill he's just picked up a moment or two ago, regardless of how small but important the skill might be, but then seeing him get confused later on and try to suck on my arm when I was holding him was quite funny, but he was actually 'searching' for a boob. [insert your own joke here].

So, what I mean about all of this is that at two days old, it shows that a tiny, vulnerable baby is already alert enough to learn, as I think it's easy to assume that babies are just poo-cry-poo all the time and don't learn anything.

Slight tangent off here, but Claire has a book called The Social Baby, which is the only one that I've read more than a few page of (and that's because there's lots of photos on each page!), and in there are photos of a dad holding his newborn baby; whilst holding the baby, he sticks his tongue out at the baby, holds it there, and pulls it back in again, and does this a few times. During the time that his is tongue hanging out, the baby looks at him, looks at the tongue and then looks away as though he's thinking about it, and then tries to imitate his dad, and he does do it after just a few goes! Either that or they have missed out a few more pictures from the process, but when I first read it I thought that it doesn't seem very likely or believable, but when you look at each photo, for which there are lots on the pages, it becomes more and more plausable. So, I've been trying it with a two-day old Jack, and he's already trying to stick his tongue out, which is absolutely fasinating! I also overheard one of the other mums telling one of her older children to stick their tongue out at their new baby brother to see if he'd copy. But we had been trying it first, so there!

No, don't worry, I'm not going to write something for every day he is old - but coming back into hospital today and seeing Claire playing with Jack's little fingers was a great feeling, sort of how I imagined it should be, if that makes sense?

Anyway, in terms of a progress update, both Claire and Jack are doing well.

Jack is being a bit of a nuisance in not wanting to feed properly - it's not really as big a problems it may initally sound, "he's just a lazy boy...", or so I was told by Daniela, one of the midwives.

Last night, the paediatricians tested his blood/sugar levels a couple of hours after birth and he was measuring a 1.1 whatevers, where he should be measuring about 2.6 whatevers, or above. (Don't know what the 'whatevers' are - any ideas?) This meant that they wanted to get some food in him pronto and get his levels back up to where they should be. They cup-fed him about 20ml of new-born baby milk (that's milk FOR new-borns, not FROM them) and within a couple of hours his levels had raised in to the 2.x whatever range. They kept doing this cup-feeding, as well as trying to get him to breastfeed too, but he was being s a bit lazy and didn't want any of it. Obviously the laziness comes from his mum's side... ;o)

When I say 'cup-fed', to my suprise too, this did mean exactly as it sounded - stuff... in a cup, being fed to him in a very civilised manner! But they seem to hold so that the liquid is flush with the top-lip of the plastic cup and hold it to the baby's mouth, whereby they seem to know stick their tounge out and lap at it, like a cat. Strange, but true.

They test his blood by using one of them mean little clickers that they give you on the side of your ring finger when you go to give blood, which, when clicked, makes a small needle pierce your skin deep enough to draw a bead or two of blood, which is ample for testing. They then dribble it onto a clear plastic plate, insert it into an overgrown calculator and it tells them the answer, measured in 'whatevers', naturally.

His blood/sugar levels did drop down in the night, but as of this evening, it is 2.7 whatevers, so that's good.

They have said that they won't let Claire and Jack leave unless his feeding is more regular, but Claire has to stay in for a few more days anyway, to allow her time to recover from the caesarean on Wednesday.

Claire is doing good - when I eventually got there this morning (because of the snow) at about 11:00, one of the nurses was seeing about getting Claire up and on her feet and into the shower. I was trying to think of a more polite way of saying 'you smell', but leading someone to the shower is certainly the most direct. Either way, she was soon up, and walking over to the shower, whilst Jack and I became friends.

Claire said she felt a million times better for having a shower and really looked happier for it too, as I think she thought that she would have to have been bed-ridden for much longer than than after a caesarian. It also meant that she didn't have to have another bed-bath, as during yesterday's antics, the lady doing the washing asked for my help in putting a clean nighty on Claire, as Claire was not to move too much herself because of the stitches, wound and so on. Now, I'll blame the lady and I'm sure that she'll blame me - either way, one of us caught Claire's cannula, which was still inserted into the vein in her hand following the operation. It came straight out... and so did the blood. Again, I'll blame the lady. If anything, it meant that it was out and Claire didn't have to have it removed. So, I did her a favour the lady did her a favour.

Claire and I changed his nappy for the first time too! My job was to hold his legs up in the air whilst Claire did the messy bit, cleaning up the black and green liquid substance from the Winnie the Pooh baby nappy he was wearing.  Didn't smell to good either.

He's not too much of a bad kid so far - he doesn't seem to cry a great deal, but when he does, coincidentally, it is when I happen to be holding him... strange.  Another happy coincidence, is that when I just so happen to pass him to Claire, he stops shortly afterwards, making me think that if I were to have held him just a moment or two longer, he would have stopped anyway...

Geek moment - I noticed today that in one of the drawers, Jack has a little vest-thing that has the words 'Hello World' embroidered onto it, and I thought that was great!  I'll have to see if I can get a picture...!  Claire just didn't get it.  Also, there was talk at work of someone seeing a baby-grow with 'Microsoft' embroidered onto the left breast, advertised online I guess. How fantastic/geeky/sad is that? Where can I get one? I just did a quick Google search for it, but stumbled across this instead, which I thought was good too.

Again today, the midwives, paediatricians, health care workers, everyone that we have seen, have been great. It's a bit busier in the ward with all of the other mums, and so we are not getting the 1:1 treatment that we were used to on Wednesday, but it was still very good. And, bearing in mind that there are 4 other new mums, all of whom have had a caesarean too, and subsequently, 4 new crying babies, I don't tend to really notice them... does that make sense?

So, what happened yesterday? What didn't happen yesterday might be a better answer! Claire has had the use of almost every tool, fluid, needle and human resource that the hospital offers - not quite according to the Birth Plan that they ask you to create before going into labour!!

The only thing I can think of that didn't happen yesterday, is a natural birth; in that, I mean where the baby comes out from between the legs.

Here's what happened and roughly when.

