BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'

Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'

This research indicates that the rate at which the polar ice cap is melting means that there could be no sea ice in the Arctic by the summer of 2060.

I find this story quite terrifying when considered alongside other stories of climatic change such as the recent hurricanes and the potential for the Gulf Stream conveyer to stop.

We seem to be sleep-walking into a possible ecological disaster that will be impossible to undo. I can't help thinking that when Oliver is grown up, all the other stories I have highlighted could look irrelevant and trivial alongside this one. And yet, despite a high placing in the news media, you can be certain that George W. Bush and his government will continue to block moves to address climate change, preferring instead to stick his head in the sand and worry about his precious economy.... as if that will survive global climate change! The degree of "short termism" in his thinking strikes me as breathtaking in its naivety and selfishness.

BBC NEWS | Education | Junk food to be banned in schools

Junk food to be banned in schools

When I heard this story as the headline news on the radio at 6am this morning while I sat feeding Oliver, I had to wonder whether I was hearing correctly. I am delighted but also astonished that the government has intervened so dramatically.

I have no doubt that this is thanks to Jamie Oliver's campaign to improve the quality of school meals and the resulting upsurge public support.

I have to confess that all this was going on at the same time we were considering names for our baby. Dare I even hint that my son's name might owe something to my unexpected new-found respect for the celebrity chef whom I had previously dismissed as an irritating mockney monkey?

Names

Although our son's name is Oliver, you could get through most of a day in our house and possibly never hear him addressed as such. Here are a few of his other titles:

"His Holiness" - as he often clasps his hands together, as if in prayer, particularly while drinking.

"Champ" - I have no idea why but I called him this from day one in the hospital.

"Mate" - it's a bloke thing.

"Bloke" - it's a bloke thing too. Usually used when he's done something blokeish, such as loudly breaking wind or soiling his nappy just after it's been changed and then pulling a face that looks mischievously close to a grin.

"Oscar" - as in Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street (I think). Used when he gets particularly unhappy for no apparent reason or grumbles quietly but persistently because he is fighting sleep.

"Rocky" - he has a white outfit with a big hood that makes him look like he's about to go into the ring to do 10 rounds with a Hollywood baddy.

"Pumpkin" / "Pumpkin Pie" - well he is good enough to eat after all.

"Professor" - he sometimes puts his hand under his chin as if in deep thought and contemplation of some philosophical principle.

"Poppy" - It's a bit longwinded to explain why, but anyone worth anything in our house is a poppy at some point.

Back to work

Today I went back to work, at least for a few days. I'm lucky to have an understanding boss who is flexible about when I take my paternity leave. It's been odd to be back here. The day has passed in a sleep-deprived haze but I seem to have functioned OK. (Maybe you should ask my colleagues for the reality though.)

Dare I say it, but things really seem to be improving at home. I am feeling less anxious about the amount Oliver is drinking, as his feeds fluctuate between guzzling down 125ml to taking only 50ml then nodding off. But overall he seems to be drinking enough from what we can see. And today Hayley had a couple of visitors: fellow new mothers from our ante-natal class, Sarah and Dawn. Dawn is bottle feeding her daughter and seemed to think he was drinking as much as he should. It's always nice to have a bit of anecdotal re-assurance like that from the grass roots. After all, the experts are visiting increasingly infrequently now.

Last night Oliver woke twice in the night for feeds. I got up to warm his milk once but Hayley did all the feeding. The loose plan is that I try to sleep during the week when I am at work and then take the strain at the weekend.

Lots of colleagues with kids are mentioning 6 weeks as around the time he might start settling into a pattern and sleeping through much of the night. Though my colleague Paul who has three kids aged two and under tells a much more frightening tale of none of them sleeping through. I'm going with the majority for now, just to preserve my sanity!

I just spoke to Hayley and she is really upbeat, looking forward to going to town this Friday with Dawn and Sarah. It's great that she has had such good day. It's a stark contrast to the clouds of last week when we were exhausted and Oliver was much less happy. I really feel we have turned the corner and can enjoy him as much as we did the first few days. In fact, much more than that!

Sleeping on the job

Frustration after frustration. Just as feeding seemed to be improving, Oliver has taken to falling asleep after he has barely started his feed. This is particularly frustrating when the feed is breast milk which Hayley has painstakingly (and even painfully) expressed at 4am.

He is feeding right now and stopped after only 20ml of what should be a 100ml (4oz) feed. We have to resort to waking him up: wetting his head and/or blowing on him, moving him about, etc. It doesn't feel great to do it but we know that otherwise he will wake up a short time later demanding another feed. If we get into that pattern we'll be as desperate and exhausted as we were a few days ago.

The other frustration is that even when he is drinking he seems to be feeding slowly. A 100ml feed is taking about an hour and yet two nights ago he drank down that amount in 20 minutes.

I wish I knew why he has started to do this. It looks like we are building up a new list of questions for the midwife and/or health visitor this week.

