| Why I've been away |
[Sep. 30th, 2005|10:46 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
We had a baby! Lucy Jane is here! Our baby daughter was born on Thursday Sept 22nd. She weighs 7 pounds and 5 ounces, and is a doll! As soon as she was born she was crying at the top of her lungs, and her apgar rating (which measures the health of a newborn baby) was 9-9 (that means top marks!) So, she is in fine fettle.
She was born with a cleft palate, which means she will have to have two small operations – one at around ten weeks to repair her lip, and another at between six and twelve months to repair her palate. But the doctors say that this is relatively common and that the operations will straighten that out. Her speech and dental situation are going to be ok.
Unfortunately this meant that she had problems breast feeding for a couple of days because it made it hard for her to get the necessary suction. So she has to be fed using a bottle with a special nipple for the time being. This meant that she was staying in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for a few days because they wanted to monitor her feeding patterns, but this was simply a precaution -- she is fine and feisty, and not sick at all.
But the NICU thing has meant that things were particularly difficult schedule-wise as I was spending all my time there and dashing back from the hospital in the early morning and for a
couple of hours at night to get John, our 20 month-old, up, give him breakfast, and put him to bed. So that's why I may not have answered emails from people recently. And the impending birth was also the reason that I may have been unresponsive for the past few weeks, as I rushed to get as many interviews completed as possible.
Anyway, now we're back home. We've had the normal sleepless nights and tired days that you get with a newborn. Today (Friday) is the first day that I've had more than 4 hours sleep, so I'm only just starting to feel human again. I'll start answering all the outstanding emails, phone messages and whatnot today. |
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