Almost average

Firstly, a new Pope has just been appointed.  I think Peter (namesake of the original Pope) was trying to tell us that he had inside knowledge of the conclave's choice, if only we'd been receptive.  We're going to try him on the 3.20 at Cheltenham next:

"Suddenly I see that it was the hand of God!"

Secondly, a hospital visit revealed that our baby has reaching a frankly obese 7lbs 11oz which, for his age, puts him almost on the 50th percentile.  We were seen by a physio we'd met in the NICU who urged us to pop in there and say hello.  We did, in the manner of inmates returning to their prison, but there was much cooing from nurses over Pete's size.



It's science, it can't lie.

And, as I know you're only here for baby photos, here are a couple more:

Pete takes a stand for gay pride, true to his SF heritage.

The only co-sleeping he's ever going to experience.

0th birthday

Slow blogging of late, I know, but my life currently revolves around feeding, sleeping, pooing, sleeping, burping, feeding, sleeping...and I have a baby to look after as well!  Hahahaa.

Anyway, we made it to Pete's original due date, 6th March, and he soared to a mighty 6lbs 7oz.  Pretty normal, which leads me to conclude that they could have left him inside and avoided the previous weeks of drama, but I'm not a medical man.  The baby has certainly decided that life has now officially begun and insists on doing things like playing and staying awake, which seriously impacts my schedule.  I also find myself third in his affections, behind his mother and a toy parrot that he will stare at and chat to for hours.

Peter's still on a heart rate monitor but hopefully the doc will let us disconnect when we see him in a couple of weeks.  Then we might even be allowed to go out!  We're banned from shops and malls, due to Pete's still-weak immune system, and in California that leaves very few options for outings.  Although, now I think about it, the pediatrician didn't mention vineyards...



Still chugging down the good stuff, and his face is now larger than the bottle!



Exhibitionism begins at home.



This is the exact expression I wore when we went to those naked hot springs.

Elise contemplates a fourth (but, odds on, it'll be a girl).

"Now I'm old enough to play!"  Most inconvenient.



The beast sleeps.

Happy St. David's Day!

There's only one citizenship that really counts.

Milestones

Everyone should leave their baby with NICU nurses before bringing them home.  Their fine training of Peter into a four-hourly schedule of feeding and sleeping is making life easy for us.  He seems annoyed when we decide to break routine and be spontaneous, like play with him and stuff.  A distinguished, regimented career in the military (or prison) beckons.

Unfortunately, release from hospital has not meant release from the healthcare system.  We've had endless appointments with physios, home nurses, pediatricians, eye doctors, witch doctors, etc.  We were also told that Peter is an "at risk" child due to his low birth weight, and for the next three years (years!) we need to have meetings with nutritionists and social workers.  This is payback for all the nasty things I said about social workers when I was a foster carer.

I've also realised that I'm a terrible Internet father.  Not only did I forget to take pics of Pete from day one, and therefore can't make one of those crazy videos, but every .com address that I could use for him has gone!  He could be a .org, but who wants to be a .org?  (Though www.peterdavies.com points somewhere quite pleasing to those of us with Welsh heritage).

So it's been a fun week with him at home: first bath (success), first trip out into Walnut Creek (not a success), first smile (Hannah claims, I haven't seen one)...more importantly he's doubled in weight since birth, which makes us happy and him almost 6lbs now.  It's weird to think that he should be inside a tummy for another week yet...

Unimpressed by the insane asylum chic of his travelling outfit.



Unimpressed by the accessories.

Out and about, and very unimpressed (this experiment lasted for eight screaming minutes).

Much more successful - his first bath.

Hannah gets in on sling action.

Tummy time.  Stop looking so doleful, you're enjoying yourself!

Better on the back.

NorCal parenting instruction

Being a parent in Californian comes with certain responsibilities.  I've been told that chicken nuggets and hotdogs account for most choking cases in the rest of the country, whereas here it's baby carrots and organic apple sticks.  I've never verified that because it needs to be true.

Most pediatricians agree that you shouldn't feed carrots to premies but there are other ways to assert Californianess.  One is "cloth diapering" (a diaper, Google Translate tells me, is the American word for a nappy).  Disposable nappies are obviously evil for various reasons: their environmental impact, their cost, and their implied Republicanism.  Using cloth ones is a lot better, provided you wash them with biodegradable liquid and dry them in the sun.  (Yes Mum, I know everyone used cloth back then, but this is different).

