Psht why would I update
It's just a baby!
So if you didn't know, Toby Nathaniel was born on Oct 13, weighing in at 8 pounds 5 and 53 cm long. It was a 12 hour labour that shaped up to be much shorter (she was labouring at home for 4-5 hours and started pushing not long after we reached the hospital) but Toby had turned around onto his back sometime in the 3 days since the previous midwife appointment. One doctor came in and diagnosed the problem and told Janey to "stop pushing" (so helpful!), but luckily it was the end of her shift and we got another doctor to do the operation. It was pretty stressful sitting in the pre-op room as she's in too much pain to talk and sucking down nitrous that's not really helpful and random people are sticking drips in her and taking blood. We wheeled her down to the operating theatre and I put on scrubs and had to wait while they stuck a big needle in her spine. Apparently it's not actually an epidural but another anaesthetic in this case.
Eventually I got called into the room and all of a sudden Janey was "awake" and talking happily... The anaesthetist, who before had seemed kind of impatient and unfriendly, was checking for any signs of pain and explainning everything that was going on. Everyone was smiling and upbeat and it was just much better. The doctor turned the baby around with some forceps that started with K, and Janey helped push the baby out even though she couldn't feel anything anymore. I held Toby for a while (finding out the sex was almost an afterthought, he'd been indeterminate for so long) and handed him over to a Janey who I'm glad couldn't see all the stitching going on at the other end.
Anyway the aftermath was pretty good. The midwife who'd accompanied us made sure that Toby could stay with Janey in the recovery room instead of getting carted off somewhere. The doctor apparently did a really good job as usually there is an episiotomy or at least external scarring of some kind, but in this case all the stitches were internal. Toby had some marks and a big bruise on his head, which was strongly cone-shaped, but all this cleared up within a few days. Janey only spent 2 nights in the hospital and wanted to go home, so they let her. She's still very sore 2 weeks later but apparently is healing well, though she is just getting cabin fever from not being able to get out and walk around in this nice weather we're having lately.
So what's it like having a baby? I think it's one of those experiences that you think about a lot when you watch other people going through it or in a movie or whatever, but when it actually happens to you you're too busy experiencing it to really reflect on it. My third day back at work last week I was creating a test account for a website and chose as my secret password question "What is my son's middle name?" Then I suddenly thought "Bloody hell, I have a son!" and had to go get a coffee and think about that for a while.
Having a newborn is a lot harder than pregnancy or even labour were. Janey says childbirth was cake compared to stabbing pains all the time, especially in combination with nausea, cramps from the uterus shrinking, and severe breastfeeding pain which thankfully seems to be slowly reducing now. It's funny that the first thing people at work said to me was "Hey, good luck changing nappies!" when that's really the least of my concerns. I guess it's something I'd rather not do, but it's really no biggie. Occasionally he has hyper fits which have no particular cause, but can last for ages and you just have to endure the screaming and worse, the wriggling. In general he hasn't been too bad, but there was a 6-hour stint last week and then last night I was up from 11 to 2:30 trying to settle him, and everything seems much worse when you're low on sleep. I'm actually pretty upbeat about it now though, as I'd much rather put up with it myself than expect Janey to cope with it when she has him all day as well. We're slowly getting used to the life changes, it's a bit like starting at a new job where the days are interminably long until you start to get used to the surroundings and culture.
Good things about the baby: well, he's pretty cute. Neither of us are normally much into the "cute" thing but we both have to admit that for a baby he's not bad. He gets the hiccups a lot and we try not to laugh at him. I think we're both going to enjoy him more and more as he becomes a bit more responsive to us and reacts to his environment.
Random thoughts: I'm not sure if kids' behaviour has ACTUALLY dramatically deteriorated since I was young or if it's just a symptom of the old "Everything was better (yet also harder) in the old days" syndrome. It is true that walking around in shopping centres etc these days we tend to comment on the well-behaved kids rather than the ones throwing tantrums, because the former is rarer and more remarkable. I did hear that one third of Australian parents feel they have no control or something like that so maybe it is a measurable phenomenon. I honestly think the Supernanny may be a hero of the age, if only to promote the idea that parenting doesn't HAVE to be a pointless day-to-day struggle. Even some of our nicest friends have ratty kids so it's tempting to believe that our dreams of polite well-mannered children are fanciful. The other worry I have is that we'd be doing our kids a disservice by raising them to be courteous and thoughtful when they're clearly going to be surrounded by shitholes.
Work update! I have a reasonably interesting project to work on, with shiny new technology that I'm actually looking forward to. Unfortunately I can't work on it until a) I get a better pc (this P3 won't cut it) and b) we've agreed with the client exactly what we're doing. So I'm back to "training" (eg updating livejournal). I should be watching Microsoft tech webcasts, but I am certain I would fall asleep due to last night. I'll only be at work two days next week due to Melbourne cup day (tuesday), taking monday off because pretty much everyone has so there's no use being here, then taking the next Monday & Friday off to go to my aunt's party in Mount Gambier. I am wondering if the state of Victoria is the only place in the world that has a public holiday for a horse race. Gobo and I thought that Kentucky, Tokyo and wherever they have the Grand National might be other possibilities. It's left as an exercise for the reader.
