Spots!

I regret to inform you all that Master Martyn cannot possibly appear on the blog today due to a slight case of baby acne. I just don't have time to photoshop out all those spots!

As a consolation here is some news:

The poor Roo has had a sore tummy or stingy poo because he's been out of sorts the last 48 hours. Lots of grizzle grumps and some unusual crying. Not really sure whether it was something Jo ate or he got too hot (Tuesday was a scorcher and the AC had trouble keeping up) but he's much better now so whatever it was is out of his system. Lets just say that he didn't learn his formidable farting ability from me!

Self soothing was our friend last night. We'd been patting and pacing to soothe the little screamer to sleep but it was pretty hit and miss success wise and often left Jo sleeping with him in the other room, not daring to move unless he started up again. Last night we opted for putting him down in the crib next to us and trying to ignore the piteous cries for 5 mins, and hallelujah! It worked! It may never work again but last night was sleep punctuated by feeding rather than vice versa.

I've been slow roasting a sticky soy and five spice marinated hunk of pork all day so that we can have pulled sticky pork over noodles tonight. The entire house now smells edible!

Oh ok so I wasn't serious about no photos! But this will have to tide you over until tomorrow's mega-cute post...

Peace

A little breath of good news

Marty Roo and his Poggie

Today we took Marty Roo back to the baby sticker for his latest bilirubin test. Luckily we also manage to have it combined with his 2 week PKU screen which means one less trip out there and one less heel prick. He screamed to high heaven but calmed down the minute the poor nurse was done.

The "shark room" at our pediatrician's office is a tad scary!

Well the short of it is that his bili is down! Not a dramatic drop but at least a drop (from 9.8 to 8.3). The great news is that it is enough of a drop that our pediatrician has us off the light therapy until Tuesday. Then we'll take him back in and they'll have a look at him and see whether any of the jaundice is making it to the skin or if it looks like we're out of the water. Basically we just have to keep doing what we're doing, sans wallaby, and hope the antibodies have hit their peak and we're now on the downhill.

We've even been doing double light therapy in the evenings - and yes the window is open, I know UV doesn't make it through glass...

The best part of this news is that now he gets to be a real little baby! We can cuddle him whenever he needs it, we can dress him and we don't have to feel guilty whenever a feed takes a while and keeps him off that &%$@ wallaby. Last night he flat out refused to sleep anywhere but on one of our chests, and let me tell you this kid has a will of iron (his mama is just as stubborn).

He can finally wear clothes - Although now we need to work out the real sizing on all of them! Global clothes supply makes life confuzzling...

Postscript:
Almost forgot to mention the other good news. I found out yesterday that my abstract for the big genetics conference in Hawaii was accepted for a platform presentation! thought I had no chance this time since this meeting will be huge - there goes my stress free holiday but still, it's fab news. It will also be my third ASHG platform out of the four years I've gone!

Stichin' (without the bitchin')

Just before the little Roo was born, when I still had insane amounts of time on my hands, I decided that I'd attempt to sew him some toys. I'm not the world's best sewer by far but I enjoy it, although I draw blood more often than Edward Cullen! Up until now the only toys I've made have been more adult...slightly mixed up rabbits etc. This time I wanted to make something more baby friendly, so soft, droolable fabrics, tight stitching and high contrast colours - plus something he could get his little mits around.

The first one was a bit of a flop in my opinion... ears too big, body a tad too round and the wrong fabric for his face, but he was a great learning curve and my beloved loves him so all good.

Clutch wabbit - the somewhat failed prototype

From there I decided to try something a little different. I'm getting the hand of this magical 'stitch something that looks sort of messy and turn it inside out to reveal something super cool' thing. I drew up a lot of parchment paper pattens for this one, but the &%$# fur was so slippery that it kept messing with my edges. The legs turned out to be way too large but the rest was ok, and he has such a soft underbelly!

The finished boodle bug

And since I have to keep the Roo fans happy here's a few more pics of sleeping beauty, who decided to sleep lots during the day so he is well rested to wreak havoc on his mummies ear drums later tonight... yay. I think that means he's feeling better though - he sure is strong when he wants to be!!

Out like a light...on his light

Fly catching

Baby Steps

Our little glow bug

Today the little Roo turned one week old! I just wanted to post quickly to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been reading the blog and leaving comments here. It makes our day when we log in to read what y'all have been posting. It is just wonderful to know what Marty has such a huge (and global) extended family.

