Making those photos interesting, other than to friends and family, is not something I’ve ever considered doing, and frankly doubt I have the skills to do. Such is not the case for the amazing work of Adele Enersen, a creative copywriter and stay-at-home mom from Finland. At her blog, Mila’s Daydreams, Adele waits for her daughter to fall asleep and then places her in amazing dreamscapes, which have been hastily constructed with odds and ends lying around her house. The results are fantastic:

Be sure to check out her blog for more photos and information on her book due out next year.

h/t to my friend Melyssa for sharing this with me.

Sadly, due to her high profile, there is a boatload of bad information propagated and entrenched across the net. And so when new parents start researching vaccinations for their budding bundle of baby, it’s impossible not to run up against it.

McCarthy’s vaccination-causes-autism bullshit is largely based on Andrew Wakefield‘s 1998 research paper in The Lancet medical journal that linked the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella vaccine) to autism. McCarthy and Wakefield, using their status and professional clout, have caused vaccination rates on both sides of the Atlantic to drop significantly. Unsurprisingly, children getting sick and dying of diseases that had virtually been eliminated in developed countries is on the rise.

Back in May, not long after Casey was born, Wakefield was removed from the medical register in the UK by the General Medical Council because “he acted in a way that was dishonest, misleading and irresponsible while carrying out research into a possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, bowel disease and autism. He had ‘abused his position of trust’ and ‘brought the medical profession into disrepute’ in studies he carried out on children.”

Even unable to practice medicine in the UK, I’m sure he still had (has?) supporters that believe he’s been wrongfully removed. Thankfully, the final nail in this fiasco has come by way of the Telegraph today:

The British Medical Journal has reviewed the six million word transcript of the General Medical Council hearings, comparing them with the findings of investigative journalist Brian Deer and the research paper in the Lancet.

Huge discrepancies have been found between what was in the children’s medical notes and what was published about them in the Lancet.

As a result, Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor of the BMJ, has accused Dr Wakefield of deliberate fraud and said the scare was a hoax on the scale of the Pildown man, which was for 40 years believed to have been the missing evolutionary link between ape and man.

She said: “The MMR scare was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud.” She added that such “clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare.”

In case this isn’t clear: vaccinating your child does NOT cause autism. It was a total and complete fraud!

I can totally understand why parents bought into the whole thing. Most of us grew up never knowing these diseases first-hand, thanks almost completely to the vaccines that were called into question. But many of us have met someone suffering from some degree of Austism, and that scares the shit out of us. It’s the devil we know and as new parents, the one that’s easier to guard against — just do nothing.

Coupling that with the truckload of new responsibilities, and the endless number of opinions everyone and their mother has on child-rearing, it’s easy to see vaccination as just a “choice”. But it’s really not. It’s a civil responsibility.

Of course, every parent should have the right to decide what is best for their child, and I don’t at all mean to suggest that the liberty of doing so should be taken away from them. However, when you refuse vaccinations, but then take part in the rest of society (schools, malls, public pools, etc.) you are leeching off the benefits of herd immunization that the rest of us have helped with. If enough people stop vaccinating, that herd immunization drops below its threshold and we all suffer.

And Jenny, my heart goes out to her and her kid. It’s tough, and I’ve no doubt that finding pet projects to feel like she’s still in control of something allows her to get out of bed in the morning. But shame on her for using her fame to disseminate bad advice, shame on Oprah and Larry King for assisting her, and shame on the parents who blindly listened to a Playboy Playthingmate over peer reviewed and well-tested science.

Don’t get me wrong, I frigin’ adore being a dad, and I didn’t fully understand what love was before we had Casey, but man — it’s non-stop. No weekends off, no vacations. Absolutely every corner of your life, no matter how simple or complex it was, is consumed with being a parent.

We hit the 4 month mark the other day, and it gave me pause. We’ve been doing this for four months! I mean, I’ve worked jobs where at 4 months I was the veteran employee. But then, this isn’t any normal job. Duties change every day (doodie changes are multiple times a day), your boss is completely bi-polar and only laughs or cries his approval or disappointment in your performance, the hours are shite, and the income is really outcome.

But the benefits are awesome. Truly.

And we are finding our groove. Most parenting books stress the importance of a routine, and as a self-employed individual with an attention span shorter than that last paragraph, routines are not my strong suit. It’s taken quite a bit of habit bending, breaking and realigning, but we’re getting there.

