Making Memories

I didn't do much with my dad growing up as he was busy building a business. We're great friends now and I know, on some levels he probably wishes he'd spent more time with me. If, for no other reason than it's quite fun hanging out with your kids! And particularly on days like yesterday, FA Cup final day.

I follow loads of Arsenal fans and bloggers on Twitter and so many of them talk about the magic of the FA Cup and trips down memory lane; going to Wembley with their dads and grandads or just watching it on telly. As football was never on growing up, I got into it late at the age of 16 and I only picked Arsenal to support in order to annoy my Liverpool supporting study mate. Since then, I've had some pretty good days supporting Arsenal, but not for the last nine years (as every journalist continually reminds us) since we last won the FA Cup, beating Man U on penalties...I remember taking a portable TV into the coffee shop I used to run and watching it with terrible reception sat on the floor as the cable wasn't long enough...anyway, yesterday I got the boys as excited as possible and we got our colours on, ate hotdogs on the sofa and watched in horror as Arsenal went two goals down in the first eight minutes! To Hull!!! In typical Arsenal fashion we did it the hard way and as overwhelming favourites, we'd turned up thinking we'd walk it...we eventually woke up and after extra time we won it 3-2.

Freddie might not remember it but Jake will absolutely look back on yesterday as the day he and his brother watched Arsenal win the FA Cup with their dad. You can't put a price on that.

Why I keep writing this blog...

I get lots of emails from people in the position we were 5 and half years ago but this one I wanted to share. (I do reply to them all by the way!).

Like us, they'll be fine and in time the anguish they're currently feeling will completely dissipate, but right now, they'll be going through all sorts of crazy emotions. Having been there I know it's not nice.

But as I said, they'll be fine. Good luck guys.

"Hello!,
You have no idea how much better you have made my husband and I feel!.. we just found out our baby boy will be born with a cleft lip and palate in our 21 week ultrasound and have been devastated. Looking up pictures and google we found your blog and you have given us hope that we can do this!. I cried so much reading your first post because it was as though I had written it myself! Thank you for writing your experience you have no idea how much you have helped us!"

5th Christmas

Crazy to think but that was Jake's fifth Christmas. And Freddie's 3rd. I recently went to my brother in law's 40th birthday and the guys got table gifts of grey wigs (as he is nearly completely grey) and as we all put them on, I remember thinking that we're all getting a lot older fast!

Christmas gets better and better as now both boys are excited and get what all the fuss is about...Jake's got to the 'more is more' stage of gift receiving and asking for more...something we tried to avoid but like screen time, squash and chocolate, there's a few things you let slide after a few years of being knackered into submission. Pick your battles they say.

Moving on, I subscribe to a free service which lets you store all of your digital photos ever taken for free in the cloud - (check out MyShoeBox) - anyway every day I get a 'this day in history' email which shows photos from this day 3 years ago and 8 years or some other random number...it's  brilliant way of looking at photos you'd almost certainly never see again unless you were really looking. Photos lost forever although stored safely and separately backed up, now popping up like magic.

Five years ago we were this very week planning to take Jake for his cleft lip repair - have another read about the big week.

Here's a couple of the last photos taken of his cleft lip.

And here's a few five years on!

Autumn

It's been a funny old autumn really. If I had to sum it up in a word that word would most likely be 'shit'.

One Monday morning after a night where my heart was beating so fast and so hard I thought I'd written my last blog post. Of course, I wasn't having a heart attack but the doctors told me I was in the right place. My normally spot-on blood pressure was through the roof and I wasn't hypochondrically dreaming about the palpitations, there were in fact, palpitations. Anyway the root cause of this was a combination of stress and anxiety.

If anyone ever asked me if I was stressed I don't think I'd say I was but that's how it works...it creeps up on you slowly. Commuting, working under pressure, balancing finances, childcare and life's daily traumas slowly tap, tap, tap away at us and if it's not managed, something has to give. None of this is exclusive to me, this is modern life, deal with it. Man up. It's true, but it needed dealing with and I didn't deal with it. The doctor earlier in the year told me I was the sort of soul who needed to proactively seek relaxation and persevere with it; just 'chilling out' wasn't a possibility in his opinion. I did download a hypnotherapy course and went to a hot yoga class (I know!) but alas it wasn't enough.