I physically went back to work today (mentally I'm not sure where I was) AND I hit up the supermarket, all in one fell swoop. It was hard being away from Jo and Marty. I had to print a photo of him to put on my desk to remind me he was real!

All is well here. We're continuing with hard core feeding plus phototherapy. He's much more alert and for longer periods of time. He has great muscle control and at day 5 managed to completely roll himself over! Going to have to watch out for this one.

The little Roo on his wallaby

Making progress

A quick update on where we're at with Marty Roo and the villain-rubins.

We saw the pediatrician today and he was really pleased with his progress. He totally agreed with our decision to ditch the forumla and use a combination of breastfeeding and pumping. His poop output is now fabulous! Thanks for all the thoughts of plenty, they clearly worked! Marty is now only 4 ounces off his birthweight, so climbing from the drop he had in hospital (I think he dropped to 7 pounds 5 but now he's 7 pounds 15). Mind you, he did wait until they weighed him before releasing the mega wee (good boy). I think he thought we were seeing the pee-diatrician.

His temp was good and he was nice and alert, and he let loose with a fabulous seedy breast milk poop while our doc was checking him out. Again, good boy! I think our doc was slightly shocked by the detailed poop/pee/feed/temp logs I'd been taking but they helped to keep us on task and keep me sane!

We're going out? You mean I actually get to wear clothes??

He sent us off for another blood draw for a bilirubin check and the disappointing thing was that is was still too high. Around the same level as when we were in hospital, but at least not climbing. That means we need to keep up the light therapy until the next visit/blood draw Friday. The problem with the ABO stuff is that the antibodies that are doing the damage can stay in his serum for weeks, so he might not have hit his plateau yet. If he hasn't then it is a good sign that we are keeping him leveled out.

Back on the light pad

So now that we're home again we will just keep doing what we're doing (well, with less of the maniacal poop logging) and hope for a good bili number on Friday. Oh and I should just mention that I was the first of us to get pooped on because someone (who shall remain nameless) decided that it was a good idea to leave him wrapped in a towel with his bottom airing while I fed him! Set up much!!

The suckyness that is ABO incompatability and the incredible resilience of Marty Roo

I realise that I tried to get the last post out too quickly and didn't really explain what the problem was with Marty or why we were stuck in hospital so long (and why we're having a hell of a time now that we're home).

ABO incompatibility is a problem that's restricted to mothers who have type O blood who give birth to children with A, B or AB. Marty is A+ (same as me, heh) and Jo is O+. The Rhesus factor isn't an issue here so the negatives or positives mean nothing. Basically, during pregnancy, Jo produced antibodies against Marty's blood. These antibodies produced by type O mothers are the only ones small enough to cross the placenta. So rather than just the usual jaundice you'd expect from your average baby breaking down their excess blood into bilirubin, he has the added bonus of a dose of these antibodies against his own blood in his system fervently attacking his blood and making even more bilirubin.

We're lucky they identified it early because the antibody response occurs in the serum, not the tissues, so the jaundice yellowing doesn't show until their levels are dangerously high. On his first test (24 hours I think) he was already in the red zone so from that point on we had to keep him under UV light and laying on a UV pad (called a wallaby for some reason that no one seems to know) 24 hour a day, only bringing him out for feeds. No cuddles, no clothes, just lot of screaming. The poor bugger had velcro taped to his head to hold a blindfold in place.

In the lightbox with his blindfold on

The problem with the high bilirubin levels, aside from the obvious risk of brain damage, is that they make him really sleepy. The problem with that is the way to clear the bilirubin is to break it down in the liver which is too young to cope with those levels, or with UV light. But to totally clear it from the system it binds to protein and is passed out with the poo. If there's no poo it get's reabsorbed. His levels are so high that it is almost impossible to wake him for a feed and if you do he's too tired to suck and loves the contact after being in the tank that he just snuggles in happily. We were so desperate for him to be well that we followed their advice and supplemented feeling with formula (from a syringe and only after a feed) which got his levels plateaued by day 3 and kept his weight up enough for us to be released.