The funny part is that as much as it goes somewhat against my personality to follow a strict routine, I’m surprised with how comfortable it makes things. With all the chaos and unknowns that come with being a new parent, little things like a 7:30 bath time make it all a bit easier.

The last four months really have been a blur, with no real sense of slowing. However, we are starting to hit milestones in Casey’s development that make every tinge of negativity that might have seeped through above melt away and seem small, slight and petty.

He’s gone from being a cry/no-cry spud in a blanket, to a little dude that has expressions, moods, and things that make him laugh (he can’t get enough of us mock-sneezing for some reason). He’s sitting up (with assistance) and really taking in the world now. It’s amazing to watch his beautiful eyes scan the room looking for things he recognizes, and pondering things he doesn’t.

He’s started to stretch his vocal chords, and while when he’s really putting them to the test it’s a bit stressful, most of the time just listening to him squawk and mumble is fascinating. He’s also begun to grasp objects. Just the other day his movements were jerky and a bit spastic, but you could see the focus and intention in his face. And now he can quite confidently reach out and grab something he wants.

So, after 120-some-odd (mostly odd, really) days of being a dad; I don’t know if it’s getting any easier, but it’s definitely getting more and more rewarding. And if my decades on this rock have taught me anything, life’s biggest rewards are never easy. It’s the challenges and constant learning in life that makes this all more than just some morbid countdown.

It’s said that nothing comes easy, but I don’t buy that. Plenty of things come easy — just none of them are anywhere near as amazing as my son.

And now for some photos (FYI: you can view all Casey photos by going to Casey-McLaughlin.com, which redirects to a Flickr slideshow):

Bath Time!

Casey’s New Swing

Casey’s 100th Day

Casey @ 4 Months

I’m happy to report that despite a bit of jaundice that we’ve been told should clear up in the next week or so, Casey is doing great. He’s already passed his birth weight (for the non-parents in the crowd, babies — particularly breastfed babies — tend to lose up to 10% of their birth weight in the first few days of life, and it can take 2 weeks for them to regain it).

Maggie’s also recovering perfectly. She’s still a bit slower moving than normal, and not back on the yoga mat yet, but improving every day. She’s also taking to motherhood amazingly — it’s a whole side of my wife I have never seen before and I’m loving it.

We stayed in the hospital for the entire allotted 6 days, with me only popping home once to drop off a few things and grab a car seat from our friends (thanks R&G!).

It’s funny that nearly a week sleeping on a bit-too-short/bit-too-lumpy sofa hasn’t left a stronger impression on me, but the whole time in the hospital is a complete blur. In the beginning I wasn’t eager to spend so much time there, but looking back on it I couldn’t be more appreciative of it. The stay gave Maggie and I a chance to get our heads around this whole “caring for another life” thing with the support of a handful of doctors, a mid-wife and a small army of nurses.

For posterity’s sake, here are a few of the more memorable moments:

The Birth of Our Son

Sort of a no-brainer that this would be the biggest memory of the week. I touched on it last post, but spending those first few moments of my son’s life, just the two of us in a room together, is a memory I’ll treasure for a lifetime.

Doodie Duty

With Maggie bed-bound, everything but feeding Casey fell on me, and I loved it. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but spending 144 hours in a small room is a bit boring. Having lots to do helped that time fly by. I had been warned about the meconium poops months ago by a friend, but nothing can really prepare you for that sticky tar-like goo.

Being quite hands on right from the get go helped with a concern I had about feeling a bit left out. I mean, Maggie had carried Casey for 9 months and was his sole source of much-needed sustenance — I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t have a place in that. It might have been the messy end of the stick, but it really made me feel a part of it all, and poo on the hand is much easier to cope with than chapped nipples.

The Dark Crystals

It is perhaps indicative that the following is the longest memory of the bunch — but despite word-weight, rest assured that these memories are in descending order.

Late in the 2nd day Casey still hadn’t peed, which is not all that uncommon for breastfed babies who are really only consuming colostrum for the first few days before the transitional milk comes in. When he finally did let it out he had dark orange (brick-coloured) crystals in his diaper.

Informing the nurses and doctor about this set into motion a rather goofy string of antics that involved putting a poorly-designed urine capture device over my boy’s baby junk in hopes of catching enough to send to the lab. Because colostrum is a laxative, and contains very little liquid, he was pooping a lot more than peeing at this point, and every time I’d go to change his diaper, what little pee had collected would quickly dump out. After three attempts over a 24-hour period, I calmly explained to the nurse attempting to affix the thing for the fourth time that this just wasn’t working and we needed a better solution.

