On YouTube as well.

Being a parent is funny. You know you’re not supposed to fret about every little thing. You’re not supposed to judge your kid’s progress against the progress of other people’s children. Hell, every BabyCenter.com article ends with “every child is unique… bla bla bla.” But, for me at least, it’s simply impossible not to worry about these things. I never really directly compare Casey to other kids, but more just have a constant “is he developing normally?” in the back of my mind.

Casey didn’t crawl. Still doesn’t. Not an inch. Ok, maybe, maybe an inch, but only because the force of the earth is on his side. We did all the things you’re supposed to do. Routinely arrange fun playtime on his belly, place well-loved toys just out of his reach for “motivation”, etc. Nothing prevented him from howling about 5 seconds after being put butt-up on any flat surface.

Because of his seemingly lackluster interest in self-propulsion, I was starting to wonder if we’d be carrying our six year old around in our arms. It may have been this irrational fear that had us a bit overeager and excited around two months ago when he began to show an interest (and ability) in walking while holding our hand(s). Since then it has been non-stop, back-hunching work keeping up with the little guy.

Several weeks in he tested the walking-alone waters, but quickly discovered gravity’s harsher side and wouldn’t budge unless he had at least a finger to hold on to. It’s hilarious, you’d pull out your finger from his sweaty little fist and it was like unplugging a vacuum — he’d immediately stop and sit down.

Then this past Monday he gave it another shot, giggling with glee when he reached his destination. He’s still a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, and obviously still quite clumsy — but oh man, cover the outlets and hide your valuables, my son can walk!

Also — Happy Father’s Day Dad!

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 /]

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.