Since becoming in-valid…. I am really excited by every little thing that I can get done. No dishes yet, but I can stack the dishwasher!
Inigo in his first Hawaiian shirt, with shorts to match
Today was Alex’s first birthday!
Inigo and I went up to Pearl Beach for a wee celebration, and in honour of such an auspicious occasion, we broke out the outfit that Donna brought back from Hawaii. So of course we had to have a photo shoot before he could spew on it!
Alex and Grandad in the surf
Happy Birthday Alex
And congratulations to Adam and Sarah for doing such a great job as parents to my favourite nephew.
Inigo wearing a flannelette nappy with a scottish fold, and a bespoke polarfleece cover by Whizz Kidz.
Ok, so it’s falling off in this picture, but if you do the nappy cover up properly, they stay on, and hardly ever leak – even when the poop is explosive. When we have used disposables, there have been incidents. I won’t go into detail.
Before Inigo was born, I did quite a bit of research into Disposable Vs. Cloth nappies (diapers for those of you in the US). Media reports quote a study that found that cloth nappies had THE SAME environmental impact as disposable nappies, and tend to encourage the use of disposables. Which seemed odd to me.
I know that growing and processing cotton is hugely wasteful, but to me it seemed almost impossible that a disposable product could be as environmentally responsible as a reusable product – it just didn’t make sense. The only edge that was conceded to cloth nappies was in using a nappy service – apparently the economies of scale involved mean that cloth nappies get the edge in that circumstance.
So I kept looking, and eventually found “The Australian Nappy Network” and Oz Cloth Nappies, both advocacy groups for using cloth. It turns out the study that is widely quoted starts off with a few dodgy premises. And we all know that good science requires good foundations, right?
Firstly, they assumed that a baby would go through 4-6 disposables in a day, not 6-8, which is more realistic (at least for a baby, older kids may differ). They also assumed that cloth nappies would only be used 150 times before they are discarded – they didn’t consider that cloth nappies can have lifecycles up to 800 uses, they can be passed down to younger children, passed on to friends, and even repurposed as household rags (I use old cloth nappies to clean the bunny houses). They also assumed that cloth nappies would be laundered using the most ridiculously wasteful laundry methods, including ironing the nappies after they come out of the dryer!
Most cloth nappy users don’t use nappysan, many wash in cold water, and only HALF the normal amount of detergent is recommended (especially for babies with sensitive skin). No antibacterial or bleach products are needed if you can line dry – UV light is an excellent stain buster, and kills any nasties hanging around. If you follow these washing guidelines, and have a washing machine with a water level sensor (so you never use more water than you need for the cycle), then it makes sense that you’re doing the right thing by the environment by using cloth nappies on your child.
And if you can find nappies made out of an alternative to cotton, the difference is even bigger. Hemp and bamboo are both excellent nappy materials, bamboo is far more absorbent than cotton, and far less wasteful to produce. Put it all together, and using cloth nappies is a no brainer.
Of course, there is all the extra work to consider…
Which I don’t – since having the baby I have had to wash every day anyway, and an extra load every two days is no big deal. I fold nappies (or often Mark does it) in front of the TV, and it’s as relaxing as knitting 😉
Inigo in his first cloth nappy – moments after getting out of NICU.
And it looks so much cuter than disposables!
Check out this article for a more detailed critique of the study.
P.S. – Terry nappies are very “old school” right now. The funky babies are all wearing “Modern Cloth Nappies”, which are tailored like a disposable, and look really groovy. You can see Inigo wearing a modern cloth nappy here, and here.
Duke & Desiah left us recently, and I offered to put up a tribute page so that their mum, Erin, had somewhere on the web to memorialise her babies.
So here you go Erin, I hope you like it.
Love, Lara
PS. In Lara news, I managed to do this while rocking the baby in the pram with one foot. If I get good at that, I might be able to catch up on email, and blogs soon – and maybe even put up a progress post about us. In the meantime, we visited the baby health centre today, Inigo is 3.36kg – which means he has put on 280 grams in one week. Three weeks old today!
We’re all fine, but we took a trip to Casualty at Westmead Children’s Hospital today, as we couldn’t find a medical center that was open, and we thought we’d better get the boy looked at.
At hospital, they told us to clean his umbilical cord stump daily, and to see a doctor if it looked weepy, or started to smell. With all the excitement, we forgot to clean it on friday, and by saturday it didn’t look as good as it had. Today it looked even worse, and had started to smell.
