Friday 20 March 2009

More teeth, (slightly) more sleep and the professor

Good morning. No, a great morning. Jake didn't wake up until 6.30am today. Life is so much better when that happens. Especially on the Friday before the Saturday you're going to see an away match which is the weekend before you go to Spain!

The last few weeks has been a real turning point. Jake's getting huge as he's on 3 meals a day but still hasn't dropped a bottle. He's not crawling but he is now consistently rolling over from back to front. He can't get back yet but he's half way there, the clever thing.

He's been restless and has had an upset stomach over the last few days but we discovered a new tooth which could explain it. As each tooth comes through I feel we're nearer a full pattern of sleep which is, I suppose, the holy grail. That said, if he sleeps until 6am + every day for ever that's o.k with me.

He's also a lot more fun now, really loves being upright, especially in his bouncer. He loves to bounce and I feel guilty to say that it makes me laugh when he's in it and starts crying but continues bouncing! He laughs almost on demand now and LOVES the bath. He lays there thrashing his legs up and down and making snow angel shapes with his arms. I get soaked every night but it's a lot of fun.

We went back to see Prof Haers on Tuesday and he was very pleased. I like to think that he would be honest and at the very least not say how pleased he was, if he wasn't. We have seen a couple of repairs where the nose didn't come out too well and we wondered what he'd have told the parents...then we worried that Jake's nose doesn't look to us like it looks to other people. Then we realised how paranoid we were being and pulled ourselves together. We're chuffed to bits with his nose (as the Prof was) and if anyone else sees it differently then that's up to them.

The Prof explained the next procedure which doesn't sound like much fun. They get his mouth open as wide as possible and using magnifiers, precision instruments and a steady hand break up the muscles in the edges of the exposed palate so that they can then be pulled into place and stitched together. Again, thank God for these people.

There are two unlikely but possible complications post op. The first could manifest itself in a matter of days and is, to an extent, the luck of the draw; this is when a hole, a fistula, appears in the repaired palate. A small fistula ought not to be a problem and in many cases would not mean further surgery. They would only look to close it up again if it were to cause social or psychological problems, i.e milk comes out of the nose at school or an overly nasal twang to speech. There's a 20% chance of a fistula and another 20% chance of having to have it repaired should it happen. That said, I'm done with percentages.

The other problem is that the new palate is too short or two long. Both cases can have speech implications and the chances are similar to a hole appearing.

Less common still is that as Jake's skull and face develops there could be jaw alignment issues. This is actually more common in people without clefts but it's when the lower jaw is less prominent than it should be. There was a boy in the waiting room who looked (to me) as if he was affected. Without sounding cruel, you could tell something was up and he'll need it dealt with for his own self confidence when he gets a bit older. The problem is with bone related operations is that the body needs to have stopped growing at its fastest rate before they happen which means that the child will have had the issue throughout the time when kids are at their most vindictive and predatory. I felt sorry for this boy and hope he isn't getting too much of a hard time.

We sat next to a couple with a 5 week old boy in the waiting room who, like us had had the heads up at the 20 week scan. Their baby was to be born with a bilateral cleft lip and potentially a cleft palate too. Bilateral cleft lips are a bit more shocking as they tend to go up both nostrils and look much messier. It sounds harsh but it's true. Although it was their second child, I can imagine they went through all the worry and heartache we did, only a bit worse because the cleft was supposedly going to be more severe. They needn't have worried as the clefts are literally like tiny snips in the front of the lip. Neither the gum line or top of the lip is affected and the palate is fine. It must have been the ultimate sense of relief. Going from thinking about a severe bilateral cleft, a minimum of two operations, speech therapy etc to having a lip repair which is not much more than a collagen injection. Good for them, they'll be fine.