06:55 Phone call to say that they've found Claire a bed on the Delivery Suite and they'll be breaking her waters within half an hour or so. Come in when you can, but no rush as nothing is going to happen immediately.

07:45/08:00 I arrive at the Delivery Suite where Claire is in her own room (with en-suite toilet/shower). She's hooked up to the baby monitor again, as they're checking that the baby is doing ok in there without any of the amniotic fluids that he's been used to. Contractions are every 5 minutes or so, and Claire was about 2-3cms dilated. Claire was a bit upset, as they found a bit of meconium (baby's first poo) that came out with the water. This means that baby isn't too happy in there.

08:50 Head-honcho consultant, Mr. Forbes, and his entourage comes around and speaks to Claire to check that all is ok. From about this point on, it's clear that the midwife, Alison, and the student mid-wife, Rosa, will be with us throughout the duration of the birth, which is reassuring, as they're brilliant people to have around.

10:00 Claire's been on the monitor constantly, except getting up to go to the loo. The contractions are still 5 minutes apart and they have, by now, getting her ready for the real possibility that she'll need to go on the drip. But before that, Claire's offered an epidural, as her contractions are strong now, let alone when the drip kicks in.

FYI: The drip is a synthetic hormone that is put directly into Claire's hand that will tell the body to start pushing. The amount of the hormone in her body determines the size of the contractions, ultimately leading to the baby's arrival. Supposedly!

10:30 The midwife calls in an expert to stick the drip needle in Claire's hand, as they're aware that Claire is pertrified of needles, but the drip will not only be used for the hormone, but also for saline, as Claire's a bit dehydrated, understandably.

11:00 Doctor Roberts the aneathatist (pre-warned is mad, but absolutely brilliant) arrives for the epidural and instantly lightens the air, cracking jokes and whistling the tune of 'You look wonderful tonight' whilst working his magic and sticking things into and onto Claire's back. (I couldn't see what he was doing, as I was facing Claire, trying in vein to reassure her)

11:30 (or so) Doctor Roberts is done, and he's still full of witty banter. Claire's relaxed a bit more now and the drug being injected into her lower back will start to work soon.

12:00 The epidural has been working great and Claire can no longer feel the contractions, which would be extremely painful by now without it, as the drip has been working for 10-15 minutes.

12:15 The midwife, Alison, decides to stop the drip, as the aforementioned baby monitor shows that the baby's heartbeat drops just after the contraction. This means that the baby isn't too keen on the hormone, and stopping it shows his heartbeat back up in minutes.

13:00 The doctors, other midwifes have been in and out at this point, checking the graph made by the baby monitor and writing events on it's timeline as they happen. The registrar doctor decides that the dip in the graph showing the baby's heartbeat may not necessarily be because of the hormone drip and wants to try again. Alison doesn't seem convinced, but she follows the instructions and we go again.

13:30 The heartbeat has dipped again coming out of each contraction, which are coming more and stronger than normal. By this point, Claire is casually glancing at the machine to her right, to find out that she's had a contraction. Very, very minor pains in her upper belly area, but she's very happy with the pain relief!

14:00 They've decided (on doctor's orders) to stop the hormone drip again, and allow the heartbeat to regain it's full beat. By this point, we've had many discussions with the midwives, doctors and aneathatists about Claire having a Caesarean section if this drip refuses to work. Claire has also been examined to find that she's still 3cms dilated, so the drip and the massive contractions that it's caused, have not made a difference and we're no further forward with a natural delivery.

14:30 Doctor Hema, the doctor that would be performing the Caesarean if we were to have one, has been brilliant in asking us about our wishes about carrying on, rather that going straight for surgery. We trust her to do what she believes is best, and everybody in the room is happy to give the drip one more go. It's looking like it's going to be a very long night at this point, and I'm really glad the car isn't in the extremely overpriced car park outside!

15:00 Doctor Hema, Alison the midwife are all agreed that the drip is simply not working, as again, the baby's heart beat goes down after each contraction, reaching a low of about 50 beats a minute, rather than the 140-150 he's been used to. The drip is aborted, and we're told that surgery is the only way now.

15:20 The heartbeat is back to normal, things are ok again, so I am whisked off to change into some stunning blue scrubs and weird slippers that stick together if they catch each other - great for when you're trying to walk! Claire's bed is pushed three rooms down, into an operating theatre, armed with more surgeons, paediatricians and our normal crew. I am given a chair, placed at the head of the bed that Claire's going to be moved on to, and told to sit there and touch nothing that is wrapped in blue or green, or anything that has wires or bleeps. Doctor Roberts boosts Claire's drugs and then starts conversations with us by telling us what we'll hear, roughly when, what it means, and that everything will be fine.

15:45 The surgery starts - a rail has been put up to stop Claire seeing anything happening, but I could lean backwards slightly and get an eye-ful of what Claire's being protected from seeing. Doctor Roberts does a brilliant job of trying to distract both Claire and I, as at this point, Claire's body is shivering, partly from nerves, but mainly from the epidural drugs. He had asked earlier what I did for work and so the conversation at present was about bankers and how badly the banks are treating people...! It didn't matter what we were talking about, the thing was that he was distracting us, as not being able to see what they're doing, but hearing noises and feeling them pull and push on Claires body, means that you start imagining things in your head, all totally incorrect of course. Doctor Roberts is again telling us at each stage what is or has happened.

16:02 I lean backwards just time time to see Doctor Hema lift baby Jack out of Claire's open body, all covered in blood, poo and everything else in there. Because of the poo, the baby looks a bit green, and Doctor Hema makes out he's an alien! Cheers, thanks for that. She had him held up as she said aloud that the cord was wrapped around his neck, "once... twice...! My god, THREE times around his neck!! No, FOUR TIMES wrapped around his neck!!"...

At this point, everyone was a bit amazed and totally relieved that he WASN'T born naturally, as he would have cut off his own supply coming out!! She then cut his cord (it didn't even occur to me about it, but I'm guessing as Claire's guts are spilled out everywhere, that it's not really appropriate that I do it) and then passed him straight to the paediatrians stood behind me. They were checking his airways more than normal, as they were aware that he had poo'd whilst still inside. They cleaned him up a little, checked that he was ok and laid him onto of Claire's upper chest, with me holding him in place.