Wayne, Sharon, Emma and Shannon visit

Oliver had some visitors yesterday: Hayley's brother Wayne and his family. The day included a trip into town shopping and much passing around of Oliver to cradle him. He was in an excellent mood all day!

Of course when everyone left and we fed him, he refused to settle for an hour and a half. Hayley managed to get him to sleep by 1.30am by which time I was already asleep. I don't know where she finds the energy sometimes. I was completely shattered.

I wonder how long it will be before he stettles into a sleep pattern or we adjust to his lack of one.

This is the toughest job in the world!

The last week has been an emotional roller-coaster. But unlike a roller-coaster, our ride seemed to have more downs than ups. Until a couple of days ago we were completely drained, both emotionally and physically. It culminated in our midwife, Jane, arriving at the house to find all three of us either in tears or on the verge of tears! "You both look absolutely shattered" ,she said, before proceeding to take the strain for the entire afternoon, to the point that when she left Oliver was bathed and asleep in his cot and she sent us upstairs to bed for a rest.

So why how did it come to this? Pressure. Pressure to breastfeed, not least from ourselves. The ante-natal classes are full of the benefits of breastfeeding but they are pretty thin on its drawbacks and how terribly exhausting and frustrating it can be. Hayley stayed in hospital specifically to get the breastfeeding right. Sadly, only a few of the midwives on her ward were "on message" and/or able to help when it came to breastfeeding techniques. But once she came home things seemed to go OK for a few days.

Then Oliver started to become increasinbly grouchy. The time it was taking to feed him was getting ridiculous. SOmetimes a feed could take three and a half hours in the night. Then he might only sleep a couple of hours before needing to feed again. And between feeds he seemed to do nothing but cry. We had given birth to a little monster! Of course, it wasn't his fault. Eventually we found out he was suffering from oral thrush.

But in the meantime, breastfeeding was becoming increasingly painful for Hayley. By early this week it was unbearable. Our midwife, Jane, who is the queen of breastfeeding, was able to help Hayley to get him to feed without pain, but only after several attempts and once she left her magic touch was hard for us to re-create. The tipping point was nearly upon us. Something had to give.

The next morning at about 5am, the pain of feeding was intolerable. Hayley was in tears and it was intolerable for me to have to watch her suffer any longer. I went downstairs and made a bottle of formula. He drank it and slept for several hours. We soon realised that it was possible to mix the use of both breast milk and formula. We also learned that just 60ml of breast milk per day for the first 6 weeks will build up the baby's immune system for the whole of the first year. This changed our whole approach.

Given the pain Hayley was suffering we have today switched to feeding him entirely from bottles, but including at least one 60ml dose of breast milk per day which Hayley has "expressed" using an electric pump that we bought earlier this week. She is also expressing more than 60ml per day and freezing it so that Oliver can continue to receive breast milk even after she is unable to produce any more milk.

I don't want to start counting chickens, but allowing ourselves to use formula like this has transformed our little family. Oliver still gets grouchy sometimes (especially around this time of day!), but much more often we are able to identify a reason and overall he seems a happier baby. And his parents are much less stressed. We've gone from an unsustainable 2-3 hours sleep a night to around 4 - 6 hours on a good night. The very fact I have been able to get to the PC and write a blog for the first time in over a week tells you something!

Last night we spent the sort of evening I had pictured before his arrival. He drank a bottle sitting on my lap. Hayley then finished off feeding him while I made dinner. He sat sleepily in his swing while we ate, then afterwards he woke, but unlike the previous few days, he was contented and alert, sitting happily in my lap looking round and listening to his Daddy babble on at him.

I really hope we have turned the corner because a few days ago I was wondering whether we would have to get some outside help. Until last night I was genuinely becoming a little afraid of Oliver as he seemed to cry so much and I could hardly ever console him. As soon as I heard him start to wake my stomach turned over. But yesterday evening has shown me that maybe the clouds are clearing. Now he doesn't seem quite so intimidating, more the adorable little boy we brought home from hospital.

But of course he's changing all the time. I am not sure what colour his eyes will end up now. They have darkened but stayed a kind of grey for the last few days. And his face is slowly changing. I know it sounds daft to say who he looks like, but after initially thinking he looks like his Uncle Wayne I can now see a lot of my Dad in him. But maybe that's because they have similar amounts of hair distributed across the head in a similar fashion: not much up front but plenty at the back.

Well, I'd better sign off, as Hayley' brother Wayne and his family are here. We have a full house for the first time since Oliver arrived. It's a great feeling and one that seemed so far away just a few days ago.

Oliver - chilled

Oliver chills out in the early morning light at Dave and Susan's house in Baycliff.

The eyes have it

Hayley noticed even before she left hospital (probably a day beforehand) that Oliver's eyes are already starting to change colour. He started out with typically blue eyes but today they seem to be getting darker. So it looks like he is going to have brown eyes, like me.

All day, and all of the night

For the duration of the pregnancy there was one fact that people pointed out to me repeatedly. Once the baby arrived, I was going to be tired. Very tired. And after less than 24 hours of Oliver being part of the household I can safely say that all those doom-sayers were right.

