Archive for October, 2006

Bang, whizz, pop

Published by
Dan
at October 31, 2006 in General. 10 Comments

Winnie the witch

Halloween isn’t as big a thing over here as it seems to be in the US. Last year Greg had over 290 kids turn up at his house demanding confectionery; we had just under 2. This year we haven’t even had that. It’s 8pm now so it looks like I’m free to guzzle the sweets we had bought just in case.

The festivities haven’t completely passed us by however. Amy’s nursery had a Halloween party, and so Amy was able to wear the rather nifty witch’s costume that her Grandma had very generously bought her. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to prize the dummy out of her mouth before I took a photo so the effect is slightly spoiled, but at least it was colour co-ordinated. She looked extremely cute in her getup and we got a number of oohs and ahhs from random passer-bys while bringing her home this evening.

During my childhood Halloween was always a poor relation to Bonfire night, just as New years comes a distant second to Christmas. You can tell firework season is upon us as the dog is spending roughly 80% of her evenings cowering underneath the computer desk. From now until the beginning of January we will be treated to random explosions shattering the night and sending Holly into apoplexies of terror. It’s not as bad here as it was in Batley; at times it felt like we were living just south of Beirut.

I have always been a little wary of the whole fifth of November thing. I think this originates from the terrifying public safety adverts that were regularly broadcast during my formative years. I am a person who is easily scared, and the depictions of small children loosing fingers and eyes because they didn’t follow the firework code have probably scarred me for life. I still refuse to hold a sparkler in case I accidentally grab it by the wrong end, and you would never catch me returning to a firework within a month of the blue touch paper being lit.

I have a suspicion that Amy will share my distrust of Bonfire night. She gets very upset by loud noises, and for this reason we haven’t tried going to an event as yet. Perhaps this year we’ll give it a try; but I’m fairly convinced it will end in lots of fear fuelled tears. And I don’t think Amy will like it much either

State of the nation

Published by
Dan
at October 31, 2006 in General. 2 Comments

I make it a rule not to blog about my work. It’s not that it’s not interesting, because it is – it’s too bloody interesting at times. I don’t blog about my work because I don’t want the patients I work with to stumble across their life stories, however well disguised by pseudonyms, blazed across the internet as if they were merely entertainment. Also I don’t want to get fired.

But I can say this; it’s been absolutely hectic at work (See how many different ways you can think of to say that without referencing mental illness: It’s been absolutely mad / crazy / manic / bonkers etc etc). I’ve made the decision to admit more people to hospital over the last three days than I have in the last year.

As you might have been able to tell by my most recent entry I’ve found this intense period rather difficult to balance with my new role as father to a newborn. But now my last shift of this run is over, and I have the glorious prospect of three days off to fill my horizon. Not only that, but we have made a last minute booking to go to Spylaw next week. I only have one more shift on Friday separating me from seven days of rural tranquillity.

So I sit here typing this with a can of beer by my side; unwinding from another hard day and counting my blessings. I have a wonderful wife, a wonderful daughter, and a wonderful son. I have a job which although can be distressing, is ultimately rewarding. I couldn’t ask for better friends than I have. The only blot on the landscape is that on my way into the lounge tonight I accidentally set off one of Evans new toys and now I can’t get it to stop shouting out “I love you” and “Give me a cuddle” at a volume that seems incredibly loud for 1am in the morning.

I’ve said it before and I hope I’ll say it again. On balance, things are pretty good in the Hughes household.

An equation

Published by
Dan
at October 29, 2006 in General. 2 Comments

Newborn baby and broken nights sleep
+
Three days of 13 hour shifts which occasionally turn into 15 hour shifts due to emergencies
+
Feelings of guilt because you want to be with your family
=
Misery

I’m taking three weeks paternity leave / holiday starting on the 4th of November. I’m beginning to drool everytime I see that date on the calender.

Do you think they might be related?

