Videoblogging theoretics, being the media, and the completely improvised future of a world currently without rhyme, reason or good beetroot fertiliser.
Louise's blood pressure went up over night, but she and baby are still doing well. We think we may hear something later this afternoon.
Louise rang me this morning (Tuesday) at 7:30am, and said that her blood pressure had spiked overnight, and that they had decided to pull the baby out. I posted a short rather ambiguous blog post to keep family and friends off our backs, and headed off to the hospital.
At 1pm, we were taken to theatre, where Louise was given a spinal and an epidural. 10 minutes after that, the anesthetist told us that there'd be a sucking noise, then a pull, then the baby would pop out quite quickly, at which point we could both look over the screen over Louise's face and have a quick look.
Luckily I had my A1P running, and at 2:32pm, Molly Claire was born, all 31cm and 2.1Kg (4.6 pounds) of her (which I managed to capture on video). After a quick medical check up due to being 5 weeks premature, Mummy had a quick cuddle, and off we went to neonatal, where she was given a yummy warm 32.4c humidicrib to rest in, and apart from a short visit from some new grandparents later that night, she's been happily sleeping most of the rest of the day. Louise is also doing very well, and may well be up on her feet by tomorrow, but we'll see.
It's been a very long day, and I haven't even talked about the second flat tyre I got last night. Maybe later... Thank you to everytone who sent messages, they were much appreciated, and we wll get back to you at some point.
Today Louise got up and was walking around a little, hard to believe considering she was on the operating table and completely cut open the day before. What a testament to modern medicine.
When Molly was born, I went with her to neonatal, and spent about 40 minutes with her while mum was being stitched up, and then headed back to Louise's room to find out how she was, but her room was empty and the nurses didn't know where she was. I found out later that the orderly had pushed her bed into neonatal to see Molly, and I had left just as she arrived. So until today, we hadn't actually seen Molly at the same time. So today we went together and had nice cuddles. It's only now that it's becoming so real.
Louise overdid it a bit though, and ended up around lunchtime with high blood pressure again, and needing a lot of rest. Molly's other grandmother also came to see her today which was really nice, as she travelled for four hours to do so. Molly's now met both sides of grandparents. :-)
As for going forward, tomorrow Louise will hopefully move to the pump, after we've spent the last few days hand expressing, and she'll try to take the day a little more carefully.
Molly is doing great, she did her first little poo today (Louise will probably ask me to remove this bit, so you're lucky you read it first :-) ), and she's a little jaundiced, but this is fairly normal.
Thanks again to all the people sending their wishes via sms and email etc., we will try to reply in a few weeks, because we're a little busy right now, so don't take it personally. We aren't taking visitors yet outside of close family, because both are trying to get their health up, so please, call me if you want any information, or if you'd like me to send you some photos. Hopefully by the weekend Louise will be up to seeing a few people, but we're not sure at this point.
A couple of quick things from the last few days. When I drove to see Louise on Monday night before the birth, I parked outside of the car park. When I came back, one of the rear tyre was flat. What are the chances that I'd get two flats on two cars in two days? My spare is one of those little dicky wheels, and it was flat, so I had to walk to a servo to pump it up before changing it. First our two cars are locked up inside a car park, next thing two cars have flat tyres. Nice. He's still an arse though.
On Tuesday I parked in the car park, because I was over it. On the way out, the car park guy asked if I'd had a baby today. Strange that over the five days he never asked, except the day when Molly was born. Weird. He also told me about the special visitor car park which is a token fee and really cheap, but I said I hadn't had a chance to organise it yet. Louise had only just told me about it. When I left the car park today, he scolded me for yet again not using the cheaper car park. I'm starting to think he's not an arse.
For those of you not interested in my personal blog posts, you can filter my RSS feed to exclude them. Just click on customise... in the left menu. There's only going to be a few more though, so it's probably best just to deal with the remaining few.
Louise and Molly are both doing well. Louise's blood pressure is normalising, and she's now up and walking around some of the time, and she can even walk to the nursery now to see Molly. Speaking of whom, Molly's drinking more and more, and her vitals are looking great. Mum and I had long cuddles yesterday, and I sat with her for several hours as well.
However, as mentioned earlier (not sure what the group noun for disasters is, probably "bloody heaps") but disasters do all come at once with me. The previous night I managed to get to the special window which dispenses the really cheap car parking, but I got there at 5pm, when it closes at 3:30pm, so I had to pay another $20 dollars in parking.
The next day, yesterday, Louise was due to do her first breast feed at 3pm after a bit of a rest, so I headed off to the cheap parking window again at around 1pm, and was going to walk home (I'd walked to the hospital) and do an emergency shop because we're out of necessities at home, like Phoebe's food! So I got to the window and there's a queue. I only had 2 hours to spare to get it and the shopping done before the first breast feed, so I was a little frustrated at having to wait 15 minutes for the rude nurse in front of me to organise parking for her shift change. Got to the window, and was told just fill in the form (which they'd already given us) and go to a different window. Grr... I started to fill in the form, but needed the license plate for Louise's car, which through lack of sleep I couldn't remember. So I figured I'll check it when I get home and hand in the form at 3pm when I got back, just before the window closes at 3:30pm. Annoying, but doable.
As soon as I walked in the door at home, there was a message on the office phone that one of my clients' server was down. I spent the next 4 hours sitting in the hosting providers control panel, waiting for them to do diagnostics. Yes, the one day of the year when I wanted to see mum and baby breast feed for the first time, this server had decided to shit itself. I missed the 3pm thing, I didn't get the emergency shop, and I missed the 3:30pm cheap parking window, which means I'm up for yet another $20 in parking next time. The day was completely written off for me.
The diagnostics on the server ran until about 5am, indicated a drive failure, and I'm now waiting on them to tell me when I can start rebuilding the box. Yep, my entire Friday, day 4 of my baby's birth, is now going to be spent rebuilding a web server. I also had a hair cut bleach and dye appointment today, which is also going to be missed, and I'm guessing it won't be until much later tonight that I get back to the hospital.