Apparently, it’s all good. We’ve been given saline to clean it, but with his breathing issues, his little body has been concentrating on healing his lungs, rather than healing the belly button. We can expect that his cord will take up to an extra week to drop off than a “normal” baby.
On the upside, we now have a medical records number at Westmead, we know how to get there, and we know we can get the kid to hospital within 15 minutes of noticing something awry. And apparently, they aren’t going to report us to DOCS for child neglect. Yet…
And last night, we got 2 periods of sleep that lasted for 3 hours or more. The kid is gorgeous.
Another night with not much sleep, Inigo likes to sleep for an hour after a night feed, then wake 2-3 times in the next hour, then refuse to sleep for the third hour unless one of us is holding him. We have taken it in turns to do the settling after a feed, so we are both getting some sleep.
This morning, the 7am feed was followed by a bath, so not enough sleep was had before the 11am feed. When he was still awake at 1pm after the 11am feed, Mark and I turned to disco music. The two of us sang him a duet of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, and he is out like a light.
What a great kid.
And in other news, Ella Grace Hodgkiss arrived last night just after 3am. No other details yet, but Bev & Ted will be here shortly to tell us all about our newest family member, and how her mum is doing.
Inigo is off all machines, and has had two successful feeds. I have been moved again, and am downstairs in the children’s ward, where there are sick people, so Inigo has to stay in the nursery.
I am going to try to get some sleep in preparation for my first night of round the clock feeding, Mark has our boy sleeping on his chest upstairs, and I will be called when he needs me.
Thank you everyone for your well wishes, and words of encouragement. It’s working 🙂
We tried breastfeeding again today, and had a much better experience – not there yet, but better. I also had a chance to talk to the midwife that I saw for most of my ante natal visits, she validated everything I was feeling, and encouraged me to go back to the nursery and touch him as much as I like. It’s been a tough 24 hours, but I look forward to every day getting better from now on. Also spoken to the social worker, who says that I am going better than could be expected for somebody who has so much to deal with.
I have been doing pretty well with expressing, this morning I got 70mls, which everyone seems impressed with. Of course I have no idea about what should and shouldn’t be happening, but I overheard one of the doctors saying today that a c section interferes with normal hormone production, and therefore can delay and reduce milk production. Apparently I am very lucky, and supply is not an issue, only demand 🙂 We’ll get there!
The boy is looking delightful – he has been fed breastmilk through a naso gastric tube, about 2mls every hour, and it seems to have improved his skin tone and colour. It’s an almost imperceptible change, and I may be imagining it, but it does make me feel better that he is able to eat, and I am able to provide for him in some small way. It may not be the way he’s supposed to get it, but it’s the best we can have for now, and I am grateful.
Mum had a meeting at the hospital and has spoken to Inigo’s paediatrician – apparently they are hoping to let us go home on the weekend. That is the first official word on timing I have had, and am trying not to get too excited, but the idea that I might be able to see my son without wires, and being able to cuddle him so soon is almost too much to hope for.
Anna Gibson visited again today, and we had such a lovely chat, I am now feeling fortified and ready to deal with whatever tomorrow may bring for our little family. All good things I hope.
We’ve just spent nearly an hour cuddling our son. He is still on oxygen, but they are so happy with his progress that we were allowed to have a cuddle while he was on a nasal cannula instead of the headbox. No pictures – because he needs skin to skin contact, all the pics are a little pornographic.
Of course, the primary reason for the switch in oxygen source was that they wanted to take another x-ray to measure his progress. We’ll have the results of the x-ray later this afternoon, and since I now have internets in my room, I will be able to blog about it as soon as I hear something.
They have started to feed him expressed breastmilk, starting with 2mls an hour. Soon they will be putting in a naso-gastric tube to assist feeding, and we’ll start to increase the amount that he eats. He is currently getting 15ms and hour of I/V fluids, so he needs to be getting about the same amount in breastmilk. We’ve tried a proper feed, but he didn’t take to it straight away, and he became distressed, which lead to his oxygen saturation dropping. We’ll fight that battle another day, and concentrate on keeping him calm, and happy, and healthy. Then we can fatten him up.
