Jeyanth Joshua Goringe

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New pictures on the website.

Catching On

OK, so the lad is not so slow. Yesterday, I blogged that he had managed to turn his mobile on. This is not hard to do, since it's a fairly large button on the side of his cot, and accessible to natural flailing.

However, this morning, after having woken up for a feed at 5.30am, our little maestro demonstrated that he is perfectly capable of learning from experience. On being popped back to bed, he turned to face the mobile controls, fought his arms out of swaddling, and flailed with intent till he'd turned it on!

So, there we were, trying to get back to sleep, being treated to snippets of Mozart, Beethoven or Bach via the baby-monitor. He's learned to turn it off as well - so it comes on and goes off randomly. I fear this is not the last time we're going to rue the side-effects of his catching-on. Thankfully, he fell asleep fairly quickly.

Starting to look forward

Every few days, Sureka posts about a new exciting thing Jeyanth has just done for the first time. It's really not fair - by the time I see him up on his elbows, staring into the mirror, it's nothing new, either to him or to his Amma.

But I'm counting down the weeks and days now - nine weeks to Christmas, when I finish work, and we go off on holiday with J., and then only four more till Sureka goes back to work and I get to be full-time dad. Probably only another four until I'm driven mad... but untill then, I will look forward to it.

Speaking of holidays, anyone got any ideas for travelling with a 6 month baby? How to cope with 24 hours on the plane? How to handle the 11 hour time zone shift?

Serendipity

Ooh, he's just managed to turn his mobile on - completely by accident I'm sure. I'm in here, and I just heard it come on. I can just picture the surprised look on his face. Am just going off to look.

Daylight Saving

Ok, anyone got any tips for painlessly introducing the concept of daylight saving to a 3 month old?

Everyday since Sunday, I have performed impressive relativistic feats to try to get him back on a 10, 1, 4, 7 feeding routine during the day, and every day he has managed to scupper the system either by refusing to feel sleepy enough at 7, or waking up at a completely random time in the morning!

I'm starting to have sympathy with the Queensland cows.

Two Firsts

For a while now, Jeyanth has been able to lift his head and shoulders up for brief periods when placed on his tummy. However, on Wednesday, he managed to tuck his elbows under him and raise is head and chest up in a stable enough manner to enable him to look around comfortably for a few moments. He can now do this regularly when on his tummy. I'm putting this development down to a Lamaze mirror that we recently acquired, which, when placed in front of Jeyanth when he's on his tummy, will induce him to exert considerable effort to get into a position where he can admire himself.

And the second first was when he was in the above position, he clenched his bottom and lifted his legs off the floor, leaving himself balanced on the rotund front of his belly. He then overbalanced and fell over onto his back. I believe we're allowed to record this as the first time he's managed to 'roll over' - though I think it might be a while before he works out how he did it that time - he looked awfully surprised when it happened.

Anxiety

One night last week, when Jeyanth had thrown up the third feed in a row, I remember sitting in bed and announcing to Chris as he came out of the shower that ' I didn't want to be a parent any more'.

Now that Jeyanth is better and its a beautiful spring day in Sydney, its hard to reconstruct my exact frame of mind at the time. This might not make sense, but I wasn't really talking about Jeyanth, my statement was about emotional exhaustion.

I had run out of hypotheses, out of ideas to try out, out of narratives that might offer comfort. I felt enveloped in a fog of worry with no handles with which to manage it.

I realised that having a child means not having any intermediate degrees of response. You are in top emotional gear every time. You can't just worry a little bit. You can't decide that 'well, actually I don't care all that much'. You are in for keeps, heart, soul and guts, every time, all the time. And this can be exhausting.

And all this because he had a tummy bug. I shudder in fear at the thought of anything being seriously wrong with him. I think of all the parents who do suffer. God give them strength. God give me strength.

Sleeping

Chris blogged that Jeyanth seems to have forgotten how to nap during the day.

Well, I think I've cracked it. It occurred to me that his unsettledness was reminiscent of his early breast-feeding days, when he wasn't getting enough food. I realised that I'd been making up smaller bottles becuase I thought his apetite had dropped off. But now that he's recovered from his bug, the poor mite was just plain hungry. I was struggling to get him to go to sleep on an empty tum. Going back to big bottles, he's much much better at going down for a nap. He still talks to himself a lot a longer than he used to, but doesn't cry and make a fuss.

Good boy!

Final Analysis

We finally have a narrative to understand all of Jeyanth's experiences last week.
The latest opinion of the GP and the baby clinic nurse, and watching Jahan go through a series of very similar symptoms indicate that Jeyanth definitely had a mild episode of gastroenteritis.

