Colin Seymour

Good-bye Lara Nieve Seymour

2010-03-12T11:15:57+00:00

Lara Nieve Seymour
14 January 2010 - 9 February 2010

Little Snowdrop
The world may never notice if a snowdrop doesn't bloom,
Or even pause to wonder if the petals fall too soon.
But every life that ever forms, or ever comes to be,
Touches the world in some small way for all eternity.
The little one we longed for was swiftly here and gone.
But the love that was then planted is a light that still shines on.
And though our arms are empty, our hearts know what to do.
Every beating of our hearts says that we all love you.

Rest in peace little bear. We love and miss you so much.

[Full Size Image]

Lara's Last Five Days

2010-03-11T16:37:59+00:00

This is the last part of a very long trail of posts about our beautiful daughter, Lara. If you haven't read the first four parts - Build Up To Lara's Birth, Lara's First Week, Lara's Second Week and Lara's Third Week - already, now is a good time to do so and come back. It'll put a lot of what is said here into context.

One word of warning, of all the posts posted so far, this is the longest and most emotional of them all.

This week started off pretty much where the last week finished: Lara was still on the ultra-high calorie feeds of 40ml every 3 hours and seemed quite content. The doctors and nurses were all happy with her progress too. Unfortunately, things started to get a little bumpy on the Saturday night (6 February) when the prostin machine (a syringe pump) started reporting problems with the long line (technically called a peripherally inserted central catheter) going into Lara's left arm. Whenever the syringe pump machine detected that the prostin wasn't flowing, it beeped very very loudly and flashed the message "OCCLUSION" to get people's attention and indicate the problem. I'd been in the room a couple of times before when this had happened, and on each occasion it was due to Lara bending her arm and compressing the line. That night wasn't one of those occasions.

The machine alarm kept screaming and flashing the "OCCLUSION" message over and over again. The nurse would come in, check Lara's vitals, reset the machine and things would be fine for an hour or two before it went off again. At about 2am the doctors decided it was time to move the prostin infusion to the "spare" short line cannula in Lara's left foot. This worked for a while but the nurses soon found that this line was leaking and the prostin wasn't flowing as it should. An on-call doctor was paged and a new short line cannula was inserted into Lara's head with the intention of a new long line being inserted at some point during the day on Sunday. Naturally neither Claire nor Lara got much sleep that night.

The doctors spent quite a bit of time on the Sunday morning attempting to insert another long line, but were having difficulty finding a vein to host it. In the end they had to stick with using a short line and that afternoon Lara was moved to the paediatric high dependency unit (PHDU) in the main hospital where she could be monitored 24/7. It was at this stage that the doctors mentioned that surgery would most likely be brought forward to that Monday or Tuesday, a week earlier than originally planned. This would be confirmed on the Monday when all the cardiologists were in and the surgery roster checked.

I was working that weekend so didn't find out about these events until Sunday afternoon when Claire's dad called me to say things weren't going too well. One of the concerns the doctors had always had with Lara was the amount of time she could be on the prostin. Whilst her body could generally cope with the prostin indefinitely, the veins are usually the limiting factor. In Lara's case, each long line seemed to last about a week of active use with each cannula, even less. I didn't go up that night as there would be no where for me to stay. I was also very tired from working the weekend shift. The nurses in the Bellhouse ward were very kind and allowed Claire to stay in Lara's old room that night.

My original plans for that Monday were to take Claire out into Oxford town centre for the day to give her a break from the hospital. She'd been cooped up in the hospital for neigh on two weeks now with the only "outing" being the occasional short walk up to Headington High street. Given the weekend's events, this plan was very quickly scrapped and I headed up to Oxford with an overnight bag prepared for a long stay. When I left home we hadn't received any news on getting a room provided by the Ronald McDonald House Charity, but given how critical things were, I was prepared to sleep on the floor if I had to. By the time I arrived Claire had been informed a room had become available for us so we could stay there. There is an incredibly high demand for the rooms offered by the Ronald McDonald House Charity so they prioritize things with preference going to those with children in a critical state.

