Bug = 1 year 10 months 13 days
Bub = 12 days

Ada

Finding the Name

Bub’s Daddy “found” her name. I’d run a couple of suggestions past him, and he’d been less than keen on them, so one night while I was out he decided to flick through our baby name dictionary and see if he could come up with anything better.

“Aaron” was a boy’s name, “Abigail” didn’t appeal, then BINGO! Bob came across “Ada”, and he remembered that a famous woman (THE famous woman?!) in the history of computing was someone called “Ada Lovelace” *, and he thought that would go nicely with the “Linus Torvalds” association of Bug’s name.

Other Appeals

Once Bob suggested the name, lots of other minor linguistic quirks increased its appeal to us:

• It is a palindrome like Daddy’s name.
• It’s a classic name, but it isn’t common these days. Although I had a congratulatory text message from UK Bob who says that his great-niece – born a month before Bub – is also called “Ada”, so I’m nervous that I’ve unwittingly participated in the early stages of a trend!
• It’s the inverse of “Dad”.
• It’s similar to “Adam” (Daddy’s best friend) and “Andrea” (Aunty).
• It ends in “-da” like “Brenda” (Nana) and “Linda” (Mummy).
• It’s a homophone of “aider”, which (if it were an actual word!) would mean “helper”, which is a positive meaning.

We also found out after we’d committed to the name that my mother had a great aunty Ada, so that’s a nice family connection (although not really surprising given that “Ada” was the 58th most popular name ** in the 1890s!).

Janette

Janette was my grandmother’s name and is both my mother’s middle name and my middle name, so it seemed like a lovely tradition to keep the name going down the generations. If it hadn’t sounded good with “Ada” we might have chosen something else, but I think “Ada Janette” has a nice ring to it.

Brown

See entry for Bug’s name.

Patterson

See entry for Bug’s name.

* Not to be confused with Linda Lovelace. And you can Google her for yourself, I’m not giving you a link!

** From US figures

Bug = 1 year 10 months 10 days
Bub = 9 days

Elvis Costello Can Say It

I’ve been struggling with pronouns since Bub arrived. In spite of the fact that we knew we were expecting a baby girl, for the first few days of her life I had to pause every time I talked about her to process whether I should say “he” or “she”.

This is partly because of Bug: “my baby” has been “he” for two years, and it’s taking a bit of getting used to the fact that “my baby” is all of a sudden “she”!

But that’s not the only reason. I remember having the same trouble with Bug, and with him we didn’t have a previous baby to blame. I think it happens because babies are so asexual: they have none of the gender-specific adornments that adults indulge in, such as make-up, breasts, and facial hair, and apart from the genitalia there are no obvious physical differences between the sexes.

The Language of Clothing

And that’s why after a couple of days of having Bub in a lovely baby blue hat that used to belong to her big brother, we asked the hospital staff if they could lend us a pink hat! They very kindly did so, and the combination of the pink hat and time helped us adjust to having a little girl. (Daddy even went so far as to change the hat from blue to pink in a photo using Photoshop, so desperate were we to stop calling our girl “he”.)

My first trip out of hospital was on Sunday afternoon to the DVD shop and supermarket, but I was distracted by a baby shop, where I found a couple of sweet wraps for Bub. The wrap she had been wearing in hospital was white and yellow, but it had tiny blue stars on it that were enough to confuse some people (even when she was wearing her pink hat).
Ada, Ada, Ada…

I’ve also had my doubts about her name. Calling her “Ada” didn’t quite sound right for the first few days, and I started to worry a little bit that we’d picked a bad name. But I kept reminding myself that we felt exactly the same with “Linus”… it took some getting used to, but we did get used to it, and now he couldn’t be anything else. So I’ve made an effort to use her name when talking to her or about her, and I’m pleased to report that it’s settling in well.

Yesterday we resigned ourselves to the possibility of having to spend Bub’s first Christmas day in hospital. Of course, Bub’s health is paramount, but it would have been a shame. We were very pleased this morning when we were given the all clear from the paediatrician and were able to venture away from the hospital as a complete family, with our fresh seven and a half day old daughter.

