Having a newborn can be hard going. It can be repetitive, too. You wake up at some point in the morning, feed your baby, change them, talk with them and lull them to sleep. After a few hours they wake and everything repeats. Sometimes in between they cry and sometimes you're not sure why and can't always calm them down. You may wake up in the early hours of the morning to the sound of your child's upset, and you may be lucky enough to be able to get them back to sleep. Or you may not.
And the thing is, babies are helpless. Like, they would die if their parents weren't around. They can't so a single thing for themselves, and totally rely on their mums and dads to deal with their every need. And there's little in the way of thanks. You don't get a, "Cheers, Dad!" from your three week old, or, "Mam, thanks ever so much for feeding me just then!" You don't get a card, or a present. In fact, you don't even get a cuddle as thanks, because every cuddle you have with your newborn is for their own comfort, not yours.
So, like I said, it can be hard going.
Until they smile.
Ellis has been smiling in his sleep for a few weeks now, but until the past few days, they've been reserved for slumber only. Recently he's become much more engaging with my wife and I. Now when we hold him and talk to him, he really studies our faces. He stops and watches, taking in every word we say, despite the fact that he has no idea what we're talking about. He follows us with his eyes, turning his head to keep watching. The other morning, after a feed, I held him in my hands and began talking to him. What a damn handsome baby, I thought, so I decided to tell him. And as I repeated over and over what a handsome man he was, his mouth, usually reserved for neutral or upset expressions, curled upwards at the sides. His lips parted and there, in front of my eyes, was the biggest smile I had ever seen. In that moment I felt a love like I have never felt before. Every sleepless night, every fussy moment, every nappy change and every frustrating upset was now worth it, because with that smile he told me that he loved me, and appreciated everything my wife and I have done for him.
The smile soon faded and despite every attempt to bring it back, I couldn't. But the following day he did the same, and the day after that, and so on. He's smiling multiple times a day now, for all sorts of reasons, and it's the best reward I could ask for.
Don't get me wrong, I could go my whole life without a smile from him, and despite how difficult it can be, I'd still love every minute of being his father. But now that I've had something in return, I can't wait for even more, and my days count down towards every smile.
Kael.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Monday, 9 September 2013
The first four weeks
Okay, so it's been four weeks since I posted. If this blog were the only source of information for you about my child, the last thing you heard was that he was born. A lot has happened since that, and I apologise for the drought that has fallen over this blog. It's been a vicious circle, as I've known that to cram all the happenings of the past month into one post will make for a lengthy entry, and that's made me dread writing it, leading to me procrastinating and essentially adding to the length of the blog. So sorry about that. Once the gargantuan task of updating you on the events of the past month is complete, I will be able to go back to Sunday updates and as-and-when happenings.
But we're here now.
My wife and Ellis stayed in hospital for two nights after he was born. Because his head was tilted back in the birth canal he had severe swelling all over his face. It looked like he had been in a terrible bar fight. The moments after he was delivered, when my wife and I were sat back in her room, were filled with silence. On one hand, we were over the moon that our baby was finally here, but we didn't have him because he'd been taken straight to the Special Care Unit. On top of that, in the fleeting moment that we were shown him all we saw was his little misshapen and, dare I say it, ugly face. I visited him several times before I had to leave for the night. He stared at me with his squished up eyes, but made no sound.
When I returned the following morning, the swelling had already gone down. My wife met me at the door to the maternity ward and we went to see him. He had a tube dangling from one nostril as the swelling made it difficult for him to feed through his mouth. Again, he lay there doing little, but all three of us in the room together felt special. The staff in the Special Care Unit explained that the only thing they were unhappy with was his ability to keep food down and if he was able to keep his dinner time feed in his belly without any spit up, they'd be happy to discharge him to us.
Luckily, he did, and we finally got to feel how we were supposed to when he was born, like a little family. We spent the day relaxing together and were advised by the midwives that we could attempt to feed him orally. His throat must have eased, because he happily guzzled a bottle of formula down. My wife took to breast feeding, too, which surprised both of us. I may have mentioned before that she had been unsure about the whole process during the entire pregnancy, but when she tried, she was a natural, and we fed him on a mixture of breast milk and formula.
Leaving in the evening was one of the hardest things ever, but I knew that I was going back in the morning, and if we were lucky, it would be the day we could bring Ellis, and my wife, home. To my delight, the swelling had reduced again, and a text I received that morning that talked about a surprise waiting for me in the hospital turned out to be the fact that his feeding tube had been removed from his nose. In the hospital I watched other dads hold their new babies and fretted at the difficulty I was having picking my son up. The worrying side of my brain began to tell me that I'd never be able to hold him safely, but I overcame it and began to practise. Eventually the doctors visited and discussed their satisfaction with both my son and wife, and explained that once they had completed their paperwork, we could go home.