So we're off on Jake's first foreign holiday. Off to sunny Spain which should be a great temperature for March, somewhere in the late 60s/ early 70s. I like it hotter but it's best for Jake that it's not crazy heat. We're going Tuesday to Tuesday so the airport and flight ought not to be too much of a hassle. If he cries for two hours then so be it. If anyone has a problem, I may have to remind them that a £60 Easyjet ticket doesn't come with a soundproof club seat and they might like to consider switching airlines if they don't like the sound of crying babies. How things change, I remember thinking 'shut that f^%$&*" baby up' on any number of flights before. Now I know!

We really need this trip, it's been 10 months since we went to Egypt and the walls have started to close in. Work, like many others at the moment is tricky, balancing staff expectations with clients' shrinking budgets is never much fun! That along with 6 months of broken sleep on the back of 5 months of anxiety means we need a break. Get your violins out if you want!

Post holiday report will follow.


He's getting big!

Thursday 26 February 2009

Sleep, Smile Pinki and an unbelievable coincidence

I've been putting off writing this blog entry for a while as I didn't want to tempt fate. Unfortunately I waited too long and fate has not only been tempted but realised.

Two weeks ago Jake had a breakthrough. He would go to sleep and stay asleep until at least 4.30am...then 5.30am and then a string of 6.15's. It really felt as if someone had handed us the key to our cell and was showing us the way to the tunnel! However the last two nights in a row have been proliferated with half hourly crying sessions which need considerable shushing and the odd dummy deployment. It's so frustrating, you think you'd done the hardest bit but then he switches it up to keep us on our toes. Here's hoping it's a blip and normal sleep service will be resumed from tonight.

Next up, congratulations to 'Smile Pinki' which won 'Best Short Documentary' at the Oscars. The documentary is about a poor Indian girl, ostracised from her community, ridiculed and left to a life of solitude and shame until the Smile Train came along and repaired her lip at the age of 7. Pinki was at the Oscars although she fell asleep on her Dad's lap so didn't join Megan Mylan, the director on stage when the film won. I guess making it all the less cheesy and more poignant. I saw an online ad which read 'which Oscar will change the lives of 4 million children?'. A worthy winner indeed.

Which brings me to the coincidence. Yesterday morning I Googled Smile Pinki as I heard it had won and had been following the film's progress since it was nominated. Naturally I was pleased that it had won but after following a few threads I landed on a blog from a guy called Martin. His company it turned out, are very much involved with the Smile Train and organise various fund raisers and have done great things over the years to promote the good things it does. Naturally you can imagine my surprise when I tell you that half an hour later, I was talking to the very same Martin in our office at a sales meeting which had been arranged the week before to talk about his business requirements. As we talked about the coincidence and his involvement and experience with Smile Train, he revealed that not only is he good pals with the founder of the Smile Train, but he is about to join the board!

I've only just started donating to this charity and a week later I have a new contact with a direct route to the founder of it. Weird and spooky but cool too. I'm not sure if I've written much about this cause before but they are an inspiring organisation. They have a total of 43 staff yet have made over 500,000 cleft operations possible, free of charge in some of the poorest and remote communities around the world. There philosophy is 'teach a man to fish' whereby they provide training, materials and support, instead of 'give a man some fish' like so many of the missionary charities who maybe carry out just 200 operations a year. Those other charities do fantastic work but it's so costly flying hundreds of western doctors and nurses out to perform the operations. According to the New York Times, the Smile Train is "...one of the most productive charities -dollar for deed - in the world." Just $250 dollars is enough to pay for one child to have his or her cleft repaired. I felt compelled to give a monthly donation as I know that every year someone else will also get the operation that Jake had for free instead of suffering a lifetime of despair. Pinki shows me that we're all really the same...doesn't matter whether you're a middle class boy from Guildford or the poorest little girl in India, a cleft's still a cleft.

Check The Smile Train out here...

www.smiletrain.org/

Wednesday 11 February 2009

Jake got a(nother) girlfriend!

Ahh, little, little one AKA Sadie Tulloch was born but C section at 00:30 on Tuesday, narrowly missing her due date by half an hour. Mother and baby doing just peachy. Massive congratulations to proud parents, Sarah and Hamish. The photo I've seen is pretty blurry but she's definitely a cutie and Jake's going to be pleased with the addition to his hareem!