When I arrived, Claire and I went to go see Lara in PHDU. When we got there, the nurse briefed us on the night's and morning's happenings - no much - and explained that Lara was doing well except her post-ductal (ie after the aortic interruption) SpO₂ stats kept dropping to levels they weren't comfortable with, even when she was perfectly relaxed or sleeping. We've seen these levels drop before, but this was usually attributed to crying, a full belly or being poked and prodded by various doctors. As a result they'd put Lara back on the CPAP to try and use air pressure to help keep the stats up. The nurse went on to say that the cardiologist and surgeon would be down at some point later that afternoon to check out Lara and also to go over the consent form required for surgery which had by now been confirmed for the Tuesday morning at 8:15am and then introduced us to a specialist who was monitoring Lara.

Whilst we were having our time with Lara things became scary, very scary and very quickly too. The doctor who was observing Lara started to get a bit concerned. She wasn't happy with Lara's stats so she called the head of the PICU/PHDU who started his own examinations. Between the pair of them and the nurse they discussed Lara and confirmed the cardiologist, Dr Bentham, was busy and would be down to assess Lara further in about an hour and half's time.

With that news, the two doctors there already continued their monitoring and assesses talking between themselves and the nurse. They decided to add some oxygen to the CPAP to try and help bump the levels. Next thing I know Dr Bentham marches into the room - probably within about 15 mins of us being told he'd be 90 more minutes - and proceeded to catch up with the two doctors and nurse.

Their primary concern was that the prostin may not be working enough to keep the ductus open which in turn would be affecting the post-ductal (ie lower body) Sp0₂ stats they were monitoring so they bumped up the postin level quite significantly - they almost doubled the infusion rate. Unfortunately, this seemed to work a little too well and Lara's breathing rate dropped significantly and whilst the doctors didn't panic in anyway, the was definitely a high level of tension in the air and a marked increase in the efficiency and speed of what they were doing. They became a lot more vocal about what they were doing, what they wanted from each other and they just seemed to all fall into place and start working like a well oiled machine. And then it happened. The three words that broke the brave façade I'd been putting on through all of this:

SHE'S NOT BREATHING!!!

That was it. I broke. I burst into tears and ran off. I couldn't take it anymore. Those three words fell on me like a ton of bricks. I knew the doctors and nurses were doing a brilliant job but the suddenness of it all and the sudden realisation that our little girl was not doing well just knocked me for six. Surprisingly, Claire was the strong one here. She remained composed and she was the one who heard what I didn't hear: Lara let out a loud cry. I was so struck by those three words I completely missed the cry Lara let out immediately after the doctors said she wasn't breathing.

It wasn't long before one of the nurses came to tell us that all was well again and Lara was fine. The prostin had actually just relaxed her heart just a little too much. When we got back to her she was back to her normal self with a new long line (Dr Bentham had inserted it whilst we were away) supplying a much lower level of prostin and good looking stats. Even through Lara now had a new long line, they weren't confident how long it would be effective. Dr Bentham was confident he'd be able to get a femoral long line in, but was reluctant to do so as this would be needed during and after surgery and he didn't want to jeopardize Lara's chances of recovery so they stuck with the plan of having surgery the next day. About 30 mins later Lara was moved to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) effectively booking her place and thus ensuring surgery took place the next morning. We spent the rest of the evening with Lara down in PICU and then made our way to our room. Saying good-bye that night was the hardest good-bye of all. Everytime I'd gone to visit Lara, the good-byes got harder and harder and it took me longer and longer to leave. Something about that day's happenings and the fact surgery was the next morning really sunk in and I didn't want to leave Lara that night. I'm pretty sure she didn't want us to go either. I also can't help but feel I saw something in her eyes and facial expression when we left which said she knew what was coming and that that would be our last good-bye.

