Mary progress (by alaric)

Mary's doing well. Her blood sugar was a bit low at first, due to some combination of medication Sarah was on before the birth (Metformin, to control gestational diabetes, which acts to reduce blood sugar levels) and a delay in Sarah's breast milk coming through properly, but she got over that fine and was pronounced fit to discharge. She and Sarah are still in the hospital for now, though, as Sarah's quite anemic and gets short of breath very quickly, and she was showing some signs of infection; but they put her on antibiotics, and the infection symptoms are fading away. She's on iron supplements, and is getting stronger every day.

I've been spending most of every day with them, helping Sarah with looking after herself and Mary, and keeping them company. I get to hold Mary lots, which has been particularly fun as she's started being more awake and alert; she spent a lot of time sleeping for the first couple of days, but now she opens her eyes and looks around, turning her head towards voices. Today she took to lifting her head up, although her neck is still quite weak so she can only do this if you're holding her upright to begin with; she now unsteadily holds her head up so she can look around more. The right thing to do to help her brain develop at this stage is to talk to her, so that's what I've been doing... telling her about the pets at home and that sort of thing. I've also been having a go at talking to her in Lojban, as I'd quite like to raise her as Lojban/English bilingual, in order to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis once and for all. I need to to a bit more research on suitable Lojban baby talk, but so far it's been {ko .iu gleki} ("be happy, darling"), {lo vi mamta be do} ("Mummy's here!"), {mi patfu do .iu} ("It's Daddy!"), {.uu .uinaidai} ("Aw, you're sad"), {.uipei} ("Are you happy?"), {.uidai} ("You're happy!"), {fi'i la meris} ("Welcome, Mary"), and so on.

Mary (by alaric)

Yesterday morning, at 9:45am, our second daughter Mary was born by Caesarian section!

The day started early, before 6am, as Sarah had to take pre-operative medication at 6. But we'd packed everything the night before, so there was little more to do than sleepily get ready and get into the car. We left at 7am, still dark and cold; to my initial horror, the road up the hill from the house was frozen and the car slid on the ice... but I took an alternate route, and we get to the hospital and parked in about half an hour. Slightly early, so there was nobody actually in the maternity assessment unit yet, so we sat and waited.

Just after 8am, Sarah was ushered in, and measurements taken, and she was questioned about allergies and all that sort of stuff by the anesthetist, midwife, and registrar. Then without further ado, up to the theatre suite. I changed into scrubs while they fitted Sarah with a canula, then into the theatre itself where the spinal anesthetic was applied, and Sarah laid down, with me alongside. Once the pain block was confirmed, a sheet went up so we couldn't see the gore. The anesthetist asked Sarah if she'd like to know when they started; she said yes, so he peeked over, and announced that they were already well underway.

After a few moments (9:45am), Mary was lifted up (still attached to the cord) so we could see her over the sheet, and my fear and panic gave way to trembling relief, and Sarah visibly relaxed as well. Then she was whisked away by the midwife for examination and cord removal, while I continued to calm Sarah as they worked to remove the placenta and clean her up.

Mary was brought to us soon, and I held her next to Sarah's head, all tiny and swaddled. Sarah began to feel sick so I took Mary away and rocked her and sang to her, as she was getting hungry (she was turning her head towards me and opening her mouth). Once Sarah was all sewn up and transferred from operating table to a bed, Mary was placed in her arms, and we went through to the recovery room.

Mary then breastfed, for what seemed like an age, then when she was done I brought her to the midwife to weigh... where it was found that, while being carried, she'd pooed on my hand and the nice surgical scrubs. So I went and changed back into my clothes while she was cleaned up and put into a nappy. Sarah was recovering fine, so with Mary back in her arms, her bed was wheeled up into the Maternity ward, where mother and baby slept.

I got some cuddles:

And Sarah got plenty of cuddles, as Mary alternately slept on her and breastfed:

And then Jean and Sarah's parents arrived. Jean was lovely with Mary - she'd been so looking forward to having a sibling, and the look of delight on her face was something to behold. She cuddled Mary lots:

Seeing them bonding was particularly special to me, having been a bit of a lonely only child. My daughters have something I never had!

We were amazed by how professionally and carefully everything has been done. The staff at Gloucester Royal Hospital have been excellent to us. But I'll leave it to Sarah to write up her thoughts on that, as she's been the focus of attention!

On fatherhood (by alaric)

The role of the father in pregnancy and childbirth is often misunderstood. It's easy to imagine that we have it easy - the conception is a hard six hours' work, sure, and then after nine months you have an extra mouth to feed; but nothing compared to pregnancy and childbirth, right?

But there's a little more to it than that.

The thing I've found hardest, to be honest, is feeling powerless. I can carry Sarah's bags, and help her get in and out of the car, and so on, but I have to just stand there looking awkward as she winces in pain at every step. It was at its worst in the delivery room, when Jean was being born; I had been keeping myself going with Optimism and Enthusiasm as Sarah's condition declined and the number of tubes and wires connected to her rose, right up to the point when the medical stuff had a worried conversation with each other and started bringing in extra trollies full of equipment. The sight of the "crash cart" laden with defibrillator and its breathing-bag thing with a set of individually wrapped sterile airways, and a cart with surgical instruments, finally brought it home that they were seriously concerned that Sarah's heart would fail under the strain. They told me that if she died, they would try and save the baby. And all I could do was stand and wait and try not to get in the way.

Once Jean was out, it was great - I could hold her, and change nappies, and take the strain off of Sarah whiled looking after her recovery. That was far easier than just having to stand and watch.