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10:20pm
I’ve just been ejected from the nursery. Inigo had an episode of really odd breathing, which the midwife put down to “overstimulation”. I had just changed him after I noticed him starting to wake up, and was sitting quietly stroking his arm, as I have been all day, every day now. I have never seen him do that before, and it was really frightening, and I am damn sure it wasn’t me that caused it. What a bitch. I can’t go back in there now until morning, and she’s gone, or I might strangle her. No more expressing tonight. Fuck.
Brendan Nelson wants to grant same sex couples “equal” rights. But he doesn’t support gay marriage, adoption, or access to IVF. Doesn’t sound equal to me matey.
Inigo has had a good night. Since about 5pm last night, all of his obs have recorded less than 100 breaths per minute, bar one. Normal is 40-60 breaths per minute, and he started out at about 120, so less than 100 is a significant improvement – in my mind at least! He’s also down to less than 50% oxygen, and still getting 100% blood oxygen saturation – the goal is that they can wean him off the oxygen completely, and keep his breathing low. Nobody will speculate how long that will take, but I have been warned that I shouldn’t expect to go home on Monday.
After he is off the oxygen completely, then I will get to start breastfeeding – we can’t go home until breastfeeding is established. Of course, nobody has explained to me what their definition of “established” is, so I’m still in the dark about that.
We haven’t heard from the paediatrician this morning though, so officially we have no word yet. Mum is convinced he is looking much better though, and I’m almost confident enough to say that I think he looks happier too.
And I finally got an (almost) good night’s sleep. And the world’s best husband just walked in with coffee. Life is looking much brighter today.
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Update – 7pm
The doctors were really happy with his progress today, resp rate was down under 70 for most of the day. Unfortunately, it’s been back up again since, so they aren’t reducing the oxygen again until he can be reviewed by the doctors again tomorrow. All in all, a good day, but with a few scary and uncertain moments with his heart rate dropping very low. We remain alert but not alarmed. He’s had his gastric tube removed at least, and been able to have a bath – so we can finally tell that he has brown hair underneath all the gore!
Yesterday Simone and Andrew visited, and brought various delights from the best of Newtown’s Turkish and Lebanese restaurants. We had a veritable feast, and I was able to eat breakfast and lunch today from the superb leftovers. They also brought a box filled with gorgeous clothing for the boy (I can’t wait to put him in actual clothes!), and Simone has created a custom skincare range for Inigo.
In the bottles are Inigo George Nettle’s “Oh-So-Clean-Feeling Baby Bum Wipe Juice”, “Super Deluxe Baby Bath Elixir” and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Baby Bum Butter”. You’d have to feel pretty special to have a skincare range named for you before you were three days old!
In which Plan C comes into effect, in full detail. Don’t read on if you’re squeamish – this is my story, as much as I remember 24 hours later.
Wednesday, I had the cleaners come, I visited Miriam and Oscar, I visited Anna and Lara, and then I picked Mark up from work. It was a pretty full day, and I was so focussed on encouraging Inigo to make his grand entrance, that I wasn’t exactly focussed on how he was doing.
By the time we got home, it was about 10pm, and I sat down with a big bowl of Bravo Lemon Lime Gelato (brand mentioned because it is the stuff of legend), hoping to kick start a bit of activity. By the time I went to bed an hour or so later, I still hadn’t noticed much in the way of Inigo activity, and I started to get a little concerned.
The next morning, instead of sleeping through the coffee delivery (Mark is a wonderful husband), I woke up, sat up, drank the coffee, and waited for the espresso to pass through the placenta and excite some action. Two hours and a spa later, I resolved to take myself off to hospital for a check.
I arrived at hospital just before 11am, and was hooked up to a CTG pretty quickly. The machine found a heartbeat that was racing a bit, and we resolved to watch it for a while to see if it settled while the coffee wore off, and to watch for movement (which was minimal).
After an hour on the machine, the heartrate dipped a bit, which prompted the midwives to consult with a doctor, who decided that the trace was worrying enough that I wouldn’t be leaving hospital without a baby, either by induction or C-section. I rang Mark, Mum, and the Doula, and told them all to be prepared.
The Doctor did an “internal”. If you’ve had a baby, you know exactly how unpleasant this is, if you haven’t, I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that although it was unpleasant for me, Inigo found it really distressing, and his heartrate dipped alarmingly.
The Doctor found that my bits weren’t anywhere near ready for labour, so a C-section was decided upon, a consent form was called for, and things went very Monty Python for a little while.