The next morning Lara went into surgery at 8:15am and the longest day of our lives ensued. The surgeon didn't know how long the surgery would take, but said he'd contact us later that afternoon. Claire and I spent the day anxiously wondering around Headington high street and the hospital until about 5:30pm when we got a call from a PICU nurse: Lara was still in surgery and the surgeon wanted to update us on Lara's progress. We met the surgeon and Dr Bentham in PICU and he informed us that things were not looking good. Lara was still in surgery on the heart bypass machine. The repair of the aortic arch went well and they were happy with the blood pressure in Lara's lower body thus indicating the repair was holding up, however Lara's heart was having problems with accepting the patch for the VSD. Apparently her heart wasn't pumping strong enough to support herself once they'd completed the VSD repair. In order to try and allow Lara's heart to recover, the surgeon said he'd removed the patch and was letting Lara rest with the intentions of trying to repair the VSD later on that evening. Leaving the VSD wasn't an option given it's size and the fact that the aorta was now repaired and working as expected. Apparently the two defects help each other in some strange way when combined, but cause problems on their own. We certainly weren't going to go with having Lara on a "portable" heart-lung bypass machine, possibly in pain and discomfort, on the remote chance her heart would recover in the next few days, weeks or even months. Claire and I have been very adamant and unified on Lara's treatment: we'd do anything necessary, provided she wasn't in any pain. At no point in Lara's treatment had she been in any real pain and given she'd been under anesthetic during surgery this would remain the case.

Devastated, Claire and I returned to our room and waited.

At about 7:30pm we received another call from the PICU nurse asking us to come down to PICU to meet with the surgeon and Dr Bentham. Our hearts sank. We knew this wasn't going to be good news. We headed over to PICU and met the doctors and were given the worst news in the world: our little angel had not made it through the surgery. Her little heart didn't manage to recover enough to support her. The surgeon explained that he wasn't quite sure why Lara's heart couldn't cope with the simpler part of the the operation and said even if the law hadn't required it, he would be referring Lara to the coroner to try and get a better understanding of why her heart had problems with this part of the surgery.

The PICU nurse's training and compassion then kicked in. She was absolutely brilliant. She offered to bring Lara in to us for a last cuddle, suggested making hand and foot prints onto some card and asked if we wanted to bath and dress Lara. We declined the bathing and dressing as we really didn't want to see the scars on her chest but we did agree to the cuddles and the prints. We'll never forget those last, or any of the previous, moments with Lara.

Just over a week after Lara's death we were notified of the coroner's findings. He'd found no signs of malpractice or error by the surgeon or his team and declared the cause of death as acute myocardial ischaemia which I understand to be a lack of blood flow within the heart muscle and very similar to the condition that causes heart attacks in adults.

Despite what other people and the press report about the NHS, Claire and I have experienced nothing but the highest levels of professionalism, care, attention and compassion. The doctors and nurses we've engaged with over the last 6 months have been absolutely brilliant and worth their weight in gold and we couldn't fault them in any way. I hate to think what this would have cost us had we had to pay for all of this and I don't believe the level of care we would have received would have been any better had we had no choice but to pay.

Ever since we found out Lara had a heart problem, we knew things would be tough and there was always a very real chance things would end like this. Whilst we'd been realistic about the possible outcomes from the very beginning, we always tried to look on the bright side. Nothing can prepare you for the loss of a child, no matter how much forewarning you have. We're very grateful for the short period of time we had with our little girl and will cherish and remember every moment for the rest of our lives.

Lara's Third Week

2010-03-10T15:03:22+00:00

This is part four of a very long trail of posts about our beautiful daughter, Lara. If you haven't read the first three parts - Build Up To Lara's Birth, Lara's First Week and Lara's Second Week - already, now is a good time to do so and come back. It'll put a lot of what is said here into context.

Lara's third week didn't start off too well. Unfortunately, her little tummy couldn't always handle the 46ml on every feed - some feeds she'd keep the lot down, others she'd get very uncomfortable and bring up some of her milk. Accordingly, the doctors dropped her feeds back down to 40ml every 3 hours and started supplementing the expressed breast milk (EBM) with SMA Gold to increase the calorie and nutrient profile to try speed the weight gain up a bit. This seemed to be kinder on her tummy and she managed to keep hold of her feeds again.

The end of the 3rd week brought good and bad news. First the bad news: Lara lost weight. She dipped back under 2kg. Apparently the doctors were expecting some weight loss to continue after the diuretics were stopped and her feeds reduced slightly. With these in mind, and given that she'd been more active and appeared strong and healthy, they weren't too concerned by this. They did however decide to keep her feeds at 40ml every 3 hours but change them to be made up of 50% Infatrini (a prescription only high calorie baby milk), 48% breast milk and 2% SMA Gold. The huge boost in calories should have seen her packing on the pounds in no time.

