Learning How To Walk

"Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
Unknown, (often attributed to Albert Camus)

Cate learnt to "walk" whilst being supported by her wrists before she could crawl. After taking a few steps she would then start jumping. She clearly loved to jump. Cate's diary for Friday 19 May 2006 states "Cate joined in with lots of singing and 'Bouncing'!" Great fun, but it added nothing to her mobility.

Six days later 'bouncing' became 'dancing' so, in the words of Meat Loaf (well Jim Steinman), Cate had learned to dance before she'd learned to crawl; although crawling shortly followed: diary entry 30 June: "Cate crawled under it [the water sprinkler] and wasn't sure what to [do] next."

Dancing led to increased mobility: "We did some dancing today so she pulled herself up and down holding on to the side." (Thursday 6 July) Followed by "Cate has been walking along holding onto the wall, she walked quite a long way doing this and was doing it all day. Maybe she will soon show us her real steps at nursery?!!" (Friday 28 July) This was exciting news, although we both hoped that Cate's first steps would be at home in front of us, not at the nursery.

In August Cate started letting go of all support and then taking a few quick steps before collapsing. This 'controlled falling' was described in her diary entry of Friday 18 August "Cate took 4 steps on her own which took us all by surprise."

Douglas Adams once wrote that you can learn to fly by throwing yourself at the ground and missing. In late August Cate let go of the chinchilla cage took a few steps and then just stood there not falling over and looking at me trying to catch her. It was the start of the longest journey.

First Words

When I was a boy I asked my father: "if apes can't go to heaven, but men can, at what point does the ape evolve into an animal with an afterlife?"

He answered me with a question: "how many hairs need to be on a man's chin before he has a beard?"

He may as well have asked "at what point did your daughter say her first words?"

Cate goes to nursery three days a week and the staff keep a basic journal of what she did that day. On 1st February 2006 the entry includes the description "very vocal"; nine days later there was "alot of shouting most of which was mama and dada (so cute)." This was true up to a point, but neither "mama" nor "dada" was exclusively directly at either myself or my wife. What sounded like words were really just indeterminate babblings.

It was a few months after this that she started saying "ah-oh" just before she dropped something. Does this count as a first word? I doubt even the most magnanimous scrabble player would accept it as such. It wasn't until early September, on a trip to Italy, that I can remember Cate pointing at a dandelion and saying "flower". I would say that this was her first word.

Inevitably my wife disagrees! She says that this was just her first identifiable noun!

Learning How To Crawl

"When you can't walk, you crawl and when you can't do that, you find someone to carry you." - From The Message episode of Firefly

For the first six months of her life Cate would always be where you left her. This changed when she was 7 months old, whilst spending her first Christmas in Canada. I did not witness her first crawling movements, I just came back into the room to find her in a different place.

I started marking the carpet where her feet and head lay just to be sure she had achieved independent movement. With her arms and legs all moving without co-ordination any actual movement was a happy accident rather than anything deliberate. In fact moving backwords was Cate's forte; that and crying until someone carried her.

Ice Cold in Winnipeg

It is important to both myself and my wife that Cate grows up knowing about her Canadian roots. So we gave her a true Canadian experience by taking her out to downtown Winnipeg in January. To an Englishman unaware of the facts, there seemed nothing unusual about this. To an Englishman aware of the facts it seemed like child abuse. The temperature was -25 celsius.

I had never been out in such a climate and it seemed crazy to take my 7 month old daughter for a joint first time experience. However, my Winnipegger wife assured me that with no wind it would be OK. One of the problems facing Captain Scott was sweating in such cold temperatures and as I shoved my baby's pushchair through the urban snowdrifts I could identify with this. Cate remained snug and warm and totally unperturbed by the whole ordeal.

Out of the three of us, only I thought that our trip down to the shops was an adventure. Remind me who the kid is?

The Strength Of Family

Alvin ... tells her how he asked them to break one stick, "and of course they could," but, when he bound a number of sticks together and asked the children to break them as a bundle, they were unable to do so. That's family.
From the film "The Straight Story"

At my Dad's 61st birthday my family met my girlfriend, who was to become my wife, for the first time. She was the focus of attention, even when Dad was unwrapping presents she was answering questions about children.