I spoke to my dad and he said he'd gone through a virtually identical period of time. Late thirties, young, energetic kids, financial pressures, chasing the dream, worrying about the Joneses and suddenly you're shaking like the proverbial defecating dog. Things are improving but it's a day by day process which involves trying, as the sign on my kitchen wall triumphantly advises, not to sweat the small stuff and a Yantra mat - a sort of medieval torture mat containing 8,821 plastic spikes which dig into your back and release the requisite endorphins for a decent kip.

And so at this time of year, we inevitably look towards the next and what it will bring. Firstly it'll arrive without a thirteen and whilst I'm not overly superstitious, I'm definitely placing some of the blame of feeling so rubbish on that number. I will be besting my one month off the booze achievement from this January and lasting until March 9th when I run the inaugural Surrey half marathon - the aim is also lose 20 pounds in an effort to run the 13.1 miles in under 2 hours...a feat I missed by 8 minutes in the Royal Parks half.

So, having indulged me for this long on a blog about my son and not my state of well being, I suppose I ought to mention Jake. All things cleft related seem okay but one of his gromits has fallen out and his hearing has got quite a lot worse. Well that's how it seems, it's amazing what he sometimes chooses to hear and chooses to ignore! Seems to be a hearing epidemic in Surrey as the next available appointment is in December...for a child's hearing? Dreadful from a normally brilliant local service.

He celebrated his fifth birthday on September 8th and the day after he started school. That means two things; firstly my first born seems to have grown up very fast and secondly, this blog is 5 and half years old. Seems mental to think about all the time that has passed since I started writing this at 4 in the morning the day after we had his cleft diagnosed. Along with all the intangible and wonderful a child brings and lives through over 5 years here's a quick list:

• 2 x cleft repair operations (1 lip, 1 palate)
• 3 x new jobs (me), 1 x new job (Mrs F)
• 1 x new kitchen, 1 x loft extension
• 1 x wall fallen over
• 3 x cars 
• 1 x gromit insertion operation
• 5 x holidays to Spain
• 1 x second child
• 1 x holiday to Lanzerote
• 2 x holidays to Italy

As Ferris so eloquently said 'Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around every now and then, you could miss it'.

Smile Pinki at Wimbledon

This is post is late. However due to the way cross rail ads work, it's still relevant. Sort of.
I work in Wimbledon and each summer I am forced to contend with a few extra commuters on my morning commute. By 'few' I mean thousands and by ''commuters' I mean tennis junkies. Combine a decent British summer with a successful run in the tournament by a Brit and the available air in the train carriage is exponentially decreased.

Andy, the Scot, is no more; Mr Murray firmly established his Britishness by winning Wimbledon a few weeks ago and he did it in straight sets against the world number 1. Fair play, sir (surely?).

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that for two weeks prior to and ever since (around 6 weeks at the time of writing), Wimbledon station has had a Smile Train takeover, in terms of advertising at least. Virtually every adshel, 48 and 96 sheet billboard have featured massive images of Pinki, the girl who inspired Smile Train to make a film which won an oscar (order your free copy).

Smile Train had been selected as the charity to perform the coin toss before the final and Pinki was the natural choice of coin tosser! She looks incredible; to think of the transformation from just a short few years ago where she'd endured six years of an unrepaired cleft lip and all that goes along with it. Since the repair, she's been all around the world helping Smile Train show to potential doners the immediate and sustained effect just a few quid a month can do.

I blogged previously about how I went to the 10 year anniversary where they told of the half a million cleft operations which had been performed for free in some of the poorest countries on earth...that was 4 years ago and they're currently up to 906,138 operations. The magic million is literally only months away.