I did manage to get out last night for about an hour during diagnostics to do the shopping and a very quick visit to Molly, but because I missed the cheap parking window, I also got an $81 parking fine. What else would you expect...
And that is today's update. I'll post again once I'm off work time and back into mum and baby time. Both are doing well, both miss me.
When you do a 32 hour straight server rebuild on day 3 of your baby's premature birth, the world seems insane and surreal, and when the frustration subsides a little, and you see that cute little baby's innocent face, you realise how pointless anger can be, and how much you love your new family member. Having spent the last few days pretty much in Molly's face and ears (talking to her), I felt like I was letting her down by not being able to visit and comfort her, and I would have gladly swapped the rebuild for a dozen parking fines and flat tyres.
So I got to the end of Friday with most of the web site up and running, and I trudged off to the hospital full of pent up anger. Any parking ticket, flat tyre or crap from a parking officer would have resembled a scene from Falling Down, at least the middle action part anyway. And lucky there weren't any of those smoker types hanging around the front entrance to the hospital, or emergency would have been busy tonight. You know the ones, those pathetic scum, many of whom are patients in hospital gowns and who are holding on to a drip, right next to the front door where there's a sign which says "Hospital Grounds Are Smoke Free". Don't these selfish losers care that their second hand smoke to shortening the lives of everyone going in and out of the hospital? A hospital for God's sake!
It took me an hour with Molly to calm down, then an hour with Louise to mellow a little, and then another hour with Molly to make me happy again. Today she did a big poo, which was great, and is now taking 2ml of food each hour. She's the calmest and happiest baby in the nursery, and they reckon in a few days she'll no longer need the canular. Mum is also doing excellently, with her blood pressure pretty much normal most of the time, she's up and walking about, and learning heaps about breasts and pumps and stuff. I would have too, but I instead spent the day with vi and Apache, which is not a even substitute.
Hopefully early next week, both Louise and Molly will be up to having visitors. We'll see.
Yesterday they took out Molly's drip, and now she's taking 10mls of milk every hour. She's still got her canular in, just in case, but they're unlikely to use it again and may take it out later today. She's had her day 4 screening tests, which all babies have on day 4, and her incubator temperature is now around 31.5c as she gets better at regulating her own temperature. Today will be her 5th day birthday. Last night the staff put a cute little pink singlet on her, and for once she looked like a little girl instead of a little Raggedy Ann doll.
Louise is doing OK. She had a spike in her blood pressure last night, which is a bit of a concern, and her liver function hasn't completely returned to normal, but she's in OK spirits now that she can visit Molly on her own now. We're now thinking best case for her would be a Monday discharge, but more likely Wednesday.
Last night we had yet another car stolen from our street. I woke at 4:45am to the sound of someone trying to pop a lock, which I thought was just Phoebe trying to get into my office. When I heard a car door open and an engine start, I realised it was another theft, so I jumped up to make sure it wasn't one of ours. Knowing my luck over the last few days, the odds were surely against me, but thankfully it wasn't one of ours.
Oh, and Mark Webber qualified on the front row for the British GP, so... strange days indeed...
First up, we've been getting requests for photos, so we've uploaded all the ones we've taken. You can see them at www.kashum.com/molly but you'll need a user and password to get at them. SMS me if you haven't received a copy of the password yet. Note that the photos are quite down rezed, so if you want to print them out, let me know and I can send you the full rez ones.
Today Molly was moved from High Dependency to Special Care, which is the final step of three for monitored babies before they're discharged. She had her drip and canular removed, and no longer has any ECG dots attached. She slept most of the afternoon and early evening with a smile on her face. She's doing exceptionally well, and is the star of the whole nursery.
Mum is also doing well, her bloody pressure has dropped back down to normal Louise levels, and her expressing is going well. Neither of us are getting any sleep, we're flat out just adapting to and keeping up with all the changes, and we haven't even gone home from the hospital yet!
I got to the hospital at around 11am today, and the first thing Louise said was "they just said I can go home". So as with every day, our plans go out the window before the day has even started. We spent the rest of the day doing Louise going home things, like empty her room, thanking all the awesome midwives in 6 East 3, and picking up Molly's paperwork.
I'd walked to the hospital, so I had to walk home again to get the car. I figured this would finally be a good time to get the cheap parking offered by the hospital, because if you remember, there's usually some kind of disaster which befalls me just as I'm about to do it. This time there was luckily no disaster.
The form which you fill in, has the patient details in the corner, and the form we had was for Louise. I told her that Louise was being discharged today, so did we need to get a new form with Molly's name, or would the Louise one be fine. For once the answer was no problem, I could just use the form with Louise on it. Great I thought, having just been lured into a false sense of security. It was then that lady said, when you've paid here, take the receipt to the parking lady's counter, but she's not actually in today. The upshot was, in case there weren't any car parking spots, she wanted to do both parts of the form on the same day. Great, prevented again.
We spent the afternoon tracking down a pump and sterilising that so that we could take Molly some express later in the evening. Louise felt like eating Indian, so we had some takeaway, and headed back to the hospital at 8:30pm. As we opened the door to the house, we were struck by a thunder storm. I kid you not, literally as we stepped out of our front door...
So after 12 days in hospital, when Louise thought she was just going in during lunch for a quick check up, we have one lady now back home. Only one little lady left to go, hopefully in about 2-3 weeks, they're now just waiting for her to grow.
Tonight at the hospital they were talking about possibly moving Molly out of the incubator and into a cot, maybe tomorrow. Louise and I think it's too soon, but we'll see. They're been gradually dropping the temperature of the incubator over the last 24 hours, and getting her used to wearing clothes. The question is, can she regulate her own temperature well enough.
Louise spent the day at the hospital with Molly, while I was off at a client satisfying my contractual obligations. Later tonight we both went up and did her midnight cares, which consists of: taking her temperature (it was 36.8c), changing her nappy, putting thrush cream on her bum, and changing which limb the heart rate monitor LED is on.
