Skyline Drifter

Consensus in the office is that we should be able to simply disable the airbag and use the seat in the front. Anyone got any experience of that?

Apologies, feeding time! He's gaining weight fine and they are very happy with him. Health visitor is coming for first visit on wednesday. Not sure when midwives finish up. Due one tomorrow certainly, though they've dropped to every second day. I guess tomorrow might be the last. I'm back to work tomorrow so that will change the whole routine again.

What the Hell is an Ignis? I've never even heard of that! I'll have to see what I can source. I have a few contacts in the car trade but it would have been a lot easier if I'd had notice of it. Thomas seems fine. A more settled night last night.

Mmm, one of those can go wrong, will go wrong kind of days. Despite the refreshingness of a better night's sleep the morning started with the fecking door falling off the washing machine. That'll mean a phone call to the repairman tomorrow first thing and potentially a new washing machine. Great timing! My mother's having to do all our washing just now. And then we finally got around to trying out the car seat in the wife's car. Uh-oh The fecking thing is completely impractical in a two door Toyota Yaris. I did suggest weeks ago that we should pick the thing up in advance and test these things but no, that's "unlucky". So now she's stuck in the house unable to realistically go anywhere with the wee man until we can change her car. And that'll be more fecking expense. It will physically go in but it can't go in the front seat because of the airbag and will only go in the back by squeezing it diagonally over the seat which is hopeless if the baby is actually in the thing. And even then, the seat belt turns out to be one of those annoying buggers that locks in position if it extends fully and then slips back a little so it's a complete nightmare to try to fit round a car seat. My VW doesn't do that. Which means in the meantime either my dad will have to be on standby if Maureen needs to go anywhere when I'm not around or we'll need to swap cars which, even if it means I'm going to work in a hairdresser's car, I can cope with but Maureen doesn't want to drive a big car around. Magic!

I don't even know where ours are! I expect the wife has put them somewhere. I'm pretty sure she won't have thrown them out but fundamentally we didn't do anything with them. We were far too scared to tempt fate and show them to anyone else. I doubt anyone other than the two of us ever saw them. I know my mother mentioned the other day we'd never shown them to her.

No, she quoted the right post. My real name is "Ewan" which presumably you didn't know but CJ does.

Yeah, that's what I said. He's vocal when he wants to be and wouldn't be slow to let us know if he wasn't comfortable. Mum panics though and he has been "frequent" since birth. He is formula fed.

Trapped wind is a right pain I know already thanks. Non-parents and midwives look away now - Is it normal for him not to 'poo' for a good many hours? He's been eating and pooing for Scotland up to yesterday but hasn't had a number 2 since 8pm last night. He's not moaning or crying and still eating fine but as he's gone four nappy changes without any sign "mum" is starting to panic. I think he's most likely fine though.

Yes, I think in your position, as long as your relatively sure you can find work again in six months or something and don't get completely out of the way of working, that's worked out really well for you. My employers have been brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Take as much time as you need, don't worry about anything and they haven't considered dropping me to paternity pay rates either. But at the end of the day I have a job to do and whilst the timing of the birth couldn't have been much better in terms of work commitments, a new month means a pile of work rolling round again that I need to move on. A lot of what I do isn't done by anyone else in the firm either and, whilst it obviously could be if I was long term unavailable, I can't afford to leave things to pile up long. So I intend to go back full time on Monday and see how we get on unless anything changes radically between now and then. I will try to minimise the late nights though (I tend to still be at the office after 6pm frequently) for the time being. I have every confidence Maureen will cope on her own (and my mother lives about 30 yards away if needs be and hers is retiring next week too albeit she lives 12 miles away) but I want to help as much as I can. Growth spurts, eh? No-one's mentioned that yet.

I don't know if he did or didn't. I'm not sure Maureen would have recognised them. But yes, he's had frequent hiccups every day, quite often during or shortly after a feed. Those foldover sleeves are a Godsend. I got to sleep about 1am, got up with Maureen about 4am for his feed, back to sleep at 5am and up again at 8am for the next one. At which point Maureen stayed up and I went back to bed again with Thomas in his crib next to the bed in the sunlight as instructed to help the jaundice. I got up for good about 10:30 when the midwife was due. This system is fine, slightly staggered sleeping suits us. Maureen goes to bed much earlier than me and rises much earlier too. All well and good just now, will need to be adapted a bit when I go back to work next week.

Gosh, what a great dad I am! Sometimes I do things I didn't know I had in me. My absence from the thread for the last hour was to do with Thomas waking himself up with hiccups so I took him away before he woke Maureen, walked the house with him, changed a dirty nappy, fed him and got him back off to sleep ALL BY MYSELF. He's settled down again but that's him an hour early on the feed stakes for the night already. On the plus side he had a massive scoff so hopefully he'll be okay through to 4am now if he doesn't get hiccups again. He seems to get them a lot. Thomas has been swaddled since he was born basically. That's what we were told to do at Cresswell (maternity unit). He seems to like it although he does like to have his arms up beside his face and he has scratched his own nose so we've had to get him babygrows with the foldover sleeves to stop him doing that. His cord has come away already after just four days which is quite early apparently.