Now you see it, now you don't

I've written a few times about when Jake's scar is more visible than others. It's normally when you see it in reverse like in the mirror or a selfie taken of him and me in a mirror. But then we all look different in reverse! 

I'm sure you can see some small difference in his lip if you don't know him but this is a photo that you almost certainly wouldn't look twice at from a cleft point if view. 

Just got back from a lovely trip back to Spain; ten days of shouting, swimming, sand castles and ice creams. Pretty much what any kid wants from their holiday. 

Since first having Jake, each time we go away we have the conversation about when we get 'our holidays back'. Clare and I used holidays before children for lying on a lounger and reading books. The only effort or exertion was the competition to see who could get the best tan and who could read the most books. Whilst we're not as brown as we used to be and we didn't read as much, holidays are definitely getting easier. 

Freddie is becoming more robust so can just about splash in the tide without drowning and Jake learnt to swim which is obviously a priority in being more able to relax on holiday. Of course it'll never be the same but really I don't want it to be the same, I want these trips to be the ones the boys remember and try to recreate when they are in our position as life inexorably cycles on. 

God bless Apple, by the way; genuinely the single best thing about an iPad is the effect it has on children on long journeys. Before kids we would judge lazy parenting by the amount of gadgets they used to give their children. Now we get it! Without wishing to be horrendously patronising, the best behaved kids are the ones belonging to non-parents!

So it was lovely but I'm also quite looking forward to going back to work. Another strange phenomenon about holidaying as a dad of two mental children!

  

 

Cleft?

Jake and I went for lunch with a few of my friends yesterday. And just because I recently realised that he's the age of the boys whose photos I couldn't really relate to when we first got 'the news', I thought I'd post a couple of pics and reassure anyone else who has recently also had a cleft diagnosed that a) the next 4-5 years of your life will go by in a flash and b) a cleft lip really isn't a big deal. I'd also like to apologise for the length of that sentence.  

Bullying. Sort of. OK not really.

A week or so ago I asked Jake about what he'd done that day and he described having bumped into his friend during a visit to Wisley. He went on to tell me all about his friend and why he liked him. Which was nice. He then said on his way home he went to the park and saw someone else from his school;

"I don't like him because he hits me"

WTF?!!!!!!!!

I immediately went into over protective and over the top dad mode. Initially asking questions to ascertain the authenticity of the claim - Jake can be prone to the odd embellishment - and then into solution mode.

I really don't want to turn him into a thug but for reasons including, but not limited to, the scar on his lip, I want him to stand up for himself from day one. There was a guy at my school who was an arsehole to everyone including me and it definitely affected me then and probably my confidence ever since, at least where confrontation is concerned. So I'm keen Jake understands 'reasonable force' as the police refer to it.

It turns out Jake was being a tad dramatic and the boy who 'hits' him, hit him once during a hitting-everyone frenzy and hasn't since hit anyone and was summarily told off. But regardless, I had a session of telling Jake exactly what to do. It starts with getting a bit closer, staring the offender down the barrels and saying 'no, you do NOT hit me', followed by, if getting no joy from the situation,  a meaningful push to the chest whilst still glaring them in the eye. Most bullies crumble when confronted and I hope if he ever comes across one that he has the cojones to stand up for himself.

I don't remember having had the conversation about these things with my dad, probably because he never had it with his dad and these things you just worked out for yourself, but it's something I'll be involved in as it is important and how we deal with things as a kid will have an impact on how we deal similar situations as adults.