Day 14 of our hospital ideal, and day 9 of Molly in the world. She's now about 35 and a half weeks. The parents are coping, but exhausted. We still have two flat tyres to fix, everyone to start thanking, and a bunch of other stuff, but are experiencing a lot of different takeaway foods, and there is good news from the hospital today.
It just goes to show that Mum and Dad never know best. Molly was moved from her crib into a cot today at around 11am, because she can now regulate her temperature at around 36-37c. She's wrapped snug as a bug most of the time, to make sure she's coping. She's now taking in 27mls of milk every two hours, which is huge compared to the 2mls every four hours she was having on day 2, And at 10pm tonight they finally took her off the monitor, so no more monitoring cables stuck to her foot. This leaves only the green feeding tube that you see in the photos. She's still doing exceptionally well, so she must have inherited Louise's good health.
Twice today and once yesterday, she decided to test the new parents by waiting until they'd removed her nappy, cleaned her up, and were just putting on the new nappy, before shitting and pissing everywhere, and making us have to change all her clothes, blankets and even her bed. I guess that's the first time I've swore on here since the family have been regularly reading along. Sorry about that, but I'm sure you've all been through it. This cutie certainly has class.
We're still enforcing a no visitors policy, because every day is a big step for her, and whenever we arrive at the hospital in the morning, we end up having to completely change our plans and run around like mad things all day. I know a lot of you want to come see her, but please be patient while she works her way through this critical period. We've updated the photos again, so hopefully they will tide you over until she's ready to party on with new people.
And as I mentioned at the top, we haven't even begun to even think about thanking people, so if you've sent kind wishes or presies, thank you heaps we appreciate it, and we will be in touch at some point. I was so tired today, I accidentally erased a bunch of SMS', so if we don't actually get back to you, please don't think we're being rude.
Oops, I forgot to mention that we finally got the cheap parking organised. Louise sorted it out yesterday, after having two visits each to both the payment office and the parking lady. We now have a $15 per week parking space, which is awesome, but is disappointing when I think about all the money and suffering I'd been through with the public car park, when we could have had this all along. When driving in to park today, I also noticed that it doubles as a public car park as well, which means even without the special rate, I could have been paying just $5 per day from the very start. :-(
Regardless, that's hopefully the end of the car parking saga.
It's Friday, and the beginning of the third week of this ongoing saga. Molly is now on 4th hourly feeds, just like a regular baby, and she's had all of her cables and cords removed, even her feeding tube, which they now only put in at feeding time.
This week has been hard for Louise and I, dealing with regular day to day stuff, medical stuff and at the same time always visiting Molly to make sure she's OK. We're not getting enough sleep, but we know at least we know it, and have vowed to work on that over the next few days.
No disasters over the last few days, although my client's server which I rebuilt last week has started having problems again, meaning I spent most of the day working on that. I think it's now fixed, but we'll see.
Every day in hospital is now just waiting on Molly to grow, and to get to where she can breast feed. We have no idea when that will be, we think up to three weeks, but it's just going to be day by day at this point. So I'm going to slacken off the blogging, unless something amusing or interesting happens. Thanks for reading along. I will still be updating the photos every day however.
Apart from some more server work and finally getting my hair done, we spent two shorter stints at the hospital today. Molly as per usual is doing excellently, and is completely asleep and at peace when all of the other babies in Special Care are crying their heads off. We did well and got some sleep over night, be we wrecked it tonight, as you can see by the time stamp of this post. No other news really, just counting down the days until she gets out. It's kind of like prison I guess, she got 3 weeks locked away for being too cute. More photos to upload, but too tired right now, I'll do them tomorrow.
Molly's still plumping up at the fat farm, AKA RPA Womens and Babies Special Care Unit. Louise is getting more sleep, and more regular on her expresses. And I'm having more client server problems which means this may well be the first day that I don't get to see Molly.
About six months ago, Louise's brother offered to send us her family's traveling container load of clothes and equipment, as they'd been the last ones in Louise's large family to have a baby. I was initially resistant because I wanted to experience the joy of learning about what we needed for our baby, to do detailed research into what the best or appropriate ones were to buy, and to not just have a DIY kit of everything you need just turn up on our doorstep. Louise didn't see that side of it, she just wanted the container full, her family's instant baby care kit.
So anyway, I never did any research, but they were kind enough to send us a list of what would be in the container load, and as I was reading through, my head went into spin, realising that I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. So I passed the list back to Louise and said "just tell them to send it all". Molly hadn't even been born, and she was already making her own decisions and thwarting my plans for how I wanted to experience fatherhood.
Now the rush was on to make room in the house. It never happened. Louise kept on holding off on sending it, thinking that at some point we'd have a nice free day to go through the house, clean up all the junk, and make some space. But we didn't. Then Molly dropped in, and I just looked at Louise and said frantically "where's that &*^%#@$&^ container load!".
So it's been a daily thing, Molly's doing better every day, and every day we get closer to her coming home, and every day we think "we have nothing, where's that damn container load". Our neighbours suggested that an old drawer has been known to double nicely as a cot and with a bit of Selleys Liquid Nails, also a bath. Phoebe our cat will probably double quite nicely as a soft toy. And I have an old billy cart that will probably end up being our pram.
It's all my fault of course. I have these silly ideas about how I want to experience life, and quicker than expected, we're in the thick of it all. We think about a week until Molly comes home, and somewhere out there there's a train heading it's way to Sydney, with an ETA of roughly... ooh, about a week.
Molly is doing well, Louise is doing well, and Richard is doing well. We're all getting sleep, and while the world is still spinning upside down, we are starting to get a handle on things.
I was with a client all day in town, but I was looking forward to heading to the hospital tonight with Louise. We'd both done small little bits of bathing Molly on our own, but this was going to be our first real family bath, just the three of us. It got me through the day.
Around lunch time, my Mum and Dad came to town and helped Louise get the tyres fixed, because she's not allowed to drive for six weeks. Turns out the tyres had been slashed. Nice one. Just what we need right now. Because they were slashed, they couldn't be fixed, but had to be replaced. Louise was lucky, but mine was no longer available, so now I have one odd wheel, and three the same. Well, not really, because the dicky wheel is still on my car, and it won't be for a few days yet until I get some time to change it with the new odd one. Louise also got her car cleaned inside and out, ready for the big trip home from the hospital.