Finally leaving our postpartum room

So they sent us home with a wallaby under strict instructions to keep him on it as often as possible, so still no cuddles and no clothes, but at least he wasn't stuck in the tank so we could interact with him more. It should have been a relief to be home, and at first it was wonderful, but last night was the worst night of all. Almost nothing we tried would wake him enough to feed. It was so awful to have to basically torture him awake, and horrible to see him lying limp like that. Even the formula, which he'd taken relatively easily in hospital, was a battle and he spat most of it back at me (kind of relieved he doesn't like formula to be honest). He was so hungry and so frustrated that he just screamed and fought and didn't poop!

Our light therapy setup at home

However, this morning we reassessed the whole situation. Clearly squirting formula down his throat wasn't working, neither was trying to force him onto the breast, especially when we needed output (yes, I mean poop, and lots of it). So now we've got Jo pumping (and doing really well) and mimicking the way we'd expect him to feed if he were healthy. Luckily she's a born dairy queen! Now we've ditched the formula entirely and have him drinking loads of breast milk about every 2-3 hours (slow-flo bottle, much kinder than the syringe and he at least learns to suck for food) and he's already much more alert and pooping!! I nearly cried with joy when we had an explosive non-meconium poo! I'm sure I'll start hating them but for now it was better than a Christmas present.

Now we just keep him feeding and when he's not feeding we keep him on his little glow worm pad and hope for the best. We see our pediatrician (who we love, luckily, because you can't meet them until you have a baby!) on Monday and he'll make then next call based on his weight (he went from 8-3 to 7-10 in the first 2 days but leveled out after that), his 'output' and a bilirubin test, which of course means more foot torture. I have no idea how soon we'll know the outcome but we'll keep you posted. For now, please bear with our slow response time and keep sending pooping thoughts!

Marty Roo feeling a bit better!

The news you've all been waiting for

Marty Roo!

Sorry for the major delay on this one, it was out of my control.

First major piece of news, Tuesday has arrived! Martyn Andrew Richardson was born at 2.20pm on Tuesday (ha!) the 14th of July after roughly 6 hours of labor. He was 8 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 inches long (not taking into account the cone head - poor fellow). My beloved was just amazing, getting through the whole labor with no drugs, no swearing and hardly any complaint (she was heard to say 'it hurts a little' at one point!) More about labor et al. later, I will keep this post short and try to get more details up tomorrow.

The second major piece of news is that we are finally home from the hospital. There was no real way to let most of you know that there was a problem. We found out pretty soon after birth that he and Jo have different blood types so there was an ABO incompatibility issue, meaning he was at much higher risk of really dangerous bilirubin levels. I don't have the energy to really explain it but you can read about it here on wikipedia. Basically it meant a lot of stress, not much sleep and more than 48 hours for him under lamps with a blindfold on and no cuddles. Again, I'll post about it in more detail tomorrow. For now I'll leave you with some much demanded photos and the knowledge that he's home, he's ok and we're working hard to make sure he stays ok!

Minutes after birth and he was alert as anything

The first night after birth with a totally exhausted poggie

Tiny toes!

"Mama, take me away from this nasty hospital now ok?"

We will start getting onto answering emails and calling people but it is still going to be rough going for a few days so we might be a little on the slow side, sorry about that!

Very early on Tuesday's morning

Well, since our 'bundle of joy' chose not to come during the night Operation Waiting for Tuesday has been forced into plan b. It is currently some horrible hour of the day (4.30am... some call it morning, I call it hell) and we are off to the hospital! Our doctor has scheduled us for a medical induction. There's no need to go into the why and how come - both mother and baby are healthy - but we really don't have a whole lot of choice. The down sides are less freedom to move around due to regular monitoring and a higher risk of C section, but we'll deal with those as we come to them. It wasn't exactly what we planned but there are a lot of good things about it:

1. Hopefully he'll be born on a Tuesday (we didn't get to pick the day so that's kind of freaky)
2. We get our doctor, who we really like and trust
3. We know roughly when it's all going to happen rather than waiting and waiting
4. It gets our friend Matt off the 'emergency driver Jo's waters will most likely break in your car bring towels' hook
   
5. A bunch of other stuff but it is too early to remember what that is right now...
   

So, I will post an update as soon as we get home, and I'll do my best to get messages out as soon as there's any major news, but please don't call us yet. We'll most likely have our phones off for most of the day and tomorrow. I will let you know as soon as we can. Keep us all in your thoughts and prayers but mostly pray that Jo doesn't get so hungry that she goes on a rampage and decimates a good chunk of the San Antonio healthcare system...