Tomorrow at 8am we have to report to the hospital, where Jean's sibling will be extracted by planned Caesarian section. Again, I'm feeling the powerlessness... I'm rushing around getting everything ready, and making Sarah a nice meal of whatever she wants before she has to go on Nil By Mouth in preparation for the surgery, and laying out everything needed for Sarah's parents to look after Jean; ticking the last things off of lists, checking and cross-checking preparations. I'm surrounding myself in hyperactivity, because I know there's not actually all that much more I can do that will actually make a difference.

The Fear (by sarah)

Coming up to this little ones birth my mind has turned itself inside out with the memories of what happened before with Jean - it keep from overly panicking I have written a couple of poems which make me cry but I think are over all helpful at least to me.

The Fear

Before you were born
The Fear began
Blood marked anxiety
Over your future
Later it grabbed me
By the Lungs
As they injected me
To develop your
So if I died
You could be plucked
Not ready but surviable
Death was a shadow over us
Labour dawned
With complications
A room bristled
With activity
I could say nothing
Just scream
Silently - SAVE MY BABY
Intervention, blood, pain
You were there
And I could speak
Whispering softly
Too Daddy
'Go with the Baby'
His worried eyes boring
Into me

The Fear did not go
They placed you on me
And I sang a grace
'Thankyou'
Thankyou for my
Cone headed, alien-primate
My bueatiful monkey
Ancient and New
In the crib with you
The Fear tingled
As it still does
I check you each night
Even now
As often as I could then
Holding my breath
Checking yours

And as you grow
The Fear
Punctuates my thoughts
The less lickely to choke
The more you run off
Into the world
Of dangers
Fear constricts my mind
But I can not restrain you
Killing out of kindness
Out of Fear
Is still killing
Including the mind death
Stiffling the life
I watch you run
Explore

This is what love
Has wrought me?
This Fear
Fear of loosing you
And yet I would not undo
Would not exchange
The Fear
I would suffer more
For you
My little one
You grow
Grow strong and free
Maybe my fear
Is your blanket
Of protection
Innoculation against
The bad places?
I hope so
What else are
Parents for?

I had a Dream (by sarah)

Actually I've been having lots of very vivid dreams which doesn't bode well for sugar levels but I haven't got the results of the Glucose Tests back yet - by this time with Jean's pregnancy I had gestational diabetes. But then I often have vivid dreams - many of them are what is termed lucid and I have some sort of control on them. Part of this is the fact that when pain levels are high I don't actually go to sleep properly so I am in a sort of resting trance. They have benifits but it makes it harder for you body to repair itself from injuries - this isn't mumbo jumbo this was out of the Drs mouth at the pain clinic when they attempted to medicate my sleep when we lived back in Essex.

Anyway I thought I really needed to share lasts nights dream. It starts with me trying to get to a PhD interview at Reading University - the PhD is about modeling other solar systems and exo planets etc... I have no idea if Reading does this sort of thing but it was Reading in the dream - the only issue was Alaric was running late so instead of having a nice sedate drive to the interview we had to high jack a state of the art plane from the local army base type place.

As we took off I noticed the tail wasn't actually attached to the plane but the whole thing was segments held together a bit like a kite - the tail itself looked remarkably like a cray fishes or something lobstery only in shiny metal.

We get to the university and I am late - I haven't read the notes on what the things is actually about but they agree to see me anyway as there is only one other candidate - a UG astrophysics girl. I then proceed to think on the spot and tell them that they need to reassess everything. I tell them that what they need in a lovely large database with a nice archive mode - this is sort of a giant wiki with the ability to pull meta structures from the data such as phase diagrams. You see I don't just want to make a database of the planets and the physics but why not add all of mineralogy and astronomy?

Why not had layers where people can choose the data to run their simulations and the like? In the dream I'm in a pale yellow room with aging equipment and they are like - we don't have the money to pay the programmers and our stuff never quiet works.

Of course it doesn't I crow - your not programmers and you just use which ever language you happen to have picked up. Then I tell them not to worry - I'll make the database - I'll make the initial system and we can have people adding their own stuff!

It would be massive and everyone would argue about things added which is were the archive system would come in - they could just take an previous theory ect... With this we could easily extrapolate the composition of planets around other stars. It could have the ability to swap between notations so no more issues over what a Chemist calls a metal compared to a Geologist compared to a Astrophysist etc...

I have to say at this point there was decent in the interviewers - there is of course a problem of who the data belongs too and would we have to pay and keep it secret - that would hamstring the project - it would kill alot of their grants dead etc... alter the peer review system. Subjects that I have touched on before whilst awake!

But then I point out that it would have commercial applications and launched into a whole thing about the gaming industry being a growth sector and how you could build games engines on this thing! (again this is something we are sort of doing anyway in the real world but not with real physics).

I point out that scifi authors and the like would love to get their mitts on such a database too - for it would make world building a lot simpler and you could make smaller custom ones.

They were still like but we need someone to make all this and we just wanted a data monkey to enter numbers into spreed sheets. I laugh and say I can build it for them (I can't but I'm planning on using an advance version of Alaric's Ugarit.).

Anyway it ended with me negotiating to mainly work from home and stuff.

Part of me is now going - this needs to become real! We need to have this database - an extention on an idea I had a few years ago! And Alaric was like that is exactly the sort of thing the archive mode of Ugarit would be good for. The arogance of me in the dream was a suprise though. Besides last time I had a PhD interview I told the person their project was recording the wrong things - which didn't go down too well :/ And this dream is just that rite large - plus there is no way I am going to be doing anything academic for a while either - but it was a cool dream non the less!