Over the last few days, we've kept hearing "a week", so we're estimating Molly may well be heading home next Monday, fingers crossed. But if it takes longer, then that's fine, she's in the best place in the world right now for a baby. And we got an official ETA today on Louise's DIY instant baby care container. Tuesday. :-)
I got home from work and we headed off to the hospital at around 7pm, and the hospital already knew we were coming. The plan was a bath and a change, then a feed, just the three of us. Louise had been at the hospital for several hours today, but could only spend a short amount of time with Molly, as she had a check up and other bits and pieces to do, and of course I hadn't seen her since Monday.
When we got there, we started to get everything ready. We were a little nervous, first time alone and all, but felt confident. I'd seen it done quite a few times (and different every time), but Louise had only seen it once, so I helped her get ready with what I already knew. We started filling up the bath, and turned to see that Molly's nurse had brought the cot over, which was a little annoying because I was going to do that once everything was ready. No matter. Louise and I had a quick chat about what clothes to put on her, form the ones provided by the hospital, and I turned around to see that the nurse had now moved Molly onto the table and undressed her. Grrr.
Louise prepared a few wipes and again the nurse jumped in a finished filling and checking the bath, then quite condescendingly told Louise how she should be doing it at home, which was completely different to how the other two nurses had described it.
Then things got out of control, the nurse let us remove and clean the nappy, but then jumped in again a washed her hair and head, and then went to place Molly in the bath, before Louise jumped in and said she's like to do it. At this point I had to stand back, because two women were competing for Molly, and I couldn't see anything that was happening. The nurse gave Louise some more condescending advice, and then took Molly and bathed her front as yet another demo, but didn't let Louise do it. She then placed Molly on a towel, Louise started to dry her, and then the nurse jumped in and did the rest. So much for our family night. The most annoying thing, was the whole time the nurse kept telling Louise what she was doing wrong, but she wasn't actually doing anything wrong!
Louise was supposed to try another breast feed tomorrow, with one of the lactation consultants, but the nurse said she would help her now, and ran off to get some screens. Screens? We've never used screens before. Would there be room for me behind the screen as well? Or just room for the nurse and Molly. While she was out of the room, I sneakily ran over and dressed Molly. Naughty me, dressing my own daughter. Hope I don't get in trouble for having 2 minutes with her today.
At this point Louise had a phone call from a brother and a nephew, who were about to visit, so she walked out to take the call. I turned around and saw that the nurse had positioned three screens around a lounge chair, with only really enough room for the chair. I put Molly back in her cot and went to tell Louise that she was going to have to go through with it. I ended up changing places with Louise outside, with her coming in to do the feed, and me waiting outside for her family to arrive.
After about 15 minutes, Louise came out again and said the feed wasn't overly sucessful, and that the nurse had corrected her on everything she did. However Louise had then explained that we actually did have a plan for the night, and said that she would wait for the family with me feeding Molly. I tried to say no, because only three at a time are allowed in, and when the family arrives it would make much more sense that they go in to Louise than me. But no, Louise was insistent.
So I went back in and found that not only had the nurse put Molly back in her cot after the attempted breast feed, but she'd completely wrapped her up and tucked her in. She's also put in her feeding tube, and she said "oh, and I took her temperature and she's normal". We didn't even get to take her temperature ourselves, which we always do. Then she asked if I wanted to hold her for the feed. Well, what on earth does she expect? She's completely tucked in, and she was falling asleep, so as if I'm going to take her out again and wake her up.
The nurse started to get the feed ready, but at this point I'd had enough and said "I'll do that", and so I think she started to figure out we weren't particularly impressed. So I ended up spending 10 minutes injecting her food into her mouth while she was asleep in her cot, which involves mainly looking at the syringe the whole time, not Molly, in order to get the injection rate right. She then fell asleep, and Louise and I talked over her for about 15 minutes about rebellion and escape from captivity, our metaphoric fingers in the air against "da man", before we had to head home again.
The only nice part of the night was when Louise's brother and nephew came in, one at a time of course, because only three are allowed at a time, but I love it when Molly can melt anyone's heart, even from several metres away.
We've had a mostly wonderful experience at RPA. It's an awesome hospital, with great staff, and leading edge ideas about parent and baby bonding, with a focus on the parents driving as much as possible while baby is in hospital. Obviously not everyone's perfect, but I will personally single out the exceptional work of Bridget (who was fantastic in HDU), Helen, Jenny, Dianne and Hayley.
I won't say tonight was a disaster, because we did have time as a family unit, even though it was ever so short, and we didn't really do much. But it was a bit of a shame, after such a build up we'd both had, and it did cause me to lose even more sleep by staying up until 2am to finish this blog post. Lots more happened today, but I'll blog that another time.
The three of us did however come up with a cunning escape plan. Louise is going to distract the nurses by having Molly switch to fully breast or bottle feeds, and then Molly will have to be discharged from Special Care, and we'll make our escape. Me? I'm the getaway driver of course. I just need to get that fourth wheel back on, and the capsule fitted... but that's for another day.
Up until yesterday, we've been kindly refusing help from family and friends. Mainly because our days never go to plan. At night we come up with a schedule for the next day, and as soon as we get to the hospital, the day spirals completely out of control, and fitting in other people becomes impossible. My parents have spent hours in the waiting lounge for Louise and I to find a gap when they can visit, and this is after making a huge hole for it in our schedule the night before. Also, most jobs or tasks would involve me having to stay at home and explain them anyway, so we simply told people to wait off until things started to settle down.
Yesterday that all finally changed. I've already mentioned getting the tyres fixed, but my Mum and Dad were beaten to the punch by a few hours when Louise's sister and boyfriend delivered what can only be described as a DIY instant soup convention! Our fridge and freezer are now completely full of soup, all shapes and sizes, all colours and densities, and going by last night's effort, all damn yummy and easy to prepare. Not to mention so much more cheaper than takeaway every night.