Captain cruisy kicking back with some relaxed beats

Bonus photo

Since you've all been so quick off the mark on the last photos, here's one more because for some reason it didn't upload with the rest this morning!

Pregatron photos

I realise I have been slack in posting pictures of my beloved and the basketball she appears to be hording. No sign of labor but we're still 14 or so days off the due date so no real dramas. Plus if he's born in June and not July we have to edit a bunch of legal paperwork which would be a right pita.

Josie is doing incredibly well and she never ceases to amaze me. Not only is she still working full days and dealing with the 40 degree heat but she looks fabulous and hardly ever complains. I am in awe.

Some of you have been asking how she manages to float...quite well actually! And since I already paid for making a Moby Dick joke I will not go there again!

The many pools around here have been a godsend. We have 2 at our apartment complex, both gorgeous and really clean and the one that is meters from our house is really private, so we've been trotting down there as often as we have the energy for it. Even at 9pm it's still 35 degrees C outside!

The hospital bag is packed...

AKA an excuse to show off my sexy sexy baby bag...


So some of you have been asking after news of the "sexy sexy baby bag" that I was looking to buy. Well I did and I couldn't be happier! It is made by a small San Francisco company called Rickshaw Bagworks. They primarily make messenger bags for cyclists and the baby bag is a modification of one of those. The bulk of the bag is 100% recycled from post-consumer plastic bottles. It is incredibly well made, solid and hard-wearing in all the right places.


The main bag is their standard messenger bag, so it has pockets for gadgets, notebooks etc. However instead of the laptop insert it has a couple of 'baby specific' inserts - A super soft change pad, a two pocket square insert that fits nappies in one side and a couple of clothes changes in the other. On the side of the bag you can see the attachable gadget pocket for phones and such. Not shown are the insert for insulating food/drink, the handy stroller straps and the drink holder that clips to the other side of the bag. The strap is super comfy and really easy to adjust.

At the moment it is packed for the hospital (along with our bag and a list of things to grab as we leave, like pillows and phones..)

I think I have all the bases covered... A couple of different outfits of various sizes and warmth levels (got to love the crabby striped one!), socks, mittens, blankets, hats, nappies, wipes and who knows what else! My Girl Guide 'Be Prepared' training may have kicked in a little here...

I'll be sure to keep you posted on when we actually need to use the bag!

The last baby showers

No rain this time! Actually, some rain would be great at this point. It's been pushing 40 nearly every day and not dropping much during the nights. I'm not sure how the beloved is staying so cheerful! Luckily we have 2 gorgeous pools here at our apartment complex.

Belly-off - Josie clearly beats Aunt Lorena's no-pregnant-marathon-running torso

A little bit of a news update. Last week we had an ultrasound (35 weeks) and initially our OB thought Tuesday was breech, but then realised his head was waaay down (engaged, yay!) and that lump that keeps pushing out of Jo's belly like an emerging facehugger is actually his bum! Yay, good boy, no being born foot first like your Poggie. Also looks like cervix is 50% effaced and 2-3cm dilated so we could be on our way any day now. Or we might not! Jo saw the OB again today but I couldn't go because of this $&%@ cold :( Here's hoping I can shake it before labor kicks in!!

But I digress, back to the baby showers...

Our second last baby shower was organised by a few of our work friends on a Saturday afternoon at the lovely Miss April's house. There was a table loaded with fabulous food that everybody had made (we contributed sushi and I was so thankful to be able to do anything!

Look at the sheer awesomeness of that spread!

Looks just as tasty from the other side too, right? It was :D

In all it was a very civilised shower. We chatted, ate, and drank. There were three games, one from each of the organisers. The first was to guess the number of Hersheys kisses in the apothecary jar, which I failed miserably at by using my 42 is the answer to everything logic.

It was more like 170

The second game was designed by one of our stats geniuses, where you selected a date and time block for Tuesday's birth, and also a birthweight to be used as a tiebreaker! Not only that, but she gave some statistical background on the general population to use as a guide.

Thankfully Mona's outside-the-box guess of June 14th wasn't a winner!

The last game was brilliant and I, for one, really appreciated it (and you'll see why). It was a form of baby shower bingo, where everyone (except Jo and I) had bingo cards with things like 'onesie' or 'hooded towel' written in the squares, and a sheet of stickers. So while Jo and I were the center of attention opening presents, everyone else also had something to do, keeping an eye on their card and filling it in if we received anything listed on their sheet. We did get a little creative when there weren't enough winners, allowing chocolate to count as baby food and rubber ducky wrapping to count as a bath toy, but it was a lot of fun!


