Alder's Tone

There could only be two topics of conversation when the word “solids” is involved, and both are at opposite ends of the digestive system. Tonight’s topic is, thankfully, entry-level.

Gruel for beginnersBaby Rice. To look at it doesn’t resemble either. Certainly doesn’t taste like either. So what the hell is it? It looks like some sort of crystal meths before it’s made up with baby’s regular milk and is about the least appetising pile of slop I’ve ever seen. I’d go back to 1979 and have my old school’s semolina pudding with a blob of jam all over again rather than eat that mush. So it does me no good to know that Junior has had his first “solids” this evening, given what he’s eaten, only because never in a million years would I (a) classify that as food or (b) eat it myself.

Wednesday’s a bit better – a cube of real food on the menu! Until then it's like a scene from Oliver Twist - gruel, gruel and more gruel.

So how did it go? It was like preparing for a major play, sterilising the bowl and a spoon, as well as the usual bottle, checking the lighting, the camera angles, I'd even gone to the trouble of bringing in ushers and had ice-cream on standby. Unfortunately the audience was via live t'internet link-up, so I couldn't really charge admission or extra for premium seating. We'd had a full dress rehearsal at the weekend and for fear of him being carted off by social services I can't say exactly what he doesn't dislike, but **hic** Daddy loves it too, 'cos it's my bestest mate evver, **hic**.

Break a leg? He nearly did, having wedged it between two bars of his cot when he went down for a post-solids powernap. That boy...

Posted by Lee at 29 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok so I covered my classes in the last post, but Sarah has also been to a couple of antenatals and we have both been a tour of the maternity ward. Sarahs antenatals have been women only and covered labor and breast feeding. Standard ante-natal stuff. The tour of the ward on the other hand was pretty intense.

January 16th 2007 – my 33rd birthday – and I was back at St Johns hospital with Sarah. It was a great opportunity to see the lay out of the hospital and the maternity ward specifically. We began in the room I had been in the night before and sat down once more. There were perhaps another 6 or 7 couples there and we began with a video on pain relief during labor. It had clearly been filmed in the 1980’s and featured the who’s who of perms.

As the lights came up after the video Sarah appeared distracted. She was looking over my shoulder at a….whiteboard. “What’s that? Support during labour? Grapes!? Feed the cat!?!? If you…” ”And so class what did you think about pain relief?” asked one of the mid-wives who was taking our tour. PHEW.

We then began the tour itself and it was information packed. In fact my memory of it is something like this (try to keep up), “ok this is the ante natal rooms and from here the café is two floors up through the fire exit that was back there on the left and down stairs. Just buzz if you need to go as you may find it is closed. Opening hours and closing hours are on a sign at the top of those stairs over there next to the fire exit. We now move to the maternity ward itself, use this antiseptic soap when you are coming and going. Even if you are just stepping out side to use your mobile.”

“Can we use our mobiles in the hospital?” someone asked, probably worried the mid-wife would pass out unless someone gave her time to breathe IN.

“Sure you can use them, I mean not in the ward, but in the corridors. Although you may want to bring 10ps for the public phone we have. Ok here are the maternity wards, 4 beds to a room, radio, storage space etc. There are also single rooms but you might want company so unless you really want one you will be in here. Here’s the room for breast feeding, here’s a TV room and here’s a room if you just want to be alone.”

And so on and so forth. It was a LOT to take in. What was very useful about it was seeing the different rooms we would be in at different stages. There was the assessment room which was the initial room we would start in where Sarah would be “checked out” to see how far we through labour she was. From there we saw the labour wards themselves and to be honest that was an eye opener. You looked at the bed and knew this may well be where you met your child for the 1st time. We then went to another labour ward which contained a bath for either during the early stages of labour to relax the woman, or indeed for a water birth. I could tell Sarah liked the look of this as did I, it had a slightly more relaxed feel to it. The only thing being you could not have pain relief apart from gas and air – if you needed anything more than that then you moved into another room.