So far we’ve had Christmas lunch with Granny and Pop-pop and are relaxing while Bug has a long overdue sleep. The other thing of note is that the day started out with murky skies giving way to brilliant clear blue, and now we’re right in the middle of a huge thunderstorm and downpour!

Bug = 1 year 22 months 5 days
Bub = 4 days old

My daughter is almost 5 days old, and we are still in the maternity unit at Dunedin Hospital. It will be obvious now that my plan for a home birth didn’t pan out.

My Health

Although my midwife didn’t make a big deal about it at the time, I found out later that I suffered quite heavy blood loss during Bub’s birth. In spite of this (and probably thanks to the iron pills I had been on during my late pregnancy), I felt relatively well after the birth (although my midwife didn’t let me get up and move around).

When I felt “energetic” enough to get up and around later on Tuesday morning, however, I felt tightness in my chest when I moved around, and I found I couldn’t move with much energy at all. I reported this to the duty midwives, and this simple symptom – combined with a high heart rate of >100bpm and up to 118bpm – set into action a long chain of tests that were to keep me and Bub in hospital for a couple of days.

None of the tests were too dramatic in themselves, but what I did find trying was that:

1. They all came back negative, so no good reason was found for my symptoms; and
2. With each negative result, I anticipated that the medical staff would stop worrying about me and that I’d be allowed to go home to be with my new-shaped family, but each negative result instead prompted another test.

The tests I had were:

• Frequent monitoring of blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation, temperature (this was done by duty midwives and may have been standard procedure to some extent)
• Blood tests;
• Arterial blood gas: blood sample taken from wrist, not from elbow pit;
• ECG (Electrocardiogram): to check the more complex pattern of my heartbeat rather than the simple rate;
• Ultrasound on my legs: checking for clots;
• Urine test;
• CTPA (CT pulmonary angiogram): examination of lungs for clots.

Also, I had to wear some very elegant thigh-high stockings (even after the ultrasound on my legs found no signs of problems).

Early on in these tests, they did prepare to put a line in my arm “just in case”, i.e. in case they found that they urgently needed to fill me with drugs or fluids. I pretty much agreed that they could go ahead, but when the doctor said again “we don’t have to”, I decided to refuse it. It’s hard enough getting in and out of bed, picking up a baby, feeding a baby and looking after yourself even after a relatively smooth delivery; I didn’t want to be hindered for hours or days by a needle hanging out of my arm “just in case”.

The All-Clear… For Mummy

On Wednesday evening I seemed to get the all clear, and so yet again I anticipated going home early the next day. However later that night the duty midwife said that she was concerned about Bub’s colour, and would like to monitor her for jaundice. I asked them to do a blood test so that we could know for sure as soon as possible (and avoid the unnecessary worry and delays we had with Bug). Unfortunately the tests came back positive for a high level of bilirubin (Daddy’s blog entry has more details), and Bub had to start using a phototherapy incubator.

The Incubator

Bub’s being in the incubator doesn’t mean that she is in the incubator all the time. She needs to spend as much time in there as possible, so cuddling and playing and photo sessions have to be eliminated (or severely curtailed). However breastfeeding is an important part of the treatment for jaundice, so she can be got out of the incubator whenever I need to feed her. This can mean in reality rather large chunks of time – a “feed” can take 45 minutes or longer when you include getting her out of the incubator, waking her up, feeding her, changing her nappy, giving her a chance to get some wind up, waking her, and feeding her again if she didn’t have a big feed initially. Then she has to be put back into the incubator (where she may or may not settle), and two or three hours later the whole routine has to start again.

Home vs. Hospital

The past few days have seen me expecting to be able to go home within a day a number of times (so much so that we’d even had all my things packed into the car at one point), and it still hasn’t come to pass. The expectation keeps shifting, and this has been stressful for our family.

That’s not to say that staying in hospital is a bad thing in itself. The advantages are:

• I’m getting precious one-on-one time with Bub (although as mentioned above this is limited by the phototherapy);
• no nappies for me to worry about washing;
• hot meals (quite nice ones too, despite the reputation of “hospital food”) turn up for me at regular intervals;
• I have no housework or toddler to worry about;
• I have midwives on call 24 hours a day to help me with any problems or concerns;
• I’m forced to rest more than I would if I were at home surrounded by my own things and housework and internet and visitors.