It's been about 4 weeks since we did a food shop, but we were finally able to do one on Monday, so it hasn't been all bad food wise. But this will now set us up for about ooh, a month? Or at least until Molly comes home that's for sure. Maybe that will be our first meal as a family.
And also yesterday, my Mum gave Louise a shawl that she had used for me when I was a baby, knitted by my grandmother. It is in absolute pristine condition, as if it had just been bought from a high class knit shop, and while this is quite normal for Mum, apparently there is a small stain somewhere, not that we could find it. Apparently my (younger) sister had also used it. Ahh, whether to use it for Molly, or file it away as a valuable heirloom... When we opened it, both Louise and I were in tears. I even had to sit down to steady myself... Mum's been doing that recently, every few weeks something turns up from when I was a baby, 42 years ago. Strange times indeed..
How quickly fortunes change. A few weeks back I got addicted to McDonalds soft serve cones. Feel free to have a go at me for supporting the pig fat breeding programs in the Amazon, sponsored by the timber industry and gay whales etc., but they've been a sanity saver. In times of trouble always find a naughty soft addiction I reckon. I've been rating my days by how many cones I have. Most days have been a two cone day, but I did have a really bad four cone day at some point.
Louise is now having cone days as well. And surprisingly it's got a lot of cred attached to it, depending on your delivery. We were in Woolworths on Monday night for our first shop in a while, and as a trendy Newtown couple came past us, I said to Louise "I so need a cone later, what do you reckon". I could actually feel the indie cred oosing out of me, and wafting all around us. I hoped the couple were listening, I think they were. Or at least I did up until the point where Louise replied "which McDonalds, Parramatta Rd?"
But bad cone days have now turned into happy cone days, and today is (so far) a happy two cone day.
We got to the hospital at around 10:45am, and threw out the day's schedule at around 11:50am. I did cares, while Louise got ready to try a breast feed. Suffice to say, it worked. Today was Molly's first real breast feed! The nurses have even given her a little certificate to prove it (photos coming soon, just keep watching the photos page).
Louise then headed home to catch up with her sister and her boyfriend, who were going to help her clean up a bunch of stuff lying around from her pre-birth work, you know, that infamous Thursday when Louise thought she'd be back from hospital after lunch. And as it is Wednesday, she also went to meet the cleaners. After all, I'd done it last time. I just went to find the post where I talked about Molly day #2 and the cleaners arriving just as her grandmother arrived at the hospital, but it looks like I never wrote that one up. I'll have to do that another time. So much for the disasters you write about, and the ones you don't.
So then I finished up by doing a bottle feed, just me and Molly, and her first one! What an exciting day, her first breast feed and her first bottle feed. We figure that's a great start to our secret escape plan, to bust Molly outa there by next Monday!
Did I mention that my car's rego expired a few days ago, and I obviously can't get a pink slip until I have four wheels on the car?
The Great Escape is now looking more like Wednesday. Molly is now having two breast with bottle top up feeds per day, out of a possible four, but it's tiring her out. She's going to need a little more time to get used to it. Now whenever she's IG (Intragastric, feeding through the tube), she also gets a dummy, to try to stimulate the sucking impulse. It's working, it's just a lot of work for her. Today she also had her very first proper cry, a sign of things to come I'm sure.
Louise stepped up her milk production today, jumping from the mid sized container up to the large sized container. Sounds like one of those big metal milking pales in a dairy the way I mention it, but the large ones are about 40mls and made of disposable see through plastic, much like an oversize takeaway tartare sauce tub you'd get with your fish and chips. U.S. readers can look that one up in wikipedia under English icons.
My client with the failing server is still ticking away. Tonight we moved the hard drives and RAM into a new chassis, to try to find what's causing our ongoing hanging issues, so we'll see how that goes. The race is on against my client, the DIY instant baby care container, and Molly coming home. My bet at this point is on the container.
And the days don't get any shorter or less weirder. The city was completely empty of traffic and people today as Young Catholics Week took over Sydney, and his papalness did several laps of the CBD, perhaps in preparation for Randwick on Sunday. It was just like the Olympics and APEC, only Sydneysiders were this time not so much frustrated, but more let's get it over with already. And if you missed him, no problem, you can see him from anywhere on the harbour, projected up onto the south eastern tower of the Harbour Bridge, 24x7 until Sunday. Some government marketing wizz must have come up with that one. I wonder if they'll offer the same thing to the Dalai Lama next time he visits. We also had our first Scared Scriptless show at the Harold Park Hotel tonight, which was a pretty good start, and surprisingly free of pope jokes.
We'd planned the weekend. Even though it is only Sunday morning, dear reader you should have already guessed the rest of the story.
Saturday (yesterday) morning we did a little breast feed, and Louise's brother, sister in law, nephew and niece all came to see Molly. Special Care has a bunch of rules that we need to follow, such as: not allowing more than three people at a time to visit, including parents; not looking at any other babies in the ward; no long sleeves; scrubbing hands and arms up to the elbow; and no children allowed unless they're actually siblings of the baby. So unfortunately Louise's niece couldn't see Molly, but that's OK, she'll have a special treat once Molly is home, to help make amends.
So with Louise bottle feeding Molly, I brought them all in one at a time. Most people are used to dropping a baby, having it in the mother's hospital room for a few days and then heading home, so the RPA nursery can be a bit of a shock to parent who've done it the easy way. It's effectively an emergency ward for babies, which makes sense considering Molly is now roughly 36 and a half weeks old, and in theory still having about 3 weeks before she's supposed to be born. Even though she's now coming up to her 3rd week birthday.
We had a sleep in the afternoon and came back to do a quick breast feed in the evening. She's still not doing full feeds, she needs a 40ml bottle top up after the breast feed, and she's still having only two of those a day, with the other five feeds still going in via the IG (feeding tube).
