The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
It’s been a while since I’ve had time to download the pictures that have accumulated on my camera. A lot have been posted online in two albums:
http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/ben
http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/hinxton
Here’s a preview of some of the pics:
Mr. BenBen
Snow brings the UK to a grinding halt …
…followed two weeks later by floods
Lots of important things are in the works, but it seems that we’re in a hurry-up-and-wait phase for all of them.
We’re still waiting for confirmation that the mortgage under-writers will lend us the money but, seeing that nobody can deal with 6 inches of snow, there is no staff at their head office so our application in festering in somebody’s in tray. We should, fingers crossed, have news tomorrow or Wednesday. We don’t want to let loose the solicitors until we know for certain that we’ll get the money – it’s not worth throwing money out the window if we can’t get the loan.
I’m in the process of filling out my Application for naturalisation as a British citizen forms, but I need to get two references to say that I’m who I say I am and not some crazed lunatic. One of them is away today and I’ll need to get my GP for the other – which will cost me 30 pounds and take two weeks (if he doesn’t lose the forms this time). I also need to study the most mind-numbingly boring facts about the UK so I can take the Life in the UK test, but I can’t do that until Friday next week.
So, we wait.
But I’m tearing out what little hair I have left and all my nails are a bloody mess.
So, ok. The worst snow fall for 18 years is still going on at the moment. Because of this:
– all public transport – buses and the tube – in London have been cancelled or have ground to a halt
– all train services in the south east are either delayed or cancelled
– Stansted, Luton, Gatwick, Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester and London City airport are closed or so delayed as to be irrelevant
– the M25 became a giant parking lot around London
– Thousands of schools are closed. So are most public offices. Those that are open are mostly staffed by people who can walk into work.
From the BBC website: Up to 10cm (4in) of snow has already fallen in some parts of Greater London, with 6cm (2in) of snow reported at Heathrow Airport. The conditions led the Met Office to issue an extreme weather warning for London and the south east of England.
4 inches? This is what we call a flurry, people, nothing more.
There has been a fog of pestilence in the office for the last few days. We couldn’t find the source of the smell until today. Apparently, a huge rat crawled into our underfloor heating space and died. It was happily festering away when the maintenance guys found it.
Loverly!
Things have been happening that I haven’t had time to write about – real life butting in and all. I’ve been told that I haven’t been writing enough, so hopefully this will keep my reader(s) happy :)
Things on the home front have their ups and downs. My mom was here for the whole of last week. That was wonderful. We had been talking on the phone the week before and I told her how much we had been expecting their trip in February (which has since been pushed back to April) and that we were having a bit of a rough time with Mr Ben Ben and how much we wished she could be here. Her answer was “I’ll see what I can do”. The next day she phones up and tells us she’s coming the following monday :) I love my mom.
Her trip went very well. We made our first foray into Cambridge with Ben and that went rather well. We even managed to sit down and have some tea in Starbucks and he was brilliantly behaved. We also had our first visit from the Home Start volunteer that’s been assigned to us. She’s going to come for a few hours one day every week to give Katy a chance to have some down time. My mom was very impressed with the amount of services that are available to us (i.e. housecalls from our local doctor, weekly visits from our Health Visitor to track Ben’s progress – until he’s about 5! – and the Home Start volunteer services). Sue, our volunteer, is going to accompany Katy to a Mum & Baby group in Ickleton next Monday and apparently there’s a good one in Great Chesterford as well. We’re also going to attend a new mum get-together that is being organized in the village by one of the local ladies-who-organize. Apparently, there’s been a baby boom in the village and lots of new people have moved in, so this will give us all a chance to get introduced.
We’re hoping that all of this is going to make things a bit easier for Katy cause she’s been having a few rough days recently. It really doesn’t help that Ben’s developed colic that hits like clockwork at 6am (and a few times during the day as well, but the morning one is rather impressive in the amount of noise it generates). Katy calls BenBen a Jeckyll & Hyde baby. When he doesn’t have gas, he’s brilliant and smiles and coos and has very advanced motor skills for his age. When colic hits though, all hell breaks loose. We know that things should start clearing up in about a month, but it doesn’t make things easier at the moment.