16:15 I don't know about Claire but it seemed like we had forgotten that they're still working on the inside of her, as we're looking at this new-born baby laying on her, so before we know it, they're done.

16:20 Baby Jack is then put in his little fish-tank thing on a trolley, and he and I are led out of the operating theatre into a different room from before, but one where Claire and the baby can relax until they're ready to move back across the corridor to the normal baby ward.

It seems absolutely mad (in a good way) - the day before yesterday, Claire 'just had a big belly'. And then today, we've got this amazing little baby...! All the pains, needles, tests and check-ups have been just to make this little baby appear.

As I said late last night, everyone at Hinchingbrook Hospital have been absolutely fantastic. We couldn't have hoped for a better crew of people to take care of us, so a big thank you to all of them from the three of us.

Today, I am allowed back down there at 10am, but as Claire's back on the Lilac Ward, which is a normal baby ward, I have to abide by the strict rules of the visitors hours, but that's ok, as it gives the Claire and the other new mums quiet time, except for loads of babies screaming at the same time!

Jack William Rigby has [finally] made his grand entrance to the world, at 16:02 today (Wednesday 4th February), weighing in at 8lbs 13oz, delivered eventually by C-Section.

I'll explain more in the morning and try to get a picture up here of him, but I didn't get back home until 23:30 and I'm waiting for a pizza to burn cook, as I'm starving!

I take back all that I said about women in labour and all that - Claire has definitely not had an easy time of it today, but she's had the patience of a Saint, along with the bravery and strength that has made me even more proud.

The staff, particularly the midwife and student-midwife that were with us non-stop all day, were just fantastic.  Ironically, the midwife and student-midwife were 'assigned' our baby to deliver, as the student-midwife needed a 'straight forward case' for her first delivery...!  Well, she certainly got more than she bargained for, I can tell you!  (More in the morning)

That must mean that it is Mr. Kanwal that takes the jackpot prize of the £25 for the sweepstake at work! Well done matey! And to think, he was quite gutted when he picked the last available day on the list!!

Another day done, and still no wife and no baby.

Claire is still at the hospital in the same ward that she's been in since Monday evening, but there has been signs of progress, namely, that is ready to be moved to the delivery ward, where they'll be able to break her waters.

Yesterday I mentioned that Claire was going to have a second amount of the 'special gel' - well, she did, around 06:00 and by the time I got there at 10:00, the gel was starting to do its stuff. 

By 11:00, Claire has having contractions and things were starting to look good when we were asked to take note of the time between each one, and the length of time that the contraction lasted.  This was a great job for a soon-to-be-dad in the room, namely me.  I wrote down the time that the contraction started and then simply waited for the expression on Claire's face to revert to normal again before writing down that time too. Then, by the time I had worked out the length of time that the contraction lasted for (Time B - Time A), she was almost ready to go again!  The hours flew by - literally.

Claire was being monitored too, by a trace-graph machine sat constantly by the bed, with two squiggle-graphs being drawn on the same sheet of paper being fed out of the machine.  One was to record the heart beat of the baby, and the other to record the intensity of the contractions.  This monitoring went on ALL day, on and off.

The only thing that was a bit of a nuisance, was the fact the midwives, (whoever happened to call in at the time) looked at the output graph, would write something on it and then mutter words to the effect of "I'll be back to check that in a few minutes" - a few meaning "multiples of 20" minutes.  Then someone else would come, write something else on it, and say they'd be back in a few minutes.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

This went on all day, dragging the day out a bit, except for when we were playing time-keepers.  And having contractions, of course.  But the time-keeping part was good for both of us (I think!!) as I felt like I actually had a role in all of this, as up until then, I could only watch as Claire fought the pain emanating from her belly.

We're now in the position that Claire's ready to have her waters broken, or for them to break naturally, and the next step is baby-related, rather than pregnant woman-related.  But it seems that today is a popular day to give birth, meaning that the Colorado River cannot be recreated with Claire's help, as there's nowhere to put her on that ward.

Before leaving, we collared one of the night-shift midwives and asked about the next step, which is getting her on that other ward.  Providing there's a space on that labour ward, then Claire will be awoken at around 06:30/07:00 and informed that she'll be moved. Then, they'll crack on and break the dam that'll flood a very small village, very possibly even before I get there. 

If they do move her, then I'll be notified and I'll be straight over there.  If not, and she stays where she is, I'll be allowed into the current ward at 10:00 tomorrow morning, and not a minute before.

But before I go, I'd like to say that Claire's doing a sterling job so far.  She's taking each 'hit' of the contraction each time that they've come and she has done really well.  Girl done good.

I'm sure tomorrow she'll be great too.

Sweepstake news: Again, it seems that this sweepstake list is getting shorter and shorter.  Could this be the end of Mr. Scott's fantastic entry?  Will Mr. "cunning" Kanwal take the lot...!?!  Tune in next time for another exciting episode of "Urgh, it's a baby - get it out of me!"

Well, I've not long been home from the hospital, minus one Claire and one baby.

Claire's fine and, as far as we know, the baby is fine too. He's just not coming out to play as yet.

We got to the hospital for the 18:00 appointment that I mentioned earlier, and they soon strapped a baby-heart monitor to Claire's belly, along with another device to monitor for any contractions, if they occurred, and left us for about 45 minutes for the machine to draw a graph of the results.

The midwife came back and then gave Claire a really small amount of the gel (inside) and then re-set the machine to record another 45-60 minutes of results.

Once all of this was over, (around 20:00), the midwife said for Claire to get some sleep, as the induction starts first thing in the morning, meaning Claire will be woken at about 06:30 for it.  Bearing in mind that for the last 5-6 weeks, Claire has been waking up at around 09:30 in the morning, 06:30 might come as a shock to the system...!

Tomorrow morning, they will then use a bit more of the gel, which should start the ball rolling properly.  The small quantity of gel that they have used, coupled with the monitoring that has been done this evening, was to check that Claire and/or the baby do not have any adverse reactions to it.

