Choking

Is there anything worse? I don't think so, I hope not. It seems most days Jake will put too much bread or something a bit too crunchy in his mouth and starts a little pre-choke. The pre-choke usually clears the offending morsel, however on occasion (roughly twice a week), the choke builds to the point parental intervention is necessary. When this happens I get the same feeling every time. Blind panic. It's probably the same feeling a bomb disposal expert gets when he's just cut the wrong wire and sees the clock ticking down. It literally feels like you're the only person who can help and you must solve the problem within seconds.

During the first week of Jake's life I turned him upside down after he'd choked on a cat hair and that was probably a bit over the top, but when there's food stuck in there, you'll do everything to get to it. The trick is to try to remain calm whilst panicking madly so as not to distress the child. If they see you flap, so will they and that'll use up oxygen quicker.

It truly is the most horrible feeling as it happens in an instant. We had to turn him upside down and whack him on the back again at the weekend and it doesn't get any easier. It leaves you out of breath as the adrenaline kicks in. This probably sounds far too dramatic but it isn't.

If I could, I'd feed him on soup until his 18th birthday.

Renovations

Since November 2007, when we moved into our house we've wanted a bigger kitchen. I love our house and it's definitely the best one we looked at but I'm still amazed the size of the kitchen didn't put me off. We stretched our budget to afford location, Victorian charm and the basement I craved but it wouldn't stretch to a decent sized or specced kitchen.

Honestly, it was all of about 9 feet in length and 5 feet wide with an arch way at one end and a door at the other, further restricting its usefulness. Originally we put in plans for a large extension which would have given us a lounge area and the essential island, but doing that would have been overdeveloping the plot which is on page one of the 'how to lose money doing up your house' manual. So we decided the sensible, if less exciting, option was to make the most of the footprint of our downstairs and do the extension / renovation that the last people got so horribly wrong. I should point out that beyond the doorway at the back of the kitchen was about 25 square feet of dead space which was made up of a walk way and an airing cupboard. O.K, 25 square feet is not much but when you think how little room we had you'll appreciate that every little helps to re-coin a phrase.

So, we've ripped out the old, smashed through the wall at the end, dismantled the airing cupboard 'room', installed stud wall and turned what was the old bathroom into a downstairs cloakroom and a play area for Jake. I say this in the past tense yet technically it's not happened yet. I should say it's what we are doing, not what we have done. Anyway, work is progressing nicely and the room should be ready for the kitchen fitters to start on Monday and we 'should' be back in by the end of next week.

Then they will start the loft conversion. All in all, four weeks of disruption is not much to bear given the end result but a month of living between parents and out of a car (especially when you only have one car between you) seems to last a lot longer than say, a month spent on a beach in the Seychelles. We're lucky that our parents have the space and the inclination to put us up and grateful, but home is home all the same and we can wait to get back to clean up the mess.

Until now I always rubbished claims that babies and toddlers were expensive. We get £80odd a month from the government and that more than covers Jake's food and nappies but it's only now when I'm building a bigger kitchen so we can house his toys and then building him a room in our roof, that I realise how bloody expensive he is!

Here's some of what we're up to.

Dadda!

So, after just 18 months, my boy looked up at me and said,

"Dadda"

That was last Sunday morning as we were in bed and Clare was opening her Mother's day cards. The irony of it all!

I've been waiting patiently. Clare's mum has been repeating dadadadadadadadada for the last year or so. He's been saying mamamammamamama for ages so to finally hear him say it was awesome, if long overdue.

He went for his hearing test last week and aced it. They were also happy with his speech development and told us to keep a list on the fridge of the sounds he's making and what we think they might correspond to. Sure enough those words are starting to make sense. Narna is banana, rack-or is tractor and dadda is daddy. So he can talk and his speech is developing nicely. Ever since he sailed through the second operation, this bit is really the only thing we need to worry about regarding the cleft between now and when he goes to school and we monitor possible bullying and then when he's 8 or 9 for the last operation. So it's good he's on the right road.

Separately, I had some nice comments from a lady in Australia who'd found the blog after having had her unborn son's cleft lip diagnosed at her twenty week scan. Whether you're in Oz, Guildford or outer Mongolia you'll immediately go to the web when something like this happens to suck up as much information as possible. It also proves Google works! The longevity of this tome combined with how blogs and search engines work mean that typing in anything from '20 week scan', 'cleft lip and palate blog' or 'probable cleft palate' will usually display What Now?! somewhere near the top. I'm really glad that someone who was searching found something they could take from all of this. It sounds a bit wanky that, and if we hadn't been through all of this, then I'd take the p*ss out of anyone who said such a thing but I do remember the afternoon of our scan vividly. All we wanted was information, before and after photos, and it was all consuming; but for all the medical sites and reports available there wasn't (or at least not when we first had a look around) a personal account of the experience from start to finish. I think we'd have got something from that and I'm pleased to have been able to help in some way.