What else is going on with us… Lemme have a think. We’re seriously thinking about buying a house in Saffron Walden. We’re fed up of our current house. It’s drafty. It’s getting a bit cramped. The boiler is so noisy that it’s become a running gag between us. There’s no one thing that makes it a deal-breaker, but the sum of little annoyances is finally starting to tip the balance. We don’t want to spend another winter there. We have our eye on a house that needs a lot of TLC – as in, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, new carpets, complete paint job and that’s all the things we can see from the estate agent details. We’re going to go see it this weekend. It’s listed at £170,000 but there’s no way in hell it’s worth that. We’d consider offering £150,000 if only because we think it’d need about £20,000 worth of work. But it would be ours, and we’d feel no remorse in ripping out the guts and making it look like we want it. We’ll see though. It needs a lot of work. We need to decide if it needs too much work. Watch this space.
2008 was, except for some bright spots that were few and very far between, a shit year. It started off with some drama over the Christmas trip that escalated into a full blown email shouting match between Katy, my sister and myself (that has only now started to resolve itself). We came back and went to fetch Reenie, our new kitten. That started off a bit rocky but she turned into a big, loveable furball. She’s one of the high points. I had to cancel a once-in-a-lifetime all expenses paid trip to Japan because of a health scare. We did manage to use my home leave allocation to treat ourselves to a nice trip to Canada, just the two of us (and Bobbles), which was another high point. My work productivity fell to an all-time low because I was so worried about complications all throughout Katy’s pregnancy (which included, in no particular order, three hospitalizations, high blood pressure, allergic reactions to medication, a recurrent boil that required massive doses of antibiotics, gestational diabetes, an emergency c-section – which subsequently became septic and required a call to 911 when it burst in a river of pus that took weeks to clear up – and having to deal with the shittiest bus service in town and spending a small fortune in cab fare). Katy’s dad had to have a quadruple heart bypass. Tolstoy got hit by a car and had to stay in a cage in our living room for close to two months.
Then, there was Ben. He counts for a big high point, because even though there was drama at his birth and he had to stay in Special Care for a little bit, he was born with all the right bits in all the right places and currently seems to be thriving. There were a few hiccups at first, while we were still trying to cope with the mechanics of taking care of a small baby. Our boiler broke down during the then-coldest weekend of the winter and we had no heating for 48 hours. Luckily, Will and Donna lent us a portable electric heater so we didn’t freeze to death. With the coldest winter in recent memory and with the shit insulation in our house, I don’t even want to think about what our energy bills are going to be like this quarter. Our main goal this year is to buy our own house because there’s no way in hell do I want to spend another winter in the house we live in. It’s so drafty that I had to buy some weatherseal so we could block out the windows and stop the wind from making our wind chimes tinkling – with all doors and windows closed!
Ben’s almost doubled his birth weight and is starting to settle down, but that’s not been the easiest road to travel. I can say that, without a shadow of a doubt, it’s been the hardest thing we’ve ever had to deal with. We hit rock bottom during the time we were in Leicester, over Christmas. I didn’t know what to expect when I became a parent, but I can honestly say that I never expected it to be this hard. It’s been an emotional roller coaster. The highs are when he’s happy and gurgly and smiles. He’s gorgeous. The lows are when he’s been crying for what seems like days on end, and you’re so tired and you don’t know what to do but you just want the crying to stop. You’re so very, very, bone crushingly tired. You have nothing left to give, but you have to. You try everything. All the books and the people give you conflicting advice. You’re physically and emotionally wrung out.
We’ve had moments where we keep telling ourselves that yes, we can do this and other moments when we think we’ve made the biggest mistake in our lives and we’re not up to the task.