My blood pressure had dropped, so I was feeling a little woozy, they turned me on my side to relieve the pressure, and both of us started to feel better.
The senior midwife returned, had a chat to the scalpel happy doctor, and convinced her that the surgery could wait at least until Mark arrived!
I handed my mobile to the lovely Leilani (one of the student midwives that has been looking after me) to follow up support people (and mainly to find Mark), as they wheeled me off to an ancient operating theatre. No complaints about the hospital at all, and the staff have all been beyond compare – but wheeling a frightened woman into an operating theatre that looks like a morgue, and then insisting on sticking needles in her spine before her husband shows up is a little bit mean. I understand that they were doing their best for me and my baby, but at the time I was a very small scared little person.
Just before the second needle went in, Leilani managed to let me know that Mark was just outside, and would be allowed in as soon as the anaesthetist was done with me. Soon he was by my side (in a very silly outfit, and I couldn’t feel my toes. They put up a sheet so I couldn’t see all the action, and I asked them politely only to give me the barest detail about what was going on.
My blood pressure dropped again, and I began to feel nauseous. I was given something to raise my blood pressure, which helped for a little while. Soon my blood pressure dropped again, and I was throwing up violently as I felt Inigo being lifted from my open abdomen, and heard him cry for the first time. 2:18pm, 29/11/07
At which point I became aware that there was an “issue”. Turns out there were a few issues, and one of them has potentially nasty consequences. We’ll going to be ok, but it’s been a hard day for our new family.
Inigo had always been a pretty active little guy, hence all our worries about turning him. And that’s why I was suspicious that he was so quiet on wednesday. It turns out that his placenta had started to deteriorate, the amniotic fluid had also diminished, and that he’d done a poo into it at some point. And then his breathing reflex had kicked in before he was out in the world, and he’d inhaled some poo into his lungs.
This happens quite a bit, and the consequences range from a few days on oxygen, to total loss of lung function, and death. Inigo breathed on his own straight away, so it was pretty likely that his issues were going to be on the more minor side – but we had to wait and see.
I was allowed to see him for about a minute before he was taken off to the special care ward. Mark went with him, and I was stitched up and wheeled into recovery. Again the lovely Leilani was there with me, and managed to talk them into letting mum come down to the recovery ward so I didn’t have to be alone. Which was wonderful, because they kept me there for ages while I waited for the spinal block to wear off enough so that I could feel my toes again.
Finally I was wheeled upstairs and allowed to see Inigo. He was naked under a heat lamp, with a space helmet over his head delivering oxygen. He had electrodes and a cannula, and SP02 monitor taped on to him, and he looked like a little alien space man. And because I was all wired up too, all I could do was hold his little hand and stroke his skinny little rib cage.
I stayed with him for a few hours. I couldn’t hold him, I couldn’t feed him, I couldn’t even give him a kiss, or change his nappy. But I did start to feel a bit connected to him, and I have certainly seen lots of uglier babies than this one.
Eventually, I made it to my room at about 7pm. I still couldn’t really feel my toes, but the pain of the surgery was starting to break through, and the weight of the days events was starting to hit home.
My parents were there, Marks parents were there, so I decided to postpone my meltdown for a little while. Christine came for a visit, Mum and Dad left, Bev and Ted left and came back with food (thanks!). Everyone left at around 11pm, and I tried to sleep.
Finally gave up at around 6am when the drugs ran out, and I’ve spent today arguing for more drugs, between visits to the special care nursery, and nursing my wounds. I have expressed a little milk, which has been given to Inigo via syringe. I won’t be allowed to feed him until he is off the oxygen, which might be Monday. Or it might not.
So apparently my “maternal instincts” are developed enough to have got him through what could have been nasty if I hadn’t acted. It’s a good feeling. While the outcome hasn’t been wonderful, it’s a lot better than the alternative, and it does look like we’ll be able to take the little guy home sooner or later.
In the meantime, we were able to convince the special care nurses to let me hold him for a few minutes tonight. We had a little skin to skin contact, and being able to hold him for the first time brought such a rush of emotion that I can’t possibly write about it without losing the plot completely.
Tonight, I have managed to convince them to give me a sleeping pill, so I am looking forward to not being a raving lunatic tomorrow.
Thanks everyone for your text messages, comments, emails, flowers, phone calls and esoteric vibes. Everything is appreciated, and I look forward to us both being healthy enough to introduce him to you all.
Disco Knitter 