As I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I don't function at all well without sleep. So sleep deprivation was probably the one thing I knew I would be able to do little about and thus the thing I dreaded the most. And yet today, after a night punctuated by several feeds and/or nappy changes, I have been extremely active and only now am starting to feel the pace.

Whether I can keep up this pace remains to be seen. And I'm sure last night was relatively good by many standards, as he slept for a three hour stretch from 2.45am until 5.45am, thus granting us at least some uninterrupted sleep.

Hayley, of course, has a much harder time than me. She is following the policy of "baby-driven" or "on demand" breast-feeding. So whenever he wakes and needs a feed, she must wake and feed him. This leaves me unable to assist, as the policy recommends no expressing of milk or use of bottles for the first 6 weeks.

Hayley is coping very well though. She occasionally gets a bit tearful as the "baby blues" get the better of her, but we both know that's the hormones and most of the time she is very chipper. Even when Oliver has become fussy about feeding from his least favoured breast, she has overcome her tiredness to chat away patiently to him as she does battle with his flailing limbs and attempts to re-attach him to his source of nutrition. I'm so proud of her for her patience today. She has come through some tough days to get him to this point and hopefully his feeding will continue to improve and we won't be driven to resort to bottles of formula.

Made with 100% Love

Oliver makes himself comfortable at home.

Homecoming

Today Hayley decided she was ready to bring Oliver home. The breastfeeding has been getting a little easier each day and this afternoon she decided she just wanted to be home again. So tonight I fitted the car seat (as I'd forgotten how to do it since I worked it out about 4 weeks ago) and drove to Stepping Hill.

Hayley was all packed up so I carried all her stuff to the car (2 trips) and then we took Oliver down in the car seat. He had a right old cry when we put him in it, but he settled after I swung him gently in it for a few minutes.

He was as quiet as a mouse on the way home. We played the Baby Mozart for him as we have done so many times, but for the first now with him outside the womb.

When we got in he gradually woke and then cried and then filled his nappy in spectacularly loud fashion. Once I had changed him Hayley fed him (which went well) and now he is in his Moses basket for the first time. He looks very cute. He barely takes up half its length.

So here we are for the first time without a midwife in sight. I suspect it could be a long night, but it feels great to be home together.

Homecoming hat

Leaving hospital

When is a policy not the policy?

This is more than just a grammatical puzzle. Hayley sent me a SMS in the night. The midwife who gave our ante-natal classes, Jackie, was on duty on the ward and she had a long talk with Hayley. As I suspected Jackie confirmed my fears about how the midwives on the ward had been handling Oliver's feeding. She was horrified to find that they were totally contradicting the hospital's policy on breast-feeding which is that it should be baby-driven (ie when he wants it) and without interventions such as the use of cups, teats and bottles of formula milk. We have been using cups when he will not take the breast and topping him up with a prescribed amount of formula in a cup on top of expressed breast milk. And Hayley has been doing this every 3 or 4 hours. Consequently she has barely had any rest. Jackie's view, and also the hospital policy which they should have been following, prescribes that the baby should be left to sleep (especially as he was not even 3 days old) until he wakes and shows signs of wanting milk. The midwives have been making us wake him up every 3 - 4 hours whether he wants to or not. I feel rotten about that now. And I feel angry at the midwives. What is the point of having a policy if you are going to ignore it!

Hayley said that Jackie was fuming and said she was going to write a report to highlight what is going on. Hayley then heard her talking quite heatedly to the staff after leaving her room. Jackie thinks that the reason they give such bad advice and want to intervene so much is that they also work down the corridor in a unit for premature babies. At one point one midwife was even talking about potentially using a tube to feed Oliver. Jackie was aghast at this. As she pointed out, he's 15 days late: you might do that sort of thing with babies that are 15 days early, but not 15 days late after a traumatic birth. You can expect such a baby to take up to three days to really come round and want to feed at a level you'd expect. Until then he will rest and sleep a lot. Oliver has been doing that and his blood sugar has been good on the two occasions it was tested. Plus he is alert when awake, so all the fretting and intervention was completely unnecessary.

Anyway we are now steeled for any further attempts to intervene which we will resist resolutely.

On a more positive note, Oliver woke and fed from the breast for 40 minutes in the night. This is a big step forward. He takes more readily from one breast than the other. Once he is taking from both we are going to bring him home. Our "home" midwives are all in line with the policy and are very good at getting babies to breast-feed. What is more, Hayley will be able to get one-to-one assistance from them once she is at home.

Last night after Hayley sent me the message about her talk with Jackie, I lay awake for an hour feeling furious and frustrated. Then I realised: I was already worrying! Because Hayley is a bit of a worrier, I kind of expected myself to be able to be the less worried partner: concerned but calm. But there I was after 2 days lying awake worrying about him!

I went to see them this morning but left shortly afterwards as they were both having a rest. I sat next to him with my face about 6 inches from his and just watched him as he slept. Then he grimaced and filled his nappy. Even that seemed like a command performance to me.