Being in hospital is essentially the last few days of relaxation and simplicity I’m going to have for quite a few months, so it’s very much like a holiday. And unlike many other mothers in the maternity unit who have to share a room with up to three other women (and their babies), I have been privileged enough to have my own room for my entire stay (just as I did after Bug’s birth). I doubt I’d be so quick to describe this as “a holiday” if I were in a shared room!

However there are also disadvantages. The major one for me is the separation from Bug. He has been looked after full-time by his Nana since Bub’s arrival. Nana has stayed at our place, so Bug has been in his own home with a carer he’s very used to. His Daddy has been around for most bedtimes and mornings, and he’s visited Mummy and Bub at least once every day. Today Nana has been given a day off and Bug has gone to Granny and Pop-pop’s just as he does most fortnights.

All in all, I doubt that this separation from his Mummy is going to be a major disturbance for Bug, but it isn’t ideal, and it’s a long way from the instant integration of Bub into our family that I hoped a home birth would bring us.

Other disadvantages of being stuck in hospital are:

• the delayed start of “real” motherhood: I’m itching to start being a mother-of-a-newborn and a mother-of-two, with all its joys and stresses and challenges;
• the burden on Nana (which I’m sure she doesn’t mind, but I still wish weren’t lasting so unexpectedly long);
• the lack of access: I don’t have access to my own clothes; I can’t finish my Christmas shopping; I have yet to blog, send emails to friends, or log onto Facebook;
• the separation from Bob: I’d love to have my husband around to support me for most of each day, instead of having him “visit”; and I’d love even more for him to be able to spend more time getting to know his new daughter

Home Tomorrow?

There is a graph on which Bub’s 12-hourly SBR (serum bilirubin) values are being charted. We were told that after two “clear” readings (i.e. below the phototherapy treatment threshold), she could come out of the incubator, and after another clear 12-hourly reading, she could go home. Unfortunately while she has technically had three clear readings already, the second of the clear readings trended upwards and nearly re-entered the phototherapy range, so she is still in the incubator.

She will have another reading done very soon tonight, for which the results will be delivered a couple of hours later. If that’s clear and the paediatrician agrees, Bub will be able to move out of the incubator and back into a normal cot tonight. If she manages another clear blood test in the morning, we will be able to go home. Probably. So the current plan is that my daughter will finally be introduced to her home tomorrow just after lunch. But my experiences over the past five days have taught me that I should take nothing for granted. So at the moment all I’m allowing myself to hope is that I’ll be home before Christmas – anything earlier will be a bonus!

Linda and Ada are still in the hospital, taking turns it would seem to be diagnosed and, in a rare turn of events, actually requiring treatment!

First of all, Linda had trouble with a tight feeling in her chest. This only caused her problems when she was sitting up straight or walking, and it has eased significantly over the past day. The staff were quite worried that it might have been symptomatic of clotting and so were very keen to diagnose the issue and treat it accordingly. She had her blood sampled a few times to test the oxygenation levels, had ultrasound on her legs to ensure the veins were clear, thigh-high elastic socks, a chest x-ray and finally a CTPA scan, all which have happily turned up clear, although did nothing to help my patience as each time the results came back it seemed they wanted to do ‘one more test’.

Secondly (and only in the last couple of hours), Ada has been tested for levels of bilirubin and they were found to be quite high. This is a common condition in newborn babies (and more common in premature babies) where their livers have to process a rush of bilirubin which is caused by an excess of haemoglobin breaking down in the first few days of life. To treat this, UV filtered (or direct) sunlight is often used, and in more serious cases, phototherapy is used to help break down the bilirubin so it can be passed out of the body. Ada gets the phototherapy treatment (see here for some examples in pictures)

The end result of all of this is that my girls are spending a lot longer in hospital than we hoped, especially after a pretty excellent birth. Linda didn’t require any medical attention after the birth and Ada seems quite lively and healthy.

Hopefully tomorrow will see them home, and hopefully (for my sake) I haven’t stolen too much of Linda’s blog material!