33 and One-Third

Mother’s Day Pt. 2

Stuart Charles — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:17:23 +0000

So what do you do to celebrate your wife’s first Mother’s Day? Tough one. The pressure is on. Luckily, I’m pretty handy when it comes to spoiling my wife, not that I do it that often, but I do every now and then get here a meaningful and thoughtful present. This was going to be a more important gift than any other, perhaps the first wedding anniversary came close, but none other.

So here goes, feel free to borrow my idea if you’re game.

I took all of the photos that The Wife and I had accumulated over the course of the five years of our marriage and stitched them together like a stop-motion animation. Luckily we take hundreds, thousands of photos, so it was pretty hefty. I threw in a few little videos that we’d shot along the way, footage of the wedding, the honeymoon, moving houses… all that stuff and ended up with a few solid minutes of the birth of our little boy. I set up the projector in the living room and we lay on the couch watching our lives on the big screen The finished film went for around twenty minutes and I’ll be damned if we both didn’t end up in tears. It was beautiful. I was also sneaky enough to put a copy onto her iPhone so she could watch it any time she felt like it.

She loved it, absolutely loved it. What a winner. Aside from making The Wife happy and creating a brilliant present, I also managed to create a little film that we’ll stash away as a ‘document’ of our journey through all the tough times – a reminder that success is in the journey, not the destination.

From a superficial perspective, I bought her a beautiful hard-covered cook book “Cooking for Men & Boys”, which I thought was pretty appropriate. We also went out for breakfast together, followed by lunch with my family and dinner with hers. If I’ve taken away anything from Mother’s Day that I never saw coming, it’s that I have a much greater appreciation for my own mother. Looking at my little boy for the past three months has given me insight into how my mother and father looked at me thirty-three years ago. It all makes sense, the whole damn thing is starting to make sense.

What a day. Mother’s Day is now one of my favourite days of the year.

Mother’s Day Pt. 1

Stuart Charles — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:03:57 +0000

I just wanted to make a quick mention of my wife and how she has been an absolute inspiration in these first three months of Little Champion’s life. She is an amazing person, who has made a most incredible mother. She is so tolerant, patient and loving towards our new little family. She never gets stressed, flustered or mad. She is a saint and I love her.

Happy Mother’s Day.

I really need to post more.

More Troubles

Stuart Charles — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 01:17:06 +0000

As I’ve mentioned before, The Wife is a magnet for all things sickly. As the obstaetrician said to her, she’s a “shit magnet”. She has been battling nipple thrush the last couple weeks, which sounds pretty gross but from my perspective you wouldn’t know she had it, there are no visible signs other than a grimmaced face every time she feeds. It is best described as like shards of glass passing through the nipples. Lovely.

It came about from the antibiotics that she was taking to treat the infection from the caesar. Unbelievable. Shit magnet. It is being treated by some more medication and creams, some of which we need to apply to the inside of Little Champion’s mouth.

The pain for her has been excruciating and only now after a few weeks is it starting to ease. She is an absolute trooper my wife. I suggested we quit the breast feeding and move onto the bottle but she was adamant that she fight through it. Incredible stuff. Shed still be expressing the milk and going through the pain regardless so she wanted to fight.

And now we are through the worst of it. I hope. She can actually smile while feeding.

My Theory

Stuart Charles — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:52:49 +0000

I have a theory. I think evolution has allowed babies to appear much cuter in the middle of the night to allow parents to think they’re adorable despite missing hours of sleep. It’s a natural defense mechanism deployed by the baby.

Sprained Ankle

Stuart Charles — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:25:08 +0000

The Wife has done her ankle, looks pretty bad too. We were out camping (actually it was more like visiting campers to be precise) and she rolled her ankle over on a log. I’m guessing she’s sprained it, maybe stretched some ligaments. We’re both basketballers and are very familiar with this injury.