Now the good news. During the doctor's ward round on the Thursday, they tentatively scheduled the surgery for the morning of Monday 15 February. This wasn't set in stone and we were advised that they may need to bring it forward or postpone the operation depending on Lara's health and how she continues to handle the prostin.

As you can no doubt imagine, we were very happy with this news. Finally a little glimpse of light was appearing at the end of the tunnel. We did however hold back a bit as we know things do change.

Other than that, Lara's third week was a very quiet week.

Update: The next post: Lara's Last 5 Days

Note: I've deliberately disabled comments on this and subsequent posts. The final post will however be open for comments.

Lara's Second Week

2010-03-08T19:39:41+00:00

This is part three of a very long trail of posts about our beautiful daughter, Lara. If you haven't read the first two parts - Build Up To Lara's Birth and Lara's First Week - already, now is a good time to do so and come back. It'll put a lot of what is said here into context.

Lara's second week got off to a flying start. She put on 83g literally overnight and rocketed passed the 2kg mark at her weigh-in on 22 January. This was fantastic news as it meant that Lara now qualified to "graduate" to the cardio-respiratory ward (Bellhouse) in the main children's hospital. It also meant...

Lara would be in a ward specially suited to children with problems like hers thus freeing up space for another child who really needs the high intensity care offered by SCBU,
there was space next to each bed so a parent could stay at the hospital if we wanted or needed to and
we could now be placed on the waiting list for a room onsite provided by the Ronald McDonald House Charity.

The last two were the most important for us as up to this point we'd been traveling up to Oxford everyday to see Lara as it was significantly cheaper than staying in a hotel or B&B in Oxford (it is a popular tourist destination after all).

When we left Lara that evening, the nurses were seriously considering moving Lara over to Bellhouse ward that evening (following a short move down the corridor within SCBU) as one of the consultants that's been keeping an eye on her, Dr Bentham (affectionately known as Jamie by all the staff), was working that weekend. By the time we got home, they'd made the decision and moved her, or more precisely, they were forced by an unexpected influx of patients.

We went to visit Lara the next day and wow what a difference. The childrens' hospital is a new, bright and colourful wing in the hospital and the Bellhouse ward is worlds away from the cold and clinical feel of SCBU. Lara was moved to a huge room with 4 other beds, though only one other was occupied, and was given a window slot too.

Lara spent the next five days doing exactly what she was perfectly skilled to do: eat, sleep, poop and grow. During this time she was "upgraded" from the incubator she'd been in since SCBU into a cot. The nurses felt she really wasn't actually using any of the functionality the incubator provided, so they moved her to a cot. This not only made access sooo much easier, it also meant she could start wearing clothes and start enjoying a semi-normal life. Despite all the growing Lara has been doing, seeing her in a cot and her own clothes gave us a real idea of just how small she was. In a word: tiny as you can see when we laid her "friend for life", Pudding, next to her...

The early part of the second week also saw a visit from the geneticists who'd taken some blood samples, photos, x-rays and notes on Lara. I believe they took some samples when she was first born, but needed to gather more information and also get a few answers about Claire and me. Ever since Lara was diagnosed with the heart condition, a genetic cause has always been suspected, especially when it was discovered she was very small for her gestation age. All initial tests hadn't brought up any of the common genetic problems so they were gathering more information to try an asses things on a more in-depth research basis. This would be far more extensive and would take longer than all the other testing. To date (8 March 2010), we've still not heard back from the geneticists, but have been advised by our GP to follow up at the end of March if we've not heard anything by then.

This wasn't the only "upgrade" this week. Later in the week Lara was "upgraded" again, this time to a cubicle room - a private room with a built-in bed for a parent and en-suite facilities. Up to this point Claire had been reluctant to stay as she was still suffering discomfort from the c-section and the bedside bed for the parents was just a low fold-away bed which would have been very tough and painful to get in and out of, not to mention not very private. The cubical room allowed Claire to stay with Lara. I continued to commute back and forth, but only every other day.