The tour ended and having seen the labor unit and maternity ward I think it did two things, put our minds at ease and yet got us picturing the process and got the old tickers racing. A very worthwhile experience.

If you have got this far let me bring this to a close by focussing on the central character to this story for one second - Junior. It loves my singing, or hates it depending on what you think a lot of movement means. It is moving around constantly and we think we saw it having hiccups this week! Finally, for the 1st time I was able to place my ear to the womb and hear what I believe to be the babies heart beat. AWESOME, just amazing. I feel I have bonded already with the kid - is it possible to love a bump? Enough of the gushing, I'm off for another listen.....

Posted by ChrisGent at 24 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)

I cannot believe that it is less than 2 months until junior arrives (should our ETA be correct). The best way to describe how I am feeling at the moment is excited and wanting to speed up time, along with totally unprepared and wanting it to slow down. A vast array of emotions but the over riding one is of antcipation. I am looking forward to the coming years with a real sense of purpose. Will there be hard times, sure, any regrets, not a chance. And having seen the effect Iain has had on Lee and Debs it just makes me more excited about the future. Back to being unprepared though - well the antenatals and Dads 2 be classes have started so...

...surely these will assist in making it all plain sailing! Not quite, but they have certainly been extremely useful so far all be it my head has quite literally span each time I have left the class (I have had 2 Dads 2 Be classes now). Lets start at the beginning - Monday 15th January 2007 (incidentally my last day of being 32..sigh) - and I headed to St Johns hospital. As I sat in the car park I envisioned myself being one of potentially two or three blokes who had signed up - wrong, 12 other blank faces were sitting in the room when I arrived - all sheet white and terrified. The first class was all about labor - there were slides and captions on the different stages. My favourite part was watching a guy Brian go into a spin when he realised just how many contractions his wife may have while he drove to the hospital! Then came an excercise where we split into groups of four - my group were led to a white board headed up "Ways to support your partner during labor"
We had 10 minutes to put down as much as we could come up with starting nowwww. Maybe it was the slides we had just seen and the realisation we had a LOT of supporting to do, perhaps it was that it was the first time we had really thought about it, or perhaps we just did not want to say anything silly however we simply stood and stared. Time passed and the canvas remained blank. Finally Sam, who was six foot both ways finally said “Massage”. That was it, one word, then “Aye I read it once in some book, give them a massage”. Cool we thought, get it down. It opened the flood gates and soon we had “Feed the cats” and “bring grapes” – I felt we had all the angles covered. Michelle approached us and some how managed to keep a straight face “That’s great lads, now try to think of other things, you know physical support, mental support, that sort of thing” and she turned and walked over to the next group. A few minutes later and it was time up. We started off by going through our list with the rest of the class. “So guys, how are you going to support your partners during labour, let the rest of the class know” Michele asked. Here was our moment. “Ok guys here’s our list”

Massage
Bring Grapes
Feed the Cats
Physical Support
Mental Support

I thank you. The rest of the class nodded in agreement, Michele said a silent prayer for our partners.

Thankfully I knew that Sarah would never see the list and that I would have a proper think nearer the time!

The second class was a little more calm - again we went over the support side with my personal lowlight being when Michele made 12 grown men stand up and demostrate some positions for labor with the person on their left. The curtains were NOT drawn and nurses could see in as they walked past. It was like sadistic and very scary twister. The we headed for the maternity ward and watched a 1 day old baby being bathed - fascinating. The dad looked in shock, total shock. 2 classes it had taken the mid-wife to encourage us and make us grow in confidence, in a split second it was shattered. Then as we watched young Libby being bathed you could see the fear turning to excitement again...

All in all a couple of very useful classes for someone as naive as me - 2 more to go!

Posted by ChrisGent at 24 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've mentioned before that there is a postcode lottery when it comes to maternity care in the NHS. So far this has been in and out of the press at a trust level, but what about getting into a trust and looking to see if there's a postcode lottery within a trust, rather than just between trusts?

