Baby reunion party

Olivia went to her first party with people her own age. It was our prenatal class postnatal reunion party. She is the one sleeping in the middle. Click on the link. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCpVtmhvYSE

She's Gaining Weight (it's a good thing!)

2185 grams 2409 grams 2566 grams! (SHE IS HUGE!)

Olivia has had the finest diet team in the land

(Jennifer and Bill) force feeding her around the clock!

Here are the results!

SEE SCIENTIFIC GROWTH TABLE AND CHART BELOW!

Most babies gain about 10 grams per day. You do the math! She is gaining over 24 grams per day! That's twice as much as normal! At this rate, she will be over 40lbs by Christmas! Bigger than a turkey! Stay tuned for more updates.

First Bath!

Click on this link to see her first bath at home:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oRhatUjkJMQ

Doctor Doctor, give me the news!

I don't like doctors. It's not because it hurts when I get a shot, or when they stick something in one of my orifices. It's because I don't like doctors.

Let me start again. I like doctors who can fix tangible problems: a broken arm, an artery that has come loose, acne, varicose veins, cataracts, open heart surgery, c-section births, vag births... you know, things that can actually be fixed. (I love saying vag birth because I know it's on the verge of being naughty, yet still a medical term)

Today we went to our second pediatrician. We fired our first pediatrician for bad bedside manner and being ESL. I know that sounds slightly racist, but when it's your kid, and there is a question of whether she's going to be healthy, you want someone explaining things to you in your mother tongue.

I can understand if you travelled pregnant in say, Nepal, and had a baby there. You would accept broken English while hearing your baby's diagnosis (or hearing it through an interpreter). Children's Hospital in Vancouver is a different story. I think it was more a combination of ESL and this doctor talking at us like we weren't really there. I can imagine her in med school learning to talk to parents using neoprene "parent" dolls to explain a baby's ailments to.

This is also the doctor who scooped Olivia from us on her second night, and sent her to the nursery to sleep in an incubator with the other incubator babies. Of course, I'm not complaining about sending her to the nursery. It was in Olivia's best interest, (I think). The explanation went something like this: "Mom and dad must know that baby's blood sugar is low, and the nurses down in the nursery are very good at bottle feeding, yeah? So baby is going to nursery for awhile. Good-bye. Oh, and don't forget to buy Nestle's Good Start Baby Formula". After we figured out it was Jennifer (mom!), and Bill (dad!), and Olivia (baby!), we were crushed to have to walk with our new baby downstairs to the nursery to watch them shove a feeding tube down her nose into her stomache (yes she cried, and so did we), and then leave her there hooked up to monitoring equipment.

The next morning (4 hours later), there was no tube in her nose. "She pulled it out", said one of the nurses. (way to go Olivia!). And they never put it back in because she was feeding well from a bottle. So, Jennifer and I fed her from a bottle for two days in the nursery. Couldn't they have just taught us how to feed her from a bottle and let us keep her? We are still feeding her. Now she's bi: breast and bottle. She is a very talented little girl. Why didn't they just teach us to bottle feed her in the first place? You get long silences from the health establishments when you ask such questions.

Doctors and nurses love machines. It's just like Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life. Even if you don't like Monty Python, just watch the first 15 minutes of this movie. It's hilarious. So Olivia is in the nursery hooked up to a machine that goes "ping" (you'll get this if you watch the movie), and then... the machine goes... PING!

What!? As a parent, your heart drops, and you start looking around. She looks fine, but there are wires hooked up to her feet and chest, and at the other end is a machine that is setting off an alarm. No nurse comes running over, they still keep doing what they are doing in other parts of the nursery looking completely relaxed. I'm looking around, and finally, someone just yells over, "is she pink?" (referring to her skin). "Yes!" I say. "Then just hit the reset button". After this happened a dozen times, I was conditioned to look at Olivia to see if she was pink, then push the reset button to stop the beeping. Couldn't we have just kept her out of the nursery, watched to see if she was pink, and fed her from a bottle?

We have fired other medical professionals during Jennifer's pregnancy with Olivia. We fired the midwife. Actually we fired all the midwives at the midwife clinic. We also fired the prenatal doctors at Women's Hospital. We ended up with one fabulous obstetrician: Debra Millar, instead.