He’s 8 weeks now. The only consistent piece of advice we’ve gotten from everybody is that things get better. Even though we have no clue what we’re doing from moment to the next, each little event should become less of a drama and more commonplace. Our Health Visitor, Jenny, was saying that we were doing well and that we were good parents. It’s very hard to judge, considering that we have very few reference points.
All I know for now is that we haven’t had a good night’s sleep since he was born. We’re both tired. We’re both emo. We both find life difficult at times. We’ve never been closer as a couple, because we can talk about things. We need to. Otherwise, we’d just break down.
Katy is having her 8-week post-natal health check this Friday. She’s gotten a referral for some counselling for her blues. I think I should do the same. I’ve lost over 20 pounds since mid-November. I’m back at work now, after almost two months at home with Katy and Ben. I consider myself very lucky in this regards, because I had a lot of holiday time accumulated and then the schedule over the holidays kicked in. I feel guilty about really looking forward to being back at work because I know it’s going to be hard on Katy, but it is how it is. I need to work. The bacon needs to be brought home.
We were talking about what our goals are for this year. I want to be productive at work, content with my family and buy a good, solid home for all of us. I want to stop being so anxious about everything. I want to get my bug phobia sorted out so we can have family outings in the summer.
I want to be happy.
Katy was moved from the Lady Mary Annex to the delivery unit on the morning of Monday, Nov 10. I took my favouritest bus ever, the craptaculous Citi7, and got to the hospital at 12:45, after a small shopping trip into town to order a giant Millie’s cookie, buy some food and pick up a TENS machine (which turned out to be a bust as those that were available to buy over-the-counter were unsuitable for pregnancy and you needed to order in the pregnancy ones a week in advance). I got to the hospital and setup the laptop and portable hard-drive. We have food, music for about 1 week of continuous playback and lots of tea. Katy’s going to have a shower and then we’ll go walkies.
5pm: We go walkies again. Nothing of note is happening yet but they want her to walk as much as she feels up to to help the baby get into a good position.
9pm: Katy’s starting to get cramps every 15 minutes or so. They’ve been getting a bit stronger for the last hour or so. The midwives seem happy about this. We keep running into various midwives from MFAU and from the diabetic clinic, who have been informed through the grapevine that Katy’s being induced.
11pm. I tuck Katy in bed after her last trace. Ben is still ok in there. We just finished watching a Time Team special on WWI about an underground bunker in Flanders. The midwives have setup a gym mattress on the floor for me to sleep on. It’s better than what I expected to sleep in, i.e. the rocking chair, but my back will be displeased with me tomorrow.
Tuesday, Nov 11, 8am: I slept ok, better than expected, but I’m still stiff. The woman who was screaming for most of last night had her baby early in the morning. Having tea now.
12pm: The midwives have taken the first hormone dose out and are happy with the progress of how things are going but say it’s going to be tomorrow, or even Thursday, before Ben pops out. They want the induction process to be as stress-free as possible for Ben, and more importantly, for Katy’s BP – which seems to be cooperating at the moment. They don’t want to go in all guns blazing unless they have to. So, slow and easy for now. More prostin gel later today and assess. If needs be, the more doses tomorrow (they only give 2 doses per 24 hours). If after all those doses and the actual labour hasn’t started by itself and they’re not in a position to rupture her membranes, they’ll have a long, hard chat amongst themselves to figure out what the next step is but, hopefully, things’ll continue on how they’re doing now. Slow but steady.
7pm: It’s official, I hate that damn bus. Since things were calm, earlier in the afternoon, I took the opportunity to go home, have a shower, grab a change of clothing and cook some food to bring back. That bit went according to plan. The bus to bring me back to the hospital? Didn’t show. Again. It’s appaling that I notice it more when the bus is on time. These days, it seems to be the norm when it’s late and it’s shockingly often that it doesn’t even come at all.