So around 7pm we did a breast feed and a bottle top up, and Louise went off to express some milk while I held Molly. We sang a few songs ("Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin was a favourite, so maybe she'll be a drummer), and played hi-5 a lot, until Louise came back 30 minutes later. As I stood up, I noticed an extra yellow patch on my Scared Scriptless tshirt, which for a second looked just part of the tshirt, until I noticed it was... poo.. lots of it. Then we noticed the poo all up her legs and arms, now all over the cot, and even inside her identification bands.
Molly is notorious for peeing during nappy changes, and a few days ago I got to eight nappy changes in a row where this was the case. But this was the first time she'd pooed so much that it all came out the sides.
In the ward there's four disposal bags. One each for baby clothes, towels and linen, soiled (to be destroyed) waste (pooey things), and normal waste. I was cleaning my tshirt off, because I had nothing else to wear, not knowing whether I should be cleaning it over their sink or not, and I ended up with completely soaked clothes, but still a slight poo stain. Meanwhile, we'd planned to have a lovely Sunday having a bath day, so we decided with the nurses to move that forward, and do an emergency poo bath.
After some quizzing from the nurses, we realised that Molly had probably just experienced her first cajun spicy chicken, which Louise had eaten the night before. Start them early I reckon. Louise has been trying all sorts of things she hasn't been allowed to eat for the last nine months, so who knows what delights Molly will experience over the next few weeks. Louise had just had curry chicken for lunch, so the next few days should be interesting.
Meanwhile at the bath, she was completely covered in poo, from arm to toe, which was a wonderful experience. But as the nurses keep saying, a few weeks in Special Care can be a blessing in disguise, because while most parents are left to fend or themselves from the get go, Louise and I will have several weeks of learning the ropes with the experts. We're already completely comfortable with all her regular maintenance and cares, and know a whole bunch of tricks and techniques, and we haven't even gotten her home yet.
So we got her all cleaned up and tucked in and headed home to sleep. I of course still had my own cleaning to do once I'd gotten home, after producing our very first piece of soiled clothing.
They said we can now take her outside for an hour in a hospital pram, to either the hospital cafe, or the McCafe up the road, so that's a our focus for today, a family pram expedition, most likely just to the hospital cafe for lunch. Whether Mum decides to have another curry is another story altogether.
Today went to plan. Give or take. We had our very first family perambulation, form the nursery to the local cafe in the hospital, effectionately known by some of the staff as Hepatitus Harry's. Molly slept through the entire thing, and didn't actually see anything outside the nursery. The nursery and the operating theatre are all behind a pass coded security door, so it was a big deal for Louise and I to take her beyond that for the first time in the almost three weeks she's been out. It's a pity she didn't feel the same way. :-)
Tonight we had a really good breast feed, the best yet by far, followed by a bottle top up. The nurses are now saying she needs to have done 48 hours of breast or bottle feeds before she can go home. At the moment she's only doing two out of the six she has each day, so we have a while to go yet. We're now betting on next weekend, so around the 26th/27th July, before she can come home.
The DIY instant baby car container kit is now locked in for Tuesday at 11am, which is thankfully well before Molly will be getting out. Tuesday is also Louise's next check up, when hopefully they'll reduce her medication again.
So this week will most likely be a slow week, with nothing much happening.
The last few days have been pretty routine. The hospital want parents to do most of the work, which while exhausting, is best for everyone so the parents are well rehearsed by the time baby is out of hospital. So our days now revolve around 4th hourly cares and feeds, 24x7.
On days I'm not working at a client, Louise is up at 6am to express, and I'm up at 9am to check in on urgent work emails. We're at the hospital by 11am and we do cares (temperature and nappy change) and a breastfeed, followed by Louise doing an express and me giving Molly a bottle top up. Molly and I then hum, sing songs, and burp a lot, while waiting for Louise to return. Molly's won most of the burpathons, but I must admit I've cracked a few corkers over the course of the week.
Then we head home to do mandatory home chores, I have a few hours sleep and Louise does an express and catches up on emails and other stuff. I'm awake again by 6pm, just after Louise has done yet another express, and we're at the hospital by 7pm to do exactly the same thing we did at 11am. We're out by 9pm and head home to have dinner, and lunch as well if we haven't had it. I catch up on any urgent work stuff, and spend a few hours on stuff that's been waiting since before this whole thing happened a month ago, such as bills, invoices or projects, and this blog on the odd occasion I finished things early, and Louise catches some sleep on the lounge. Around 1am or 2am I'm off to bed, and Louise wakes up to express, and then comes to bed as well. That's a normal day for us, and there's no relaxing time, it's all work.
On the days when I have paid work during the day at a client, I simply miss out on everything up until 6pm, and then have to shoe horn everything into the few hours I have left before I go to bed. Also, every second day is Molly's bath day, so that gets factored in as well. They never said it would be this hard in parenting class, it was just all about the pros and cons of epidurals vs. gas, and how to breath. They didn't say what to do if you don't actually have time to stop and breath.
For the last week I've been humming to Molly at feed time, while Louise is off expressing. Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin is a favourite, but tonight we also did Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water, and Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.
When Louise turns up, she usually pulls out the old boring standards, like Miss Polly and Her Dolly, or The Teddy Bear's picnic. I tried the The Teddy Bear's picnic tonight and Molly started to cry, I don't blame her. When I switched back to Stairway ("if there's a bussle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now"), she started smiling and having fun again. She really enjoys lead breaks, whether it be guitar or drums, but that just may be my delivery.
But Louise is insistent, so we haven't heard the last of those childish Teddy Bears. Louise has also promised to learn the actual words at some point, so that's certainly worth looking forward to.
The photos are continuing to be updated every few days. The most recent ones are with Molly in the pram on her very first trip outside of the nursery.
Today the container load turned up. Hooray! We've yet to go through it, but it's calmed us down a little. Also today, Louise heard the lactation consultant say "she should be allowed home soon" or words to that effect, which just scared the shit out of us again.
Did I mention Led Zeppelin at all? "Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him..." Classic.