Why all this firing? I believe it's our right to ask for proper care. As parents, we don't know what proper medical care is in the moment, but we can figure out pretty fast if things are making sense. I hate to compare this to how George Bush runs his country (it makes us look bad as parents), but its similar. George really doesn't know how to properly look after those people down there in the U.S.A.: it's too complicated. Experts show him all the options, and he picks the best one. The difference between he and us is that we care about the end result. We don't have just 4 more years of parenting (or six more months as of today - HURRAY!).

Who in the medical community came up with the term "false positive?". False positive was the result of Jennifer's triple screen pregnancy test back in December. From that day forward, we knew we were in trouble.

What if I used that term in my work? If I hit a wrong note, or played a song in a wrong key while accompanying a jazz singer, could I get away with it by saying: "yes, that was a false positive passage of music" - with a straight face?

You get terms like false positive (or just plain silence) when we are in qualitative limbo no man's land of medical explanations. Jennifer was dragged into Women's Hospital for ultra sound after ultra sound, fetal monitoring after fetal monitoring, and blood pressure test after blood pressure test because of the false positive results in December. All tests came back normal.

Only twice were the results abnormal:

1. We went to a private ultra sound clinic. The baby's measurements came back as no growth from the last ultra sound. The moment I heard this, I figured "different machines, different results". You get a blank, silent answer when you bring this up with medical staff. Their answer was, you guessed it, more tests. Why not check the machine?
2. Jennifer's blood pressure scored high as a result of our frustration with a prenatal doctor and her insistence of continuing with the tests. We told her we felt like lab rats. After more heated discussion, she took Jennifer's blood pressure. Surprise! It was high! The result of this test? Even more tests.
   

We finally asked for Debra Millar, obstetrician. It was a great move: everybody out of the pool! And you know what? There were no more tests. Don't forget to ask for the specialist!

Yesterday, pediatrician number two (the one who is still working for us) said, "let's put all the small baby/placenta problems behind us. You have a normal baby".

Thanks. That's what we wanted to hear. We don't want to hear "come in for another test", or "feed the baby more than she wants to eat".

Now Jennifer is breast feeding Olivia when Olivia is hungry. What a concept! No Nestle's anything. No false positives. No more dragging Olivia out of bed to force feed her around the clock. Again, hindsight is 20/20. If there were problems, we would have invested more faith in the medical community. In our case though, we knew they were just covering their own asses.

We've been hearing stories of babies in the prairies decades ago who were two pounds at birth. Mothers would put them in a shoe box with cotton and olive oil by an open fire. Some of those babies grew to strapping 6' tall farmers. Some of them probably died. We are thankful that there are modern machines that tell us how well we are. It tips the odds in our favour. During labour, Olivia's heart rate kept dropping. We knew this thanks to fetal monitoring. It helped us know to have a c-section. It probably saved her life.

If you know us, you know we have chosen a different lifestyle in the arts. I guess the alternative lifestyle is spreading into our biology as well. No problem. We roll with all kinds of strange scenarios daily. And, all three of us now are getting along famously, or if you ask one of those midwives: infamously.

Father's Labour Day

The memories are coming back. It was hard to watch. I think most dads who experience labour leave out a lot of information when they report the incident. You don't want to see someone you love go through the pain of labour, but you want the outcome: a safe, happy family.

The prenatal classes were great, but really, what can a guy do when his significant other is wrything in pain, toning, and basically wanting to go through this on her own? I don't blame her. Would you want someone in your face while you're having a tooth pulled saying "that's great honey, the root is almost loose, just a little longer, keep toning, keep looking around the room, do you want morphine now? How about if I hold your hand?"

Of course the prenatal courses were full of great information, but when it came down to the actual contractions, what could I really do? Just be there I guess. It was about 24 hours of hard labour, and at about 16 hours in, I found myself just sitting beside Jennifer's mom, watching.