This puts me in the position of doing most of the running around now for Little Champion. When he needs a feed, I’ll have to get up and get him to The Wife, I’ll need to change him, settle him, all of that. It’s gonna be tough. Wait a minute…

Late Night Feeds

Stuart Charles — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:01:22 +0000

Look at the time. This is my new life. Getting up at random times of the night has become a new norm for me. I’ll admit The Wife does 95% of it, I need to rest for work. But every other night I don’t get back to sleep easily which sucks. But you know, Little Champion is so darn cute that it makes it all worth while. I long for the day/night when I can have an uninterrupted eight hour sleep. I’m tipping that’ll be somewhere around 2017.

The Witching Hour

Stuart Charles — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:31:29 +0000

It seems around 7pm every night, Little Champion likes to refuse sleep and do nothing but cry. He has done so for three weeks solid now. He’s usually pretty good the rest of the day, around the clock. But 7pm every night is a chore. He cried for a solid two hours tonight and I can tell you, that’s where your patience gets a real workout.

I keep telling myself that it’s my role and responsibility to make sure my boy grows up well and I have to do whatever it takes to ensure this happens. That’s my new role in life. It’s my mantra I suppose. It works. I’d do anything for him, and that includes going hungry, going deaf and sacrificing time that once was my own.

Such is the life of a father.

Weddings

Stuart Charles — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:11:29 +0000

We went to our second wedding last night with Little Champion. He’s five weeks old and has already been to two weddings and so far, he has a perfect record. For a kid that doesn’t like going down to sleep too easily, he sure doesn’t mind doing so at weddings. He slept through the whole ceremony, woke for a feed afterward and then slept through the whole reception with a feed around half-time. So what’s the secret? Who knows, but I can tell you he loves his cocoon. It’s like a carrier thing that came with the pram that we bought. He sits all snug in it with a lambswool underlay thing in there. It sounds pretty lush I know, but man, I’d sleep in this thing – it looks so comfortable. It’s from Phil & Teds. He sleeps beside the table, no worries.

Speaking of sleep, we’ve been struggling a bit of late. I’ll get to that later.

Breasts

Stuart Charles — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:55:49 +0000

By far the hardest thing we’ve had to get used to, more so than the sleep deprivation, is the feeding. While it doesn’t affect me directly, it does so indirectly. If The Wife is having trouble, then I’m having trouble. That’s the way it is, that’s the way it’s gotta be. The only way to make a family work is by getting Mum and Dad on the same page and supporting each other.

And yes, we are striving to be the perfect family.

So the feeding… not easy. Before the birth we had mountains and mountains of advice from anyone and everyone who had ever laid eyes upon a baby. But not one of them said anything about how difficult it would be to feed the baby.

* From this point on, on this blog, the baby will be referred to as Little Champion.

It all started well enough. The midwives in the hospital were amazingly accommodating and went to great lengths to help The Wife get Little Champion on the breast. And get on the breast he did. (disclaimer – if you’re a man and you haven’t had children yet, what you are about to read may seriously disturb you). But after two days, The Wife’s nipples were bleeding, they simply weren’t accustomed to having someone suck the absolute shit out of them. They tried all sorts of remedies, from these things called Mother Mates to nipple shields and creams of all varieties. They all helped to a certain degree but not to the point where feeding wasn’t extremely uncomfortable. She couldn’t tolerate it any more and I couldn’t blame her. Not only would it have been uncomfortable but Little Champion doesn’t want to be drinking blood whenever he goes on the breast. So we needed to take other approaches to feeding while the nipples recovered and prepared themselves for round two.

The midwives suggested expressing the milk and bottle feeding him – once again for those of you without children, hold on tight. This is where the mum is connected to this milking machine which, using suction, the machine withdraws the milk out of the breast into bottles where it can then be fed to the baby.