Apparently parents aren’t meant to raise questions about the care their child is receiving, as the nurse left quickly and sent in the senior nurse on duty, who did nothing to listen to our complaints of the adhesive annoying our newborn, and the spilled urine creating a risk of skin irritation. She insisted that we needed to do this because we had to collect his urine and make sure the stuff wasn’t blood.

I approach saying what I’m about to say next with a bit of apprehension, as I don’t want to be one of those people, but a quick search of the Internet explained that the orange substance was simply urate crystals and nothing to be overly concerned about as they would likely clear out as soon as the baby started getting on a more liquid diet.

Now I’m not saying the nurses and doctor weren’t aware of this, but they certainly did nothing to illustrate this or even hint at the possibility to Maggie and I. Rather, they continued to scare us with exclamations of the possibility that it was blood in the urine (it looked nothing like blood).

Their out-of-the-box suggestion to my foot-down refusal to stick another plastic bag to Casey’s bits was to give us a small plastic cup. Their idea was to have us strip him down and wait until he spout like a fountain and then attempt to catch it — remember, he was relieving himself at most twice a day at this point.

Finally a nurse came in and suggested we do what we’d seen a thousand Chinese parents on the street do with their kid — the bathroom equivalent of holding him over the curb. Not wanting to ostracize ourselves any further with our primary caregivers, we took him into the bathroom and held him over the sink — careful to relocate the toothbrushes (just in case). With me holding Casey’s legs up against his chest and us joking that this was never going to work, we were taken by surprise when suddenly piss was going everywhere. Doubled over with laughter at the waterworks, Maggie scrambled to grab and fill the little plastic cup before the well ran dry. Seeing opportunity to add additional humour to the moment, Casey chose to complete the set and seal the memory with an explosive Number Two all over the sink.

But we got the goods — test performed — urate crystals. A bit of patience and a tiny bit of water with each feeding and it was cleared up 24 hours later.

There were so many more little memories of those first days that combine to create the experience in my mind, but I’m finding it incredibly difficult to figure a way to string them together into sentences. An endless stream of small moments that when I look at individually couldn’t possibly be considered amazing to anyone other than myself and Maggie. But then, I guess that’s what parenthood is, being in a continual state of absolute amazement at the incredible wonder that is by definition a completely average and basic action. I look at Casey and am just blown away by him; by every little move he makes, look he gives — and then I realize that every parent must feel this way when they look at their kid — I had no idea.

More Photos!

And a Video!

[flashvideo file=http://www.ryan-mclaughlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Casey's%20First%20Week%20-%20Small.mp4 /]

Despite my ambition and relative familiarity with the use of a camera, my friend Jakob’s work puts anything I’ll attempt to shame — of course, he’s a professional videographer with his how studio in Shanghai; so I suppose my amateurish images-to-be can be excused. Check out this excellent video of his daughter Emily:

Jakob and his wife, you might remember from my Having a Baby in China links post a couple weeks ago, had a hell of a time with their pregnancy at the hands of the Chinese health-care system.

And what a bonus for us it is. So much advice, sharing of experiences, and a healthy amount of warnings. So, to help propagate that knowledge, here are a few links from around the China blogsphere talking about having babies in China that I’ve found particularly insightful.

Giving Birth in Chengdu – Chengdu Living: This excellent four-part series is penned by new father Sascha and offers a lot of advice and information. Though written particularly about giving birth in the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu, the series carries with it sagacity that applies to anywhere in China.

• Part 1: Giving Birth in Chengdu
• Part 2: Giving Birth in Chengdu – Selecting a Hospital
• Part 3: Giving Birth in Chengdu – the Cesarean Conspiracy
• Part 4: Giving Birth in Chengdu – A New Life

The hellish birth of a beautiful angel – Jakob Montrasio: My talented friend Jakob in Shanghai recently endured a rather terrible experience with the birth of his daughter at the hands of the Chinese medical system. He, his wife and his daughter all came out the other side relatively unscathed, but his account serves as an excellent warning for anyone planning to have kids here.

Adventures By Design – The Elbees: My friends Ric and Gin share their experiences (albeit not as often as they should) about having a baby here in China. Lots of cute photos of their adorable baby girl, Aria. These three people deserve much of the credit in preparing Maggie and I for parenthood and we love them for it.