The walk to the car was a careful one. When we reached the entrance I left my family in the foyer and brought the car to the door. A kind old lady offered my wife her seat, but we were ready to go before she could accept the offer.
I have never driven so slowly in my life. Speedbumps were tackled at a ferocious two miles per hour, corners were rounded wider than the world's fattest man, and I may have generated a queue of cars behind me long enough to measure a football field, but eventually we made it home. Well, I say home, but first we went to Tesco because the one thing we had forgotten to buy was formula, and despite my wife's decision to breast feed, we wanted to have it just in case. Checkout ladies fawned over him, asking how old he was and what he was called, and when they said things like, "He's so handsome," I thought, Yes, yes he is. Then we visited my wife's father, who lives down the road from Tesco. For a man who is typically very dry and tends to show no excitement for anything or anyone, he lit up, and truly looked like a proud grandfather. He's going to be called 'Grampa', something he's not very happy about. He'd prefer the less traditional 'Wayne', but that's not going to happen.
And then we were home. Somewhere I had barely been for the past week, and somewhere my wife hadn't been for the past week. We were back, and we had someone else with us, and he wasn't going to leave. Our cats were very happy to have us back, and their reactions to the baby ranged from indifferent to, "I must protect this creature". Morgan, our smallest and newest cat, whom we joke about being my wife's 'Spirit Animal' because she's so protective of her, seemed to instantly adopt this attitude towards our son, preferring to sit as close to him as possible. The other two, while understanding that he wasn't just another piece of furniture to sit on, seemed to not pay much attention.
Sleeping is something that I miss. In hindsight, if I had realised that the gift of a full night's rest was going to be cruelly torn away from me the second my son came home, I would have never spent those long summer holidays staying up until five o' clock playing my Game Cube. I would never have squeezed in an extra episode of a television programme I was engrossed in. I would have slept every hour I could, just to make up for when I became a father.
My wife agreed, begrudgingly, that she would sleep through the nights, because she was beginning the six long weeks of recovery from labour and the cesarean. Six long weeks that still aren't over. She needed, and still does need her rest, so I insisted that I would take the night shifts. That's where the formula came in handy, and later on, expressed breast milk. The first night was a breeze. As I said, I've spent many a night awake until the early hours, so waking to the sound of his stirring was fine. He fed, had a cuddle, and went back to sleep in his swinging crib that sat next to my wife's side of the bed. He woke two more times before morning, but tending to him was a pleasure. The next few nights were similar, but then came the Night of the Five O' Clock Bed Time.
My wife drifted off at around midnight, while my son was still a little fussy. I laughed to myself. I may have called him a 'scamp' or a 'rascal', and lulled myself into believing that he would soon be asleep. Five long hours later my wife awoke to me and Ellis both wide eyed, having had not a single minute of sleep between us. She came to my rescue, insisting that I slept for a few hours.
Since then, he's had good nights and bad nights. There was a delightful phase of sleeping at midnight, waking at three or four for a feed and then sleeping until seven. I loved it. I'd wake with him and then bring him downstairs to watch The Office or Flight of the Conchords or any other show on DVD. There have been several four o' clock wake up, where he has woken me screaming and not slept until nine or ten. Those nights caused me problems. I'm not a person who typically naps. I don't like them. I wake up feeling confused and disoriented, so I tend to avoid them. However, in recent days my body has been crying out for rest, leading to me sleeping on the sofa, the armchair and on the floor, at random points of the day. Luckily, the past four nights have been a blessing. We've gotten him to sleep at midnight and he's managed to rest until six o' clock. Six hours may not seem like a decent sleep, but for me it felt like I had awoken after a Sleeping Beauty-esque length of time, on a bed of the finest silk, with angels caressing my face with their wings. And that's where he is with his sleeping right now. And where I am with mine.