The end of the second week saw the doctors up Lara's feeds to 46ml every 3 hours and after a few days they started to suspect she may actually have been retaining fluid (a common side effect of the prostin), so they put her on a diuretic on Friday morning. This worked beautifully as she was soaked through on her first change after the diuretic. As a result, Lara's weight dropped down to 2.09kg (from a high of 2.135kg) but the doctors were happy it was not fluid weight. They were also happy with her progress and told us they'd let her be for the next week and re-assess her on the following Thursday.

All Lara had to do now was lie back, relax and grow.

Update: The next post: Lara's Third Week

Note: I've deliberately disabled comments on this and subsequent posts. The final post will however be open for comments.

Lara's First Week

2010-03-06T14:29:07+00:00

This is part two of a very long trail of posts about our beautiful daughter, Lara. If you haven't read the first part - Build Up To Lara's Birth - already, now is a good time to do so and come back. It'll put a lot of what is said here into context.

Due to Lara's size and heart problems, she was very quickly whipped away to the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) pretty much immediately after birth. Claire was transferred back to the observation ward to recover from the caesarian section.

In SCBU, the doctors and nurses assessed Lara and then:

inserted a cannula into her right arm for the prostaglandin infusion used to keep the ductus arteriosus ⁴ open, (this was moved to the belly button a couple of days later)
inserted a feeding tube in her mouth and down to her stomach, to ensure she could be fed, no matter what,
inserted a nasal cannula to supply her with "continuous positive airway pressure" (CPAP), not for oxygen supplementation just added air pressure,
and attached several monitoring sensors to monitor her heart rate, respiratory rate and spot oxygen saturation (SpO₂)

With all these in place, Lara was placed in an incubator and put on an hourly feeding cycle. All but the nasal cannula would be with her from here on in.

We finally got a chance to see our little one for the second time (the first being minutes after birth) at about 9pm that night. I could have gone and seen her earlier, but that wouldn't have been fair on Claire. I also didn't want to see Lara for the first time on my own. So I waited until Claire was relatively mobile and wheeled her round in a wheelchair, camera in hand, to see our beautiful little girl...

I must say, it was quite scary seeing Lara's tiny little body with all these tubes and wires attached to her, but in a strange way, it was also relatively reassuring knowing that all but the cannula in her arm were there purely for assistive or monitoring purposes: they're weren't essential to keeping her alive and certainly weren't causing her any pain. Other than the heart problems, Lara was a perfectly healthy small baby.

With Lara being so small, she only really had one goal: grow and put on as much weight as possible. First she had to hit 2kg so she could move out of SCBU and onto the paediatric cardiac ward, Bellhouse, over in the main children's hospital. Once there, her next weight goal may as well have been "infinity" as the doctors didn't want to give an exact weight other than to say they wanted her as big as possible before going into surgery. A ball-park figure of 2.5 - 3kg was mentioned in one consultation, but we were told not to set our hearts on this weight: they may intervene earlier, they may allow her to rocket right past before conducting surgery. It all really depended on how she progressed and coped with the prostaglandin infusion.

This first week saw Lara pull out all the stops on the weight gain front: instead of losing weight in the early days, as most new borns do, she put on weight and was up to 1.897kg on the 17th, 1.91kg on the 19th and 1.925kg on the 21st - 119g in 7 days. Not bad at all. During that time she went from hourly feeds of 7ml up to 17ml every 2 hours, all of which were now purely expressed breast milk mostly sent down the tube in her mouth. She did have a few attempts on the boob, but given the CPAP for the first 4 days (it came out on the night of the 18th) in her nose and the fact she was never really given the chance to get hungry thanks to the regular feeds, she didn't really latch on and feed for any particular length of time.