In all my preparation for becoming a father, I never contemplated this. The girl of your dreams, the one you marry, the one you’re madly in love with, the one you lust for… suddenly becomes a mother, the mother of your child. And you know, it’s no big deal. Her breasts – as I once knew them – will never be the same. They’ve been to hell and back, they’ve seen things no breast needs to see and suddenly their purpose has changed. The Wife’s breasts sole purpose in life was to tempt, tease and please me, and they did a mighty fine job. An incredible job actually. But now their sole purpose is to give life to Little Champion and I’m ok with that.

Advice of the week for any man yet to have children: Spend some valuable time alone with your partner’s breasts. Just the three of you. Sleep in, roll around in them, talk to them, take them out for dinner. Because they won’t be yours for long.

The Birth

Stuart Charles — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:08:50 +0000

We were told to be at the hospital for a 6:30am check-in. We’d woken at 5:30 with all the excitement, weariness and anticipation of those days as a youngster when you;d wake up early to go on family holidays. The sun wasn’t up, the birds weren’t up, the garbos were out emptying the rubbish.

Leaving the house was odd knowing that when we returned we’d be returning as a family, not as a couple. We hopped in the car and headed off to the hospital.

The hospital is a private one only ten minutes away from where we live. We chose it for it’s convenience, because it had a nice feel about it, it was small and we had heard good things about the people there. We chose the private path as opposed to the public because of the extra special treatment you get in the private system. It was going to cost significantly more money, but now that all is said and done, it was money very well spent.

They guided us to our room and it was there that The Wife got into her gown and we had our first visit from the anaesthetist. We’ve been there and done that before with these guys and it never gets easier. Their mere presence leaves you with a nervous, anxious kind of feeling. They come armed with forms, contracts, agreements, all sorts of paperwork. I surprised he didn’t bring a lawyer along. So we signed on the dotted line and thought nothing more of it.

Everyone was super organised so we essentially spent the next 45 minutes sitting in the room waiting to be wheeled out. The delivery was set for 8:00am. I can’t emphasise enough how strange it was waiting for a caesar to happen. It was nothing like I’d ever seen in the movies. The movies are filled with gasping, painful, sweaty labours. Ours was quiet, civilised and scheduled.

The came and took The Wife at 8:00 and I followed along feeling like a hanger-on. I was given a set of scrubs and by this stage the nerves had kicked in fairly strongly. I had a hard time putting the scrubs on. They then took her into the operating theatre and I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye, good luck or anything like that. I kinda thought I’d be going in for the whole thing. They told me they’d come and get me when it was ready to cut. They gave newspaper, a chair and told me to take it easy. Once again, odd. Surreal. I’m a half hour away from being a father and I’m reading the paper.

I got the tap on the shoulder and was guided into the operating theatre where The Wife was lying down with a big sheet held up as a screen so we couldn’t see the gruesome action going on. My camera was confiscated by one of the nurses who said he’d take the photos for me. I was glad about that. So I sat down next to The Wife and gave her plenty of kisses and reassurance. I was nervous, very bloody nervous. But excited also. At this stage we still didn’t know the sex of the baby so that’s what was most exciting at this stage.

The surgery was strange to say the least. There was plenty of pushing and pulling, very aggressive tactics I would’ve thought for a surgery. At one stage, the obstetrician called for a rolled bandage with which he tied to something – a part of The Wife’s body I presume and he flung the rest of it over our side of the sheet. The midwife then tied it to the pole holding the IV. Archaic methods for sure. But… we’ve put our faith in them the whole way so who am I to question things?

With a few short sharp pounds on the stomach, the baby came out.

He lifted it up into the air Lion King style, and it was then that we could clearly see that we’d given birth to a baby boy.

For anyone who has ever had children, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that it’s an experience that can’t be matched to another and can’t be compared to anything. Seeing my son for the first time was as close to a religious experience as I have ever felt.

When he was brought around to us wrapped in a towel, we were able to look into his screaming eyes and it was then that I shed my first tear over this child. I’m sure it won’t be my last.