For the smart cookies amongst us you will have figured out by now that as I'm doing a post on the subject there must be. So what have we uncovered so far?

Take a ticketOne would expect that first and foremost, as the NATIONAL Health Service there would be a NATIONAL standard of care. But we know this is absolute pie in the sky stuff, so down on an individual trust level surely this is more of a reality?

My guest author, Chris, and his wife live in the Lothain NHS trust area. As do MOTS and I. So given we received health care from the same pot of cash you could expect the same level of healthcare? How wrong we are.

I feel I should first point out the differences between us here, just so we can try and identify why there is a difference in the care received.

• Age - MOTS and I are slightly older


• Address - we live at a different address, but within the area covered by NHS Lothian


• Hospital - our babies are to be born at different hospitals, but within the area covered by NHS Lothian


• Hair - I'm losing it more rapidly than Chris

So what differences are we seeing in the service provided?

• Chris & Sarah get a tour of the hospital before delivery. We did not.


• Chris gets "Dads-2-Be" classes. I did not.

No excuse for the differences, the same Trust in the same overall organisation, discriminating based on one of those differences pointed out above.

If I find out it's because I'm losing my follicals, I'll lose more than that.

Posted by Lee at 24 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Essential worksAnother upgrade is available for Movable Type, so expect a short outage at some stage later this week when I upgrade.

Posted by Lee at 22 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just a quick post for the record today. We've had our first rollover, from tummy to back, yesterday afternoon. And Daddy missed it 'cos he was out in the garage tearing his hair out trying to "tidy up".

This does open up a whole new world though...

But not a £40m jackpotNo more turning round to grab a clean nappy when he's on the changing station, no more leaving him in the middle of the bed to go to the loo, no more leaving stuff on the floor, no more leaving him under his gym on the futon in the office, no more safe zones.

Looks like we're a step closer to having to go shopping for all those little safety catches that stop cupboards being opened. Oh joy!

On the topic of movement, and thus negating the previous statement of this being a quick post, the little lad has been pulling his bottle towards him for the last couple of weeks now. More so when Daddy encourages him to do so by holding it just within reach but not close enough to bring his head forward. It's really good to see the skills improving day by day, even if yesterday's first rollover does strike fear into the very hearts of our general untidyness.

Posted by Lee at 21 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wanted a rant at British Airways staff for going on strike again, but wasn't quite sure how it would fit in with the family oriented nature of this blog. BA have handed the answer on a plate, the strike is rumoured to be during half term holidays, just as families are jetting off for a quick break. This sticks with the norm of hitting holiday periods.

This is a deliberate ploy by the unions to cause as much disruption to as many people as possible, and mainly those with small children in tow who well then get upset in the airports when they don't get to go on holiday.

This course of action holds no place in a service oriented business. This sort of action has no place in any business.

The world's favourite strikersBA are totally reliable, another holiday season and we have another strike. Reliable for the wrong reasons, clearly. What the unions fail to recognise is that the constant striking damages the company's image and reputation. I have used BA a lot , mostly business though. I have only flown BA on leisure a couple of times, and then only on domestic flights to get another carrier's international flight. With the damage the unions have done and continue to do to the company, if there are other like-minded people out there who see this as a "don't use BA during holiday periods" warning, then they will succeed only in bringing the company down, either through bankruptcy or take-over. Either way, what security will the members have then?

Just to reiterate, I will not consider using BA as a carrier to get me on holiday for fear of being stranded. Oh, go check your insurance policy too, does it cover strike action?

BBC story.

Posted by Lee at 16 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It had to happen eventually, and I'm surprised it's taken this long to be honest. Mummy & Daddy have had their first nights out without junior, which also make them "Baby's first...nights in"

Worried? Nah.The first night was the second we'd arranged, and the second night was the first we'd arranged. Confused? We've had two nights out this weekend, Friday and Sunday. Sunday being the first we'd organised but second outing chronologically.