I've said this to multiple people, but I'll say it on here. For a creature that spent the first nine months of his life having all of his waste ferried off through a convenient little tube, Ellis has taken to pooping like a champion. He still doesn't show much in the way of emotion, but I'm pretty sure he loves going to the toilet. We'll be there cuddling, or feeding him, or he may even be sleeping, and suddenly he'll go crimson and being making a noise that can only be written as: "HHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGHGHHHGGGGGGGGG!!!" and then there will be the worst sound I've ever heard. Unfortunately, I don't have access to heavy duty waste cleanup crews, so we have to make do with baby wipes, which we use a lot of. Two nights ago I experiences my first projectile pooping. No, it wasn't diarrhea, it was a normal poo, but it shot out like a Nerf dart and hit me in the arm. I've been urinated on, one time in the presence of the health visitor. You may be thinking, "God, all these poop jokes, how juvenile," but guess what? We're talking about a baby here. And I am pretty childish anyway, so yeah. Besides, the fact that he has a healthy toilet life is a really good indicator that we have a healthy baby.
He's getting hungrier, too. The very first tub of formula that we bought was labelled, 'Extra Hungry', and it really set the stage. It details that by this point in his life, he should be consuming roughly 150ml of feed every four hours or so, but he drinks anything from 180ml to 230ml. He's a gutsy boy, and he shows us when he's hungry. We tell people that he doesn't cry, which is almost true, but the one instance when he really goes for it is when he's hungry. With no warning, he makes this squealing noise that sounds as if we are sticking the soles of his feet with burning needles. We all have our ways, I suppose. My wife's tummy rumbles. I smack my lips. My son shrieks like a madman. Unfortunately, my wife's breast milk stopped after about two and a half weeks. It upset her, but ultimately he did end up getting the most nutritious of breast milk, and they do say that the best time for a baby to breast feed is the first few weeks.
Up until recently, my wife has been feeling pretty down on herself about being a mum. Don't get me wrong, she's been an amazing mum so far as anyone is concerned, but because her recovery from the C-section has limited what she can physically do, she's seen it as her being a bad mum. I try to remind her that her belly was cut open completely across, and that's not something a plaster and some antiseptic cream fixes. The trouble was that every time she began to feel a bit better, we'd leave the house for a mini day out. But then the stress on her body of walking for an extended period of time would hurt her and slow her recovery. Over the past week she's seeming a lot better. She's on her feet more and complains of pain less. It still hurts her, but luckily we're visiting the doctor tomorrow for her MMR booster, and so we'll discuss the scar then. It kills me to hear her fret about being a good mum, though, because she's amazing. Ellis can be fretting and fussing and screaming his head off, but five minutes with his mum and he's calmed right down. Tudor men do love their mums. She's calm, loving, considerate, and needs to give herself far more credit.
Every day brings something new with him. Little developments and changes that may seems like nothing, but are big enough for us to notice them. He started gripping really well after two weeks or so, and could find a finger (or lip) with his hands with ease. Recently he has begun to watch far more. When I used to hold him he's stare blankly in every direction other than my face, but now, when I talk, he watches and listens. He makes all sorts of expressions for everyone except me, but I'm still happy that he watches me, with his big, gorgeous eyes. He's also begun to smile, but they're always in his sleep, or when he's half conscious. It's not enough for me to proclaim, "My son can smile!", but I don't think he's far away.
We've also survived three midwife visits and two health visitor visits. Ellis' weight, as of the last visit, is a huge 10lb 4oz. During one of the first visits, in a time period that I consider when we were finding our feet as parents, the midwife told us that we were doing amazing, and that she thought we were coping better than some parents that were on their second or third child. Talk about a confidence booster! We were signed off from home visits, too, which means that we're doing something right. We've had multiple visits from friends and family, too, and all I can do is sit by and beam as they coo over my son.
So, without going into any greater detail than what I have, that's a summary of the first four weeks of my being a dad. I'm tired, but happy. It's the greatest job in the world, and I promise that from now on (now that I'm used to this job), I'll keep regular updates.
Kael
But we're here now.
My wife and Ellis stayed in hospital for two nights after he was born. Because his head was tilted back in the birth canal he had severe swelling all over his face. It looked like he had been in a terrible bar fight. The moments after he was delivered, when my wife and I were sat back in her room, were filled with silence. On one hand, we were over the moon that our baby was finally here, but we didn't have him because he'd been taken straight to the Special Care Unit. On top of that, in the fleeting moment that we were shown him all we saw was his little misshapen and, dare I say it, ugly face. I visited him several times before I had to leave for the night. He stared at me with his squished up eyes, but made no sound.
When I returned the following morning, the swelling had already gone down. My wife met me at the door to the maternity ward and we went to see him. He had a tube dangling from one nostril as the swelling made it difficult for him to feed through his mouth. Again, he lay there doing little, but all three of us in the room together felt special. The staff in the Special Care Unit explained that the only thing they were unhappy with was his ability to keep food down and if he was able to keep his dinner time feed in his belly without any spit up, they'd be happy to discharge him to us.