Not wanting to draw too much attention away from Lara, this week also saw Claire being discharged from hospital on the 19th. Once Claire had had her overnight stay in the observation ward following Lara's birth, she was transferred up to a private room (as opposed to a general ward) on the seventh floor to recover. Claire was also very lucky to be allowed to stay for 5 days instead of the normal maximum of 3. We think this was due to a combination of the weekend, Lara's condition and the fact they weren't particularly busy. From a selfish point of view, having Claire discharged on the 19th did have a plus for me: I got to wake up on my birthday with my wife by my side. I also happened to get a birthday wish I'd wished for every year since arriving in the UK: snow on my birthday. The only thing is I deliberately didn't ask for it this year as I didn't want it to affect our chances of visiting Lara. Thankfully it wasn't a particularly heavy snow fall so we had no problems visiting Lara that day. I also got to discover I'd taken what would turn out to be one of my favourite pictures of Lara the day before...

The end of the week saw Lara start her short life as one that gets to travel a lot: she was moved from what we believe was a "higher dependency" room, shared with one other baby, to a slightly "lower dependency" room shared with 5 or 6 other babies. She also got a little stint under the sun lamp to deal with the slight jaundice she'd developed over the last few days...

All in all, the first week was quite a busy and exciting week. Everything was looking good and Claire and I were growing very attached to our little girl.

Update: The next post: Lara's Second Week

Note: I've deliberately disabled comments on this and subsequent posts. The final post will however be open for comments.

Building Up To Lara's Birth

2010-03-04T19:40:15+00:00

As you will have no doubt seen our first child, a lovely little girl, Lara, was born on 14 January 2010 at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford and weighed in at a very petite 1.806kg. I haven't written very much about her since as things have been far from simple but I hope to fill everyone in on the events, dating back to the 20 week scan, over the next few posts. This is to fill everyone in, document our experience and also help come to terms with the whole event.

Back at our 20 week scan (9 Sept 2009), the sonographer detected that Lara was on the small side for her gestation age and suggested we went back 2 weeks later for a growth check and for a more specialist sonographer to check the baby. Two weeks later (23 Sept 2009) we duly attended our appointment in which the sonographer confirmed that Lara was indeed very small, but growing. She also however picked up a problem with Lara's heart. She wasn't quite sure what, but her initial suspicions were the heart was slightly rotated. Accordingly she referred us to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford for an ultrascan to be performed by a fetal cardiologist. A week later (30 September) we headed up to Oxford for our scan with the fetal caridologist - Dr Archer - who sadly confirmed that our sonographer in Reading had indeed spotted something that was very hard to see. Lara did indeed have a heart problem and his initial suspicions were that Lara had a coarctation (narrowing) or complete interruption of the aortic arch ^{1 & 2} and a ventricular septal defect (VSD)³.

As you can imagine, we were absolutely devastated to hear this news and the doctor and an accompanying nurse were very understanding and supportive and gave us more information on the problems, possible cause - short of genetic disorders, they don't really know what causes these problems - and possible outcomes, including termination, and treatment which would involve putting Lara onto a prostaglandin infusion immediately after birth to keep her fetal cardiac system working as it did in the womb - essentially keeping the patent ductus arteriosus ⁴ open and thus providing oxygenated blood to the body - until such time as corrective open heart surgery could take place. The general prognosis was good given no underlying genetic issues were found and that surgery went to plan.

At this point we agreed to an amniocentesis to rule out the 4 common genetic disorders, Down's Syndrome, Edward's syndrome, Turner's Syndrome and Patau syndrome, but also to rule out another likely genetic disorder commonly associated with these cardiac problems: 22q11.2 deletion syndrome also known as DiGeorge Syndrome. About two weeks later we received the results and much to our relief we were all clear for all the genetic disorders tested, though we were cautioned that the 22q11.2 deletion is a lot harder to detect and their testing may not pick up very very small micro-deletions. With this terrific news and given Lara's petite size for her gestation age, we started fortnightly treks up to Oxford for continued growth checks and checks on Lara's heart with another fetal cardiologist, Dr Manning. Dr Manning very quickly confirmed Dr Archer's findings but was more confident Lara had a complete interruption of the aorta and not just a coarctation. She agreed with the suspected VSD.

As the weeks progressed, Lara continued to grow along her chosen, albeit smaller than expected, path and Dr Manning was able to confirm the VSD and interruption. Other than the small growth and heart issues, Lara was behaving as any other baby within the womb so there was nothing further to be concerned about and the plan was to see things through to the original due date of 26 January 2010 and have a normal delivery. As we approached due date the doctors became a bit concerned that Lara's growth was slowing. She was also breech which would make a normal delivery harder and more likely to distress Lara.