I went back on campus and was able to mooch a lift from somebody who was heading into town. What also didn’t go according to plan was me almost getting hit by an ambulance that pulled out about a foot in front of me when Jules dropped my off in the middle of the Addenbrookes roudabout.
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2pm: Things are still progressing slowly but surely. More hormone doses. Ben’s moving lower into her pelvis but the cervix still isn’t open enough to allow her membranes to be ruptured. Katy’s getting stronger and more frequent cramps. This is a good sign but she’s goading her uterus on with taunts of “come on, you can do better than that!” I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to quote that back to her when she’s in labour proper. Right now, we’re just bored. Katy’s watching daytime TV and I’ve just hacked the hospital networok (but that wasn’t really a challenge, to be honest). The midwives will be checking in on her bits in an hour or so. If her membranes can’t be broken tonight, they have to wait 24 hours until they can give the next dose of hormones.
5pm: Katy had a bit of an emotional moment when it felt that nothing was happening and she just wanted to go home.
7:30pm: Yay, cervix. It’s dilated enough that they could break the membranes soon and that should really kickstart things.
10pm: Contractions are regular in timing but still not strong enough to qualify as labour. Considering the amount of screaming that we’ve been hearing, we’ve got a long way to go still. I put some music on and Katy pretends to ride a horsey on her birthing ball.
K: This is some way to pass the time, eh?
R: What, in pain?
K: Yeah :) By the way, I’m sorry in advance if I’m mean to you.
R: It’s ok, I’ll just use it against you at a later time.
Thursday, Nov 13,, 2:15am: They did Katy’s epidural. She took it like a champ. I thought I was going to puke from the anxiety I was feeling. They still need to test it out properly. I felt like my BP was going to go through the roof.
3:15am: Katy is plugged into her epidural drip, an oxytocin drip, a glucose/insulin sliding scale, a trace machine and a dynamap BP machine. Now I know why they call it assisted delivery. We now have a midwife assigned to us for the foreseeable future.
5am: Saw mucus plug. Not nice.
K: How do people do this without an epidural?
R: They scream a lot.
5:30am: Still not proper labour yet. Contractions are still too erratic. Hopefully, the ever-increasing levels of oxytocin will start to work in a few hourds. The midwives reckon it’s going to happen today, but late today. I’ve been up for24 hours and I’d kill for a cigarette.
6am: Had an experience straight out of a horror flick. I walked all the way from the delivery unit to the food court without meeting anybody except long, institutionally-painted hospital corridors, humming fluorescent bulbs and wall-paintings of clowns. Everything had been cleaned and tidied by the night staff and everything was completely empty. Freaky.
7am: The c-word is being bandied about with increasing frequency. It seems that Ben’s getting very tired by the whole induction process. If things don’t get a move on, Katy’ll need to have an urgent c-section, which is still better than an emergency one.
9am. Just woke up. Apparently the rocking chair snuck up while I wasn’t looking. The duty midwife had to climb over me a few times to check on Katy’s drips. I never noticed. The docs say that we’ll have Ben today, just not sure when. He seems to be behaving now. They’re still increasing the oxy to try and get her into fully established labour.
12:30pm: Went outside for some fresh air. It seems to be a nice day out. I was weak and mooched a fag from one of the builders on site. Katy’s cervix is now dilated to 4cm. This is a good milestone because things can start happening very quickly now. Or so we hope.
1:15pm: I have to say that I’m really impressed with the amount of care and support we’ve been getting. Various doctors keep popping in and out to look at the trace and there’s been a midwife with us constantly since Katy got her epidural. We have been lucky in the postcode lottery. Addenbrookes is one of the best hospitals in all of the UK and is the regional neonatal hub. We’re in good hands. Currently, the plan is still watch and wait. They’re going to get a blood sample from the top of Ben’s head to confirm that he’s still ok in there. That’ll dictate a lot of what happens next.