So, I'm off to sleep myself, as it's starting to get late now and I didn't sleep too much last night - nothing to do with my wife getting up to go to the loo a million times. Nothing at all. Absolutely nothing to do with her.  Ok, you got me. It was.

Apologies to Mr. Finn for the sweepstake entry, as it looks like your day may have come and gone!  From memory, I believe that it's Mr. Scott's day tomorrow...?  After that, it's Mr. Kanwal's day?

Ok – The time now is 16:00.  Claire has called the hospital and we’re good to go for an 18:00 arrival at the hospital.  Actually having a time to work to, now means that things are starting to feel like a ‘plan’ for us, rather than sitting around waiting for a baby.

I’ve just loaded more bags into the car than Heathrow loses in a month.  We’re armed to the teeth with everything that we need (we hope), ranging from spare clothes for both of us through to a full week’s worth of clothes for the baby, music player, a million nappies, and much much more. 

Remember that list that said what we needed to take?  Well, that’s SO wrong, evidently.

Even the dog is started to notice that there’s a change in the air; so much so, he’s thrown up on the lounge carpet. Nice.

Providing Claire doesn’t start to give birth in the next few hours or so, the birth will more than likely be induced on Monday, (Mr. Finn’s day in the sweepstake). This means that the process will be initiated rather than waiting for the body to start it itself.

There are two ways of inducing labour:

• Prostaglandins
  These are substances produced naturally in the body, and can therefore be thought of ‘natural stimulants’.  Prostin is an artificial prostaglandin given as a Gel and applied to the back of the cervix.  Basically, this softens the cervix and encourages the body to start labour.
  
• Artificial Rupture of Membrane (ARM)
  This means pretty much as it sounds – having the waters broken, which encourages the uterus to contract and labour to begin.  This is done by means of an internal examination, during which the midwife gently breaks the bag of waters around the baby’s head.  Some ladies go into labour shortly after having their waters broken, but if the contractions do not start after 2 hours or so, the midwife will recommend another artificial hormone called Syntocinon, which is given by a drip into a vein in the arm. The quantity is then gradually increased until labour starts.  If Claire is given the drip, she will not be allowed to walk around, as the midwives will be constantly monitoring the baby’s heart until birth.
  
  Syntocinon is a synthetic form of Oxytocin, which is a natural substance in the body, and causes the uterus to contract.

How long will this all take?  Good question.  Your guess, it seems, is as good as any.  Depending on how long it looks like it’s going to take at the time, depends on whether I am allowed to stay.  If Claire is admitted over night while having Prostin, I, as the father, will be asked to go home; if anything happens in the night, then the midwife will call and I’ll then be allowed to join Claire, hopefully before the birth begins.  During the day, however, I’m ok to stay with Claire though. 

Do visiting hours affect any of this? Well, yes.  It seems that Hinchingbrooke hospital is quite strict on the visiting hours, for the dad as well as other visitors.  They made a point about it during the hospital tour a few months ago, and again too on all paperwork on the subject too.  I quote:

Partners only 10.00am – 1.00pm and 8.00pm – 9.00pm
Partners + Other Visitors 3.00pm – 5.00pm and 7.00pm – 8.00pm

I suppose this means that the new mums in the ward have a bit of quiet time too. And, there’s a limit on the amount of people in with the new mum and baby at the same time. But Claire’s just announced that she’s not going to stay in hospital long enough for visitors, so it’s ok.

So, we’re another day down - more names come off the sweepstake list at work but more importantly, we’re still waiting for this baby to even start showing signs of wanting to come out of there. 

Claire’s not really feeling any different from yesterday, no more pains, twinges, or anything like that.

My apologies for the short blog-post this evening, but today has been fairly slow.  But on the positive side, I've managed to watch 8x episodes of Series 4 of Lost, trying to catch up as Series 5 has already started on Sky One! 

Quick update: We’re now nine days overdue - yes, nine whole days and still no signs of the baby coming out.  The midwife has been over to the house again, though, for another check-up as normal.  She’s done the once-over on Claire for the week and deemed her fit to carry on, which is good.

Well, I’ve done something a little different today and interviewed my wife.  Yes, I am a little sad.  And this is my first ever interview for blogging purposes! Enjoy.

Interview with Mrs Rigby at 20:00 on the 30th January 2009.

BR: So, wife. How’s your belly feeling?

CR: Hard – my belly is currently rock solid to touch, and is a little tender in places.

BR: Did you imagine going 9 days overdue?

CR: No – I think I always thought that because my belly was so big, I was going to be nearer the due date (21st January), or even before that.  But instead, I’ve had five and half weeks of my maternity leave at home when I would have rather been at work!

BR: How late do you think that you could have stayed at work?

CR: Don’t know.  I couldn’t be there full time, as I’m too big.  And, the people I work with couldn’t wait to get rid of me!!

BR: I know you’ve been back to visit work whilst you’ve been away – have they changed anything since you’ve been gone?

CR: YES! They’ve rearranged things and made it ‘better’ - that’ll give me something to do when I get back!

BR: When are you planning on going back?

CR: October.

BR: Full-time? Part-time?

CR: I’m planning to do two days a week until Christmas.

BR: What’s your favourite moment of the pregnancy so far?

CR: You feeling the baby kick inside my belly, because he’s our baby and that was the first time that it felt to me that it was real to you, rather than just an photo from a scan, even though you didn’t seem to really realise that you’re having a baby until about December!

BR: Well, it’s a bit different for men! It’s a bit hard to get excited about you throwing up in the mornings and getting up in the night to wee all the time!  Anyway... what are your thoughts about the pending birth?

CR: Pain.  It’s going to hurt!  They’ve told us that Jack is a 9lb baby or thereabouts, but even if he was tiny, it’s got to hurt.  Excitement and apprehension too, I suppose.

BR: Have we got everything that we think we’re going to need for the first week or two after the baby is born?

CR: Don’t know - Have we, Brett?

