I Have Children! TWO!

It's definitely a shock to the system to say that you have 'children'. Somehow saying that I have 'a child' makes it sound like I'm only a wardrobe change away from flitting out into the night and not returning until daybreak. Or that my regular infantile journey to egocentrism just took a momentary detour and now I'm back on track to self-indulgence.

But talking about how I now have 'children'. . . For some reason the plural dips me in terry-towelling and leaves the mental image of myself bedraggled, unkempt, surrounded by washing and dirt and screaming across the playground. I guess the beauty with having a second child is that I know what to cherish and what to ignore. I think the list goes something like this:

Cherish

* the smell
- the night we took a 5 day old Harriet out to dinner with us, a friend immediately asked if she could smell her. Sure I thought she was weird then, but now I know exactly what she was doing. I smell Teddy regularly. Even the nappies smell sweet (seriously!).

* the deep sleep
- as has been well documented, Harriet was not much of a sleeper. Having said that though, her first two or three weeks of life were peppered with heavy sleep periods. Teddy does that a lot at the moment, but we've been primed to expect that all to change once he reaches about 3wks past his term date.

* portability
- friends keep offering to pop over to our place in order to save us having to move around with Teddy. Let me tell you, it's never a problem to move Teddy, but it's a darn sight more stressful to get Harry moving! Newborns are so, so easy. Pop them in a sling and away you go!

* warmth
- Teddy radiates such a glorious warmth, just perfect for snuggling. Feeling his body against mine in the Hug a Bub is better than wearing a cardigan any day.

* predictability
- if he's crying, we know why. Or if we can't work it out we also know that we're bound to hear a nice big fart soon after the grizzle and there's the answer to that one. Teddy is quite windy but he has Harry's strong constitution so far in that he hasn't brought anything back up (touch wood), it's just a gassy bottom he has to deal with. Welcome to the family!

Ignore

* baby stores
- out to sell you more crap than could ever have been imagined in the past. Really all you need is a sling, some nappies and some clothes. Baby-sized blankets are a bonus (and we have plenty of them) and some are really beautiful too. A padded change mat and some teeny tiny cloth nappies are about the only investment we've really had to make.

* milestones
- Harriet never rolled. Or crawled. Yet miracle of miracles, she is still able to walk! *shock* Who would have thought?! Teddy will do stuff in his own time. If we feel that something's not quite right we'll follow it up, but we definitely won't work ourselves up into a lather about it because of some average ages generated without any consideration of our child.

* other people
- We parent differently to most, I think it's fair to say. For example, Teddy will eventually learn to sleep through the night. I definitely don't have to leave him screaming in a room by himself to teach him that. Learned helplessness is ugly and sad in animals; in people it's reprehensible. So suffice to say in this house we don't need to listen to that suggestion, thanks anyway.

The birth of Teddy and his hospitalisation has really brought out the kindness and generosity of our beautiful friends. A few of them have online stores, so I thought it only fair to also link to them here:

* Mamaluna - bookmark this site! Kristie is going to be stocking so many cool items, including a delicious body butter for babies that I have been lucky enough to receive as a present. It smells delicious! We've also been the lucky recipients of her nappies and wipes. Lucky us, lucky Teddy!

* Natural Parenting - a comprehensive online resource for any aware parent in Sydney. Jenny has selflessly offered us Harriet-minding, wraps, food and advice. We are indebted to her generosity.

* Frangipani Baby - the ever beautiful Sarah has a fantastic site for all of your babywearing needs. What sets her apart from others is her ready availability to discuss your specific needs and pinpoint exactly the right carrier for you. She is wonderful!

* Making Mothers - my awesome doula for Teddy's birth. I can't speak highly enough of her and her support and skill. If you are planning on a birth, please do yourself a favour and book her!

Hanging out at Home

Teddy looks so small in all of these photos! He has actually grown a bit lately. His little suit from Rebecca (which is a perfect weight for the weather at the moment, it's in the b&w photo below) used to be much baggier and now it fits him like a proper suit would. Yay! He is still wonderful - basically he cries when he's doing a poo, doing a wee or trying to get down to sleep. Other than that? Well he either sleeps or gazes out intently at everything with deliciously big eyes.

Having James at home has been great for the past couple of weeks. Teddy and I have been able to get up when we want rather than me having to rouse him when it's time for James to leave. Teddy sleeps so deeply that he can stay soundly in slumber whilst *right next to him* Harriet screams blue murder about something or other not meeting the exacting standards of a three and a haf year old. However if I try to move from the bed...well, then he can wake in a flash. He also makes the most hilarious noises when he's asleep or stretching - they sound like a duck trying to quack inside a moist plastic bag. They can be pretty longwinded too - I really do have to get a video of them.

