It goes everywhere!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progress Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Utilising Online Services

Not long after starting this blog, I also created a website for Jack – not for him to use (as that is just silly), but more for our friends and family to be able to see how he’s getting on. I thought I’d write something here about it, explaining a little about it and some of the online services that I have used to make it work.

There are websites that are designed for new parents to do a very similar thing to what I have done, such as those at mytinybaby.com, but even though they are free to have and to use, I can’t help but be a little cynical about why they’re giving away such a service for free – are they selling on your personal details to third party companies, for the purpose of marketing more baby products? Who knows. Who cares? But me having a personal interest and the ability in doing this stuff, I thought I’d give it a go.

Windows Skydrive
The ever growing collection of photos of Jack are being stored and managed on the Windows Live Skydrive website – this is an online storage area owned by Microsoft, that is available to the general public. Once you’ve signed up for an account, you now get 25GB of free online storage space (it used to be just 5GB) to use for photos, files, documents or whatever and you can also specify whether you want these files private or publically accessible. The idea is then that you can take a photo album (or whatever) and make it available to the people you designate, whether that is the whole world or selected individuals. I chose to make the images I put up online available to the public providing that they came from a particular hyperlink which contains an encrypted key, meaning if you don’t have the password to the website, you won’t have access to the page that contains the link to the images on my Skydrive account.

Originally, I did set out to make myself a online photo storage area directly as part of the website, but why reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it? Skydrive does a great job of holding the photos, and even allows Claire and I to grant other people the access-rights needed to upload their images to our storage area, if need be.

Uploading photos to Skydrive is really easy, i.e. 'drag and drop' easy. The images are uploaded quite quickly and then the various thumbnails, etc are made automatically and without delay, they are available online.

YouTube
The videos available on the website are held by those nice people at YouTube. Basically, I have created an account and uploaded the videos and simply dropped links back into the website that kicks off the video. As YouTube records the number of times each video is played, by periodically visiting the YouTube site and signing onto my account, I can see the hit-count for each clip.

Uploading video clips to YouTube takes a lot longer to do, but that is simply down to the fact that video files are significantly larger in size than photos, and depending upon the length, quality and file format, the file size can vary quite a lot. But I do have to say that despite YouTube being an extremely popular website, I couldn't find the link to begin with that uploads the files... maybe it's just me, but if I couldn't find it, being a geek n' all, I'm sure other people might have backed out by then.

The videos on YouTube are actually meant to be public and shared from the start, which is a little bit against what I have been trying to do with the photos and other content about Jack, but I’m using YouTube in a slightly different way. I have created an account but in a random name that does not link back to anyone particular and have uploaded the videos under this name. The videos are not tagged with anyone’s names or details, and so the videos are just of ‘a baby’ and possibly ‘someone else’ in the footage too, so if someone was unlucky enough to stumble upon them whilst surfing the wide range of videos on YouTube, they wouldn’t necessarily know this was us and our baby, etc.

On Jack’s site, there’s a little slick animation that goes on when you click on one of the videos, which makes the video ‘appear’, but this is just little Javascript ‘lightboxing’ that goes on for effect.

Jack’s website
I made the website itself in classic ASP (Active Server Page for you non-geeks), which basically means the web-server builds each page before sending to you as a visitor to the site (potentially allowing each visitor to see a totally different page, based upon data, the date and time, etc., if need be). The fact that is was an ASP site meant I could implement the password-protected element of the site, which stops people who are just surfing the ‘net the find the photos etc.
The mechanism for the passwording was already in place, as I made it all years ago for the same purpose but for our wedding photos. So, this time around, I wiggled a few wires, pulled a few plugs and was able to reuse it for this.

This website is actually a first for me in a geeky way, as this is my first (proper) CSS website! – The website uses clean and compliant CSS to display itself and *should* be able to be displayed on a multitude of devices, such as mobile phones, notebooks, etc., in a much clearer and accessible way compared to the good ol’ days of making a website with a million nested tables to get image exactly where you needed them to make the website look correct. One false move or a dodgy sized screen to view it on, and the whole thing goes to pot...

I'm not really one to blow my own trumpet, but the result is not a bad effort. The website needed to come together fairly quickly, as I started making it all literally a week or so before the due date back in January! I’ve been back in and modified a few things around a little here and there when I've had a chance, but all in all, I’m quite pleased with it.

NCT Class Reunion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dirty Nappies

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

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

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

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

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

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

More reading if you're interested:

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

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

Random Updates

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

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

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

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

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

Milk Production

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Post-Birth Interview

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

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

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

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

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

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

CR: No, like... this isn’t me.

BR: Who else would it be? Explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CR: No, didn’t feel a thing.

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

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

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

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

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

CR: Tugging, that was it.

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

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

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

CR: ...covered in poo...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BR: So, he’s feeding ok now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

CR: Give or take.

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

CR: Yeah..

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

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

BR: Is the baby monitoring working out ok?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CR: You seem very comfortable with looking after a baby

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

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

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

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

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

CR: Hmm. Maybe...