“Foreign Baby in China” Category – ChinaHopeLive.com: Joel and Jessica, a couple in Tianjin, share their experiences and opinions on having and raising a baby in China.

Hao Hao Report “Babies” Tag: As might be expected, I get a lot of direction for China-focused information from stuff submitted to the Hao Hao Report, a Web site I run that is a human aggregator of stories about China.

Update 1

Having a Baby in China: a fantastic resource for parents having a kid in China — complete with a rather comprehensive Chinese-English pregnancy vocab list (complete with pinyin).

If you have any other good reads about having babies in China, please help me out and leave links in the comments!

The benefit of having two close friends go through everything we’re about to, only six months ahead of us, is a fortune we’ll never be able to repay. I’m sure I’m not the first to say that being on the road having my first child is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. Being able to witness this whole process first-hand in the lead-up is amazing, and having two people that live only minutes away that I can turn to and ask the litany of questions I have about becoming a parent is just awesome.

Ric and Gin, I couldn’t be happier for you both. And as sleepless as the two of you no doubt are, it’s hard to tell through the glow you both have. Aria Marie is beautiful. A truly wonderful addition to your family, and our little tribe.

However, in recent months, and much to the contrary of years past, I’ve found it harder and harder to share much personal. I hadn’t given much thought as to why, and assumed it was just because I’m busy. But I now wonder if it might have something to do with what I’m about to write.

Maggie’s pregnant and I’m going to be a dad!

Let me just repeat that… Maggie’s pregnant and I’m going to be a dad!

And with that, let me fill in a bit of back story. A few months ago now Maggie and I decided that we would start down the road to having our first child and beginning our family. We started talking to friends about their experiences and reading books on conception — I had thought it was a lot less complicated than it is. For instance, I was surprised to learn that there’s only about 40 days a year the average woman can get pregnant — or only about a 10% chance per month — being 16 and drunk seems to up the odds.

Anyway, with slightly more baby-makin’ education than my middle school’s “insert tab A into slot B” instructions, we set to it (snicker snicker). After no joy the first month of “trying” (a euphemism that I plan to continue using long after we’ve stopped trying to get knocked up), at the end of August Maggie’s pee delivered the best message urine has ever given me. She was pregnant.

As you can see from the picture to the right, the second line wasn’t reassuringly strong. The box indicated that while no second line didn’t necessarily mean “not pregnant”, even a faint second line meant “baby”. To confirm things, we headed down to the hospital and re-did the urine test and also got a blood test. She was definitely pregnant.

We had already told most of our family and friends that we were trying, and so were bursting a bit to let them all know the good news, despite us both knowing full well the percentage of pregnancies that miscarry. The miscarriage rate was really the biggest reason I didn’t want to announce it too early here.

At seven weeks we headed back down to the hospital for our first ultrasound. Most literature says that an ultrasound should be able to distinguish a heartbeat in the embryo between 6 and 6.5 weeks. There was no heartbeat. Like a cold slap our hopes dropped a few notches and we began to assume the worse.

The doctor told us that it was still early, and that we should come back in a week or two and check again. That led us into our recent trip up to Dalian, and then this past week’s National Holiday. Though impatient to know one way or the other whether everything was alright, we assumed a bit of extra time could only make the results more definite.

And so this morning, at 10 weeks into the pregnancy, we returned to the hospital and had our second ultrasound, which showed a perfectly healthy peanut-shaped smudge complete with heartbeat. A good thing too, as I’m not sure what Maggie would have done had she been suffering through rather harsh all-day “morning” sickness these last few weeks for nothing.

Now it’s real. Despite having planned this, and known about it for more than a month, today it’s really begun to stick. Maggie’s pregnant, and I’m going to be a dad. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath since we began this journey, and while tomorrow I’ll start holding it again, today… well… today I just simply can’t hold my breath, the smile on my face just won’t let me.

My sister gave birth to a whopping 9 lbs. 9 1/2 oz bouncing baby boy named Gabriel. I’ve yet to receive all the details, but was too excited to wait and post about it – I’m going to assume he’s got the appropriate number of appendages.

Despite endlessly meeting parents enthusiastically urging their kids to say “Hello Shu Shu” to me, I’ve never been an uncle before. I’m going to be a cool uncle. I’m gonna buy the kid ninja stars. That’s what uncles are supposed to do.

Huge congratulations to my sister and my brother-in-law. Truly wish I could have been there. Well, not there, but near there. Much love to all three of you.