Going to an all boys school, girls were a bit of a mystery to me as a nipper so it'll be great for Jake to have as many female friends as possible. Of the 8 most recent babies born to friends and family there are 4 boys and 4 girls which seems about right in the natural order of things. In the relatively short time since writing this blog (and not counting the 7 NCT babies), Molly, Jake, Henry, Aniela, Eliza, Rufus, Jack and now Sadie have entered the world and it's going to be great watching how they all grow up. The ups and downs that punctuate their development and shape their personalities will be a source of constant amazement to their families and friends. It's life affirming stuff this parenting lark...Jake screamed for 2 and half hours between 9 and 11pm yesterday and all it took for me to forget it was the wry smile on his face when I went in and turned on the light. I know just turning the light on is creating the cliched rod for one's back, but I don't so much mind the rod if it's accompanied by that smile.

I think that I'm slowly learning that I can't fix everything right away and he will be unpredictable or unbearable at times but that's kind of the point in having a child. After childhood and education, early working life and a lot of reckless partying, we settle down and have kids. It's the next step or even just a change so as to do something different in life. A challenge if you will. As long as the good outweighs the bad (and it always seems to so far) it should be a lot of fun and as the sickening advert says 'there's no greater adventure than having kids'. Cheesy as that sounds the point I'm making is that we shouldn't know exactly what's going to happen, it should unravel slowly so each day or each stage should surprise, engage, entertain us somehow, otherwise it would be incredibly dull and predictable. Once you realise that and accept that your new life is a better life and has been enhanced massively by adding a new person to it you can deal with the crap much more easily and get on with all the great stuff.

How's that for deep!

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Sleep, teeth and two steps backward

Aside from the cleft, sleep, or lack thereof was always my primary concern during Clare's pregnancy. How I would cope on 4 or 5 hours a night was always a big worry. After Jake was born it took a while to adjust but we did adjust and it's amazing how you can actually cope. Then for probably three months Jake would miss out the eleven pm or midnight feed and go to 3am before waking for food. Then he'd sleep until 6 or sometimes 7. We have a clock which projects the time onto our ceiling so know about his waking times and analyse them more than we perhaps ought to but life is about routine and it's how we see him develop. We bore anyone stupid enough not to make their excuses with tales of how tired we are and how he slept last night! Anyway for a long time he was a one-feed-a-night baby and we could probably cope with that indefinitely.

Then his op came along and quite understandably it messed with his routine completely and things haven't been the same since. It's been a month since the lip repair and we've had two of the old nights but the rest have been at best unpredictable and at worst, horrendous.

One of Jake's best habits was passing out at on the dot of 7pm after his food and would be fast asleep without so much as a murmur but now he fights it and quite often needs shushing and stroking and dummying before going to sleep. Then he wakes at 8, 9 and 10. His best trick now is to save up his rage until either five minutes before we fall asleep or five minutes after. If I was crossing my fingers before, I am praying to the East and making deals with God now.

The problem is that, following the operation he got a cold (how cruel is that) and now he's getting teeth. Understandably he's got the hump but he's teething all day long so I don't get it that he only wants to scream at night. We drug him up to the eyeballs before he goes to sleep but nothing really helps. It's just one of those things we have to go through. I'm sure anyone reading this will think this is just a moan and I should get over it but as I've said before, this is my blog and if you don't like it write your own. Or just piss off. Can you tell I'm tired?!

Jake's cousin Jack!

Massive congratulations to Matt (Clare's older brother) and Vee on the birth of their beautiful baby boy, Jack. We went to see the little man on Sunday and although every parent of a six month old says it, you really forget just how small they were and how light they feel. He almost fits in one hand! Anyway he's lovely and Vee's labour was a breeze and they were all home within the same 24 hours so as to avoid the snow.

It's great news and I'm looking forward to seeing Jake and Jack as thick as theives in the years to come. I wished I'd seen more of my cousins whilst growing up so I'm determined that Jake will be friends with his.