I'm just posting this photo because I think you can get a glimpse of what he's going to look like when he's older - the heart shaped face is a little like Harriet's and more than one person has commented on how similar their mouths are. Yesterday I walked about 400m from our favourite local restaurant to the supermarket and Teddy, Harriet and I got stopped twice. Everyone exclaims at how tiny he is, especially when he's in the hug a bub he looks like this tiny little munchkin skull peeking out between my breasts. Harriet loves to inform people with great authority, "He's my baby brother and he came out too early. The placenta was coming away. His nickname is Teddy but his full name is Edward Stanley R***. Now he's home with us and I'm the big sister".

On that whole having-a-baby thing. The other morning James was talking to Harry about how babies get inside mothers. She already knows but we hadn't talked about the details in a while so she needed a refresher obviously. Anyway, the inevitable topic arose. "So is that what you did with Mama?". HAHAHA!! James replied yes, and Harriet said "But I didn't see it. When did this happen?". Errrmmm...needless to say this particularly sticky situation was not really top of James's list of pre-coffee ideas for the morning.

The blanket over the head look was from the other day when she had both of us engaged in some great game about dying. You needed to have a blanket over your head in order to be safe from being killed and then dying. So Papa and Mama and Harriet all had blankets over our heads. Then there was something to do with water squirters...and we were all in Magicland of course, where all good blanket wearing saves the soul.

This outfit is courtesy of Mars. Harriet has a helmet on to protect her head from space dust, a hat to keep her head warm, glasses to ensure her eyes are kept safe and a little toy screwdriver in her hand to 'chip' rocks with. She and I go down the side of the house (which is Mars) after blasting off from Earth in the rocket (aka the lounge in the playroom) dressed in our appropriate outfits. We then scour the planet for rocks and plants of interest. Harriet will chip the rocks and collate them in her collection bag, whilst I...well, I just go along for the ride and to be told what to do. One of the fun asides of going to Mars is finding out that the rocks can also be used as chalk - Harriet then marks her territory in proper imperialistic manner by writing her name on the ground ("So that everyone knows that I was here on Mars you see Mama").

Oh and for some reason my photos are coming up looking very wan on blogger. No idea why, I'm saving them in the same colour profile (sRGB). Anyone have any ideas?

Wearing Babies

If you look closely, you'll see that there is a little baby head peeking out from between the two blue straps over the front of my chest in that photo. After having him in the pouch sling kindly leant to us from Jay for a week, he has now decided that the Hug a Bub is the coolest thing and refuses to be in any other carrier now. It's so cute - he has a carrier preference already!

We watched the instructional DVD on my computer and after watching it, Harriet was determined to make her own "in case there are women who want to watch that one but can't find it. Then they can use my one". Not too sure just how helpful it would be, but she gave it a good go as you can watch. James is convinced she's going to be a film director - she loves to set things up and then film them or create the story that goes along with the scenario she's set up. She also enjoys saying "Can we make up a story about it?" in regards to...well, just about anything really. Show her a new toy and she wants to make up a story about it and how it found its way to her. Find a dead beetle in the backyard? Harriet is eager to make up a story about it and its life. She's definitely a storyteller!

Homecoming

Well we are very belatedly here to announce that the Tedmeister is HOME! We're so ecstatic, he confounded everyone's expectations and had completed all of his sucking feeds within the very first 48hrs that he tried them (basically all babies have to have been putting on weight over 48hrs when they only have breastmilk through either a bottle or straight from the breast - premmie babies often get too tired by the end to go home). But Teddy passed with flying colours, putting on a whopping 60gms over the 48hrs. I even had the supervising nurse (who I had met with to make a complaint the previous week) come over to me to apologise and say that he had been wrong; Teddy really *was* deserving of special attention. :o)

So he came home on Wednesday morning and we have been running around picking up things for him here and there, but mostly we've just been gazing at him as he sleeps peacefully in the sling or sucks furiously at the breast. Yep, he's a hard boy to please. ;o) Please don't be upset if you have only just found out - we seriously sent out an sms to a few family members and that's it, and just completely forgot to let everyone else know. Yes we are hopeless!

Here is a photo that we took on the first day back home with all of us. Remember that I've just had a baby and we'd all just been through a harrowing couple of weeks, so we're hardly looking our glamour-model best. But boy are we happy!

We hope to catch up with everyone soon and show off Teddy to all and sundry. He is pretty gorgeous after all.

Update

I thought I might update you all on what's going on. I know that lots of you have been calling, sending emails, contacting us on Facebook etc etc and we've been pretty slack at responding.

I should say first that Teddy is fine.

I guess in response to our failure to communicate I might say that it's difficult to feel like talking about it (hence this post).  The update is:

• Teddy has successfully moved from Neonatal ICU to the High Dependency Unit and now on to the Special Care Unit. Next stop will be home
• Originally he needed some oxygen to support his lungs, but that stopped some time ago now (it's hard to remember how long ago, as the days become a bit mixed up)
• Until recently Teddy had some difficulty keep his temperature within normal range, and he was in a humidcrib. This stage has passed as well and he's in a little open cot
• He also couldn't suck, and therefore couldn't be fed through any normal method, hence he had a tube that led to his stomach to feed him through. We/the nurses would use a syringe loaded with breast milk to pump the milk into his stomach. At the moment this still happens sometimes

We're he's at now is that he needs to spend a 48 period getting a "sucking" feed every 4 hours, either from the breast or bottle (expressed breast milk in that case) and then he should be able to come home (on the 4 hourly feeds when he doesn't "suck" he gets intubated and feed with the syringe again). We're hoping that he will get to 48 hours sometime this week, but it could conceivably be a week or two yet.

