Parenthood – Five in a bed

Parenthood – The Big V

Posted on August 23, 2019August 23, 2019 by Pete

The Pregame

It’s the main thing most men dread above all else. The conversation about the big V, the snip, the 2 house bricks to the crown jewels, the vasectomy.

Nothing will prepare you for this … from 2^nd and 3^rd hand horror stories to just your mind wandering away. Your wife will tell you all about the pain of child birth and that you owe her this.

You will genuinely contemplate just not having sex again until she goes through the menopause, its only 10 years, away right?

She could stay on the pill its only been 25 years it can’t mess up her hormones that much, oh yeah apart from that one time you were late home from the pub and had to hide the kitchen knives.

Fine, I’ll do it stop nagging me woman!

The Main Show

The first and main thing I can tell you is leave your shame at the door, within a few minutes you are going to have 1 or 2 fellas throwing your Johnson about and cupping your nuts while a 3^rd tries to make small talk at the head end like you’re in an interview and a few women wandering about the place for good measure. I sure everyone had a very important tasks at hand, but it does suddenly seem like a lot of people …. I’m sure there was less at all my kids’ births put together!

The pain ranges from what the doctor calls “uncomfortable tugging” and what I call “why is he trying to pull my arsehole out through my belly button?” Right through to “good god man are you trying to save money on anaesthetic!”

The spray …. for some reason they spray what they claim is an antiseptic spray on you afterwards but i swear it was Ralgex!!!

All in all though, it’s not a long operation when you look at it afterwards but at the time it goes on forever. I was in and out back at home in the tighty whitey’s and a bag of peas by lunch time.

The Endgame

You’ll hear macho stories about how some men were back on the building site 10 minutes later carrying 300 bricks on 1 shoulder up 20 flights of stairs.

And!

So!

What!

Well done, have a gold medal.

Balls to that and I mean balls to that, do what the doctors says, take at least 1-2 days sat on your arse doing nothing but swapping frozen peas and watching TV. Don’t even be tempted to lift the kids up, they will kick you in the junk and trust me that hurts like no pain imaginable.

The All clear

Your told to “release” yourself 20 times over the next 16 weeks and part of you wants to joke come on love I could have that knocked out by Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, very quickly despite my tight pants & frozen pea regime I am very quickly carrying 2 black cricket balls where my nuts used to be and the thought of urinating when my balls weight 10kg each is bad enough never mind sorting myself out.

The Aftermath

Now you’re getting this horror story 1^st hand this time and it gets graphic so if you don’t want to know just close your browser now.

Still here?

Well you were warned.

Everything has almost gone back to it’s natural size and no longer carrying round 2 lead weights, the scaring is pretty minimal to be honest, you can barely tell where it was done.

But ….

I used to be able to need to urinate before bed decide not too, go to sleep for 8 hours then wake up and go to the loo. Now I’ve approximately 30 seconds between thinking it and having to go! I’ve turned into one of those 1 beer in 1 pint out people on a night out now. Devastating!

I must also keep the toilet attendant is business with the £1 no spray no lay patter ever time i wash my hands.

A few months down the line and every “perk up” moment is still painful, so it’s kind of worked as I do my best not to see the wife naked in case he perks up and causes me pain rather than pleasure!

Was it worth it? … 50/50

Part of me thinks not considering we needed IVF for the previous additions, but then that peace of mind that there shouldn’t be another 2 appearing anytime soon that makes it worth it.

PoBz

(Father of 3 & no bloody more! with no hair & little sanity left)

Parenthood – The 1st 2 Years

Posted on August 5, 2019August 23, 2019 by Pete

Sleep Deprivation

Almost 2 years in now and the main thing I’ve learnt about twins is they tag team better than the Hardy Boys, seriously as one stops crying the other one starts it’s a constant 24 hour cycle where at this point that coupled with the occasional beatings from the toddlers I reckon I’d stand up pretty well on Channel 4’s SAS Who Dares Wins.

I’m sure they have come up with a game plan to see if they can break someone before they get to school, and to be fair they’ve come close!

Journey

We’ve come a long way in the last 2 years, from the emergency room at NICU through countless operations and appointments, the twins along with their older sibling have survived and adapted probably better than the parents.

2 years in and the eldest is about the leave Pre-school and head to primary and the twins about to go up a class at nursery as well. Adam is making massive strides (literally!) for someone with no balance nerves and developmental issues from being in NICU for so long he’s finally standing up and taking a couple of steps, much to his delight.

A lot of thanks for us surviving this journey can be laid directly at the grandparent’s door. Without them stepping in a helping with the twins we couldn’t have afforded to go back to work, but also mentally we couldn’t have afforded not to go back to work so they have helped more than we can ever appreciate.

So here we stand on the precipice of another life event the eldest about to head to primary school, although I’m sure I had a paper round / working down the pit by his age! An emotional wreck of a mother can be expected on his 1^st day of school, especially as she cried when she just sold her car.

The eldest one going to school & the youngest to slowly heading towards the 30 hours free child places nirvana also means hopefully finances will improve until the inevitable, gymnastics / flute / football / horse riding / astronaut training camps etc. Whatever happened to a ball and a stick and the back street until dawn, psssh kids today 😊

PoBz

(Father of 3 with no hair & little sanity left)

Parenthood – Birth & NICU

Posted on June 4, 2018August 23, 2019 by Pete

The Last Year

The long gap between this and the last blog of just over a year is down to its taken this long to really process what happened to us as a family. It’s a long a twisty ride so strap in and grab a brew and a biscuit or 2!

The Birth

The delivery date was brought forward to perform an emergency caesarean due to increasing pre-eclampsia markers in my wife.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and we were not prepared at all for what happened in the next few hours….

1^st sign was my wife was huge not just twin pregnant huge but huuuuuge.

2^nd Sign was the water breaking and a tsunami being released.

3^rd sign was Twin 2 didn’t cough up his fluid and had to be helped.

I’ll skip the more gory bits for the delicate of mind but if you’ve been at a birth you’ll know.

So back in the recovery room and Twin 1 fed straight away and well, but when we came to feed Twin 2, he very quickly turned blue and started choking.
This was diagnosed by the neonatal paediatrician as a TOF (Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula) and Twin 2 was taken from us and rushed down the M6 to St Mary’s specialist Neonatal unit in Manchester.

I followed him down straight away in my car just stopping to grab a wash bag and a t shirt / underwear, but Mrs S was suffering various effects from the trauma and needed blood transfusions and close monitoring so wasn’t able to come down with twin 1 for 2 more days.

NICU

When in Manchester the team at further diagnosed his problem as a TOF/OA (Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula, Oesophageal Atresia). To put this simply his stomach was attached to his windpipe & his throat was a dead end. This meant as he was feeding it would just fill the dead end and overflow into his windpipe & lungs.

NB: So going back to Signs 1 & 2 he wasn’t recycling his pre birth waste it was just topping up the bag because he couldn’t swallow. Sign 3 was he couldn’t cough up the liquid in his throat.

The surgical team in Manchester worked miracles and managed to reconnect them together (just). They had to paralyse him for a further 48 hours to prevent him moving and tearing the repair. However it had torn slightly and he was under further observations and interventions that kept him alive while his body tried to heal the tear. Meaning all his breathing and feeding was being done by machines / specialist nursing staff.
Once the leak had self-repaired they were able to start feeding him properly and build his strength up enough to come home 2 months after he went in.

Pete

(Father of 3 with no hair / sanity left)