Friday night was the big one though, the first time we'd left him and headed off out on our own. We were a little apprehensive, not for him because we knew he'd be safe with the Jeffreys, but for what we'd be like. I guess we both thought we'd be constantly wondering if he was behaving, if he was screaming the place down, if he was too demanding, not settling etc. The reality was somewhat different.

The occassion was the relaunch of a local restaurant for which MOTS had won us an invite. As things panned out we met a couple in the bar with whom we shared a table, so that kept the conversation flowing and away from the questions above. That was an absolute bonus!

The first night arranged / second night out was just a quick couple of scoops in the bar of a local hotel. The conversation did go a little in the direction I'd expected it to on Friday night, but nowhere near as deeply given we'd already gone through the first night out two nights previously.

All in all a good weekend. So thanks to the Jeffreys for keeping Junior entertained on Friday night, Mike and Zoe for keeping us entertained on Friday night, and Mrs Stewart for coming over to us on Sunday night and not drinking too much Bombay Sapphire in the process!

Posted by Lee at 15 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

We always had Christmas and New Year to think about before the birth - not any longer. Dont get me wrong, this is not a bad thing but it is, well, another milestone on the journey.

All of a sudden it's not next year this and next year that, it's this year all the way. Have I said yet this is going fasssst. I cant wait and yet feel like I am still ill prepared!...

...however this month is filled with antenatal classes and for me Dads to Be. I cant remember if I mentioned these - I have 4 classes at Livingston on 4 consecutive Monday nights. They cover everything from labor, to baby massage, to changing nappies, bathing the child etc. They even let you hold a real baby - I've set that one up for you Lee, dont let me down. ;o)

I think these classes are a god send. For someone who has never been around babies I think I will learn a lot. Sure there is the usual trepidation as I am heading along on my tod to a class thats catch phrase is "Run by men for men". I am wearing Nikes in case there is anyone there named Bubba.

So I'll let you know how they go. It is going to prove to be a VERY busy month and I can see it being February before I know it - then its just one month to go. I need air....and gas!!!

Anyway, onto something I typed earlier...

Don’t Cramp my Style!

I would say Sarah has been very lucky throughout the pregnancy with regards to physical ailments. She was not sick in the 1st trimester. She did not become bloated. She did not have any really disgusting cravings. In fact, life did not change that much…until now.

Life has become very much like one big monkey chant “Ooooo oooo ahhh ahhh eeeee eeee ooooo”. Every move is now accompanied by its own little sound.
Sitting down: “ahhooo”
Getting out of bed “arrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uppp”.
Getting up to make a cup of tea “Chris make a cup of tea….I’m pregnant.”

I've become used to these sounds, I can live with them, however…

They say when a lion roars in the jungle it can be heard for 2 miles and the ground underneath your feet can vibrate a mile away. It is a sound that strikes fear into all those within the close vicinity. To be frank, it scares three types of s**t out of anything or anyone who realises this sound is coming from something not to be messed with.

Our house now has one such sound - when the female of the species goes something like:
”Jeeezussssssssssscrammmmmppppppinmylegggggggggggggaghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

It was normally followed by the male of species:
“Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiining light is on and its 7am and I cant get my breath back, what the ffffflick of the switch happened??”

Yup, cramp is setting in each and every time Sarah stretches her legs. When does she stretch them? When I am fast asleep and she is lying not 2 inches from my ear drums! Pregnant women in constant agony, a perpetual state of pain even, simply feel it is their god given right to act as they please. Sigh.

Posted by ChrisGent at 08 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

2007!When we embarked upon 2006 we had an expectation of what was to come. We sort of knew at the start of the year that we'd be parents, but didn't confirm this until after we had the house back to ourselves. And from early 2006 to the end of 2006 it has been an incredible journey. So as I sit here on Hogmanay, wondering why I'm sat in front of a PC rather than out on the town (hmm, that wind might be one reason) I look back and wonder if it was all worth it.

EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

So whether you're part way on your own journey, in the departures lounge, or still trying to buy a ticket, my family wishes you a very Happy New Year!

Posted by Lee at 01 January 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)