BR: Yes – I think we, namely you, have done a marvellous job in spending large quantities of money! I’m just worried you might be getting a little too used to it!!  Ok.. moving swiftly on.  What’s the worst bit being pregnant?

CR: The worst thing about being at home waiting to give birth, is not being able to plan ahead.  I want to be able to organise myself and say that next week I wanted to do so and so, I can’t.  Before, we’d ask friends over, or go to theirs, for a takeaway or go to a restaurant, but not knowing if I’m going give birth at any moment makes it a little different!

BR: Anything else?

CR: Not being able to lie on my tummy at night to go to sleep! It’s so awkward having a big baby strapped to the front of you, especially doing things you take for granted, like rolling over in the night!

BR: Really? Hadn’t noticed...

CR: Hmm.

BR: All bags packed and ready to go at a given moment’s notice?

CR: I’m ready.

BR: Shall we take bets on the time of day that it’ll come out of there?

CR: Well, I think we’ve proved that we can’t even pin down a day, let alone a time!

BR: Ok, good point. We’ll leave that one. 

CR: Stretch-marks – that’s another bad thing about being pregnant!  I got all the way to my 36th week before getting my first stretch mark! Now I’ve got 40 million of them on the underside of my belly!

BR: Do you think that’s a slight exaggeration?

CR: Well, more than I wanted!  I think I ought to have shares in Bio Oil, as I’ve spent a small fortune on it!

BR: Isn’t that supposed to stop you getting stretch marks?

CR: Or you put it on stretch marks and it’s supposed to fade them. It’s just supposed to keep your skin supple really.  I’ve been putting it on every night too, and it’s done well really.

BR: Well thank you very much for your thoughts so far.  I’d like to say that you’re doing a sterling job of growing our baby. I would say ‘keep it up’, but if you could just squeeze him out now, that would be great.

CR: Ok, I’ll try!

Interview over 21:00!!!

Well, again, I’d like to say that things have started happening and the baby is here, but unfortunately, Jack still hasn’t arrived. He's now 8 days overdue the due-date of the 21st January.

If it were a parcel being delivered, then you can get a tracking number or an estimated delivery date.  Even worse, a confirmation that the sender had sent it!  But these babies don’t seem to come with any in-built tracking device, or sender confirmation; I suppose we do actually know which ‘depot’ it’s at, and that it’s actually there, as it’s been there a while now, but it’s not clear as to when it’s allowed to be collected.

Maybe he’s in quarantine? 

Maybe he has to pass stringent in-bound rules or he's liable to import duty?

Or, maybe, its all just taking a little bit longer than the date that we were told by the doctors and midwives.  (This is much more likely the truth and we’re simply guilty of being part of today’s 'I-want-it-now' culture, where patience was forgotten about.)

Either way, he ain’t here!

Claire is getting on ok though – she’s quite bored at home by herself, which I can understand.  She’s been off work now for over a month, since 24th December, and getting bigger steadily, whilst the ability and desire to actually do 'stuff' is almost directly in-proportional! Besides... daytime TV is rubbish, as there’s only the like of ‘Quincy’ and ‘Diagnosis Murder’ to keep you occupied, which is great as student-TV, but to have to watch it day in, day out, not knowing when you’re able to stop!!

Needless to say, once baby Jack does make his grand debut into the world, I'll post news and a photo or two on here.

I wanted to write a post on here about our friends and family, before the nipper arrives.

Claire and I have been a bit overwhelmed recently with friends and family members calling, texting and emailing us to find out if there’s any news to be told about the birth.

Unfortunately, so far, we’ve had a pretty standard reply of ‘no, not yet’, but it’s been nice that people have been thinking about us and wanting to find out the score so far.

Each of the past couple of times I’ve seen my folks (particularly my mum) have muttered words like ‘maybe next we’ll see you, Jack will have been born...’ etc, but I still keep seeing them and still no baby for them to coo over, which is a shame, but it makes me laugh each time they say it.

Anyway, he's now 6 days late, which might have the up-side in proving that he's a Rigby, but also the down-side in that we're getting a bit fed up waiting for him!  Not least Claire..!

Well.  It’s been one of those days.  You know, one of those ‘random’ days when you’re told that your wife is going to have a caesarean the following day, and then half an hour later, you’re told that she’s not.

Claire originally had an appointment this morning with the midwife for her weekly check-up on the unborn sprog and the midwife has had another rummage around on Claire’s belly and determined that his head is ‘no longer engaged at all’... which is a bit of a disappointment, as last week she said that the head was ‘partially’ engaged.  She’s suggested an appointment for Claire at Hinchingbrooke hospital with a consultant to make sure, and if needed, then they can arrange for a caesarean for tomorrow or Wednesday.  (Which would have been good for one of the sweepstakers in the office!!)

So, Claire’s gone with her mum, Pat, to the hospital to see the consultant, who’s instantly felt the baby’s head and determined that it is indeed engaged, and felt what the midwife thought was the head and said this was in fact, his shoulder.  He’s then scanned her and seen the head in the pelvic cavity and all that.  So, all is good.

Because the head is in the right place, they’ve decided that Claire doesn’t need caesarean and that she will probably be ok to give birth as normal.  They have booked in an induction appointment for a week today, which is Monday 2nd Feb (Mr. Finn’s day!) but they said that they doubt that she’d make it that far and that she’d probably have given birth by then...! 

The midwife then gave Claire a sweep – if you know what that is, great.  If you don’t, have a look on your favourite internet search engine yourself. 

So, we’re back to waiting again.  This isn’t bad, as we at least know that things are good inside there with young Rigby, but it’s the not knowing when he’s going to come out that makes for the interesting part.

More and more recently, people have been saying that I should get as much sleep as I can, as very soon, I won’t be sleeping much due to a crying poo-machine sharing the bedroom with Claire and myself.  Most probably, this is all very sound advice, but I’m yet to learn this firsthand.

I am a really light sleeper – in that, I mean that I wake at the slightest noise or disturbance, so there’s not much chance of me sleeping through a baby’s wailing during the night, nor me trying to pretend to Claire that I didn’t hear it either!

But I’m actually quite shattered now and the baby's not even here yet! 