The nappy rash is apparently caused by a sudden drop in poo pH. The tendency to throw up feeds, the suppressed apetite and the frequent poos are all standard symptoms of tummy bugs. Apparently these are fairly common in small children, adults often transmitting the bug without suffering symptoms due to better resistance.

Anyway, when we didn't think he was unwell, because he was his normal cheery self, we thought he'd dropped off on feeding demands because he had finished a growth spurt and was settling in for a fallow period. We were wrong! The big Jeyanth apetite is back (so we know he's definitely recovered), and he is continueing to demonstrate a Chris-like metabolism by maintaining the correct height-to-weight ratio but consuming ~30% more food than an 'average' baby in order to do so.

We are sooooooo relieved he's better.

Much Better

Well, Jeyanth seems to have emerged from his recent illness none the worse for it. Except that he seems to have forgotten how to fall asleep during the day, which makes him much more high maintainance.

He managed to sleep 11 hours straight last night, despite there being around 50 people partying in the house...

We don't like Jeyanth being ill

That's my main conclusion from the last few days. Having thought that he was pretty well back to normal, over the past 48 hours Jeyanth's appetite has been significantly down, he's been throwing up some of his feeds (he's never been a vomity baby, another point in his favour), and then yesterday he had diahorrea as well - half an hour after every feed.

So, we were back to the doctor, who diagnosed a viral gastro thingy, and put us onto lactose free formula and gastrolyte to keep his fluids up. Last night we had probably our worst night yet - not just up to change and feed him several times, but stressed on top of it.

The one major source of relief is that he has remained a happy, smiley baby throughout, so it can't be all that bad, right?

Today things seem improved - poo with some degree of solidity, and food staying down. But I don't understand this - I'm sure we ordered the 'doesn't get sick' model.

How times flies

So, our little boy has passed three months old. I can't get over how quickly it has gone - and how much he has changed.

I guess my experience is a bit different from Sureka's. Most days, my interaction with Jeyanth is in the evening and at night - so I see him in three modes
- having his 5-7pm whinge
- enjoying a bath/screaming at being taken out
- last feed and bedtime

What I don't see, day to day, is his playtime. Come the weekend, when I get to spend wake time with him, it's amazing how much more he can do. Every week there is something new. Mostly at the moment it involves his growing ability to use his hands - and his dawning realisation that he can put things into his mouth, and that this is a Good Thing.

What I'm waiting for, next, is his realisation that the toy cube, which is bigger than his head, is not going to fit in his mouth, however hard he tries.

Nappy Rash

We have a book which says that 'there's nothing more pathetic than a sick baby, except a sick baby's parents'. Well, we were a glowing example yesterday.

The normally happy gurgling Jeyanth woke up on saturday morning crying persistently and with hideous nappy rash that just hadn't been there the night before. We took his temperature and discovered that it was about a degree above normal, and so we panicked. After an hour and a half wait at the doctors' (skeleton emergency service at weekend), we learned that 'his temperature was a bit high and his bottom a bit inflamed' and were recommended trying 4 hourly infant paracetamol for 24 hours.

Despite discovering Jeyanth's ability to carefully spit out all the infant paracetamol pipetted into his mouth, his temperature dropped within a couple of hours, and he perked up from being an irritable sleepy baby, to pretty much normal alertness and mood. We continued with the futile paracetamol when we could, but he slept pretty much his normal 8 hours overnight, so we didn't wake him. His temperature has been absolutely normal all day today.

So, he's being having loads and loads of nappy-free time - much more than normal and we're trying to figure out how on earth he got such a bad rash, and whether it was at all related to his temperature. The rash isn't infected, so the latest theory is that Jeyanth might have had a touch of the virus that is going around (Chris seems to have a cold), and might have slept badly and given himself the rash by kicking a lot - the rash is a chafing-rash, not an allergy-type one.

Anyway, the poor mite still has a bit of a sore bottom, but is otherwise cheerful.

A day in the life

Reading Bridget's entry this morning, it occurred to me that we haven't done any entries recently on what Jeyanth's days are actually like at the moment.

We are now about 2 weeks into a phase where Jeyanth sleeps through the 'night'. He goes to bed around 7pm and will then stay asleep till somewhere between 4 and 6am. We initially tried to shift him by about 3 hours, so he'd have his last feed at around 10 and then sleep through till a sensible hour in morning, but he stuck to the waking times, and just scored an extra feed if we woke him up. Though his current routine means that we can't take him out in the evenings like we used to, it gives us back our evenings, which is very wonderful. Chris and I get to have a meal together and talk about normal stuff. And we just invite our friends round to our place instead of going out.