Cleft checkup

This weekend, I had the pleasure of four days with my beloved children. All to myself, how wonderful. *needle scratches off record*. What I mean to say is, last Friday I had to take a day off work in preparation of a four day single parentathon whilst my wife swanned off to Dubai to a friend's wedding. When the wedding was announced I'd just got back from the wedding I went to in South Africa last year (the one where Clare was about to take off to meet us but Jake had an accident and she had to stay - that one) and it was just too expensive for us both or all to go to. Normally when she goes away for a weekend I decamp to my parents' place, but they also went to the wedding. Ditto my sister. And as Clare's mum does a lot of baby sitting already, I didn't want to ask her. Anyway, so it was just me and the boys and to be fair, they were great. I made sure they were entertained every day and apart from the Monday (which I also took off work by the way) they behaved impeccably. It was my fault for thinking the ordeal was over sooner than it actually was and I let them watch TV all afternoon; an activity which is certain to turn them into Tasmanian devils. Not great when you consider I was trying to paint the kitchen at the time. The point of this is that one of the duties I was left with instructions for was taking Jake to see Professor Haers for his annual checkup. That in itself was something of an accomplishment. I know I'll not get any sympathy from any mothers reading this but for someone whose normal routine is get up, shower, breakfast (maybe), leave, the task of getting both kids up, fed, milked, dressed and out, before getting through rush-hour and parking at a hospital in order to be on time for an appointment, is quite impressive! We went in and I'd forgotten the size of the team we'd originally been given and, having expected to see Prof H and maybe Anne, it was a shock to see all seven of them before me. They were all there, the psychologist, dentist, orthodontist, speech therapist, surgeon, community nurse and one other whose profession escapes me. I took this in my stride as I'd got used to how amazing the set up is for kids and the issues they get born with. Jake, however, found it a touch daunting and went into super shy mode and was curled up in a ball and wouldn't look at me, let alone the audience. Professor Haers wasn't bothered though, he didn't need to see or hear Jake and was happy the shyness was 'age appropriate'. They asked me a few questions and whether I had any concerns at all and also weren't worried about the slight lisp I reported - apparently this is very common in kids, cleft-affected or not. So, this post is much ado about nothing. More to say that we're free for another year. Next September or so we'll go to Guys for a photo session and another chat and the year after we'll be back at Royal Surrey to discuss the operation to graft a part of Jake's hip onto his gum. Sounds pretty nasty and not something I want to worry about for a while. As always, if you're here having recently found out that your son or daughter will be born with a cleft or indeed, that your child has just been born so, then please go back to my first posts around May of 2008...it seems a long long time ago but I can still remember how we felt our world had been turned upside down, wondering how we'd ever feel like we do now.

Jake is 4

As these posts get fewer and further between, the less perhaps relevant they become to the people who turn up looking for information. As I wrote once before, we saw loads of photos of kids who'd been born with a cleft lip but because they were 4,5,6 or older there was no context as we were expecting a baby, not a child! I suppose it is useful though to see how a baby with a repaired cleft turns inevitably into a child with a repaired cleft. I'd like to think I'll be doing this to the point where I can show you what a teenager and then a man looks like after having been born with a cleft. Anyway, Jake recently underwent a very small surgery to unblock his ears and to insert grommets. This is to overcome glue ear which is very common in cleft-affected kids...whilst it was performed under general anaesthetic he was knocked out, operated on and awake again inside an hour and I can't tell you the difference it's made to him and us. Although Jake would often ask 'what did you say?' when we'd clearly said something loudly and he'd curl his hand to make a sort of ear-horn, we really didn't grasp how bad his hearing had become. Almost instantly after coming round from the op he said how much louder and clearer everything was and was clearly very happy about it. We no longer have to call him for his tea umpteen times before getting angry at him. We feel a bit guilty about that by the way! It's a bit of a pain as he can't get water in his ears, so we're using cotton wool until we have his ear plugs made up. Anyway, hopefully there won't be any other operations before the one we know about when he's 8 or 9 but it's another hurdle cleared for the better. Jake turned 4 last Saturday. which means I've been blogging about him for 4 and a half years.
Where the hell did that go?!