I think that this is possibly because Claire has to get up in the night to use the toilet at random intervals..!  No, of course, it’s not Claire’s fault; nor is she doing it intentionally. But I do wake up even if she tries to sneak out of bed, or even if she rolls over in the night. Come to think about it, I used to do this even when she wasn’t pregnant, so it’s definitely a problem with me and my sleeping.

Anyway, what I am trying to say or point-out (badly) is that a pregnant woman does need to use the loo during the night.  Therefore, if you happen to be a light-sleeper, like myself, then you’ll probably notice this too.

The more annoying part, is that Claire is NOT but any means a light sleeper, and so when I wake up in the morning and do my best SAS/cat-burglar/‘sneaking-around-the-room-not-trying-to-wake-Claire’ impression, it’s wasted, as she’d sleep through anyway!  I even use the dim backlight on my mobile phone to pick a pair of socks out of the draw when she’s still in bed...!

Last time Claire saw the midwife, she said that Jack’s head was no longer engaged – A baby's head becomes engaged when it moves down into the pelvic cavity usually a few weeks before birth with first babies.

Apparently, it wasn’t really a problem then, but the midwife wanted to come out again to check after 4 or 5 days just to check again. If the baby’s head wasn’t engaged when Claire’s waters break, we were instructed to make sure that the midwife at Hinchingbrooke hospital sees Claire, as the cord could come first which is dangerous.

After a bit of a cock-up (on her behalf!), the midwife eventually came over to the house the other day to check Claire’s belly out again.

Claire said she wiggled, jiggled and bounced around her belly a bit and she thinks now that Jack’s head is ‘slightly engaged’ now, which is a good thing.

This doesn’t mean that the baby is ready to come out yet. (Much to everyone’s dismay at work so far of course, as they’re dropping off the sweepstake list as each day goes by!)

The other week, Claire was washing up after lunch and was struggling with the big belly in front of her.  The problem was that the belly was sticking out so much, that she was actually standing further away from the sink, meaning she was reaching over. 

I happened to walk into the kitchen to see she was struggling with this, complaining that she couldn’t do the washing up properly.  She explained about the hindering baby-bump against the worktop in front of the sink, and that’s when I knew what I had to do.

Introducing the answer to the problem… the Yellow Pages!  Not in the sense of using it to buy a dishwasher, or calling someone up to get them in or anything like that.  No.  For her to stand on, of course!

The extra couple of inches in height gave Claire the ability to simply stand just that little taller, meaning that she could rest her bump on the edge of the sink.  This, in turn, means that she can stand closer to the sink, continuing the job at hand!

And before you start thinking that I make my heavily pregnant wife do the dishes, I don’t. In fact, trying to stop her doing it is the tricky bit!

As the birth-date is getting closer and closer, I am technically in the paternity time that I have booked at work!  I had to book a 2 week window of paternity time in the annual leave diary, but my employers are very flexible in that I actually start my time off when we rush off to hospital, it seems.

Having said that, I am having to assume that, each evening as I leave, that I may not be back in tomorrow morning, and I have to make sure that my work is available to others in the office and that it’s in a fit state that it won’t break the build! (It’s a geeky term, if you’re that curious, I’ll explain later!)

Claire has said that she’s been working to this expectant out-of-office time for six months or so, as she’s been having to book locum pharmacists 6 months or so in advance.  So, I guess she’s had a bit more time to get used to it, whereas I’ve only had it for a few days now..!

But it is quite strange in that I'm expected to not appear at work one day soon...  It's a strange feeling.

Today is the 18th January, and the baby is *due* on the 21st.

It’s a bit of weird thing really, as the 21st is only really a midwife’s or a doctor’s estimate, which is based on the baby’s size at the 12 week scan.  And as we’re not expecting the baby in the next few days, we’re not entirely sure as to when we can expect to meet the nipper.

Even though that sounds like a daft and possibly blindingly-obvious thing to say, it doesn’t help Claire really, as now that she’s finished work (on Christmas Eve) she’s had a few weeks of doing not-that-much at home, which means that time seems to go by much slower.  As Claire’s been getting bigger and bigger over the last several months, doing general ‘stuff’ is a bit more difficult.  Don’t get me wrong, she’s hardly loafing-out in front-of the TV all day, but still, I’ll bet the days are a drag.

For me too, it seems like we’ve made it all this way and although I’m of the opinion that a few more days is neither here nor there over 39/40 weeks or so, but I do admit that I’d rather the big day was tomorrow than next week.  Bit like being a kid waiting for Christmas to arrive..!

Since Claire fell pregnant, she has had a her head and internet browser constantly buried in the Baby Centre website (www.babycentre.co.uk), which not only provides loads of information related to babies, (focusing mainly around a forum), but the website sends out weekly emails too.

The weekly emails are bite-sized ‘teasers’ of what’s going on with your baby at each stage of the process, which are interesting enough for new dads too, but without being bombarded with too much information.  The email comes through as a single paragraph of text, plus a sketched cross-section image of the mum’s belly with a baby inside. The email is very well worded, as it helps to relate to what's going on in there, either by comparing the baby's size to something you can picture (like a small fruit), or by describing how he or she is moving around, or what they should be feeling about now, etc.

Also on the email is a whole load of follow-on hyperlinks to more pages, but I tended to ignore those.

'Birth-clubs' are another part of the Baby Centre website, whereby a new mum (or dad for that point!) can register into the month of the expected birth and speak to other expectant mums, posting questions and comments about their pregnancy, problems, funny moments, etc. 

I don’t think Claire’s ever felt the burning desire to contribute to the any of the forums, but she’s certainly had a good time reading it all!

As Claire’s getting nearer and nearer to the due date, she’s now on weekly appointments with the midwife and today was another appointment.

At last week’s appointment, the midwife said that the baby’s head was no longer engaged, as it previously was.  Apparently, this does happen and sometimes the head can be become re-engaged.  But not this week, as the head is still out of the ‘socket’ that is the hips.

I wasn’t there, but Claire said that the midwife had a good ol’ juggle around with the baby’s head, feeling it all round and probably giving young Jack a taste of his upcoming hangovers, when he’s 18+ of course!

