A long time in parenthood

It was Harold Wilson who said "a week is a long time in politics". Well, it's a pretty long time in the world of parenthood too.

Today is Toby's one-week 'birthday', and already the circumstances of his sudden arrival are starting to feel slightly surreal. (We have joked about marking the spot on the living room floor where he was delivered with a ceremonial 'X'. Me, I'd go for one of those round plaques you see on the side of famous people's homes.)

Apparently, in certain circles I am now unofficially 'Superdad' or alternatively 'The Coolest Dad In Town' (I'm thinking about filing for the latter as a personal trademark). I have to admit, though, I don't feel particularly super; I've certainly never been cool. In fact, looking back, the sum total of my achievements appears to be (a) I was there, (b) I didn't pass out and (c) I didn't drop Toby. So, I wasn't down the pub, I stayed awake and I am overqualified to play cricket for England. Hey, if people think that's cool or super, then who am I to question them?

So, what's happened this week while I've been at home with my feet up? (Yeah, right, ha ha.)

Well, Toby has taken to breast-feeding like a real natural, eating for England at every possible opportunity, a trait clearly inherited from his dad. (I'm thinking about putting a vending machine in his room.) He also seems to have settled into a three-hourly routine during the night, which is good news. He seems pretty bright and alert too; he is certainly awake for more of the day than Isaac was at a week old.

You talking to me?

Speaking of whom, Zac has taken everything in his stride reasonably well. Given that he's always been a real mummy's boy, he doesn't seem too jealous for the most part (although he keeps demanding a cuddle whenever he sees Toby being fed) and he's even being quite helpful at times. When Toby cries, Zac will wander over to the crib, peer in, say "Toby's crying. I'll sort it", and then give it a rock. Quite cute, really. He might get a bit more antsy once I'm back at work next week and he can no longer demand both our attentions, but he's doing okay.

Heather is understandably tired but seems to be recovering well, and managing the sudden transition back to night feeds without too much trouble. She's certainly pleased to be able to see her feet and tie her own shoelaces again. And it has helped that she has had a steady stream of friends coming to visit too.

Finally, me. I'm having a really good time. Other than finishing a few bits and pieces, I've been able to take my mind off work and actually enjoy my paternity leave. I've been able to spend some quality time with Zac - well, I appreciate it, I'm not so sure he does - taking him to playgroup sessions a couple of times and generally keeping him out of Heather's hair. Being home during the day also means I have time to indulge in proper cooking - a saltimbocca last night, and I'll be hand-making gnocchi tonight - in between all the household chores. (How can one small baby get through so many clothes in one day?) And I've even had the chance to start catching up on my large collection of unread books and unwatched TV programmes.

Just chilling with my dad

All in all, it has been about as smooth a first week as we could have ever hoped for.

What's next? Well, I don't go back to work until Thursday week, so we're hoping to get out and about a bit more over the next week. We're taking Toby down to see Heather's mum for the first time tomorrow, then hopefully the three of us (minus Zac, who will be in nursery) will head into Oxford for lunch on Thursday. And then I've got dinners to plan, and photos to sort out, and ...

It's a busy time, but I wouldn't change it for anything.

And then there were four

If this was a cricket scorecard, it would have read: Liew c Liew b Liew.

Allow me to explain.

Long story short, by the time I got home at 6:30 last night, Heather had been having regular contractions for a couple of hours, so we knew we were in for an eventful evening. Having phoned my parents - who had been on yellow alert for more than a fortnight - and asked them to head westwards out of London, we decided to settle in and have as normal an evening as possible under the circumstances to take our minds off things. Which meant putting Zac to bed, followed by takeaway curry in front of Countdown and Hustle on TV.

So far, so mundane.

The grandparents pitched up at about 9:30, quickly followed by our midwife, Amanda. A quick physical exam suggested everything was fine and we were still several hours away from serious action, so Amanda headed off, suggesting we all get some sleep.

We were preparing for bed at around 11:10 when, without any warning, all hell broke loose. Two huge contractions sent Heather scrambling downstairs while I dashed around phoning Amanda, grabbing towels, firing up our birth playlist on the iPod and so on. Although things had moved on too far too fast to make use of the birthing pool, fortunately everything else was proceeding without complication. Textbook stuff.

The only problem was I hadn't actually read the textbook. I had literally just been settling down with the book to revise the details I had so studiously memorised when Zac was born when I was suddenly called up to perform my practical exam. And as the contractions came harder and faster, it became clear that Amanda wasn't going to get here in time. I was on my own.

Fortunately, earlier in the evening I had watched an episode of the American TV drama Brothers & Sisters which - instructively - featured a birth scene. They didn't actually show the detailed process, but I nonetheless followed carefully as a group of actors in matching, pristine surgical gowns glided purposefully around a delivery room in beautifully choreographed slow motion to the strains of Coldplay's 'Fix You'. Surely that's all you need to know to deliver a baby yourself? (The sequence also featured the father-to-be collapsing in a car park as he rushed to the hospital, with what turned out to be a non-fatal heart attack. I thought it best not to try and replicate that particular bit.)