Cleft Lip and Palate Awareness Week

I have to admit I wasn't aware there was an awareness week for the reason I started this blog. I guess they're not doing such a great job! If anyone ought to be aware I should be...I suppose as it seems less of an issue nowadays and life is just life, maybe I'm not looking out for things as much as I should. Whilst we're realising things, I just realised it's been very nearly four years since I wrote this post the morning after Jake's (not that he had a name then) cleft had been diagnosed. I have to admit I'm pretty pleased (and a little bit proud even), that I'm still writing it. So much has happened in four years which have gone by in a flash. Operations, new jobs, house extensions, learning to walk (him not me), a new baby, holidays, speech development, hearing tests and the rest of life and so on....it kind of makes you forget some things, take others by granted and perhaps become less appreciative of what you have. We have Jake, who is a healthy and happy little boy full of life and his face, whilst showing some reference to the cleft, is perfect as far as we're concerned. So having a Cleft Lip and Palate Awareness Week seems like a good idea; I remember so clearly when we got our news and there was less on the interweb then than there is now, especially blogs...our first port of call was Clapa's website and then a random mix of articles and medical sites but we always came back to Clapa. So it's only fair I help this awareness thing and link back to them. And for anyone reading this for the first time and is all over the place with worry, take 10 minutes or so reading the original posts from 2008 and then so you can fast forward to beyond Jake's nearly 4 years, check out this great post by a fellow parent blogging about the experience they had with their daughter. Can they fix it? Yes they can!

Jake at 3 years 9 months

I always think it's funny when adults talk about how old their kids are in the same way kids do. That half a year or even the extra month is so important we specifically mention it. I suppose when kids are so young the increments are all the more significant but when someone asks me how old Jake is, I'll say 4 in September or 3 and a half, yet I'm 36 not 36 and one week (since you ask). Anyway, the reason the post is called '3 years 9 months' is for anyone who's just turned up here after recently receiving a diagnosis of a cleft or who's just had a baby with a cleft. I remember when that was us (which genuinely seems like 5 minutes ago), I wanted pictures and context. It's pretty difficult to get that context of how your unborn or brand new baby will look at 3 years and 9 months. The fact is that the cleft affects us so little these days, to the point where you have to force yourself to consider it separately and it's easy to forget how much of an issue it seemed at the time. So, for anyone new here's a few photos to show you the transition. I hope you don't look at Jake now and see only a cleft repair, but I understand if you do as you've never seen him before and after all, you're here as you just got some news. I understand that as much as I know that in a while (not as much as 3 years 9 months), you too won't see or be affected by the cleft related issue which has lead you here! Take care everyone, have a great Tuesday. James

Speech update

Although not many people read this blog, I'd like to apologise to those who do and may have expected a more timely update since the last post. I know you've been on tenterhooks since.

The long and the short of it is that Jake's fine. Actually, he's not fine, he's bloody marvellous. Both the speech therapist and Piet were very pleased with the lip and palate repair and his development.

I'm sure it's coincidence but perhaps the Montessori is paying off as he seems ahead in terms of comprehension, reasoning and speech. He may have a bit of a lisp as he still has trouble with his 'd's' as he's using the back of his mouth for them instead of the front, but nothing which won't sort itself out before he starts big school next September.

Also, the dreaded lip revision this year is now not happening. Nor will it ever unless Jake asks for it or we feel it's causing social problems.

So all in all, a complete result.

Thanks as ever to all his amazing team.

February 27th

That's the date Jake will be going back to see the speech therapist. His first meeting was a few days after Freddie was born, so not far off a year ago. At that meeting he wasn't great at responding to the therapist but he did sit on my lap and say a few words when we went through a picture book.

Since then, his speech has developed at breakneck speed as you'd expect. The combination of pre-school 4 mornings a week and just growing up means we have full conversations now and his vocab increases almost daily. There are still letters he struggles with but, not being a speech therapist, I don't know if that's his age of because of anything particular to his unique mouth. He's got some lisping going on and various other Jakeisms but generally I'm happy. However only an expert will be able to tell us one way or the other.

I really hope they say all is well; we've not done anything clefty for ages and in the back of my mind is the next operation sometime in the next 12 months, so I'd rather that was it.

Anyway, we'll see what's what the week after next and will deal with it accordingly.

Here's me and the kids.