I've mentioned a couple of times the friend of a friend who emailed me photos of his boy at 18 months after both successful operations. Those were a great help and whilst I didn't know the chap, his empathy was worth so much more than the sympathy we got in spades from all the people we did know.

It's funny how whoever you are, whatever you do, life just circles on. I'm sure the guys who just read this will be passing their experiences on to others in the same situation they're in right now in 18 months' time.

All better

Good news to report that the boy is much better and back to bouncing around the place like he was before. Just a week long blip which seemed like a lot longer. Problem is now that his sleeping isn't great. And when his sleep isn't great, ours isn't either. We had a week of 4 hours' kip a night. Shushing sessions, gallons of Calpol, crossed fingers and 4am arguments. I believe, in the heat of it all, I said I was moving out the night before last.

I find myself constantly worried about going through all that again. We're at the stage where thoughts of number 2 arise. We're not 'trying' (I really hate that expression) but at some point, we will have to consider the timing of it all. I've written on here before that I think you'd always feel guilty about stopping at one child, yet you'd never feel the necessity to add a third to a brood of two; I said to a friend of mine recently that you could always have an 'accident' pregnancy 5 or 6 years after the second and he said that would be just as bad as having an only child. I've never thought of it like that, but there's 11 years between him and his brother and as far as he's concerned he felt like an only child. Maybe he isn't lumbered by some of the behavioural traits that some only children develop, mainly because he's not an only child, but he felt he missed out somehow. There was always this elder brother, but he couldn't relate to him, couldn't bond like he did with his parents. There was always too much of a gap to bridge and at every new stage of each of their lives, the other was at a different one. So, while they're not strangers, they're certainly not mates and it's no one's fault, just bad timing.

And that's the point isn't it; it's about how it affects the child, not our selfish 2.4 children, 4x4, black Labrador, suburban ideal. So, the gap needs to be enough but not too much. I also think that there's a sense of the sooner it starts, the sooner it'll be over. I.E the hell of sleep deprivation. I'm sure it's not just me but I really do think that's head and shoulders the single worst thing about parenthood. I certainly feel that I've got it in me to do it once more but then, unless I have the money for a live in night nanny, I'm done. So, I totally get why people stop at two but also wouldn't judge anyone who stopped at one. I do think you'd regret it in the long term when the memory of sleep deprivation fades.

Hopefully as his appetite gets fully back on track he'll add the extra hour and half to his sleep pattern which is currently missing and that makes all the difference to mum and dad's sanity!

Sick

Jake is not well at the moment. He's had plenty of coughs and colds and a snotty nose for most of his life so far, but this is his biggest illness to date. He's been unable to keep anything down for the last two days and even a sip of water ends up coming back out. I can probably count on less than one hand the number of times he gave us back his milk as a baby so it's especially out of character. Loads of people we know have seen their toddlers go through exactly the same thing recently so we're not overly worried but it's horrible to see nonetheless.

I'm fairly sure it's the norovirus or winter vomiting bug and it's just something he has to get through. For the last 48 hours he's been sleeping and crying. I haven't seen him smile since Tuesday and he's not eaten a thing. Understandable then, that he's not in the best of spirits. Take away my food for that long and I'd tell you all about it too.

He's listless and a bit floppy, exhausted from feeling rubbish and an empty stomach. He just wants to cling onto us and can barely summon the energy to build a proper cry if we have to leave the room. I'm normally quite blasé to the verge of being flippant when it comes to his gripes and sniffles, brushing them aside as something which will help him build his immune system. I think that's just because he normally just cracks on regardless; a runny nose won't stop him running around and wreaking havoc, but this has knocked him off his feet and he's not the same, not even a little bit.

Anyway, I don't wish to be dramatic but it's the first time I've really worried about him in that way. Not worried because I don't think he'll get over it quickly, but worried about how sad it makes him feel and look to us. I can't take it away or make it better. Perhaps the fact that he was up more often last night than when he was new born has also made things seem worse but I can't wait till he's over it and can go back to tearing about the place and being himself again.

Get well soon Jake. x