Anyway, I had enough of my wits about me to project an air of calm reassurance for Heather (in truth, there simply wasn't enough time for panic to set in), to remind her about her breathing at the appropriate moments, and to be in position as the baby manoeuvred itself into launch position with one contraction, crowned with the next one, and finally with a deft wriggle of the shoulders slithered gracefully out where I was waiting to make the catch with a towel at the ready. A quick glance at the clock to note the time of birth, and a pause to register which song was playing on our randomised playlist - Sinead O'Connor's classic version of Prince's 'Nothing Compares 2 U', in case you were wondering - and job done.

Amanda arrived five minutes later. Which was good, because (a) I got to cut the cord without having to worry about cleaning up the surrounding mess and (b) I really didn't fancy filling in the paperwork myself.

(Incidentally, I wonder if there is a separate name for the male equivalent of a midwife - 'midhusband' doesn't really sound the part, does it?)

By 1 o'clock, everything that needed to be done was done (including a beer for me to balance the slide down from my adrenalin high). We started the evening as a household of three; we ended it as a family of four.

Toby, aged 15 hours (and a bit)

This entry and the series of blogs preceding it comprise the birth journal of Tobias Alexander Liew, who was born at 11:27pm on Tuesday 19th January 2010, weighing 8 lbs 9 oz. Welcome to your life, Toby. Make it a good 'un.

Overdue

No, I'm not talking about library books or utility bills. Yesterday was D-Day - as in our due date.

It came. It went. And today is just another day closer. So now we enter a period of indeterminate length which could be a mere smattering of hours or as long as two weeks, with the worst case scenario being an induced birth.

It's a period which can best be characterised by one word: boredom. Tedious, mind-numbing boredom. Like responsible parents, we've made all the preparations we need to make. And socially, we've been cramming in as much as we can over the last few weeks (the weather hasn't helped on that front), but we haven't planned anything beyond yesterday. Which means we are currently gazing into the abyss of a social vacuum - yes, I know it's a mixed metaphor - with nothing to look forward to as a distraction. We can't really stray too far from home. And even though we're planning a home birth, I need to be sober enough to drive to the hospital in the event of any complications.

Fundamentally, all that remains is to sit and wait patiently, silently cursing the weather forecast which is still predicting heavy snow for Wednesday.

I've never quite been sure why we place such importance on the expected date of delivery. Of course, it's important in terms of determining the timing of pre-natal checks, scans and so on, but its calculation is fairly arbitrary, being simply the date 40 weeks from the mother's last menstrual period. The statistical reality is that under five percent of births - in other words, fewer than one in 20 - occur on the due date. If there's one thing you can be reasonably sure of, it's that the baby won't arrive on the expected date.

(Hmm, I know way too much about this.)

Anyway, we've been in this position before, as Zac was also a late arrival (by 12 days). It was a situation we worked around in our usual way: by going out to dinner pretty much every night until Zac arrived. (I've never shifted the weight gained as a result of that, but hey.) However, with a two-year old to look after, that's not such an easy option this time around - although, obviously, that's why God created the takeaway and then bettered Himself by following that up with the invention of delivery services. (I'm betting He then invested heavily in Domino's Pizza shares. Well, you just would, wouldn't you?)

So there we are. We sit. We wait. We use the birthing pool as a spa bath. Speaking of which, it's time to empty, clean and refill the pool again tonight. If that doesn't invoke sod's law and induce labour, I'm not sure what will.

Still, at least this is one situation where being overdue doesn't involve the accumulation of fines or threatening letters to send in the debt collectors. Small mercies and all that, eh?

It's Groundhog Day

When I looked out of our bedroom window this morning, it was almost as if I was experiencing my own version of Groundhog Day, because it looked very much like the view I had exactly one week ago.

View from our bedroom window - 8am today

Fortunately, whereas last week we had upwards of 20cm of snow, today it was more like 5-10, which made clearing the driveway and road much easier. According to the forecast, we will get some respite over the next few days as it should warm up a bit and we will hopefully get a proper thaw. Which will be good, as no one has ever bothered clearing the main road through our estate, meaning it has been more ice rink than road for the past week. It will also be nice to be able to buy salt again!

On the birth front, we are at T minus four days with no dramatic happenings to report. Heather had a pre-natal check-up yesterday which was uneventful. We emptied, cleaned and refilled the birthing pool last night. (We've been using it most evenings for a leisurely soak, which has been most relaxing.) And things are generally as chilled (ho ho) as they can be given the erratic and extreme weather. Contrary to my initial assumptions, it doesn't look like the baby is going to be early; or, at least, not overly so. It's really just a case of not getting overly stressed. Or overly bored. Or just overweight (okay, make that even more overweight).