Published by
Dan
at October 27, 2006 in General. 5 Comments

newborns

Well that’s another fine mess…

Published by
Dan
at October 25, 2006 in Competiton time. 22 Comments

A few days ago I wrote a post about my general ineptitude and idiocy. I cited a couple of incidents as evidence to back up these claims, but I have more; many, many more. For example:

Case study one
I use to keep birds in an aviary. One day I found one of my favourites dead on the floor with no immediately evident cause of death. A few days later I was cleaning out when I noticed one of the electrical wires for the lighting had been chewed through. My exact thought process was: “Stupid bird, must have touched the cable” as I promptly reached up and touched the cable, causing myself to be thrown across the room by the electric shock.

Case study two
In my late teens my friends and I used to go into Huddersfield for a night on the town. There were only two buses running at the late hour we returned, and both took particularly tortuous routes through the surrounding countryside resulting in a journey of around an hour. Our beer filled bladders were rarely up to the task of enduring this period of time so we often got off a few miles from our village and walked the rest of the way.

One particular night we came across a three foot high wall with a hollow tree on the other side. Thinking I was perhaps the wittiest person in the entire world I vaulted the wall and jumped down into the centre of the tree. Only to find out that although the wall was 3 feet high on one side, it was 8 feet high on the other and I was now trapped inside the tree. The walls of the tree were slippery with rot and the opening at the top was about a foot beyond my reach.

My calls for help were met by my drunken and hysterical friends shouting “oh look, a talking tree”. Very amusing I’m sure. Visions of the front page headline of the local newspaper proclaiming “Drunken pillock rescued by fire brigade from a tree, parents very disappointed indeed” swam before my eyes.

Eventually I managed to get out, bizarrely enough via my equally idiotic friend jumping down there with me and letting me climb on his shoulders. I will leave you to ponder on how he managed to get out himself, some mysteries are better left unrevealed.

……………………………………

Since my last competition was so successful I thought I’d have another. What are your claims to ineptitude, incompetence and general idiocy? Did you once set fire to your head when attempting to light the gas fire? Have you walked into a lamp post while reading a particularly interesting newspaper article? Or, like my dad, have you accidentally cut the arteries on your wrists while demonstrating to a class full of schoolchildren how not to cut themselves on sheet metal?

Just as last time there is a prize. This time it’s a DVD of my favourite Laurel and Hardy Film, Towed in a Hole, which I found in the Everything’s a Pound shop the other week. It is region free so should work in DVD players throughout the world. The closing date for the competition is midnight 1st of November. Stick your story in the comments of this post and let’s all have a laugh at each other’s expense. Go on, participate; you know you want to.

Laurel & Hardy (Towed in a Hole)_02

My two penneth

Published by
Kerry
at October 24, 2006 in Pregnancy. 1 Comment

I thought I’d put forward my side before we move on from tales of Evan’s arrival.

Last Friday was a strange day emotionally. I wasn’t particularly nervous when we got to the hospital but I knew there were a lot of things to happen before we knew the baby would be on his way. I didn’t want to start thinking Evan will be here that day as there was a strong chance it would take more than that. However, it was strange to see the hospital cot in the delivery suite and think “our baby could be in that very soon”.

I’m not going to do details as there are plenty of people who would rather I didn’t. Suffice to say, they started me off in the morning but nothing particularly happened until they broke my waters at 5pm. It then wasn’t until sometime after 8 before I started to wonder how I was going to do this (and how much longer would it take) and sent Dan for the midwife.

I’m not sure if the gas and air helped but it gave me something to concentrate on. When the midwife checked how I was doing at 8.45pm, I was quite disappointed to find out that I was 4cm and therefore likely to have quite a few hours ahead of me. Next thing I knew she was starting to get everything ready and I couldn’t understand why. Then she said it was nearly time and before I knew it he was here. With hindsight, I was really lucky to only end up with under 2 hours of grief, although I wouldn’t have agreed at the time.

Since then everything has seemed much more straightforward than it was with Amy, purely because we are a lot more confident this time. However I do have a list of things to learn again. It’s only been 3 years but I have forgotten more than I have remembered.

Amy seems really huge since we brought Evan home. It was when she (gently) put her hand on Evan’s head and it seemed so massive that it struck home. I know it’s all relative but she seems to have gone from being our little girl to our big girl in one instant.

