Hvem ligner hun?
Hvem ligner Anna?
Mange siger, hun ligner mig, andre, at hun ligner sin mor, og andre forslag har inkluderet min mor, Phyllis’ mor, min far, min søster, Ursula, Léon, Charlotte og Marcel.
Her er nogle babybilleder af Anna, mig, min søster og Phyllis, så kan I selv vurdere, hvem hun p.t. ligner mest.
A late surge
I blogged this Christmas card last year:
It didn’t seem to be wildly noticed at the time, but last Monday I suddenly got 400 blog visitors in a day (compared to the usual 20-30), and it seems to have been caused by this, probably through this link.
Anyway, Merry Christmas!
Hearing test
Anna had her hearing tested when she was one day old.
They mounted electrodes on her head and neck, put on some fancy headphones and then played noises and measured through the electrodes whether her brain registered them. She was asleep half the time, but it still worked fine (and her hearing was just fine, by the way).
I think it’s so much better to measure it electronically and at an early age. In Denmark, they seemingly still do it the old-fashioned way, and it’s just not nearly as precise.
For instance, what happened when my niece Ursula had her hearing test at eight months was this: The nurse stood behind her and made a noise to the left. Ursula turned her head and looked at her. She then made a similar noise to the right, but this time Ursula had figured out what was happening, so she didn’t bother doing looking, and the nurse therefore thought she was deaf in her right ear. It took weeks till she got a proper test and established that their was nothing wrong with her hearing in the first instance.
Five minutes after birth
I took this wee video clip five minutes after Anna Bridget was born:
I’ve had some problems uploading videos to YouTube from the new Sony HDD camcorder my parents gave us because of the file sizes and the 16:9 format, but I found some useful advice here – use mencoder and the following options:
mencoder infile.mpg -o outfile.avi \
-ovc lavc -oac mp3lame \
-vf-add kerndeint \
-vf-add hqdn3d \
-vf-add unsharp=cl:3x3:1 \
-vf-add scale=320:180,expand=320:240 -ofps 30 \
-lavcopts vhq:vcodec=mpeg4:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=8000:vbitrate=8000:v4mv:aspect=4/3:trell:cbp \
-ffourcc XVID
Triage complacency
When Phyllis and I went to the hospital after the waters broke, we naturally had to go to triage in the first instance – it’s their job to check the stage of labour and send people home or to the delivery suites as appropriate.
The midwife there gave Phyllis an internal examination shortly after 2am and said she was only between one and two cm dilated, so she was wondering whether to send her home till the morning. Phyllis persuaded her to let her stay, but she would only put her up in the normal ward, and she told me to either go home or wait in the reception.
Fortunately, I chose the latter, since I had to wait there for less than an hour before another midwife got me, saying that Phyllis was now six to seven cm dilated (birth starts at ten).
I thus went to the delivery suite with her for the birth that happened less than an hour later, so everything was well, but I’m getting angry at the thought that I could so easily have missed birth if I had listened to the silly triage midwife!
Of course most births happen more slowly, but she should know that it varies wildly and not make decisions that could have horrible effects. In fact, although I didn’t suffer this time, Phyllis had to suffer horrible contractions alone in a ward not designed for labour, and if she hadn’t had the sense to call a midwife soon after she got there, she would probably have given birth alone in a normal bed.
I really think the triage midwife should have looked at how Phyllis looked and not just at her measurements, and she should have given her an extra internal after an hour to check progress before sending her to the other ward.
If she always performs her job like that, no wonder that some mothers give birth in supermarkets and traffic jams!
Far
On 19 December 2007, at 4.24 a.m., Phyllis and I had a daughter: Anna Bridget Buchanan-Widmann. She is beautiful, weighs 3400 g and is 50 cm long.
Everything went well, but really fast: Phyllis woke me up at 1 a.m., we arrived at the Queen Mum’s at 2 a.m., at 2.45 I was asked to wait in the reception (or go home) because birth wasn’t imminent, at 3.45 they told me to return as birth was about to start, at 4.24 I could see the crown of the head, and less than a minute later she was outside and I could cut the cord.
I’ve uploaded some photos.
It’ll be interesting to find out what she’ll call me – far (Danish for “father”), daddy or Thomas (like her siblings).
Blog block
I haven’t blogged for a wee while now. 
I think it’s because Phyllis keeps having contractions, and I keep thinking birth is imminent, and then I think other things are more important for the moment.
I expect to come back blogging with a vengeance once I’m on paternity leave!
