November 2006 Archives

Tilly has spent most of her first three weeks being the most being the most laid-back baby imaginable. Within three or four days she was down to one feed a night and once even managed to sleep through. The only thing that upsets her through the day is filling her nappy and burping her isn't the cakewalk it was with Dom who used to do a Barney Gumble belch upon returning to the vertical.

Dom is still very keen on her, almost always using a sing-song voice to talk to her 'Hello, little darling...' apart from when she's crying when he goes all West Riding - 'What's up wi' you?' Tilly responds to Dom's voice and after a while of being unsure whether it was actually trapped wind and wishful thinking, we're now certain that she's a smiler.

This weekend has seen the first bit of bad news. Not just the end of my three week paternity leave but also a little bit of colic on her part, which Infacol seems to be sorting. All remains great.

Dominic's been dressing up again for charidee

There are plenty more pictures (literally a couple of thousand as of this morning) in my flickr photostream.

We went into town to make Matilda official, open her up a bank account and to place a birth announcement in the local paper. We thought we'd do this in person rather than be put through to a call centre in a deprived part of the world where they speak funny English (Liverpool) and to lessen the chances of typos creeping in. Little did we suspect the Little Britain sketch we had seemingly walked into. Having eventually managed to attract someone's attention, our desire for a simple announcement (surname in bold, rest in body type) was met with incomprehension. You don't want a picture of a stork? No. You don't want "IT'S A GIRL!!!"? No. You don't want a novelty font? No. You don't want flowers? No. You don't want random shouty font-size changes? No. And you're sure you don't want the stork? Yes. You do want it? No. I'll have to check with my manager...

Eventually, we managed to persuade them that we weren't asking for the moon on a stick and succeeded in getting the announcement into Saturday's paper. Fans of storks in top hats will have to look elsewhere I'm afraid.

Matilda's first week has flown by after two hesitant starts. Matilda spent her first day not being very keen on feeding and trying to cough up stuff that she managed to swallow on exit, sometimes going purple in the attempt and giving us quite a fright. By the end of a third late night with a midwife in attendance the worst of the coughing was behind us and she'd got the hang of feeding. Come Saturday and her first weigh-in, it transpired she'd lost only 5% of her body weight (7oz, taking her down to 8lb 12oz) which is perfectly healthy given that newborns can happily lose up to 10%. After a few nights of hourly snacking through the night, she seems to be settling now for big feeds at 11, 4 and 8 for which we are very grateful.

After a Monday of being interested rather than enthusiastic, Dominic soon began to relish the role of big brother. His first words on Tuesday morning were, 'Is the baby still here?' and by the evening he was proudly showing people the correct way to kiss and cuddle her. Eloise, whose antenatal excitement about Matilda far out-stripped Dom's, jump-started his love of holding her in his lap until she gets 'too heavy'. He's still calling her Moppy, which we're neither encouraging nor discouraging, though he mostly calls her 'baby' or 'my baby' unless specifically asked what her name is. Best of all was seeing him creep up on her when he thought we weren't watching, giving a running sotto voce commentary on himself for her benefit, 'Baby sister ... this is your big brother ... wearing a bib ... coming to give you a kiss...'

Having felt tired just at the thought of having a new baby in the house, it's so far seeming quite relaxed having Matilda around. The transition from no kids to one kid was always going to be a bigger jump than from one to two, but compared to a boisterous two year old Tilly's simple demands (food! nappy! cuddle!) are as nothing. Even compared to the first time round, whereas Dom would make his requests for food loudly and persistently until Helen obliged, she issues a gentle request at intervals in a slightly half-hearted fashion. 'If it's no trouble and you were going to get your boobs out anyway, I wouldn't say no to a little snack, no rush..' She truly is a very laid back baby indeed. There has been the learning curve of dealing with a nappy sans crackers, though as in all things we are indebted to Webby for guidance: the house ringing to the refrain "Front to back, Jillian, front to back" several times a day. Still makes us laugh and, sadly, I find myself saying it even when Helen's not listening.