The midwife has booked another appointment for Claire for next week to check again if the head is engaged, if not then an appointment with a consultant will be made to find out about the possibility of having the baby induced.  Now this might sound ok, as the baby is nearly due and it’s a controlled induction, but I get the feeling that this doesn’t sit too well with Claire.

But, we’ll see and we’ll keep you posted.

Today is the 13th January 2009 and the baby is due on the 21st, according to those in the know.  Although, having said that, Claire has said all along that she thought the doctors had it wrong, and the baby is actually due on the 26th… We’ll see, I suppose.

Either way, we’re down to a matter of days until the baby is born. Days.  Until our baby is born.  A baby that will be absolutely, 100% reliant on us for everything, from eating, poo-ing and sleeping.  Sounds like a daft thing to say, but it’s becoming more and more real for me particularly.  Of the very few baby books I’ve read a few pages of, I do remember reading somewhere that dad’s don’t feel like it’s all real until nearer the end, with the big smack-in-the-face with the birth.  Well, that sounds right so far..!

It was easy beforehand to make a joke of the fact that the baby was months away when people asked.  Whether it was a means of getting around the subject or just a little light humour for the moment, I’d say something like, “nah, it’s months away” or even, “it’s next year!”, especially when people would say things like “oooh, it’s not long now” or “enjoy yourself while you can, as soon you’ll never be the same again…”.

Distractions
At work, it was suggested that I start a sweep-stake, based on the day of the birth.  It started out being 10 days before through to 10 days after the expected birth, which was a good start, as this gave us 21 days to gamble upon, or a potential 21 people for each day available.  But the dads in the office suggested that this was extended a few more days, as there’s always a chance that the baby could be late.  So, it was pushed from 11th January through until the 4th February, which makes the pot a healthy £25 rich when all sold.  Amazingly, the due date of the 21st January was the last ticket to be drawn from the hat!

With all 25 days sold to 18 happy punters, the days are being crossed off one at a time, not just for them, but for Claire and me too.  It’s easy to concentrate on the sweepstake and think of it as any given chance for a small flutter in the office, but the underlying ‘prize’ is what really matters.

In terms of the ‘baby-stuff’ that one needs, it seems, I think it’s fair to say yes, we have it, regardless of what you ask if we have.  The spare bedroom, which used to be our office upstairs, has been magically transformed into a baby’s room, with prams and high-chairs spreading into the other spare bedroom.  It has to be said, that Claire has done a fantastic job of being chief-in-charge of purchasing. She hasn’t just bought the first thing that she’s seen and wasted loads of money on things that we don’t need, as she has put lots of thought into what has been bought, as well as where it came from etc., and everything that’s here is great.  Admittedly, it was a little overwhelming each day I got back from work to find more and more cardboard boxes from the recent delivery piling up in the hallway upstairs and downstairs too, AND with more parcels at the Royal Mail place in March awaiting collection because we weren’t in at the time.  Days and evenings have disappeared building the wardrobes, cot, cupboards and all that.  All good fun, but hopefully they’ll all get lots of use!

One of the sheets of information given to us by the hospital, was that of what to bring to the hospital.  But then during a recent tour of the hospital, the midwives showing us around did try to encourage us to only bring one bag...! 

Here's the list of what they suggest an expectant mother brings for their stay...

For You (mum)

• Wash bag and toiletries
• Bath towels x2
• Sanitary pads (maternity size!) x2 packets
• Breast pads (even if you are bottle feeding)
• Knickers (disposable if you prefer and high-waisted if having caesarean section) x2 packets
• Dressing gown
• Slippers
• Nightshirt / T-Shirt x3
• Maternity bras x3
• Normal clothes (loose clothing as the ward can be hot & stuffy)
• Small change for payphone, newspapers, sweet trolley etc)
• Books / magazines
• Drink / squash… champagne if you like!!

Extra Things You Need For Labour

• Comfortable T-shirt or something similar (we provide hospital gowns if you prefer to use this)
• Sponge / flannels
• Music / relaxation tape (we have cassette players)
• Snacks (for yourself and your partner, e.g. crisps, sandwiches, chocolate bars, glucose sweets) NB  All main meals are provided for you only
• Camera
• Telephone numbers (for whomever you wish to contact following the birth)
• TENS machine if you have hired one (we do have some on labour ward that you can use)
• Partners please wear cool, comfortable clothing
• All delivery rooms have a wall mounted fan
• Bean bag (if you wish to use one – we do have a small supply of these)
• Massage oil (we do have some on labour ward)

For Baby

• Cotton wool
• Disposable nappies (plenty)
• Scratch mitts
• Hat
• Cardigan
• Babygros, vests / gowns x4
• (Bath towels for baby will be provided)

Don’t forget to organize a car seat!

Blimey! Only one bag!?!

If you're a computer geek like me, you may know that when big companies like Microsoft develop computer software, they give them codenames.

If you're not, then basically, project codenames are the names by which the project is referred to by all concerned, until the the 'final release name' is announced shortly before the product appear on the shelves.

Such as..?
An example is that of Microsoft Windows XP - it's codename during it's development was 'Whistler', which was named after Whistler, British Columbia, where design retreats were held. So, when 'Whistler' was very nearly finished and ready for release to the world, it was announced that it would be called 'Windows XP'. (More here)

So, as I'm a software developer, and technically speaking this baby is a project of ours (albeit a life-long project!), I thought it would be a good idea to give the project a name. Hence, Juniper appeared.

Why Juniper?
Good question. Sadly, it's not named after a ski resort in British Columbia; It's actually one of the ingredients in the Carex foam soap wash in our bathroom, and it didn't sound gender specific, as at the time, we didn't know if the baby was a boy or a girl. T'is true. Daft, but true.

It turns out that, according to Wikipedia, Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the mountains of Central America. (More here)

However, this codenaming of the 'project' needed a little explanation to those outside geeky-developer-world, as some people actually thought it was the name that we had chosen for the sprog, including family as well as friends. It probably didn't help that Claire and I didn't think twice about referring to the baby as 'Juniper' during mid-conversation, even up until very recently.