On 4 January 2010 we attended what would turn out to be our last appointment with Dr Manning. At this appointment, Dr Manning wanted to see if it was possible to manually turn Lara if she was still breech. During the examination it was found Lara was indeed still breech, but also lying with an extended neck which would make turning very hard without hurting Claire or Lara. It was at that point that Dr Manning decided an elective caesarian section on the following Tuesday (12 January 2010) would be best and the wheels were put in motion and we were told to come in for 7:30am to be "booked in". We were warned that the delivery was however very dependent on there being a bed available in the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) for Lara.

As luck would have it, Mother Nature chose the rest of that week to bring the UK to it's knees again by dumping another huge load of snow on us. Thankfully things cleared up a bit by the Friday so we used public transport to visit the anaesthetist office to go through all the necessary paperwork and pre-surgery discussions. Things continued to clear over the weekend and things were looking good on Tuesday morning when we woke up at some insane time of the morning and made our way up to Oxford for a 7:30am check-in. I was über prepared with a huge bag of snacks and goodies to keep me fed and entertained for the day.

Once there it became a waiting game and at about 9am we were told that there weren't any available beds in SCBU so we'd have to post-pone the birth. Following a bit of to-ing and fro-ing by us and the surgical assistant/nurse and a lot of waiting, it was established that there wasn't likely to be space on the Wednesday either but probably would be on the Thursday, so we headed home with the intention of coming back on the Thursday morning. Wednesday evening we received an unexpected call from Dr Manning asking where we were. I confirmed we were at home and would be heading up the next morning. She'd apparently had had other ideas earlier in the day and had asked the relevant nurses to arrange that we went up and stay the Wednesday evening in preparation for Thursday morning. Given the recent snow falls, she didn't want us to get stuck and miss our "slot". Unfortunately, something got lost somewhere as the first we heard of this plan was when Dr Manning called. With that news, we packed what little we had unpacked and headed up to Oxford again.

That night wasn't the best night either of us have had: both of us were anxious, Claire was on a ward right opposite the noisy nurses' station and I got a bed in the day ward down the corridor.

Anyway, we made it through the night and got the good news the next morning to say a space was available in SCBU and the wheels were put into motion. Soon enough we were downstairs in the delivery suite waiting for Claire to be wheeled away to theatre and for me to join her once she was all setup and ready to go. 12:30 arrived and Claire was wheeled off for her anaesthetic and about 20 mins later I joined her in theatre.

At 13:08 Lara Nieve Seymour made her grand appearance and so began week one of Lara's life outside the womb.

Update: The next post: Lara's First Week.

Note: I've deliberately disabled comments on this and subsequent posts. The final post will however be open for comments.

Insanely Expensive Mouse Pad

2010-02-25T09:11:49+00:00

I bet a lot of people are a bit bummed by the fact they didn't managed to grab one of these babies from Amazon.com before the price went up...

I suppose given the cost of the mouse mat, the $6.44 shipping is quite a bargain :-)

The Libel Reform Campaign

2010-02-17T09:34:15+00:00

You may or may not know this, but the UK is well known for it's rather one-sided libel law. So much so, London is known at the libel capital of the world and regularly sees "libel tourists" - foreigners who travel to the UK just to take advantage of the one-sided libel law to quash any publication they feel is damaging.

I wasn't aware of this until I happened to find myself on the end of an email threatening libel action (reminds me, I really need to write about that email) following several very critical posts about a certain online shopping company's (capitalise the last 3 words yourself) appalling customer service. A quick bit of research on the internet soon found me staring at information which pretty much stated: as an individual without mountains of cash and an army of lawyers, there was very little chance I was going to have any hope of defending my words and standing up for the freedom of expression given current UK libel laws (assuming I had the time or energy to). Naturally, I winced and very reluctantly and begrudgingly made copies of my original posts and changed the published versions to cover my arse.