When Cate was only a few weeks old we took her over to my parents' house. With the exception of Morrisons and Mothercare, it was only the third place that Cate had been following the hospital and our home. The family grapevine advertised the event and instead of a quiet visit our daughter met a menagerie of uncles and aunts. Cate was passed from relative to relative and the inevitable debate of which of her features came from which parent ensued. She started sounding less like a daughter and more like Frankenstein's monster.

It was a fitting welcome from the clan to the next generation and heartening to know that there are so many people that Cate will be able to rely on in the future.

First Feeds

New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the morning sun
Fool (if you think it's over) - Chris Rea

Babies are badly designed. Can you imagine how long one would last in the wild compared to other new borns from the animal kingdom? They can't crawl, let alone walk and not only do they have no teeth, the whole feeding thing is a huge struggle.

In her first week Cate was almost put on a drip because she refused to feed, and she brought this attitude home with her from hospital. I could understand her reluctance. Whoever said: "you can't take out more than you put in", had never seen a baby vomit. Even when the milk stayed down her windy cries caused her such pain that it was easy to understand her happy burblings when the milk did come back up. Fortunately at that age I could rest her tummy on my shoulder and pat her on the back without her cries perforating my ear drums.

Gaviscon oh Gaviscon (as I believe Glen Campbell once sung) is only a temporary answer. In time it was something she gradually grew out of, as people told me she would, but you grow-up with your child and you share their pain and their anxieties.

The First Laugh

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." Peter Pan

The first six to ten weeks of a baby's life are arguably the most difficult for the parents as all the infant does is eat, sleep and scream, without any concept of day and night. I loved the fact that I was a father and I loved my child for what I knew she would become, but I had no real connection with her. For her the feeling was clearly mutual. I was just the one who did not feed her.

That changed one afternoon after work when, armed with a suggestion I'd read in a book, I experienced my first interactive moment with Cate. I got her attention and then stuck my tongue out at her. She gave a pensive expression and then stuck her tongue out at me. The start of a beautiful frienship.

Coming Home

It was 9am and I had just endured another lonely night in an empty bed. The phone rang:
"I need some things"
"OK, hang on and I'll get a pen ... fire away"
"A coat and a car seat"
It took a moment for me to understand. Her coat had been soaked after her waters broke on the way to the hospital.
"You're coming home! You're coming home!"

When I got to the hospital everything had been packed and was ready to go. I made several trips to the car, remembering how many times I had walked this route in the last few days. This time I was walking on air.

Gradual changes often go unnoticed, so my wife, who had been hospitalised for over a week, had to point out to me that the daffodils and tulips were in bloom. Our daughter's birth had coincided with the start of spring.

We returned home, pausing only to take a photograph of my wife and our little bundle of joy outside our house. We put Cate down into her moses basket and looked at each other with the same thought:
"So now what?"

The Downside of Testing

Pregnant women of my parents' generation were not subjected to the level of testing that we have today. While this has undoubtedly saved many lives and ensured that expectant parents are better informed than ever before, knowledge has a price.

My previous blog entry details the unnecessary scare that we were given when the monitor started to record my wife's heart rate instead of my daughter's. Testing will always cause added anxiety as the results are awaited.

My wife has a music degree and we both hope that Cate will be able to enjoy the same level of pleasure from music that her mother does. These hopes were dealt a blow when Cate failed a hearing test when she was just a few days old. We were told that many babies fail this test due to fluid in the ear and that a specialist unit would be able to determine if her hearing defect was permanent. Cate's tiny body was hooked up to a machine that measured nerve impulses in the ear. The first few tests failed to work as Cate hands flailed at the wires attached to her head. During this time my wife and I looked on, as test after test failed to detect any nerve impulse, as our daughter gave out the small pathetic cries that are typical of a premature baby. Eventually Cate managed to exhaust herself into staying still long enough for the test to show that her hearing was normal, but I didn't truly believe these results until weeks later, when Cate clearly starting responding to sound.