She’s also taken to saying that Evan is “my precious”. This obviously amuses her geeky parents although it’s just her chosen term of endearment. According to her, Amy is Daddy’s sweetheart and Daddy is Mummy’s darling etc but I am now hoping this is the only Gollum trait to make an appearance.

A study of justifiability

Published by
Dan
at October 24, 2006 in General. 4 Comments

Giving the dog a bath and shampoo because she’s spent the entire day roaming the fields and rolling in cow muck: Completely justifiable.

Then using half a bottle of your wife’s very expensive hair conditioner because you think it would be funny if the dog smelt of peaches: Not so much so.

To sleep, perchance would be a fine thing

Published by
Dan
at October 23, 2006 in General. 2 Comments

We were lulled into a false sense of security. All through his first day home Evan slept peacefully, oblivious to the comings and goings of visitors and well wishers. He even managed to sleep through being prodded and poked and generally manhandled by his big sister. He woke now and then to feed, but then dropped gently back off. “This is great” I said secretly to myself “this is much easier than we thought it was going to be”.

Then came the night.

There is only one thing more soul destroying than hearing your baby start crying yet again after you’ve just put him down; and that’s hearing your two year old decide that she wants part of the action too. Kerry took the full brunt of the night’s traumas, being the only one who can actually feed Evan. However I spent around an hour with Amy at three in the morning trying to persuade her to go back to bed, and Kerry’s mum was particularly heroic in taking care of the baby while Kerry snatched some rest. No one in the house was unaffected though; a screaming baby is a hard thing to sleep through.

And then came the next day. Evan reverted back to his placid and peaceful dozing persona, but now we had a tired pre-schooler to deal with. Whose idea was it to have two children again? We coped though, and last night was much better – with Evan sleeping around two hours between feeds, which is much more civilised. The community midwife told us yesterday that the reason he was so demanding on that first night was that Kerry’s milk production hadn’t properly kicked in, so he was only getting a little bit each feed.

Amy’s at nursery today, and we have no visitors booked. So now we can get down to the business of getting to know our son.

When Amy met Evan

Published by
Dan
at October 21, 2006 in General. 1 Comment

IMG_3161-1

Amy’s pretty excited about her new baby brother; perhaps a little too excited. We find ourselves walking the fine tightrope between involving her in his care and preventing her from dropping him on his head. She’s just about accepted that the only time that she is allowed to hold him is when she is sitting down, but we almost had to wrestle her to the ground to prevent her “helping” with nappy changes (finally hitting on the genius idea of getting her to change her dolls nappy instead).

There have been one or two signs of possible jealousy. She’s told us a couple of times that Evan says that he doesn’t want to be held any more and to put him back in his crib. She’s also resorted to cliché and asked if the baby will be going back in mummy’s tummy tonight. Still, this wasn’t unexpected and I’m sure things will be fine.

On another note, congratulations to Jim and Erin who got married today. I’m sorry I missed the wedding, but feel I’ve had a pretty valid excuse. Have a good time on honeymoon in Africa and I hope you get your wish of outwitting a hippo and beating a baboon.

Tales from the maternity ward, part 1

Published by
Dan
at October 21, 2006 in Pregnancy. 1 Comment

The delivery suite has pretty tight security. Every time you want to come in or go out you have to be buzzed through by a midwife. This is to prevent anyone just wandering in and helping themselves to a baby or two.

I had to leave the ward now and again to get something to drink, send a text message, or just stretch my legs. I also wasn’t allowed to use the toilet attached to Kerry’s room for some reason, and so had to go through the security doors every time I wanted a pee (and people who know me will tell you I pee a lot). Each time I left I had to press a doorbell and talk through an intercom to be let back in.

I had just finished phoning my mother to tell her it looked like things were starting to move. I had bought a bottle of diet coke at the hospital shop and, not wanting to clutter up Kerry’s room with rubbish, quickly finished it off before I pressed the intercom button. After a short wait I heard the crackly voice of the midwife at the other end:

“Who is it please?”

“It’s… BUUURRPP” I replied with a bone shattering belch as the carbonated water forced its way out of my stomach.

There then came a stunned silence from the intercom. Now the microphones on those things are pretty primitive; but I’m sure I heard the rustle of papers of the midwife reaching for the social services child protection forms.

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