So if you didn't know, Toby Nathaniel was born on Oct 13, weighing in at 8 pounds 5 and 53 cm long. It was a 12 hour labour that shaped up to be much shorter (she was labouring at home for 4-5 hours and started pushing not long after we reached the hospital) but Toby had turned around onto his back sometime in the 3 days since the previous midwife appointment. One doctor came in and diagnosed the problem and told Janey to "stop pushing" (so helpful!), but luckily it was the end of her shift and we got another doctor to do the operation. It was pretty stressful sitting in the pre-op room as she's in too much pain to talk and sucking down nitrous that's not really helpful and random people are sticking drips in her and taking blood. We wheeled her down to the operating theatre and I put on scrubs and had to wait while they stuck a big needle in her spine. Apparently it's not actually an epidural but another anaesthetic in this case.
Eventually I got called into the room and all of a sudden Janey was "awake" and talking happily... The anaesthetist, who before had seemed kind of impatient and unfriendly, was checking for any signs of pain and explainning everything that was going on. Everyone was smiling and upbeat and it was just much better. The doctor turned the baby around with some forceps that started with K, and Janey helped push the baby out even though she couldn't feel anything anymore. I held Toby for a while (finding out the sex was almost an afterthought, he'd been indeterminate for so long) and handed him over to a Janey who I'm glad couldn't see all the stitching going on at the other end.
Anyway the aftermath was pretty good. The midwife who'd accompanied us made sure that Toby could stay with Janey in the recovery room instead of getting carted off somewhere. The doctor apparently did a really good job as usually there is an episiotomy or at least external scarring of some kind, but in this case all the stitches were internal. Toby had some marks and a big bruise on his head, which was strongly cone-shaped, but all this cleared up within a few days. Janey only spent 2 nights in the hospital and wanted to go home, so they let her. She's still very sore 2 weeks later but apparently is healing well, though she is just getting cabin fever from not being able to get out and walk around in this nice weather we're having lately.
So what's it like having a baby? I think it's one of those experiences that you think about a lot when you watch other people going through it or in a movie or whatever, but when it actually happens to you you're too busy experiencing it to really reflect on it. My third day back at work last week I was creating a test account for a website and chose as my secret password question "What is my son's middle name?" Then I suddenly thought "Bloody hell, I have a son!" and had to go get a coffee and think about that for a while.
Having a newborn is a lot harder than pregnancy or even labour were. Janey says childbirth was cake compared to stabbing pains all the time, especially in combination with nausea, cramps from the uterus shrinking, and severe breastfeeding pain which thankfully seems to be slowly reducing now. It's funny that the first thing people at work said to me was "Hey, good luck changing nappies!" when that's really the least of my concerns. I guess it's something I'd rather not do, but it's really no biggie. Occasionally he has hyper fits which have no particular cause, but can last for ages and you just have to endure the screaming and worse, the wriggling. In general he hasn't been too bad, but there was a 6-hour stint last week and then last night I was up from 11 to 2:30 trying to settle him, and everything seems much worse when you're low on sleep. I'm actually pretty upbeat about it now though, as I'd much rather put up with it myself than expect Janey to cope with it when she has him all day as well. We're slowly getting used to the life changes, it's a bit like starting at a new job where the days are interminably long until you start to get used to the surroundings and culture.
Good things about the baby: well, he's pretty cute. Neither of us are normally much into the "cute" thing but we both have to admit that for a baby he's not bad. He gets the hiccups a lot and we try not to laugh at him. I think we're both going to enjoy him more and more as he becomes a bit more responsive to us and reacts to his environment.
Random thoughts: I'm not sure if kids' behaviour has ACTUALLY dramatically deteriorated since I was young or if it's just a symptom of the old "Everything was better (yet also harder) in the old days" syndrome. It is true that walking around in shopping centres etc these days we tend to comment on the well-behaved kids rather than the ones throwing tantrums, because the former is rarer and more remarkable. I did hear that one third of Australian parents feel they have no control or something like that so maybe it is a measurable phenomenon. I honestly think the Supernanny may be a hero of the age, if only to promote the idea that parenting doesn't HAVE to be a pointless day-to-day struggle. Even some of our nicest friends have ratty kids so it's tempting to believe that our dreams of polite well-mannered children are fanciful. The other worry I have is that we'd be doing our kids a disservice by raising them to be courteous and thoughtful when they're clearly going to be surrounded by shitholes.
Work update! I have a reasonably interesting project to work on, with shiny new technology that I'm actually looking forward to. Unfortunately I can't work on it until a) I get a better pc (this P3 won't cut it) and b) we've agreed with the client exactly what we're doing. So I'm back to "training" (eg updating livejournal). I should be watching Microsoft tech webcasts, but I am certain I would fall asleep due to last night. I'll only be at work two days next week due to Melbourne cup day (tuesday), taking monday off because pretty much everyone has so there's no use being here, then taking the next Monday & Friday off to go to my aunt's party in Mount Gambier. I am wondering if the state of Victoria is the only place in the world that has a public holiday for a horse race. Gobo and I thought that Kentucky, Tokyo and wherever they have the Grand National might be other possibilities. It's left as an exercise for the reader.