One of the things Maureen said was "Under no circumstances am I doing that again". One of the things I said was, "If she does, she can find someone else to sit with her through it!" I don't know if we'd want more kids. House isn't really big enough for more and we're a good bit older than most people starting families but we'll see. At this point, Lord alone knows how people cope with twins and more, my admiration for them knows no bounds! I'd imagine coping with a toddler AND a baby would be just about as difficult and if we were going to have more we'd need to do it damned soon. Given the long four years plus it's been to get to this stage I'm not convinced it would be as easy as all that just to have another anyway.

As far as I can gather there seems a difference of opinion on what is "right" about many baby things from medical professional to medical professional and from hospital to hospital. Hell even within the same midwife team we've occasionally had contradictory advice already. And yes, I've had the dirty nappy bit though generally we do them together. I do most of the feeding so far. And though we worked as a team both nights, I basically did his bath tonight and Maureen basically did it last night. I haven't done any of the making up of food so far. That's on the "to do" list though I was talked through it tonight.

Congratulations Mother and baby as well as can be expected I hope? Weight? Name? Enjoy your quiet time now the stress is temporarily passed. As someone 3-4 days ahead of you the next few days are amongst the most daunting you'll ever face. I guess you might get a little temporary relief if she had a cesarian as she might be in a little longer?

Actually we probably got too much sleep last night. He's a wee bit jaundiced so they said he MUST be fed every four hours but we actually let him sleep from 9:30pm to 3:30am before giving up on him waking himself and getting him up. Given how little sleep Maureen had the previous two night I was keen not to wake him before he actually woke himself if it wasn't absolutely necessary. Then he went back to sleep and woke again about 6:30am and again at 7:30am when we just got up. After getting him sorted and back to sleep downstairs I slept on the couch most of the morning as I wasn't actually feeling 100% myself this morning but I feel a lot better now. Just trying to get him into a four hour routine and it seems to be working now though he's eating like a horse. Just got him off to bed half an hour ago but he's to be up at 1:30 for a feed and again at 5:30. They say once the jaundice goes away we can let him sleep a bit longer if he wants to but whilst it's there it has to be regular feeds. That's the fellow I think. I knew it began with an "Sy" anyway. As Rowan is already aware because we discussed it by PM, epidural is not available in Dumfries & Galloway anyway.

I am still thinking of you. I hope it's going well.

She had the drip yes. Wasn't Oxytocin, something similar Systocin maybe? Or is that the same thing with a different brand name? She got up to maximum dose for a while though they turned it down as it was working too well!

Well Thomas came home today and the wee bugger certainly has a fine pair of lungs on him! So much for barely uttering a sound the first 24 hours. Maureen has had no sleep two nights running in hospital and they've had to take him away to give her 2-3 hours both nights. Now he's home we're bracing for the storm tonight although right at this second he's being an angel. Tried to wake him to give him a feed before proper bed and he wouldn't wake so it's up in three hours for the next one instead. Going to be a long night / week / month / year I expect

Jesus Christ! I let my golf membership lapse about three or four years ago because I wasn't using it enough and it wasn't value for money. I was only playing 2 or 3 times a year but my course cost me £250 per annum when I was a member (granted it's probably up a bit now). It's a fairly low grade course but most of the clubs round here are about that. Southerness is a championship course and only charges about £300 a year for membership.

His middle name is after my grandparents on my mother's side. I had to take a couple of seconds and a silent pause before I managed to tell my mum that. My grandmother died the year before I met the wife. My grandfather died the year after I met her but had Alzheimers for his final year or two. It was important to me to keep their name alive. It meant a lot.

I've had a wee tear in my eye now and again today now that things have calmed down. I find it odd I didn't cry at all at the time (though when he was actually born and I went across the room with the midwife to see his first breaths and the turning from blue to pink I then turned to Mrs SD to tell her he was perfect and I couldn't get the words out, I was completely choked up) but I've been much more emotional today. As I suggested before, can only be that there's been less to concentrate my attention elsewhere today. He's gorgeous, absolutely perfect. Good luck with that. The info we got was that being induced is usually a little worse than natural labour. Not entirely sure why but that's what they said. She got Prostin at 6pm Wednesday, had her waters broken manually at 9:30am Thursday and went into proper labour about 1:30pm Thursday. From there it was a long 4 - 5 hours (Jesus that was long) and a very short final hour and a half. It's worth every second though. I will be thinking of you when I get a spare second. Good luck for Sunday but more likely, good luck for Monday.

All the very best. You cannot believe what a journey this has been. Few can, mercifully. Good luck. Fantastic news MB. All the best to you and your (at this stage) much more important other half.

His granny got him an entire outfit of QoS baby stuff today and the club gave him a junior blue season ticket. I'll post a photo of him with that later maybe.

The hell with that! Though I see there is one floating about the First Division Board for some reason It's been a very long day (and if the wife ever wants another child she can have someone else sit with her through labour!) but all worth it in the end. Looked set for a midnight-ish birth but suddenly around tea time everything started to happen very fast which was a relief to all parties. Welcome to the world Thomas. 7lb 13oz born at 19:02, 19/02/09