The positive effect of testing far outweigh the negative, but if Cate had been born 30 years ago the outcome would have been the same, except her parents would have had less to worry about.

The First Nappy

Following the birth my overriding feeling was that I wanted them both home. Visiting hours were strictly enforced and I would hang outside the maternity ward minutes before 10am, like the habitual drunk waiting for the pub to open. Seeing them both each morning was a joy, but leaving them every evening was a real wrench.

Cate had been born six weeks early but she hadn't required any special treatment and had taken to feeding without much difficulty. The only remaining reason to keep her in hospital was the need to confirm that her digestive system was working properly.

We were both there to witness Cate filling her first nappy, with a sticky tar like substance called mecanium. We were practically fighting each other to change her, knowing that months and months of practice lay ahead.

My family was finally coming home.

The Only Girl to Make Me Cry

The waiting was over; after seeing many couples go into the delivery ward and emerge as a family, it was finally our turn.

I wanted to be the ideal husband. Holding onto my wife's hand and mopping her fevered brow as she went through the pain. Unfortunately the i.v. drip used to induce her wasn't put in properly and my wife's fingers swelled up like sausages. The drip was swapped from her left to her right hand leaving her unable to use either. It became my job to hold the gas and air mask and to judge when pain relief was required.

Throughout her stay in hospital my wife was frequently wired up to a machine that monitored our baby's heart rate and the ward would often echo to the sound of babies' pulses. At one point the mid-wife complained that she couldn't hear our baby's pulse over the noise of the second heart rate (from another machine in the room) momentarily convincing me that we were suddenly expecting twins. In the delivery room I noticed that our baby's pulse had got progressively slower before levelling out at about the rate of an adult's, the machine was now monitoring my wife's pulse. The mid-wife was sufficiently alarmed to press the emergency button and within a few seconds the room was full of people all talking in a medical language that I couldn't understand. A young consultant burst into the room only to look at us sheepishly and then back into a corner as moments later an older consultant swept into the room and took charge. The mid-wife was instructed to attach a scalp monitor to the baby's head. I guess I should have realised that her scalp attaching technique was no better than her ability her to attach an i.v. correctly, but when she said "that's the best I can do" and there was still no pulse on the machine I thought the worst.

I should mention that my wife was completely stoned on gas and air and she started to engage the consultant in a conversation about his tie. It was at this point I noticed that the baby's pulse had come back on the monitor and I interrupted the consultant's story about his holiday to Kamloops to tell my wife that our baby was still alive. The consultant assured me that everything was and always had been fine and the entire entourage left the room as suddenly as they had arrived.

In the last stages of labour I could see the top of the baby's head, which would emerge with each contraction, only to agonisingly disappear again. My wife was clearly in pain and I took it on myself to whisper the names of people she didn't like to get her through it. Later she told me the she thought I was saying the baby looked like these people. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The mid-wife instructed me to withhold the gas and then barked at my wife to give harder pushes, to get the head out. None of the four to five people in the room were expecting what happened next. After the head was clear the rest of the body immediately followed and I saw my first child fly into the world with a neat little somersault onto the foot of the bed, with her surprised eyes looking up into mine. The mid-wife, who had been too slow to catch her, now jumped into action like a slip fielder trying to retrieve a catch that has already gone to ground.

A tremendous feeling of relief washed over me; our child had been safely delivered. I managed to tell my wife how proud I was of her before breaking down in tears.

It's Not Over Until The Fat Baby Screams

The puddle on the wheelchair removed any lingering doubt, this was actually happening, I was about to become a father. The parents' class on what to expect during labour was due to be held later that week, so I only had hearsay and sitcoms to guide me. I believed that the waters breaking was the final stage before labour and parenthood. Sure I guessed that in the real world the labour might last longer than a 30 minute episode of Friends, but I was thinking in terms of hours. It was days.

I was not expecting to be sent home alone from the hospital, leaving a wife who looked as bewildered and as emotional as I felt. I couldn't sleep, the bed was too empty and my mind was too full. I dreamt of a phone ringing, which seemed so real that I found myself dialling 1471 at 6am. 6am! How early that seemed once!

