Pither.com

Just a quick photo update...

I am very pleased to announce that Edward is no longer a strange shade of dirty yellow and has instead developed a fairly pale skin tone.

His jaundice has lasted roughly four weeks, having started within a day or so of him being born. He can thank it for an extended initial stay in hospital, complete with some time under blue lights, plus two further trips back to hospital.

He has had many (I've lost count) blood samples taken from his heels and one much less pleasant looking one from a needle stuck into the back of his hand. He's also clocked up two (although it took three attempts!) urine tests.

Thankfully, after the early blood tests that led to the phototherapy, his blood tests have all come back clear.

The first of his urine tests however did return a positive for galactose, which is what led to the next test. Apparently false positives for this test are relatively common, and after a short physical exam, the doctor didn't seem too concerned. We still had a fairly worrying wait from Friday morning to Monday midday for the second result. Thankfully it was clear.

After all of that, the final result was that we just needed to wait a bit longer. Indeed some extra time, and moving Edward onto formula milk, has left him putting on weight and clearing the jaundice nicely. :-)

For once, and despite the inevitable worry involved, I have actually been quite pleased with the speed and thoroughness of treatment that we've received for this.

That's the very firm message that is presented from all directions. Even the formula manufacturers print it on all their packaging. Reports I've seen about and comparing formula foods all start with half a page telling you how none of them are as good as real breast milk! The hospital has counsellors on hand to help you with breast feeding and Cow & Gate provide a midwife helpline who are also happy to help with breast feeding advice.

This is great when you need a little bit of support, some technical information on how to aid attachment or a new position to stop your arm aching. But when you'd really like to breast feed and it's just not going so well, and all they can offer is "keep trying" it adds so much extra pressure and extra guilt to the idea of giving up that it's actually not very helpful at all.

With Edward a little over two weeks old, he has lost nearly 15% of his birth weight, is still very jaundice and does not appear to be gaining weight at all. Each feed is taking somewhere between 1 hour and 1.5 hours and Edward is generally awake and hungry again 1 - 1.5 hours after he had last finished. At various times we have (at the advice of the hospital) been offering formula top-up feeds, which then take a further 30 minutes or so, plus all of the bottle preparation and cleaning time. Edward has visible bags under his eyes. Liz and myself are somewhat (ie extremely, to the point of regular, unfounded frustrations) sleep deprived (about 4 hours in each 24, with no more than 1 hour at a time!) and Liz is especially feeling very worried about Edward not putting on weight and quite stressed by the fact that it might be her breast feeding that is at fault.

When we visited the hospital about Edward's jaundice and talked to them about this, they continued to encourage breast feeding, saying that we should give it longer and that breast milk can take a couple of weeks to fully kick in. However they didn't volunteer to actually witness him feeding or to check how it was working - despite us being in the hospital across two feeding times.

After several days of discussing it, we have finally decided to gradually transition Edward from breast feeding onto formula feeding.

Just a day later, the transformation in the house is remarkable. We all seem to be so much more relaxed, Edward is taking his formula feeds in a much shorter time and is sleeping for a little longer afterwards. The full transition will probably take several weeks, but hopefully this will be the start of his recovery from jaundice and regaining of his missing weight.

We suspect the problem to have been caused by a number of factors. Edwards tongue tie and jaundice led to him not breast feeding well initially, which probably also caused Liz not to develop her milk supply quite as quickly as normal. Even after Edward had his tongue tie fixed, his feeding ceased to be so painful for Liz, but didn't really improve in any other way. In fact, he now often "plays" with his tongue and seems to get it wrong, ending up pushing away with it instead of suckling. Due to his jaundice, the hospital also started us on top-up bottle feeds while we were there, apparently bottle feeding babies early can cause "nipple confusion" which could well have also have contributed.

Let's now hope Edward manages to develop well on his "Closer than ever to breast milk" formula milk. I'll keep you posted! :-)

... in the eyes of the country is remarkably simple and without paperwork!

Liz phoned up a few days ago and booked an appointment with the registrar (she did at this point provide her name, the closest thing to authentication in the entire process).

Yesterday all three of us went into Reigate, found the library and kept that appointment. Upon our arrival, the registrar volunteered Liz's name, which we confirmed.

After this, we were asked the expected questions - our names, occupations, address and a few other bits. Plus of course Edward's name - she already knew his date of birth and other details from information provided by the hospital.

She printed a birth certificate and we left, it was that simple!

No evidence of anything at all was required. No proof of name or address and certainly not of occupation was required!

Well we didn't lie about any of it, honest, and now Edward is an official person! :-)

On Wednesday 3rd January, the morning after Edward was born, a paediatrician visited to give him an initial check up. One of the things she spotted was that he had quite severe tongue tie. This condition can affect a baby's ability to feed (especially breast feed) and later possibly affect speech. Further more, it almost always affects males and hence is most often inherited from fathers - so it's all my fault! :-(

Thankfully it's quite fixable.

The problem is that the membrane connecting the tongue to the bottom of the mouth extends too far towards the front of the tongue, in Edward's case, all of the way to the tip of his tongue. This limits movement (especially forwards, out of the mouth) of his tongue. The fix is "simply" to cut the membrane!

It seems that not many people/places perform this minor operation though. The hospital was good in this respect though and contacted one such person in the area and arranged for them to contact us. For a change they did this quite efficiently and the specialist got back to us while we were all still at the hospital.

We called back the specialist (who was based in Brighton) on the Monday after Edward came back from hospital and they booked us into a clinic they were holding the next day in Haywards Heath.

So Edward's first trip out of the house was a little sooner than we had expected.

It took us quite a while (perhaps an hour!) to get everything ready that we needed to take Edward out, but once that was done, the outing was really quite straight forward. Edward is generally a quiet baby and this seems to be especially so when travelling in the car.

At one week old, Edward had his first little operation. Although it was so simple it can hardly be called that. He was first checked visually and confirmed as having a 100% tongue tie. He was then taken to a second room, wrapped up so he could not struggle too much and the tie was cut with a small pair of scissors. The entire experience took no more than ten minutes and the actual operation less than one minute. He didn't seem to mind at all, only crying a little bit when he was released from the wrap afterwards.

Since then he seems to be playing with his new found tongue a little, making some strange faces. We're not entirely sure that he's quite got the hang of it yet. Certainly breast feeding doesn't seem to have got any easier yet. Perhaps that will take a few days.

This photo was taken at the hospital, just before we brought Edward home.