I normally do his early morning feed, unless its close to 6.30am, in which case Chris does it as he's getting up to go to work anyway. We put him straight back down to bed, and he will then sleep through till about 9am.

The day is spent in 3 hour feed cycles, each feed followed by playtime and naptime. Playtimes are normally spent on a quilted playmat, with his nappy off (with strategically positioned rubber mat and cotton nappies). He loves kicking his legs, waving his arms and wiggling his bottom in order to rotate himself off the rubber mat before weeing. Playtime entertainment varies from having a full body rubdown (he's got very dry skin and needs moisturising all the time), swatting at the babygym, looking out the window at the garden, tummy time and of course the mandatory face-pulling, raspberry-blowing, Dr Seuss reading, silly-song singing time with an available parent.

His daytime naps are getting shorter, and often don't extend till the next feed time, so I'm having to find more things to do with him during the day. Of course, he gets whacked in the car and taken shopping and to various coffees and lunches. He's normally very good humoured during the day, and will settle to naps with little or no crying. His most unsettled period is just leading up to bedtime, which is a bit sad for Chris, as this is when he's home.

Bedtime ritual involves a bath or a top'n'tail on alternate days, followed by a feed. He loves the bath, inevitably screams in protest on being pulled out, screams continuously while being dried and dressed, and then, when the lights are dimmed, the Wiggles 'Go to sleep Jeff' CD (cannot recommend highly enough) put on, he's swaddled and a bottle is stuck in his mouth, the screaming stops and the little body relaxes completely. It is often an effort to keep him awake long enough to take a decent feed.

Sour grapes

Still on the subject of bottle feeding, I remembered that all the lists you get in the pamphlets that compare the pros and cons of breast vs bottle are very very good on the advantages of breastfeeding but tend to be somewhat dismissive of the advantages of bottlefeeding. Now, there is absolutely no doubt that breast feeding is the best nutrition for your baby. I really wish I could breast feed Jeyanth. However, bottle feeding has some perks which soften the blow. The following are based only on my observations and I don't claim any statistical validity.

- Bottle fed babies need feeding less frequently
- You can always tell how much a bottle fed infant has taken, and can tell if he's off his food and when he's catching up.
- Daddy can feed the bub and have some quality bonding time.
- You baby feeds facing you, so you can have constant eye contact, and study each others faces. I love the way Jeyanth gazes into my face when I feed him.
- You have a lot more energy and feel a lot less tired if you're not lactating.
- Bottle fed infants sleep through the night earlier than breastfed ones. And they are often easier to settle.
- Its easier to arrange to have a few hours off and get granny (or granny equivalent) to do a feed.

Bottlefeeding

A friend pointed out to me recently that 5 out of 7 people she knows who've had babies in the last 6 months have had to resort to formula feeding their babies, despite having started with every intention of breastfeeding.

It is odd that none of us were prepared for the emotional or practical issues that went with bottle feeding, despite the fact that we were all 'well researched' and had been to all the classes etc.

I suspect that the health professionals we rely on guiding us in early parenthood are so committed to breastfeeding that they deliberately underplay the possible difficulties and complications in the fear that we will quit too quickly.

This may well pay dividends for some, but sadly in my experience, the 'Of course everyone can and should breastfeed' attitude lead to unrealistic expectations of success, followed by overwhelming guilt and an acute sense of failure.

Personally, I'd have preferred to have known and understood all the possible complications beforehand. In all the cases that I'm aware of, breast feeding didn't work because of an unavoidable issue. However, even in the cases where breastfeeding success is just a matter of perseverence and practice, knowing that the difficulties you're having are not unique is more likely to encourage you to keep trying?

Withdrawal

I have a sore throat, so in order to minimize the risk of Jeyanth catching anything that I might be coming down with, we are quarantined from each other. Chris is doing a magnificent job - having just tackled bathtime and bedtime on his own.

I, on the other hand, am suffering horrible withdrawal symptoms. I WANT A CUDDLE!

We were planning to go to Black Stump (Christian Arts Festival, akin to Greenbelt) this weekend with the youth group. Feeling a bit scuppered on that front. We might make it for a day.

Show & Tell

Today, Jeyanth went to visit the Business Development and Commercialisation team at CSIRO headquarters. Needless to say, he was a hit. He behaved very well for the entire duration of the visit, being passed around like a small cuddle dispensing machine, smiling and gurgling winningly. Most of the time I didn't know where he was, since he got kidnapped by Paula before I'd even got up the stairs.

He has promised to go back and have lunch in a few weeks.