Luckily, he did, and we finally got to feel how we were supposed to when he was born, like a little family. We spent the day relaxing together and were advised by the midwives that we could attempt to feed him orally. His throat must have eased, because he happily guzzled a bottle of formula down. My wife took to breast feeding, too, which surprised both of us. I may have mentioned before that she had been unsure about the whole process during the entire pregnancy, but when she tried, she was a natural, and we fed him on a mixture of breast milk and formula.
Leaving in the evening was one of the hardest things ever, but I knew that I was going back in the morning, and if we were lucky, it would be the day we could bring Ellis, and my wife, home. To my delight, the swelling had reduced again, and a text I received that morning that talked about a surprise waiting for me in the hospital turned out to be the fact that his feeding tube had been removed from his nose. In the hospital I watched other dads hold their new babies and fretted at the difficulty I was having picking my son up. The worrying side of my brain began to tell me that I'd never be able to hold him safely, but I overcame it and began to practise. Eventually the doctors visited and discussed their satisfaction with both my son and wife, and explained that once they had completed their paperwork, we could go home.
The walk to the car was a careful one. When we reached the entrance I left my family in the foyer and brought the car to the door. A kind old lady offered my wife her seat, but we were ready to go before she could accept the offer.
I have never driven so slowly in my life. Speedbumps were tackled at a ferocious two miles per hour, corners were rounded wider than the world's fattest man, and I may have generated a queue of cars behind me long enough to measure a football field, but eventually we made it home. Well, I say home, but first we went to Tesco because the one thing we had forgotten to buy was formula, and despite my wife's decision to breast feed, we wanted to have it just in case. Checkout ladies fawned over him, asking how old he was and what he was called, and when they said things like, "He's so handsome," I thought, Yes, yes he is. Then we visited my wife's father, who lives down the road from Tesco. For a man who is typically very dry and tends to show no excitement for anything or anyone, he lit up, and truly looked like a proud grandfather. He's going to be called 'Grampa', something he's not very happy about. He'd prefer the less traditional 'Wayne', but that's not going to happen.
And then we were home. Somewhere I had barely been for the past week, and somewhere my wife hadn't been for the past week. We were back, and we had someone else with us, and he wasn't going to leave. Our cats were very happy to have us back, and their reactions to the baby ranged from indifferent to, "I must protect this creature". Morgan, our smallest and newest cat, whom we joke about being my wife's 'Spirit Animal' because she's so protective of her, seemed to instantly adopt this attitude towards our son, preferring to sit as close to him as possible. The other two, while understanding that he wasn't just another piece of furniture to sit on, seemed to not pay much attention.
Sleeping is something that I miss. In hindsight, if I had realised that the gift of a full night's rest was going to be cruelly torn away from me the second my son came home, I would have never spent those long summer holidays staying up until five o' clock playing my Game Cube. I would never have squeezed in an extra episode of a television programme I was engrossed in. I would have slept every hour I could, just to make up for when I became a father.
My wife agreed, begrudgingly, that she would sleep through the nights, because she was beginning the six long weeks of recovery from labour and the cesarean. Six long weeks that still aren't over. She needed, and still does need her rest, so I insisted that I would take the night shifts. That's where the formula came in handy, and later on, expressed breast milk. The first night was a breeze. As I said, I've spent many a night awake until the early hours, so waking to the sound of his stirring was fine. He fed, had a cuddle, and went back to sleep in his swinging crib that sat next to my wife's side of the bed. He woke two more times before morning, but tending to him was a pleasure. The next few nights were similar, but then came the Night of the Five O' Clock Bed Time.
My wife drifted off at around midnight, while my son was still a little fussy. I laughed to myself. I may have called him a 'scamp' or a 'rascal', and lulled myself into believing that he would soon be asleep. Five long hours later my wife awoke to me and Ellis both wide eyed, having had not a single minute of sleep between us. She came to my rescue, insisting that I slept for a few hours.
Since then, he's had good nights and bad nights. There was a delightful phase of sleeping at midnight, waking at three or four for a feed and then sleeping until seven. I loved it. I'd wake with him and then bring him downstairs to watch The Office or Flight of the Conchords or any other show on DVD. There have been several four o' clock wake up, where he has woken me screaming and not slept until nine or ten. Those nights caused me problems. I'm not a person who typically naps. I don't like them. I wake up feeling confused and disoriented, so I tend to avoid them. However, in recent days my body has been crying out for rest, leading to me sleeping on the sofa, the armchair and on the floor, at random points of the day. Luckily, the past four nights have been a blessing. We've gotten him to sleep at midnight and he's managed to rest until six o' clock. Six hours may not seem like a decent sleep, but for me it felt like I had awoken after a Sleeping Beauty-esque length of time, on a bed of the finest silk, with angels caressing my face with their wings. And that's where he is with his sleeping right now. And where I am with mine.