3pm: Midwife shift change. Ben is still being a git. Katy needs to change position every 30 minutes or so, which is a right faff considering her right leg is completely dead and she slides lower in the bed every time we try to move her. The c-word has been heard in the background, as she’s not progressing quickly enough. The whole induction process has been going on since Monday. They can only give her so many drugs. Even though she’s not feeling any pain (she has the epidural to end all epidurals), her body is still going through a hell of a workout. The good news is that her sugars, BP, kidneys and epi are all doing well.
4:15pm: Ben’s heart rate on the trace is seriously concerning the docs. Katy is now fully dilated but Ben is still lying really high in her pelvis. What’s worse is that every time Katy has a contraction, Ben’s heart rate dips and takes about a minute to come back. This is not a good sign. Wheels start turning very quickly when the decision is made to wheel Katy to an operating theater “just to be safe”. Every able body in sight is drafted to move the bed and all the drip stands. The chief resident examines Katy and decides “right, he’s coming out now“. Katy needs to have an emergency c-section. That’s when all hell breaks loose. People coming out of the woodwork – it looks like pure chaos but you know that everything is controlled and everybody is doing what they should be doing. it takes 5 minutes for Ben to be cut out. He’s officially born at 4:XX. One of the midwives asks me if I want to go to the resuscitator to go see him, but that’s across the room and I don’t trust my legs just at that moment.
5:31pm: Jesus Christ. Shock. Tea. Katy is being put back together. I seek normalcy in mundane tasks, like packing everything back into the suitcase so that nothing is lost when Katy is transferred from the delivery unit to the recovery ward.
5:55pm: Dr Tom just left. Ben had the cord wrapped around his neck. That’s what was causing the distress on the trace during the contractions. The good news though is that they tested the oxygen levels of a sample of cord blood and everything is fine and there should be no lasting effect. The operation went very well with little blood loss. Katy is currently snoring on the operating table while they finish up. Second bout of shock. There is still tea and a comfy chair. All is well.
Things continue much in the same vein as they have been for the past week. Katy is still in Addenbrookes and is slowly going mad from boredom and having her BP checked every two hours (at minimum). The docs are still playing around with her meds. They might have finally found the right formula because her BP seems to be cooperating for now. They’ve put her on a different class of beta-blockers, and so far she’s not turned into a human hot water bottle. They do make her very sleepy but that’s miles better than the side effects of the other meds she was on. It was a nice catch-22.
When she was using those, her BP was high but all she felt was a slight headache that could be easily treated with tylenol. When they gave her a higher dose of meds, her BP went back to a level that didn’t concern the docs but gave Katy a splitting headache that nothing could even put a dent in and when her headache started going away, her BP started rising again. So yeah, tons of fun.
I spent most of the afternoon with her yesterday and she was not a happy camper. She’s gotten 3 hours of sleep, at most, the night before and had been carted to and from the delivery ward (where they could monitor her even more closely). It really didn’t help that the obstetrics clinic was running close to one-and-a-half hour late in appointments as well. Anyway, in end end, we managed to have a good chat with the consultant on her case. They’re going to keep her under observation for a while longer yet, but I have a feeling that things will be happening some time next week – unless Ben decides to take matters in his own hands, of course.
Speaking of, he’s doing fine. The latest growth scans put him at around 6 pounds 10 oz, or a bit over 3 kg. His growth profile is spot on average and all the other readings are perfectly fine as well.
In any case, watch this space. More news when we know what’s happening.
It’s been a while since I last posted something more meaningful than an article lamenting the decline of the US (still, there’s lots to lament). I have actual, honest-to-goodness content to post today, so I might as well get started.
Katy’s started coming on campus to have lunch with me a few times a week. It gets her out of her PJs and gives her the occasion to see Stephane and Sheila once in a while.
