900 days

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As a little addendum to the New Year’s post: While we had a nice NYE telethon with nibbles and bubbly (one glass over the evening for mummy), one member of the family didn’t like the famous abilities of champagne (seems it’s a german myth about the increase of milk production when drinking it) at all! Instead of a sleepy and well-fed Baby, we got a New Year’s Day surprise with a marathon of its own kind: Esmé had a dodgy tummy all day, and was awake and active from 7am all the way until 10pm. That would be a party and a half, if it was the other way round, and the dodgy tummy was a result of overindulgence, and she’d be partying with her friends, and they’d be in their late teens or so, I’d say, but as none of these applied, we were left with an unhappy bundle on a grey january day. Lesson learnt: Champagne does not work for everyone!

silent night, holy night

Yay, It’s 2009! Christmas came so quickly, we barely got around decorating, while our ever-vocal daughter took on the hard job of singing christmas carols. In a style and language I’ve never heard before. Maybe the Mieskuoro Huutajat will be able to help me translate.

We also received lots more presents, mainly for Baby, but some very nice things for us as well. I might take the opportunity to say thanks for all the amazing gifts and well-wishes she received since birth, for the off-chance that one of the kind souls bothers reading this. This stream of packages and letters so far lasted 8 weeks, but the calendar tells me it’ll probably come to an end very soon.

Amongst many other beautiful things was a fox that looks a bit like a kangaroo, but with the pouch on the back (it’s the tail!) and the baby missing, a parent-friendly wooden rattle which isn’t loud at all (imagine shaking a few light bulbs with broken filaments), and a clip-on peacock that seems to have more colors, in a very in-your-face manner, than my computer could ever deal with. Amazing!

Following the custom to review the year past between the holidays, I have an easy job, only 6 weeks to cover, yay:

• I am happy to confirm that the amount of limbs and other extremities has consistently stayed the same since birth.
• So has the color of her eyes.
• Not trying to get too soppy here, but despite the occasional hiccup in the beginning, we, obviously, love her to bits by now.
• After only losing a very small amount of weight after birth she’d gained about 600 grams on her birth weight by the end of the year. If she continues like this (I’m doing this in a linear fashion here, in case you’d ask), she’ll be 9.6 kg when she turns one year old, and 105 kg when she’s 18. Lovely. When she has managed her way through life’s obstacles as far as I have, she’ll be roughly around 180 kg. Although that’s fine for some, “Doctor” Gillian McKeith will no doubt intervene through the power of television.
• She’s looking less and less like Fatso when she’s angry (I so far failed to post pictures for this period, sorry!)
• Using fat-american-italian-man as a nickname didn’t stick, but Poopee did. She’ll give me heat for this creation at some point in the future, I’m sure.
• Luckily it’s got a great new contestant, due to her love and closeness to mummy: Barnacle.

On that note, we wish you all the best in 2009, and may you, too, gain the love and trust of 2 new people, about 10kg in bodyweight and at least one new nickname in the next 12 months.

Et tu, Brute?

Finally, after an emotional roller coaster ride lasting about 7 weeks, all the couples from our NCT class had their babies. Due to the power of time travel I am able to post this in the past, one week ago when I originally wanted to write this.

All mums and babies, and even the dads are up and well, and that’s a very satisfying situation, even though I was only marginally instrumental to one of the births.

It’s funny how a more or less randomly gathered group have given so much support to each other, when the only common factors were having-the-first-baby, and maybe a certain financially safe background that might come with the £200 or so registration fee.

Saying that, 3 out of the 7 dads (including me) changed their jobs so close to their wives’ due date they didn’t get their paid 2 weeks of paternity leave, and, at least in my case it wasn’t a planned decision, so that financial safety only goes so far. But more on that another time.

I’m very happy for all of the brand new families. Meeting all the guys and girls made me realize how many of my relationships with other people don’t seem to have room for soon-to-be-dad conversations. Naturally, as pregnancy only lasts 9 months, all my friends are either not having any children (and not thinking about having any right now), or they had a baby or two already. Like this, conversations seem to only have the 2 outcomes “I don’t know” or “it’ll pass” (now this is entirely unfair to my parent-friends, there’s also “I don’t remember” and “you’ll miss those days later on”); either way nothing that made any impact on me.

Not so with the NCT dads. While the girls established many afternoon coffee meet-ups, The guys started a bi-weekly huddle in a local pub. The first time happened to be on our first couple’s due date, but Steve braved it and we were all mighty proud of that (which set the drinking pace for all following evenings). As it turned out later, we all did it; I went 2 weeks later with Jen being 4 days overdue, and the last time we met the final 2 guys were in the same situation as I was previously.

Says Rob to Frank: “I feel like we’re in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Slowly they’re all turning, one by one, until I see you on the street one day, and you turn around and go gggggaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”. This kind of exchange must be worth more than any baby book can ever provide.

I will destroy you if you touch me!

And they’re off!

Everything happened so fast in the end: Saturday, November 22, in the morning, 2am, light contractions started. By 7am we were still joking at home, by 12:30pm Esmé Maria Francesca Willerich was born.

It’s nice to be part of an uncomplicated birth; we had heard so many stories about complications in all sorts of ways, we almost forgot that the bulk of babies are still born without a hitch.

A day later Baby and Baby Mama were released from hospital, and the same evening my parents arrived to help out.

I can’t say enough how grateful we are. With both sets of parents living outside the UK we’re quite independent, although sometimes we felt it would be nice to have someone to fall back on. When birth was inching closer, it was clear that we definitely wanted somebody here. My parents were flexible and close enough to simply buy tickets for a convenient plane on call, and so they did after I called them right after arriving at hospital at 9 o’clock.

This first week or so they were buying groceries, making us breakfast and dinner as well as showing super-human patience with our very vocal daughter. That left us with figuring out the details of how hungry she really is (”very”, it took us until yesterday to get that one right), how long it takes for the umbilical cord to fall off (5 days, and day 5 is a bit smelly. The midwife said not to worry, as “it’s just rotten flesh, nothing unusual”), and how long it takes us to lose patience.

This last one took 3 days with me, with very little sleep and of course still recovering from the birth. I felt terribly frustrated that someone who is supposed to mean so much to me can give me so much grief. Esmé had, roughly up until today, not shown any signs at all if she preferred being around the house in my arms, or rather down at the pub with drunken strangers. Instead she learned in less than one day so many variations of cries that all puncture your heart and ears severely, and the lesson that took me another 3 days on top of that was that apart from diaper-changes, food (well, let’s talk about the top-up bottle another time), comfort and warmth there’s nothing I can do to help her, and that in many cases the big four are simply not enough to get her settled.

Again, my parents saved the day a lot of times, when Jen was so tired she’d almost fall asleep standing, and I was so tense I thought I’m going to break my jaw from clenching it too much. I don’t think I’m as good as my dad with singing songs to her yet; I don’t think I’m as good as my mum just stroking her belly and cooing, when the distance between her mouth and my ear is so little that all health and safety alarm bells would go off if this were my employment. These things are doubly hard when you think that everyone expects you to be in total (albeit tired) bliss after birth, when really giving birth was so far the easiest thing for us. But I’m getting there and today is the first time I’m carefully happy.  Just writing this makes me a little proud; and apparently that’s what I’ve been meant to feel since day one. Ah, I’ll get there soon.