I've said this to multiple people, but I'll say it on here. For a creature that spent the first nine months of his life having all of his waste ferried off through a convenient little tube, Ellis has taken to pooping like a champion. He still doesn't show much in the way of emotion, but I'm pretty sure he loves going to the toilet. We'll be there cuddling, or feeding him, or he may even be sleeping, and suddenly he'll go crimson and being making a noise that can only be written as: "HHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGHGHHHGGGGGGGGG!!!" and then there will be the worst sound I've ever heard. Unfortunately, I don't have access to heavy duty waste cleanup crews, so we have to make do with baby wipes, which we use a lot of. Two nights ago I experiences my first projectile pooping. No, it wasn't diarrhea, it was a normal poo, but it shot out like a Nerf dart and hit me in the arm. I've been urinated on, one time in the presence of the health visitor. You may be thinking, "God, all these poop jokes, how juvenile," but guess what? We're talking about a baby here. And I am pretty childish anyway, so yeah. Besides, the fact that he has a healthy toilet life is a really good indicator that we have a healthy baby.
He's getting hungrier, too. The very first tub of formula that we bought was labelled, 'Extra Hungry', and it really set the stage. It details that by this point in his life, he should be consuming roughly 150ml of feed every four hours or so, but he drinks anything from 180ml to 230ml. He's a gutsy boy, and he shows us when he's hungry. We tell people that he doesn't cry, which is almost true, but the one instance when he really goes for it is when he's hungry. With no warning, he makes this squealing noise that sounds as if we are sticking the soles of his feet with burning needles. We all have our ways, I suppose. My wife's tummy rumbles. I smack my lips. My son shrieks like a madman. Unfortunately, my wife's breast milk stopped after about two and a half weeks. It upset her, but ultimately he did end up getting the most nutritious of breast milk, and they do say that the best time for a baby to breast feed is the first few weeks.
Up until recently, my wife has been feeling pretty down on herself about being a mum. Don't get me wrong, she's been an amazing mum so far as anyone is concerned, but because her recovery from the C-section has limited what she can physically do, she's seen it as her being a bad mum. I try to remind her that her belly was cut open completely across, and that's not something a plaster and some antiseptic cream fixes. The trouble was that every time she began to feel a bit better, we'd leave the house for a mini day out. But then the stress on her body of walking for an extended period of time would hurt her and slow her recovery. Over the past week she's seeming a lot better. She's on her feet more and complains of pain less. It still hurts her, but luckily we're visiting the doctor tomorrow for her MMR booster, and so we'll discuss the scar then. It kills me to hear her fret about being a good mum, though, because she's amazing. Ellis can be fretting and fussing and screaming his head off, but five minutes with his mum and he's calmed right down. Tudor men do love their mums. She's calm, loving, considerate, and needs to give herself far more credit.
Every day brings something new with him. Little developments and changes that may seems like nothing, but are big enough for us to notice them. He started gripping really well after two weeks or so, and could find a finger (or lip) with his hands with ease. Recently he has begun to watch far more. When I used to hold him he's stare blankly in every direction other than my face, but now, when I talk, he watches and listens. He makes all sorts of expressions for everyone except me, but I'm still happy that he watches me, with his big, gorgeous eyes. He's also begun to smile, but they're always in his sleep, or when he's half conscious. It's not enough for me to proclaim, "My son can smile!", but I don't think he's far away.
We've also survived three midwife visits and two health visitor visits. Ellis' weight, as of the last visit, is a huge 10lb 4oz. During one of the first visits, in a time period that I consider when we were finding our feet as parents, the midwife told us that we were doing amazing, and that she thought we were coping better than some parents that were on their second or third child. Talk about a confidence booster! We were signed off from home visits, too, which means that we're doing something right. We've had multiple visits from friends and family, too, and all I can do is sit by and beam as they coo over my son.
So, without going into any greater detail than what I have, that's a summary of the first four weeks of my being a dad. I'm tired, but happy. It's the greatest job in the world, and I promise that from now on (now that I'm used to this job), I'll keep regular updates.
Kael
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