We went to the NCT nearly new sale two Sundays ago and got the last bits of baby clothing we wanted (mostly some sleep suits and something suitable for what passes for winter in this country). After the chaos that was the sale (imagine a few hundred mommies vying to get the best bargains in enclosed spaces – I’m surprised there wasn’t any bloodshed!), we went to Saffron Walden for a late lunch. We tried Dish, a place we’d walked by countless times before but finally decided to go in. We were happily surprised. The decor tries a bit too hard to be jazzy and stylish, but the food is fresh, tasty and they even catered to my various allergies without batting an eye.
We saw a hedgehog on the neighbour’s doorstep one evening last week. It was cute and spiky and wanted to be left alone, so we did.
Katy spent another long Tuesday at Addenbrookes, getting poked, prodded and smeared in ultrasound jelly. The good news is that her blood pressure seems to be stabilizing, as are her liver enzymes. The less good news is that her blood sugars are still all over the place and aren’t even considering playing nice. It seems that the more insulin they put her on, the worse off her sugar levels get. It makes no sense… We’re going to have a long, hard chat with the diabetic clinic midwives tomorrow to figure out what options we have. Katy’s almost taking more insulin than her mom, which is wrong on so many levels it defies description. On the upside though, Ben is still dancing the rumba on a daily basis so he seems to be doing fine.
We got the all-clear from Addenbrookes to go see Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall last Thursday evening. I’d taken Thursday and Friday off so we could take our time getting there and back. Turns out that Phil, a work colleague, was able to give us a lift to London in the afternoon because he and his missus also had tickets to go see the show.
It had taken me the better part of a day to get the tickets when they first went on sale (and the website melted down!) but it was so, so worth it! We were 6 rows from the stage! Most excellent :) The show was great and we’ll be buying it as soon as it comes out on DVD.
We had an al fresco picnic in the courtyard of the RAH before the show – chicken drumsticks, sausages, bread, cheese, olives and home-made coleslaw. All very yummy, but the experience would have been more pleasant if not the fact that we were freezing our butts off :)
We had a show pootle back to the hotel after the show. 20 Nevern Square is, by far, our favouritest hotel in London. The rooms are great (especially given the fact that they upgraded us to a suite both times we’ve been there) and the breakfast is kick-ass. We’d planned to go to the British Museum and the V&A on Friday but Katy was feeling less than stellar, so we headed back to Cambs on the train.
As you can see, Katy was tired and I was despairing at my ever-advancing hair loss.
We were expecting Lennart, Leen and their son Reuben for Sunday lunch, so we spent most of Saturday cleaning house and prepping culinary delights. I made a ham and roasted a chicken. I haven’t been impressed with the quality of the chickens Tesco is selling these days, so the menu changed from roast chicken to chicken, mushroom & bacon pie. It was very well received :) We spent a very nice afternoon talking about babies and cats.
Speaking of cats, our two are becoming increasingly clingy these days. Surprisingly so!
No, I don’t have a night-vision camera (but I do have Photoshop).
They had their first baby experience last night when Reuben was in a bouncy chair on the kitchen floor. Tolstoy was curious enough to try and sniff the strange creature, but his natural courage quickly reasserted itself and he scampered underneath the kitchen table.
This week sees us at Addenbrookes again on Tuesday, and then we continue our Christmas shopping. We’re getting it done early for several reasons, most notably because Katy is still on full pay at the moment and we want to get it done before Ben shows up :) We’re doing the bulk of it online – yay, internet shopping! We’re going to go to Scottsdale garden centre on the weekend to see their xmas display though. That’s always fun.
Oh, and I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – can I be a spoiled rotten cat in my next life, please?
Remember how I mentioned previously that our cats were behaving really oddly in a recent post? It’s getting even more odd.
I mean, having Reenie sprawled on the bed in the middle of the night is not new.
But having to sleep diagonally in bed because both cats are hogging your sleeping space is a new one.
I got fed up and chucked them both off the bed at 4 this morning. I feel a bit bad about that, because we actually do like having them closer around these days, but at the same time it’s been impossible to get a good night’s sleep in the past week!