Despite his protests, at 8:30pm I was marching my four year old out of the television room to have a bath when the television ratings warning came on for the impending movie.
Trying to leverage this he pleaded with me, “Ohhh, but I love ‘Low Level Course Language'”.
After an attempted exit on Friday afternoon, we had to wait three long days at the Royal and Women’s Brisbane Hospital awaiting our second son to show himself.
Lewis eventually arrived Sunday night 07/09/2008 just before 8pm, becoming an unbeatable Father’s Day present.
It was around 30 food-deprived hours after the first discussed plans for my wife’s caesarean, but you can’t knock Queensland Health and the fine people who work for them.
And yes, someone has already coined the potential nickname for Lewis, in “Wally”. We saw that one coming Myles (or “1.6 km”) away.
Our latest little guy’s quite big, coming in at 4.105 kg (just over 9 lbs). So Mum is thankful in some ways avoiding delivery the natural way. Mum and he are doing extremely well. In fact Lewis had his happy, inquisitive-looking eyes open at the first sign of light. And perhaps a testament to his happiness, he weed – with quite an impressive gush – all over the poor lady trying to clean him up.
It’s been a very different experience having a slightly over-term baby, compared to Myles who arrived at around 33 weeks. For one, he has those fantastically wrinkly hands and feet (Exhibit A) that look like they’ve come from an extremely tiny 90 year old. And he’s also ready for action. He was searching for milk less than 30 minutes post escape. And he’s been drinking impressively ever since. I should add, “ever since” here means a little over 24 hours.
My first son was at my parents’ for the birth. He met his little brother this morning, which was just beautiful. As he arrived he was straight to the point. He asked to cuddle and hold Lewis, and if he could see where they cut Mummy.
My wife and I have spent most of the last two days at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Yesterday afternoon she started getting the first signs that our baby’s coming. So off we went.
After a wait in one room, then another room where a few traces could be performed she was admitted to the ward. The labour was not forthcoming, so they thought it was a better venue than our place for playing the waiting game. Unfortunately this didn’t turn out to be entirely correct. Amongst the three others who share the same ward, two are very loud and constantly talking about their issues with what appears to be their utter moron partners or relatives; and the other snores EXTREMELY LOUD, all night.
Hopefully the prescribed sleeping tablets will do the trick tonight, as tomorrow morning is showtime! My wife’s name has been added to the emergency board to get a caesarisan section at the first opening – between 9 & 10:30am. It almost sounded like a tradie’s timeframe when the young doctor said it to us, except that she was so articulate and educated.
Unfortunately this timing means this will be the first time my son and I will miss participating in the Bridge to Brisbane fun run. It will be the first time we’ll miss it since he was delivered in the same way (caesarian) at the same hospital in the same month, just shy of four years ago. In fact, this ward bed is probably 10 metres from the last one.
While the hospital is a beautiful place where babies are brought into this world, there is a lot of things to get you down. For one, as you enter there is always a mass of carcinogens from patients that felt the need to have another cancer stick. The ugliest thing in the world is certainly a heavily pregnant mother smoking. It’s not nice seeing anybody smoke, but knowing that an innocent baby is stuck in there getting the same poisons going into their blood makes me sick just thinking about it. Let alone having to navigate your way around them to get into the hospital.
And in an unfortunate irony, it’s hard to miss seeing at least one amputee in the resulting unfresh air puffing away. I can’t help but wonder if smoking may have caused the loss of their limb.
It’s also not nice to see and experience the tremendous, and nearly unsatisfied demands on the health system. We probably spent 90% of our time in the hospital waiting for people just to get back to us. There was more than one example where staff said they were trying to get back to us but they were swamped. I know it’s not their fault, they’re trying their best. The nature of the industry means there will always be some times when they’re flat-out. And unfortunately the current situation in the South East of Queensland is that the demand is increasing at a rate that exceeds our capabilities at satisfying it.
At least the extended waiting time allowed me to read the 100s of pages which made up two of our major weekend papers. I rarely get enough time on the weekend to finish the sections I put aside to read – let alone the whole thing. So that part has been good.
And mum and baby are doing well, so tomorrow morning we’ll get to meet the latest Brinkworth – who we’d call “Boody Gum Gum” if my first son had his way.
I was recently chatting with a colleague about our respective kids, when he started comparing our situations. Ordinarily there’s no value in making comparisons. But it was just interesting to see the difference in our ages.
Despite being almost ten years older than me, our children are set to be very close in age. He made a comment along the lines of finding his kids quite a handfull, and it would probably be a lot easier for me to get around after my kid. But in answer to him, I had to say I’ve never found it effortless.
Every year it seems there’s a new oldest mother in the world, often with a lot of negative publicity. There’s a number of reasons why that’s not a good idea. Most importantly in my eyes is life expectancy. These mothers in their 70s would be doing exceedingly well to just be around to see their child’s 15th birthday.
But in terms of ideal age, I suppose it just made me reflect that it’s obvious to me that at no age a parent is going to find it easy to endlessly chase after and look after their kids while keeping them entertained. Last year I was probably the fittest I’ve been in my life. I was in marathon running shape so my stamina was quite high. But I can honestly say my son was still a handfull.
Perhaps the measure of a kid being a handfull is something they watch. Perhaps they are just able to guage how much energy a parent has, sap it to the point of exhaustion, then they’re ready to go to bed.
I think this may explain how my older, non-marathon running colleague found his kids such a handfull, yet I did too.
Guess it begs the question how much energy do our kids have. I think in all honestly, there is a connection between how well you’re able to keep up with them, and how much energy they’re able to exert.
But the longer I’m in the game of being a parent I also see the value of being creative. A game to keep them entertained is good. A game that keeps them entertained while not involving you physically is better. But a game that keeps them entertained, while not involving you physically, that helps with getting some of the house work done is clearly the best! I can’t recall any of these examples off the top of my head, but I will certainly document them when I remember.