The other reason it's been so easy has been the help and support we've had from friends, family and the midwives, the latter even going so far as to change that troublesome first meconium nappy after an ill-advised fingerdip test - cashback! Special mention must go to the Osbrads for bringing, serving and afterwards washing up a lovely handcooked meal but thanks to everyone that's helped, you know who you are and we are very grateful.

Thankyou as well for all the cards, flowers and gifts that we've received. One of Helen's books had a line something like, 'Nobody cares about your second baby. Get over it.' How wrong that's proved to be - Dominic has loved unwrapping Tilly's presents for her and all those that he's received to mark his becoming a big brother. Helen is also enjoying the influx of chocolate and alcohol which is obviously widely deemed to be the best prescription for new mothers. Thanks again.

It seems like only yesterday...

Having spent most of Sunday resigned to induction on the Monday, at 9pm Helen's contractions suddenly stepped up a gear fom half-hourly to one every three or four minutes. A second midwife was duly called out and, lovely as she was, she conspicuously didn't bother unloading all of her kit from the car at first. Word about the previous nights dress rehearsal had obviously got round. The greater intensity and frequency of the contractions made it quickly apparent that this was the real deal but Helen managed to stick with her TENS machine throughout (one half-hearted puff of Entonox aside). Matilda arrived twenty-five minutes after Helen's waters broke and was much bigger than anyone was expecting and every bit as perfect as we hoped.

A couple of hours and a first feed later, we were left to our own devices and the chance for some much-needed sleep, having only had 3 hours the night before. Helen took much pleasure in phoning the delivery suite to tell them she wouldn't be coming in after all actually, before finally hitting the pillow.

Like kids at Christmas we were soon up again, texting people with the news and posting the official pic to the blog. (Special points to Grandad Ronnie and Grandma Dor for already being on the website looking at the picture of Matilda as I phoned to tell them, the little silver surfers). For 'up' read awake, since we received a number of visitors - 'our' midwife, the GP, etc - without actually getting out of bed. Helen said she felt like decadent royalty in a bygone age having guests brought to her chamber.

Come the afternoon, we retrieved Dom fom Gingatopia and brought him back to meet his baby sister. Despite not having mentioned her all day, Dom was keen to meet her and, especially, to give her the presents he had chosen for her. He was even more pleased to find that she had told us to buy presents for him, a plan that backfired somewhat as he found the new garage more interesting than the sleeping swaddled Matilda.

Most strangely, as Webby points out, Dom's insisting that he will be calling his baby sister 'Moppy' ('Yes, you call her that but I call her Moppy'). The etymology of this is uncertain but I suspect that it has it's root in one of Grandad's jokes. He suggested that perhaps Helen should hold on a few days to Armistice day and call the baby Poppy, thus making them Poppy and Dom - Poppadom! Ba-dum tscchh!

Helen gave birth to our beautiful daughter, Matilda Dora at 3am this morning. She was 55cm tall, weighed 9lb 5oz and is the greatest thing ever. More later.

Still no baby. (Déjà moo?) And yes, we've tried that.

It did get a bit exciting last night though. On the Webster's first night off the on-call rota for weeks and thanks to Helen's second membrane sweep, Helen started getting contractions at bedtime. By the early hours of the morning they were close enough (every five minutes) to warrant the summoning of Aunty Jobley for the evacuation of Dom to his Nan and Grandads, thrilled partly at the prospect of a new sibling but more so at the chance of a drive with Jobley in the "super-de-luxe."

Helen was especially pleased as a Monday (term +16) deadline is looming for the chance to have a homebirth, and the community midwife was duly summoned. Sadly, the contractions petered out as the sun came up. We've been in today for some more monitoring and all is still well but time is still against us.

As I write, Helen's contracting every 15-30 minutes whilst bouncing furiously up and down on her birthing ball to Take That videos that occasionally interrupt the loan-consolidation ads on some rubbish telly channel. Fingers crossed.

Dominic appears in only the best publications. (Back story)