I had to add in this pic of us wearing the amazing felted hats that our friend Jennifer made! The green one is Yoda and the other has the cutest bunny ears.

Course, after all that hard work of opening presents (we have such incredibly generous friends!) there had to be cake. And not just any cake, but kick ass petits fours from the cake shop.

They were so delicious and juicy, almost like they'd been soaked in condensed milk!

Last Friday we had our final shower at work. This was a whole new experience for me, but it was also a lot of fun. There were so many people there I nearly got stage fright and ran away! No games to distract from the public intensity of opening the huge pile of gifts (Tuesday, you are one lucky boy kiddo) but there was a huge and delicious red velvet cake that had my name on it (ok, Jo's too...)

mmm...under that cream cheese icing is dark and delicious red velvet cake

I was so impressed by how amazing and generous and unprejudiced the work crowd were. There isn't room on the blog to show you all our wonderful gifts, including children's books written by our friend Jack's dad in the 60s, handmade spit cloths that say Tuesday with gorgeous grey kangaroos embroidered on them, cowboy-boot socks etc etc...and not only that, some of these gifts were so impressively wrapped that we hardly dared to unwrap them!

Just look at that wrapping - All those little monkeys hanging onto the ribbon!

Now that the hospital bag is mostly packed and our house is visitor free, my big task now is to finally get the nursery sorted. Not that it's really a nursery since we'll be putting his cot in our room to start with, but it is good to have a place for all his 'stuff' and somewhere to decorate and keep as a sanctuary from the day to day. Or maybe I'm just nesting...

The first babyshower!

We had our first baby shower on Saturday and it was an absolute blast! I say first because there are three (!) lined up in all. Seems showers are something that Americans love. They love to shop and they are so generous so it is the perfect combination. Jo and I were feeling seriously uncomfortable about it but our friends were pretty persuasive and won us over in the end. Then it turned out that I had to set up registries for these things. And not just one! I set one up at target but there was too much 'online only' stuff apparently so I was sent off to set up another at Babies'R'Us (ack how I hate names with R in them). That was another experience entirely and actually a lot of fun, where we ran round the store with a scanner blipping things.

These cupcakes are the goods! Don't let the blue scare you, they're lemonade flavoured.

So, first shower Saturday and the weather decided to get into the spirit as well, a little over-enthusiastically. It didn't shower it poured! The kind of drenching rain where even getting into the car has water in places where only the bath should go. Didn't matter a bit in the end. This shower was organised by some of the chicks from Church, and they did an incredible job.

This was part of the incredible spread. The plate with the tongs on top is full of 'nano' tamales, beef, pork or bean, and they were incredible. If you look hard you can also see the storm pelting against the window!

I didn't feel uncomfortable for a second (well, only during the present part) and there were about as many men there as women...no secret womens' voodoo just friends and food and one totally off the wall game! Have a look at the following pics and see if you can work out what's going on!




Yep, that's right. We're playing the "poopy diaper game". Eight mystery candy bars were melted into the bottom of 8 diapers (nappies - but I think I've already explained why I need to call them diapers here) and our job was to use sight and smell (no tasting!) to determine what the different sweets were.

Josie's score card. She doesn't eat enough candy from the looks of it...

This is our friend Liz, who is a chocolate connoisseur, working out 'what is that smell, I know it...'

The gummi bears weren't too tricky to identify. The Reece's peanut butter cups were just gross...

And yes, you're looking at the champion of the day. Well, actually Liz beat me with 7/8 but she was an organiser (as well as a chocolate fiend) so she stepped down to lucky number 2, which was me with 6/8. The two I missed were the two I'm holding and that's only because I've never tried either of them before in my life! Look at me, I'm all blurry with excitement!

The final phase of the party was opening the masses of generosity in the form of gorgeous present bags, dripping with ribbons and tissue paper. One thing Americans seem to know how to do well, aside from shopping, is wrapping!

We are incredibly blessed to have such lovely and generous friends here and let me tell you, Tuesday is a very lucky boy. I'll take a few snaps of some of the presents later but a couple of my favorites off the bat are the steam breathing red dragon humidifier, the lamaze magnetic stackable pond critters, and the (happy) monster squishable nightlight.