It was like sitting ring side at the main event. You don't cheer though, and really, you don't give much sympathy. What's the point? Jennifer was in too deep. She says it felt like she was drunk at a party and people were helping her sober up. She sat in the shower because people told her to. The shower lasted about 5 minutes. Her and I tried the positions we learned in class (one position had her in a deep squat while I held her up). That lasted 5 minutes. One position worked where she leaned on the head of the hospital bed in the up position, (sort of an all fours position). That's when I entered the room and asked if her dad (the baby to be's grandpa) could come in to see her. "NO! I DON'T WANT TO FREAK HIM OUT!", she quickly responded. I told her a friend sent her love. "WHO CARES?" she snapped back.

Earlier that morning, I was sleeping in the delivery room on a chair with a pillow and blanket over me. I think Jenn responded to the morphine she took earlier that night and got sick. It was projectile vomit directed right at me. I couldn't do much except watch it fly. "Missed me", I said. Amanda the doula chuckled. We emptied the room of furniture, and a nurse came in with a bucket and mop, and cleaned it up. Then the labour continued. A few drops of puke hit my blanket, but not enough to give up sleeping in it. Puking is one of the few things Jenn remembers clearly from the ordeal.

It reminded me of The Exorcist. Don't get me wrong, Jennifer looked much more attractive than this as she wrythed in pain. She didn't LOOK like this. I just thought I would use this photo as a symbol of the feeling in the room at times.

I guess I better put in a happy picture to balance this out:

This is how I was imagining the new addition to the family would be like while the events of the previous photo was taking place.

Anyway, it all felt like a bit of a war. Thank God for our two doulas: Amanda and Aleksandra, our unbelievable nurse, Robin, and Debra Millar. Dr. Millar was the cowboy in the white hat at the end of the movie who says "all right round up the wagons, we're heading home". She called the end of the labour, and basically said. "This party is over, time for a C-section".

In minutes after Dr.Millar's call, we had our baby girl. Why 24 hours of hard labour? Who can answer that question? Except that we had no idea of the outcome at the time. Hindsight is 20/20. Jennifer was going for it, and we discussed a "vag birth" as our goal. Looking back, it could only have been done the way we did it. Pain and all.

Is she all right?

Yes, BOTH Jennifer and Olivia are fine. Today we are dealing with moving from bottle feeding (learned in the hospital), to breast feeding. Tonight we managed a text book feed. Left breast 15 minutes, right breast 15 minutes, followed by expressed milk from a bottle (40 mls). Perfection! Even though Olivia is small for full term birth weight (she passed that weight with the community health nurse yesterday), she shakes her head like a dog trying to get the nipple into her mouth (breast or bottle). She has LOTS of energy, and we are happy to point it in the right direction. It's tough having visitors right now. We don't know when she will wake up, and after she eats, she is right back sleeping again. I'm sure this stage will pass soon. Right now, she is glad to be home, and so are we!

We are home!

Yes, that's right. All three of us are under our own roof for the first time. Here are some pictures of Olivia at Women's Hospital on July 3rd (the day after), and in Intermediate Care at Children's Hospital over the weekend with Grandma, Grandpa, and Jennifer.

Now that we're home, we are counting formula and expressed breast milk (in milliliters), and pees and poos (in occurrences). See the chart on the left. It's not rocket science, but it will keep baby fat and healthy!

July 3rd.

I'm just home for a shower, and I'm missing feeding time, but I want to post this blog: Mission accomplished! Our baby girl was born July 2nd at 7:24pm 4 lbs 14 ounces. Small, but beautiful and bright eyed. See for yourself! Everyone is doing fine!

Bill

Da - due, due, due

The infamous DUE DATE. Which, as you find out, is really the middle of your due MONTH. Well, it sure was strange to be at a theatre opening last week telling people I was due in 4 days! hahahahhaha It really alarms most of the population. We also went to see some jazz at David Lam Park on Sunday (our official due date) and I was hoping not to run into anyone I know to be asked "When are you due?" to answer "uh, today".

Well, here we are Canada Day. Bill was supposed to play a gig today and I woke up with mild cramps and contractions. The first father test. He likely could have gone and I would have been fine, but never having been through this before.....we really have no idea how fast we'll zoom down this road now.

My mom and dad are on their way down from Kamloops and we are just lounging around waiting for things to kick into high gear.

The weather is fantastic, so we can sit on our patio and enjoy the relaxing time.

That's all for now folks. Check back....I have no idea how quick we will be to up date this with the news -but I hope we can just post a quick announcement.

Jennifer