Claire and I have been thinking about a 'release name' for project Juniper for months and months, and have decided that we're going to call him Jack William Rigby.

As Claire has signed up for as many free baby things as humanly-possible, it seems that we've had lots more baby-related post arrive. Amongst it all, was a leaflet from a company called Baby-Bond offering a 4D scan on unborn babies.

We had read the flyer and looked at the website and it all looked really interesting. (Having said that, at the time of seeing the website, I looked back at Claire and she was balling her eyes out!)

What's a 4D Scan?
Basically, a 4D scan is like a 3D image but in 'real-time'. This means that you can watch your baby moving around inside the belly, picking his nose, etc as if he's just a few feet away from you, sitting upright on the chair or something. This is nothing like the black and white cross-section scans done when you go for a scan on the NHS. I mention that, as this is not a service that the NHS provide, as apparantly, the 4D scans can not provide any data or information with regards to measurements on the baby.

There are different packages, but the marketing is done such that you can't help but want the top-whack package. Bit like Sky TV really.

For our top-whack package, we had the 20-30 minutes of video footage recorded on a DVD, as well as some smaller and shorter video clips and photos on CD, print-outs large and small, etc.

The next package down has just the DVD video with no stills; the next package down again has the CD based stuff but no DVD, etc, so you can see what I mean about the wanting to have the best option, especially as you can ever go back and do it again. So, we were suckered in? Mostly certainly.

As the scan can be done in lots of place across the country, it's basically a case of picking the doctor's surgery near you. So, Claire booked the scan for a bit later in the pregnancy (for more interesting viewing more than anything) and picked a date so the baby was about 27 weeks old and chose a surgery in Peterborough, as it was easier for me to get to as I work there. I even managed it within a lunch-hour!

The scan was very much like having a normal ultra-sound scan, but the only difference being that the TV/monitor at the foot of the bed also had a DVD-recorder and deskjet printer linked to it.

The scanner tool was held against Claire's belly and the usual black and white cross-section image appeared as we've seen several times before at this point, but at the click of a button, the image instantly changed to a 4D scan of young Rigby, with an orange haze to it. (There must be a technical reason for this, as I'm guessing it's dark inside there!)

As 'little Rigby' was about 27 weeks at this point, he was too big to get all of him in a picture at once, so the footage was mainly of his upper torso, head and arms. But, true to form, there, on the screen, was our unborn child waving his hands around and playing with the umbilical cord like it's a toy or something. Claire did have to get up and jump around a little bit to start with, as the cord was looped in front of his face and in our line of view, so to speak. The lady then carried on scanning, changing positions every few minutes to get a different angle, zoom depth, etc. All of this was being recorded to DVD as we were going along, and durng this time, she was also pressing a button to get snapshot still images too, which she printed out later for us.

To be honest, the clarity of the video was amazing considering that this is a non-invasive scan and these video images are coming from sound waves going through Claire's stomach muscles, skin, etc., but it really weird, as it was just like watching a baby in front of us, watching as he moved his head, lips, hands and fingers. He even found the ol' Rigby charm by sticking a fore-finger up his nose, just when the lady clicked the button to take a photo! (Guess which one I chose to have blown up to A4 size...?)

The recording went on for quite a while, which was good as it really felt like you was getting your money's worth, but soon our time was up and the lady proceeded to finalise the video on the DVD whilst printing images and burning the other files (short video clip and photos) to the CD in the laptop. The photos are good, but they don't really portray the same as what we saw on the screen.

All in all, the session was good and we enjoyed it. We'll be able to look back in years and years to come and see what was waiting for us. It maybe doesn't have the same appeal to others, but to us, it was good and special and all that.

Ages ago, whilst shopping in what felt like the world's biggest Mothercare shop, I went wandering off and found one of these kits for 'moulding a bump' - basically, a Plaster of Paris set to take a mould of the belly... fantastic.

Amazingly, Claire didn't whisk it out of the shopping basket and so we bought it for £16 or so, and since then it's sat in the back of a wardrobe, as her 'bump' wasn't that impressive.  With the recent comments of the midwife that the sprog can appear at any time, Claire mentioned the kit and this morning, we used it.

The box didn't have any instructions, but found this set of instructions to taking a real-life cast on the internet literally 5 minutes before, which sort-of saved the day, as it certainly wasn't how I was thinking that I was going to do it..!

Anyway, I was hoping to get a few mid-action photos, but Claire wasn't really that impressed with the idea of me taking a photo of her standing very-nearly-naked in the bathroom wearing a plaster of paris cover on her belly, especially as she knew I wanted to put them on here!

Actually, it was a good job that no-one saw us, as I particularly looked a bit dodgy sporting the surgical gloves that come in the pack and with bandages, towels and water everywhere except where it needed to be.

All good fun, but it took at about an hour to do in total and the cast is still drying as I write this now. 

It does look a bit weird, but the result is great.  I just need to find a way of hanging it on the wall or something, as it's quite fragile.

So, my wife, Claire, is 38 at weeks at the moment, and we are expecting a baby boy anytime now (according to the midwife), as she is technically 'full-term'. 

We went for a scan on New Year's Eve 2008, whereby we was told that young Junior is estimated at being about 8lbs now and could be 9-9.5lbs at birth, if born on the 40th week.  These calculations have all been done by measurements of the circumference of the head and abdomen, as well as thigh-bone length.  All measurements are recorded on-screen during the scan and held on an NHS computer somewhere.  The results are plotted on graph print-outs each time by the midwife and given to the parents, as this forms an on-going record that they can grab at any time and run off to the hospital when needed.

They also told us that the baby has a slightly larger than normal head circumference, for the 'average' babies at this age, which is highlighted on the graphs, as his head-size is outside the projected lines of min and max.  But they also said not to worry, as this is nothing abnormal, and that babies born like that balance out over time. 

Of course, the first thing that Claire's realised, is that this baby is going to be a fair size to give birth to! Possibly 9lb baby, with a huge head too... I can't see the problem myself - good job that women don't get Man-Flu.  Where would we be then?