We'd got in our nappies while still expecting a standard-size baby, but checking today they claim to work from 5lbs upwards so we went for it!  The benefits were immediate: the extra bulk means that Peter resembles a tiny Teletubby.  They also do alright at containing explosions, and hopefully that will improve as the fit does.  We need to work on his thighs.

The second Cal thing was to break out the child sling.  Pushing around a stroller is far too impersonal, taking the child outside the range of your aura (unless you have a really big aura, like me).  Our favoured carrier - the Baby Bjorn - doesn't take anything under 8lbs but my sister sent us an amazing one made in Britain but found in Uganda.

The Kari Me allows for multiple baby positions, based on the sort of faux-ethnic earth-knowledge that we just eat up around here.  It's suitable for that crazy babywearing thing, where you never put them down, and has the advantage of making the carer look like a shaolin monk with mad martial art skills.  I was too scared to wear it out of the house (in case I was approached to free a local village from evil samurai or something) but did wander around inside with Pete crushed to me in the 'cuddly' hold.  Judging by his silence he was in awe!

So there you are - a successful day of acculturating our baby to the foreign practices of his birthplace.  When he starts answering to "Peeder" and successfully ordering a glass of "warder" in a restaurant our work here will be done.

Hmmm, perhaps a nappy isn't meant to reach to his ankles.

Is this a ninja dedicated to fighting for truth and justice?

No!  It's a man carrying a baby, but your mistake is understandable.

It also has a convenient space for my battery pack.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

They let Peter out!  I still can't believe it.  We've been trained in the use of a portable heart and breathing monitor, which makes a lot of noise when it goes off (usually because you've stepped on a wire), and after four hours of "discharge" - it sounds as yucky and medical as it is - they took the security tag off the baby and let us go!

It's all rather strange.  They are no nurses to call, but there are also no nurses to tell us what we should be doing.  We have more than five-square-feet of space around us.  We get to play with a baby instead of having to return him to the incubator after an hour!  We can panic and fret like real parents, although the monitor does remove the fun of constantly checking that he's still breathing.

NICU babies have obviously never experienced darkness or silence, so we've been warned that we may have to have a bright, noisy bedroom at night.  Hmmm.  Vince and Christine taught us a great trick with a hair dryer but I may have to find episodes of ER to recreate Pete's natural environment.

What is strange is that having a newborn at home is giving us far more time to do things.  Without trips to hospital eating up hours, we've already been more productive this evening than ever.  Hannah even cooked dinner (I was busy, burping the baby while watching an episode of Californication).  If you're looking to boost your productivity: have a baby.

I know people always say this will be the happiest day of your life, but this is the happiest day of my life.

Ok.  Heart rate monitor, clothes, breast pump equipment, nappies, bottles, meds...have we missed anything?

Crossing the threshold.

Hannah, no longer forced to choose between cuddling a baby and checking her Chevron emails.



The portable heart rate monitor.  I, for one, welcome our new electronic overlord.

It's a boy!  Actually it's a margarita.

Ok, we've brought you home...what are you going to do to entertain us?

Different setting, same default position.

Still inside

It's our five week anniversary in the NICU today!  We didn't get any cards, although nurse Allison did make one for Valentine's Day.

Pete has broken the 5lb barrier and has started troughing down his food.  The incubator lid is up, but he can still stop his own heartbeat on command.  Well, not really stop, just slow - this is known as a bradycardia, or simply a "b" as we've spent so much time in hospital that we get a doctorate in medicine for time served.  Professional cyclists can have resting heart rates as low as 28 beats per minute.  So Peter's a cyclist!

We've been told that he might be sent home early attached to a heart monitor, a piece of equipment infamous for alarming every few minutes with false positives.  It's new parent sleep deprivation with an added edge.  He also has a funny-shaped head, according to the physio, that they may scan again, but he gets that from his father.  He's looking less like a wrinkly old man but does somewhat resemble a famous British comic-strip villain:

In the meantime he has to keep his temperature up and keep growing, although we've found that dressing him in three premie babygrows at once keeps him toasty and makes him look bigger!  I'm pretty sure the doctors haven't noticed our sneaky tactics.

Playing on his parents' emotions already.

Hannah will be put on the payroll soon.

Unimpressed by this strange burping routine.

And with one simple touch, I control you!

The top is up!  Again!  And we live in hope.



Although, with all these blankets, he might have preferred it down.

Underneath, finally resembling a real baby!

Cute!

Cute!



Cute and cute!