Today I was pleased to discover there's actually a campaign - The Libel Reform Campaign - set up to try and campaign for our MPs to debate this unfair portion of UK law and implement the suggested changes. The campaign is slowly gaining momentum and has already gathered support from the likes of Ian Hislop, Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry, however as Tesco says: "Every little helps", so I encourage you to sign the petition, even if you're not a UK resident.

If you ARE a UK resident, please also continue through the submission process and let the website email your MP. The Rt Hon John Redwood MP, my local MP, now has an email from me asking him to back this on my behalf. The website provides a template email which you can change to suit your needs. I changed my email to include a little mention about my brush with libel law.

Who knows, if this campaign is successful, I might be able to restore my original posts :-)

Kulula Does Flying 101

2010-02-08T09:12:30+00:00

Claire and I flew with Kulula - a low cost South African airline - on one of our trips to South Africa and we were really impressed with the whole ethos of the company. This is a company that seems to emphasize the "cheerful" part of the old adage: "cheap and cheerful" .

At the time of our flight, Kulula were going for superheroes in a big way: to Kulula, ALL of their passengers are superheroes. At the time all their advertising was pushing this and even the flights we were on had a little "dooo da dooo" announced over the speaker system on take off (just superheroes always do when they take off ;-) ).

Well, it looks like Kulula have another brilliant idea: Flying 101. Check out the new paint job:

So now you know exactly what goes where and what all those little things were for.

Bucket Rattling Chuggers

2010-02-05T15:23:46+00:00

Picture this: it's a lovely cool, clear crisp day. You're walking along the high street enjoying yourself when you hear it: the sound of buckets full of change rattling. You look up and very quickly spot the source of the sound: several people are ahead of you waving buckets and banners purporting to be collecting for charity XYZ. What do you do?

Well, if you're like me, you very quickly change direction or cross to the other side of the street to try and avoid these bucket-rattling "chuggers". Whilst they're not chuggers by the Wikipedia definition, I still refer to them as chuggers as they're still trying to guilt you into making a donation to their cause.

Chuggers have got to be very high up on the list of things I detest most in life. It's not that I'm a scrooge, tightwad or a heartless bast*rd, it's I just object to their methods of raising money for charity in this very anti-social and quite un-charitable manner. The primary reasons I detest this form of raising money for charity are...

Charity is all about giving out of the goodness of your heart, not being forced into donating by someone sending you on a guilt trip or pressuring you into it. As my mum always said: if you're not going to do something with a good grace, don't do it at all.
These chuggers assume you don't already make regular donations to one or more charities of your own choice, either in your own time or directly from your salary. Of course they could just be ignoring this fact.
These chuggers assume you actually agree with their cause. Now I believe charities are needed for some major causes, but some of the charities out there are almost charities for the sake of being charities. I'm not going to name them, but I'm sure you all know of at least one charity that falls in this category.
They're missing the biggest gift-horse and aid to their charity that there is in the UK - the lovely tax feature that is gift aid. If your charity is that important to you, surely you'd prefer your charity received at least £1.25 for every £1 donated. You can't get gift aid on bucket collections.
This method of raising money is so easy to fake and hard to verify that it can easily be used rip off a lot of people under the guise of "collecting for a charitable cause".

Now with an understanding of my dislike for these bucket-rattlers, imagine my chagrin when I arrived at work on Wednesday morning to be confronted by 3 bucket-rattlers in the office foyer collecting for the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal. Yes; this was a terrible event. Yes; all those people in Haiti need all the help they can get. But NO; this is not the way to do it, especially 3 weeks after the event, after everyone has already been bombarded with requests to donate many many times before for the same appeal when it first happened.

Not one to back down on my principles, I greeted all 3 with a very cheery "Good morning" and walked right past them. One of them called out after me: "Shall we come see you later then?" to which I replied "No thank-you" and I went on my way. My opinion of bucket-rattling chuggers was further affirmed when three more people took their place right in front of restaurant doors at lunch time, in our CASHLESS office.

So my message to all those collecting for charity: please please please don't become a bucket-rattling chugger. There are much better and more rewarding methods of collecting for your chosen cause: run the London Marathon, come up with some obscure and courageous challenge or donate some of your time to help the charity directly and increase people's awareness of your charity, just don't resort to using buckets.