Cass and I have (obviously) been talking about this a lot, and it's quite weird to have a child who has never once been in your house. Last Friday I finally had a chance to hold him for the first time - he was two weeks old. I can't begin to explain to people how crappy that is, particularly in the light of the way that Cass and I parent. For her part, Cass is able to feed him and spend a bit more time with him that I can, but it's in no way the same as having him home. Cass said to me today then when he eventually does come home she won't be putting him down for the next 2 years!

And, just a sample of our days:

James

- get up

- get Harry ready for pre-school (she loves pre-school, but still has difficulty separating from me when we get there)

- get on the bus and go to pre-school

- drop Harry off, usually amid a flood of tears and sadness (although after I've gone she loves the place)

- walk to work

- work all day (breaking some times to talk to someone about Teddy)

- get the bus to the hospital, where I usually meet Harry and Cass

- spend about 5 minutes with Teddy before Harry drags me off (not that I resent this, I completely understand)

- go home

- get dinner ready & eat it

- put Harry to bed

- fall asleep in front of old DVDs of "The West Wing" (as an aside, I'm starting to view the show as a management instruction tool, I'm not sure that's a good sign)

- go to bed far too late

Cass

- get up

- express breast milk

- get Harry ready for school

- say goodbye to Harry and James

- get showered and dressed

- go to hospital

- feed Teddy

- hang around making sure he's ok, all the while wishing he could come home

- get something to eat and drink

- feed Teddy

- hang around making sure he's ok, all the while wishing he could come home

- pick up Harry from school

- talk to little miss excitement for 2 hours about how awesome pre-school is

- go back to the hospital

- try to wrangle the family so that everyone gets a chance to hang with Teddy

- go home

- sort out dinner, Harry's bath

- get Harry into bed

- go back to the hospital

- feed Teddy

- hang around making sure he's ok, all the while wishing he could come home

- come home

- express breast milk

- go to bed far too late

So you can see, that doesn't leave all that much time for conversing with you all. But that doesn't mean that we don't appreciate everyone's love and support, and even though I've painted this all as pretty tragic, we are managing to get through it all.

Another Photo

Here is Ted with his eyes open. It's very rare to see, he spends most of his time with them closed, so far at least (no doubt that'll change).

Teddy Update

(some of you may have received this as an email, but I thought I'd post it here in case people missed it)

Once again apologies for not getting in touch with anyone. Our days at the moment consist of running around like crazy trying to maintain a juggling act of tending to Harriet's emotional needs (all related to me not being there and not to do with Teddy which is great in one way but bad in another of course), getting small life acts done (like doing the shopping and washing), expressing milk (which requires me to be either at the hospital or at home) and sleeping somewhere in all that.

To say that it has been exhausting doesn't really cover it. If this was our first child it would be a completely different story but having to ensure that Harriet is settled, happy, secure, and not too crazy with overtiredness is a full time job in itself at the moment, let alone trying to fit in the needs of another child who isn't available to you. James and I are running on pure adrenalin right now and so we really apologise for not getting in contact with people - be it by email or by phone it's tricky. Email requires us to be at home and we are mainly out and about all day, and you have to turn your phone off when you're in the nursery at the hospital so that removes a huge chunk of our day too.

As for Teddy, he is doing remarkably well. Yesterday he *finally* got the bloody UVC out (the fluid lines that were entering through his umbilicus). They were quite fragile and needed to be exposed all the time, so we couldn't hold him up against us or take him far or put clothes on him or anything. I could hold him with my arm cradled underneath him but couldn't have him right up against my chest. But now I can, yay! The other good news about the UVC being out is that it means he is now tolerating just breastmilk rather than it needing to be supplemented with nutrient fluids because his GIT was too immature to handle the milk properly previously. He still has his orogastric tube in since he still can't suckle at the breast properly, but he has had one great go at it where he sucked for about an hour, and a couple of other less interested turns where he was just too darn sleepy to get right into it.

Today Harriet is at preschool so I get the chance to go in there and sit with him on me for the whole day. When I went in last night he finally had some clothes on (a little green wondersuit, so cute) because they want to get him into an open bed rather than the incubator. He is so chilled out, all the nurses tell us how he just sleeps and looks around when he does venture to awaken. The only time he has cried was when his nappy was full - Harriet never cried at that, so I'll have to be more mindful of nappy changes now!

Well while I'm writing this I could be off at the hospital, so I'll end now and drive on over to see our gorgeous little boy.