Zac's still being extremely clingy with Heather. He understands there is a baby on the way, and on some level he senses that this will have a big impact on his life. It's a real shame the weather has stopped us doing more stuff together - just the three of us - over the past month, as he will never have our permanent, undivided attention again. Mind you, the new baby will never know what that's like anyway, and hopefully Zac will get something out of being involved with him/her anyway.

Life will never be the same again. More rewarding, I'm sure. More hectic, certainly. I'm still looking forward to it immensely, though - just as much as I did the first time around. Unlike shovelling snow, this is one thing I'm happy to be experiencing all over again.

A slippery slope

Weather-wise, it's been an interesting couple of days, that's for sure.

The snow started here at about 4pm on Tuesday and began settling almost immediately. By late evening we had a blanket of maybe 3-4cm.

Tuesday, 7pm

By yesterday morning it was over 20cm - not as bad as the Met Office warning of 40cm, but still more than enough to render our road pretty much undriveable and to make my decision to work from home an easy one.

Wednesday, 7.30am

I spent much of the morning with several of our neighbours clearing driveways and our road - our house is at the top of a fairly steep slope in the middle of an ungritted estate. (Who needs gym membership, eh?) And thankfully, although it snowed persistently for much of the afternoon, we didn't have a significant fresh fall overnight, so there was only a thin dusting of snow on our road this morning.

Anyway, it hasn't been all work and no play. Zac took a bit of coaxing to venture outside - he has an intense dislike of the cold - but, once he did, he had a whale of a time, trying out (and, for the most part, falling off) his sled, running up and down the freshly-cleared road and even happily wading through knee-deep snow.

Our little Antarctic explorer

The boy doesn't know how lucky he is! How often have we gone four or five years without a proper snowfall, and now we've had three in the past twelve months. (Global warming? Arctic oscillation? Whatever.)

Having done some digging and even some work, I ventured out after lunch to visit the shops in town. Clearly, many other people had had the same idea several hours before, because both supermarkets had been cleared out of both milk and bread. I did, however, manage to secure all the major items on our emergency shopping list, so we're good to go until the weekend at least. Although - just my luck - I managed to catch the worst of the afternoon snowstorm on my way home. Still, it was all very pretty.

Wednesday, 3pm

Most importantly, from a birth perspective everything is still on track. The birthing pool was delivered Tuesday lunchtime (about three hours before the snow began), has been assembled and filled, and is now being maintained at a pleasant 37 degrees Celsius. The newspaper delivery man has been up our road this morning in his front-wheel drive car, so it's clearly not impossible for our midwife to get to us (or, in the event of an emergency, for us to get out). And Zac has been outside again this morning, trying to throw snowballs, falling over on the slippery ice patch on our driveway, but nonetheless loving every minute of it.

Indeed, as I type this the sky is blue and the sun is shining brightly. It's (just) warm enough to melt the snow, which means we will probably have problems with icy roads after everything refreezes tonight - our road is already, literally, a slippery slope - but I'm feeling much less stressed about the impending birth today than I would have been if Heather had gone into labour yesterday morning.

In fact, the only thing irking me at the moment is the fact that this is my third day in a row working at home and I'm starting to suffer from cabin fever. Still, I'd much rather stay here than be virtually alone in the office worrying about whether or not I can get home!

Waiting

T minus 13 days and counting. At least now we know for sure which decade the baby will be born in.

As we're now within two weeks of Heather's due date, I'm effectively on call 24/7 and ready to make a mad dash for home from the office at the first ring of my mobile. (Note to self: assign a suitably comical ringtone to Heather tonight.) So, no alcohol - well, maybe just a little.

Our birthing pool is being delivered tomorrow, ready to be assembled and filled with water. Once that's done, we are basically all ready to go for the planned home birth. In the event of complications requiring a transfer to the Royal Berkshire, we have packed hospital bags. And the baby seat is currently sitting in the hallway; it will be taking up residence in the boot of my car as of tonight.

Other than that, the plan from my end is to minimise the amount of time I spend away from home between now and the birth. Fortunately, there is very little I actually need to be in the office for over the next couple of weeks - I've already turned down a two-day trip to France this week and am mulling over the wisdom of a two hour-plus drive over towards Bedford next Wednesday, but other than that the plan is to work from home a couple of days a week, and leave the office no later than 4pm on other days to avoid the evening rush hour (meaning I should never be more than half an hour from home). Everything else in my diary is either movable, doable by phone or expendable. It means planning my work-flow for January is a complete nightmare, but that's just tough. The world will, I'm sure, manage to muddle along without me for a couple of weeks.

So, other than a couple of small, non-essential tasks - such as baby names! - we're as ready as we're ever going to be. The only major job remaining is the hardest thing of all: to sit and wait.

Tum-te-tum.