People have been asking why I haven't been videoblogging this, and I agree that it would make a fantastic disaster movie. Well, we are videoing lots of things, and in vlogging style, but the two main reasons they're not here on the site are: a) I just don't have the time to log, edit, render and upload, which is annoying because a few years ago I was hoping this problem would have been solved by now, and b) because I'm protecting the privacy of Molly. Regular readers will know my predictions on privacy, but that doesn't mean I wish to accelerate it's ultimate downfall. Video and photos of Molly this young aren't for public viewing, but friends and family can see them if they ask for the password. So stick that in your videoblogging manifesto.
I was in town today working with a client. I'd just reached a major project milestone around lunchtime, when I got a call from Louise at the hospital. She was there to do the 11am cares, as previously mentioned in What a crazy year, part 35, and she said "they're saying she might go home tomorrow".
Like everything that's happened in this long saga, nothing ever comes with a warning. Events always seem to sneak up on you unawares, and then when you least expect them, bam, something happens.
And so here we are, in no fit state to support a baby at home, yet like it or not, she's probably on her way tomorrow (Thursday) morning. While the nurses all usually tow the the same line, every now and again you get varying opinions, so I ask who actually said she might be going going home. "Oh, one of the doctors came over to us with the nursery registrar". Hmm... OK, that's probably fairly accurate then.
I still have to get my car registered, so this morning I got up early to take it in for a service and rego. But first I had to drive it from up the street down to my house, in order to put the fourth wheel back on. It was parked too close to the curb to do it, hence I had to move it. Unfortunately though, the battery was flat, because I hadn't used in the three and a half weeks since the tyre was slashed. So, I had to drive Louise's car up to mine, in order to jump start it. This meant blocking the entire street, which is the main sneaky connector street between Newtown and Marrickville that everyone uses in the morning to bypass King St. I annoyed quite a few people, but they could all see that I wasn't to be messed with at this point in the birth of my child, so I didn't get any crap from people. I then parked Louise's car, drove mine to our house, and switched the dickie wheel for the real one, all with the engine running so it would charge the battery. Don't do this at home folks.
Meanwhile, back to lunchtime and Louise's phone call, we agreed that we'd both head home and then run through the plan for the day. We both got home around 2pm, which left us a few hours of shopping time to get the following necessities that we so far didn't have: nappies, towels, singlets, a new matress for the bassinet, a matress protector, wraps, and some clothes. Any clothes.
The other big thing we hadn't done, is fit the car capsule, or in our case, the car seat. It's the law, so if we didn't get it fitted in time, the she wouldn't be coming home. We'd booked in a fitting for Friday, because that was the soonest the people we preferred could do it, and we figured there's no way she'd be out by then. And of course we just may have found some time to go through the container of gear to find the seat by then as well. Instead, I had to drag it out this afternoon, and call around for someone to install it. We found someone. It took them 5 minutes. Our biggest concern, sorted on the spot in 5 minutes. Nice one. I enjoy life when things turn out better than expected.
We also have to get her from the hospital nursery to the car, so instead of just wheeling her out in the hospital cot, we figured that her own pram would be the way to go. So tonight was spent putting the pram together (from the container load) and assembling the bassinet so she can sleep (also from the container load). The pram was one of those ever extensible types, where you can keep adding extras until it resembles a space ship or an out of control Katamari. It actually came already extended, with an additional toddler seat attached to it, for a nice two level baby effect. Unfortunately I didn't realise this at first, and couldn't work out how this vertical tandem contraption unfolded correctly to form a simple pram. I eventually worked it out by downloading the manuals of several prams in the company's line and working from those. For some reason our parm hasn't got a manual available on their site. No matter, I eventually worked it all out.
Now it's 3am, and I need to get sleep before Louise gets up to express, and we go to pick up Molly at 11am. I still haven't talked about industrial chemist man and his foolproof breast feed volume measuring system, but that will have to wait until another day.
Molly came home yesterday (Thursday) at around 2pm. Yay!
We had about 4-5 hours sleep the night before, getting up around 8am. We didn't get the bottles and other bits and pieces on the Wednesday, and typically for us, we actually bought the wrong food. I mean, it's not like we bought chicken chunks in jelly, when she prefers tuna strips in brine, no, we bought the formula the hospital uses, but for full terms, not preterms. So knowing we'd have to feed her around 3pm, we had to exchange the formula and buy the bottles before we got to the hospital.
The formula exchange went fine. But when we got to the chemist... they were out of bottles. Great, we were about to be the primary care givers for a newborn, and we had no way to feed her. There's something to be said about having a spare rubber device or two around the home, because you never know when it might come in handy. The chemist said they'd be getting more bottles in around midday, so that meant we could probably pick up Molly and then pick up the bottles from Marrickville Metro on the way home. Assuming of course that the bottles would arrive when they said they would.
We turned up at the hospital at 10:45am. The only thing we'd heard so far was that one "she may be able to go home tomorrow", so I tried not to get too committed to the idea until it actually happened. Louise was more convinced, and none of my "let's just see what happens, no expectations" type lines would sway her, she just knew Molly was coming home.
When we walked in, everything fell into place. The nurses all assumed she was going home, and had already done most of the work required to make that happen. They'd also done the 11am cares for some reason, which was a shame, because we were looking forward to doing the last one, but no matter.
By midday we were pretty much ready to go. The doctor came around for the final discharge check up, which Molly pretty much slept through because it was under the nice warm bath lights. The final step consists of the doctor shining a light into her eyes and checking for a reaction. Well, Molly wasn't having any of that, and kept her eyes firmly closed. Then the doctor got paged, and said if she didn't open her eyes in the next minute, she'd have to leave and Molly would have to stay until later in the day. The three us rubbed hands, her legs, her tummy, her cheeks, nothing worked... then finally humming Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin saved the day, and she open each eye slightly to see where daddy was. Eat that Teddy Bears, John Bonham moonlights as a doctors assistant.
We had to return all the hospital clothes and linen, so we dressed her in a pink singlet from Louise's mum, a cute little white with pink spots jump suit, the only clothes we own that fit her, from one of my aunties, and wrapped in the same wrap that my grandmother knitted for me when I came home from the hospital. The latest lot of photos show everything off.
