it's a little known fact, but i am tongue tied. my dad was also tongue tied at birth, but was operated on soon after. baby no-name (as he's currently known in the hospital) is also tongue tied, and it was proving to be a problem with feeding. apparently there's a shortage of midwives specialising in tongue-tied babies, so we went to Slough to see one (the next closest was Southampton!). She immediately said that it was a severe case, and would need to be operated on immediately. She had a lot of questions about me being tongue tied, including some rather personal ones about my kissing ability. she seemed pretty keen to do me as well as baby no-name, but settled for the one who couldn't run away.
sarah was led out of the room, to prepare for feeding. i stayed, but found it tremendously difficult to watch someone hurting my baby. once it was done, with a lot of very patient help from the tongue-tied specialist, he started feeding, and has been doing pretty well since. i missed out on the feeding, as it was a communal feeding area. i got locked away in a room with a tv. the only decent reception that i could get was on a nature documentary about fatherhood in different animals. i thought that god, fate, or the flying spaghetti monster had intervened to show me how easy i have it as a human, and how tough hippos have it as fathers.
sarah's mum and brother david have been down all day today, and her brother jamie and his girlfriend roz came by this evening. roz had picked up some amazingly cute shark-mittens, which we put straight on the baby.
i'm really happy that we were able to have the baby in ascot at heatherwood hospital. visiting the hospital in slough again reminded me of how big and impersonal the maternity centre there was. it felt a little like an assembly line, as there were so many people. the midwives have been excellent and very accomodating of our rampant abuse of the visiting hours at heatherwood. they've added a lovely personal touch to all of their visits and examinations.
hopefully sarah will get home tomorrow. we'll see though.
6 comments:
Hi Martin and Sarah,
Glad to hear the baby is now feeding OK. I remember us having a discussion about the fact that you could stick out your tongue very far - nor John I think...
Hopefully it was too painful for the baby and I'm sure he is now happy that he can feed, I bet he was starving!
Anyway, Lou and I thought we would give you a ring on Thursday evening as we didn't want to pester you guys so soon after having the baby especially when you are coming home and busy and getting settled into your 'new' life. Hope things aren't too hectic.
Take it easy, oh some more name suggestions for you (all from the bible):
Adam
Andrew
Benjamin
Caleb
Christian
Christopher
Daniel
David
Eden
Edward
Elijah
Ethan
Francis
Jacob
James
John
Jonathan
Joseph
Joshua
Matthew
Nathan
Sampson
Thomas
I'm sure you thought of all of these already though!
Sorry comment should have read:
"discussion about the fact that you COULDN'T stick out your tongue very far"
and
"Hopefully it WASN'T too painful for the baby and I'm sure he..."
Congratulations Sarah and Martin.
I can't wait to meet him and to hear what you decide to call him.
Sarah K xxx
Hey Martin,
I'm sure Sarah's glad you're not a hippo too!
Pam
Congratulations Sarah and Martin
He is gorgeous! looking forward to hearing the name.
Cherylx
Congratulations Sarah and Martin!
He's so beautiful, and you picked a lovely name for him! I'm glad to hear that everyone is doing well! David's doing a great job filling us Americans in and translating (Deb and I didn't know what tongue tied was). Congratulations again!
Love,
Stacey
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