Having been let down by popular culture, I spoke to friends and colleagues who had children and their stories were very similar. The agony of waiting, the failure of a gel that is supposed to induce labour but never does and then the phone call from the calm midwife.

Let Nobody Sleep

As the pregnancy developed my wife was forced to sleep on her back. The resultant snoring provided ample training for the sleepless nights to come.

I considered going to bed first, which reminded me of childhood holidays sharing a room with my snoring elder brother. I would watch the clock, trying and failing to get to sleep, knowing that each elapsed minute brought me closer to a restless night.

The decision to wear ear plugs seemed the perfect solution, although waking up to a silent world was a little disorientating.

Then one morning at 3am, I was woken up by my wife. She was agitated, she was shouting at me, but I could hear nothing. I removed the ear plugs ...
"I think my waters have broken."

This made little sense, she was only 35 weeks pregnant, we hadn't packed her bag for the hospital and we hadn't covered this bit in the parent craft classes yet. I didn't realise it then, but we were going to have the mother of all excuses for missing the next class.

I packed her bag with a mixture of trepidation and disbelief, which perhaps explains why her bag contained six pairs of underwear, but little else. The only coherent thing I did was to put a dustbin liner on the passenger car seat to keep it dry.

We drove towards a new life, with the empty early morning roads making a slient mockery of our decision to chose the provincial hospital because it would be more accessible in rush hour.

Names

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;" Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2 lines 43-44
"Not if you call them 'Stench Blossoms'." Bart Simpson, The Principal and the Pauper

Usually just two words, and in some cases just one, are enough to identify a person and it is this which makes names so important. We wanted to avoid giving our child a name that was either obscure or common; we sought to provide an identity without ostentation. Anything remotely associated with a famous person was immediately rejected. In fact we agreed to avoid naming our child after anyone, as this could create only one friend but many enemies. The problem was that although all people are unique, no name is (yes I know I've just ended a sentence on a preposition, but I can't think of another word for "unique").

We eventually agreed on Cate, which by spelling with a "C" paid homage to the Celtic blood in both our families and also made the name special but familiar. We realised how familiar when settling down to watch the Lord of the Rings.

Seven Magpies

The risk of miscarriage is at its highest in the early stages of pregnancy and so there was a limit to the number of people I wanted to inform. However, while I may have the stoicism to hide bad news, I do not have the will to keep good news to myself. Within a few hours of the test the entire office must have known. Unfortunately it is not a family business and so while people I don't recall ever meeting were coming up to offer their congratulations, my nearest and dearest were still in the dark.

It was several days before I managed to arrange a meeting with my parents and that was at the Eagle in Cambridge. So in the same pub that Crick and Watson had announced that they had "found the secret of life" some 50 years before, I announced to the head of my family that a new generation was on its way. Their surprise seemed muted. Whether I was truly the first to tell them, I shall probably never know.

The Announcement

My wife had told me that she would be doing the test in morning. When she got up I had feigned sleep like a coward. It wasn't that I didn't want to join her to watch a tiny urine soaked piece of paper turn colour; I just thought it would be easier for her to learn of the bad news on her own. We had been married less than a month and like a naive teenager I couldn't believe that she'd be pregnant first time.

I waited. Each passing minute confirmed to me what I already knew. If she were pregnant she would have run up the stairs to tell me. The film Maybe Baby with Hugh Laurie had taught me two things. Firstly, that I did not want to go through the indignity of IVF and secondly a disappointed unexpectant woman could be comforted with the words: "we'll just have to try and be the best couple that we can." I knew that I couldn't put it off any longer, I'd have to get up and comfort her. It was the manly thing to do.

She was in the computer room with her back to me. Had she been crying? As I approached I realised that I risked giving her an unintentional shock, bringing her too quickly out of her thoughts is as dangerous as waking up a sleep-walker. Suddenly the chair swivelled round ...

"I'm pregnant!"

My spontaneous hug was more of a self-defence mechanism than anything else.

"Why didn't you come up and tell me!"
"I thought you needed a lie-in and it wouldn't have been fair to wake you up with such momentous news!"

Our journey towards parenthood had begun.