We wheeled her cot out into the main part of RPA, and then outside for the very first time, in the RPA emergency drop off, we'd parked the car.
It was a little embarrassing, because I didn't know how to properly use the car seat, or even if it was OK for a premmie, but the nurse was great and knew hot to strap her in. Originally we thought we'd have to pick her up in the pram, so it was sitting in the boot, waiting for for dad who knows nothing about prams or strollers, to have to pull it out and somehow nonchalantly expand it (from it's portable collapsed state) into an actual stroller. Luckily we didn't actually need it.
So we finally left the hospital, and stopped off at Metro on the way home. I'd love to say we left her in the car while we went shopping, but some of the family may not see the funny side. No, I sat with Molly with a window slightly down, while Louise went and got the bottles, a final cone, and strangely enough, a pie with sauce. Molly's mum is a bit of a nut job at times. I hope she's getting most of it from me.
As I write this, we've had our first 32 hours at home, and this the first moment I've had to blog. I'll hopefully cover those initial 24 hours tomorrow, once I've had a little sleep. Or does this just go on for 18 years now?
When people say that you don't get any sleep in the first few months of baby being at home, you think OK, I've had some pretty bad nights in my time, sure it's going to be bad, but how hard can it be?
Last night was difficult, getting up every few hours for feeding and cares. At 3am I couldn't take it anymore and ended up sleeping for most of the night, with Louise doing every shift and then sleeping a few hours this morning on the lounge.
We were both sleep deprived before Louise went into hospital, trying to finish up all our projects before the baby was born. Then Louise went into hospital early, which just made the sleep deprivation worse, because she wasn't really sleeping, and I was trying to run the house as well as finish projects off. Then Molly arrived and went into the high dependency unit, which sucked up even more of our time, and Louise got discharged, which took up even more. Most peoples' sleep deprivation begins on the day of the birth, usually with a long labour, and then a few days later when everyone goes home to 4th hourly cares. Our lives were screwed before we got anywhere near getting back home.
But we're surviving. We had a community nurse come and visit for several hours today, giving advice to Louise and I, and a check up to Molly. Then we took her out in the car for her first outdoors pram ride, to the Bonds seconds factory to get a few extra necessary clothes, and then to good ol' Marrickville Metro to get some extra cleaning products, and of course a cone.
On top of all that, I think we're in the honeymoon period, as she rarely cries, and she pretty much feeds on schedule. I must say however that Louise's sister's lasagne was awesome.
Today Molly shat three times in the middle of a nappy change.
We've been changing Molly in her bassinet since she came home last Thursday, and my back has been starting to hurt because it's too low down, so we finally bit the bullet and bought a change table. My Mum and Dad did the research over the weekend, and I went and picked one up today. The plan was that Louise, Molly and I would go, but the severe thunderstorms put paid to that. We also had another visit from the community nurse today, all part of the awesome service they provide for pre-term babies at RPA. Did I mention RPA rock, and you'd be either an idiot, or a Packer, or both, if you went anywhere else?
So it was my turn for cares this evening, but it was the first time we'd be using the new change table, so I managed to con Louise into helping, in what ended up being the triple poo incident. I had a run of eight cares in a row at the hospital when Molly would wee on the new nappy in the middle of the change and cause us to change the entire bed and all her clothes, but I'd been fairly lucky in the last few days. Not so now. Three nappies, eight wipes, two towels, a singlet and a jump suit all soiled.
Sunday, yesterday, was going to be a big day. We were supposed to have visits from two of Louise's brothers, then one of her sister in laws, then a friend of mine to help empty the house of a bunch of old computer crap that's been taking up valuable Molly space, and then Louise's sister. In the end, none of it happened, which as you know is normal for our scheduled plans. Except for her brothers, who popped in while I was out doing even more shopping for necessities, like antibacterial hand wash, bottom wipes and chocolate, not necessarily in that order.
We're starting to get more sleep now, and patterns with the cares are starting to emerge. I usually do the late night ones solo, and Louise does the early morning ones solo, and we share during the day. Although today Louise did most of them, as a rehearsal for the next three days when I'm at a client in town. This may not last that long, as they're trying to get me security access so that I can work from home, which would make things oh so much easier, and I'd actually get more work done as well. But it would mean more poo disasters.
I was going to make this part 40 blog post the final in this series, but I kept remembering cool stuff to mention throughout the day, so I think I'll continue on. Although I forgot them again by the time I got to writing this, so I need to get out my old reminder notebook out again. Louise and I both get calls and emails from people who are reading this blog, not just family and friends, but also distant friends and acquaintances. I'm not sure whether it's an interesting read, or whether it just brings back memories of them going through the same thing, but either way, that's gotta be a good thing.
Right now it's 10pm, and time for a feed and cares. Louise is asleep on the lounge, and Phoebe is asleep on her lap, with Molly upstairs asleep in her bassinet. How come everyone is sleeping except for me? Time to wake them all up...
Again, if you're not into my personal stuff, then please consider customising your RSS feed so that it doesn't contain the personal stuff. Either way, I still figure there's either a book, a stage show or a stand up routine in all this, which I'll probably work on when I get some free time... some free time... some free time...
I mean seriously, someone needs to invent a better baby bottle. Surely it's not that difficult you know, milk goes in the bottle, bottle goes into baby's mouth, baby provides a seal around the bottle, and you just pour the shit down baby's throat. What could be simpler?
All these bottles have one thing in common, unless you tip them up to about 80 degrees, a few mls of milk will remain in the bottle, because there's an internal lip that prevents it running out. You can see it in the Avent ones pictured, but they seem to be like this in all bottles. On top of this, the standard teats you buy are fitted to these bottles in a way that actually creates a second internal lip, that you guessed it, prevents another few mls of milk from leaving the bottle.
At first I thought this may be so that any sediment will fall into the lip and not into baby's mouth, but I doubt it. It's just plain badly designed.
We've put men on the moon, worked out how to incinerate hundreds of thousands of people in an instant, and we've invented the hot and cold thermos, surely after feeding babies for hundreds of thousands of years, the practice of feeding a baby properly is within our grasp?
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