Christmas, Contraptions, and Concussions

The season of family gatherings is upon us again.  And I know, I already posted about family gatherings back at Thanksgiving, but we all know Christmas family gatherings are a whole other ball game.  Christmas is the big one.  And when you have a kid, it's an even bigger deal.  You want him to look cute, and to be good and you've got a stack of pictures of him to give to all of your aunts and uncles and cousins and so on...(remember that my extended family is so big we need to rent churches and community halls to get together).

Our Friesen family gathering was up first this year.  We met in a church in Winnipeg, which is really nice for us because we usually have to drive at least an hour and a half outside of Winnipeg to see our family.  Otto wasn't super happy but he did pretty good.  Our cousin, Mel Weins, had brought this slingy-wrappy baby holder thing that wraps around you and your child in such a way that they have no choice but to be still.  Once it's on, the parent looks like a python that swallowed a baby whole.  Otto loved it.

It's pretty amazing the simple yet ingenious things people have come up with for babies.  For instance, it's been cold and flu season around our house (Kindergarten Teacher + Emergency Doctor = Lots of cold and flu experience).  Babies have to breathe through their nose, but they aren't smart enough to use kleenex, so when they get stuffed up it's pretty frustrating.  So somebody invented something called an aspirator that is essentially a straw that you stick up their nose.  You then use it to suck all the mucous out.  There's got a built in filter so that your child's snot doesn't get in your own mouth.  Genius.  Also, a Bumbo.  I know it's old news already, but why hasn't this thing been around since the 1800's.  It's moulded foam that lets your baby sit up without falling over.  How hard was it to come up with that?

Then there was our Klassen gathering.  It was pretty nice, so I'm told.  I can't remember a lot of it.  Let me explain.

It was in a town called Sommerset.  The idea was to have a mini curling bonspiel.  I didn't want to play.  Lets say that sports and me are like oil and firecrackers.  But I did.  It's curling, after all, what could happen?  Well, I threw a rock and on getting up from throwing said rock I promptly slipped backwards and fell square on my head.  I then continued to curl, but seemed to forget what town I was in.  I went inside to take out my contacts, but kept trying to take out the left one.  I still have no idea where the right one is.  I found my wife and apparently asked her the same question three or four times.  My wife has experience with me and sports and immediately identified I had another concussion.  (Yeah...I said another concussion).  My wife tells me I was saying over and over again, "but I have to study."

The potential of not being able to study was a very real concern.  Concussions are not very conducive to learning.  I'm fortunate to have a very faithful and prayerful family who took very good care of me, including my wife who drove all the way home and let me rest in the passenger seat.  By the time we reached the perimeter I was able to recite all the reasons I did not need a CT scan.  I read a chapter the next day and remembered about as much as I would have expected to pre-concussion.  It looks like I will be ok (although I've got a decent goose egg and a sore back, but that's a small price to pay.)

For future sport consideration, though, I intend on wearing safety goggles when I play darts and a helmet when I go swimming.

As for Otto, he's doing OK.  Like I said, it's flu season and with all these new people holding and hugging and kissing him it was inevitable that he would catch something.  I'm comfortable with him getting sick and I understand that it is an important part of his development.  What I don't understand is how you can poop that much and still gain weight.  He's making more and more sounds every day and has now figured out how to rock himself in one of his chairs by kicking his legs.  He loves it.

So I guess this might be it until after Christmas (realistically).  I hope everyone has a really nice holiday.  Merry Christmas to you from Jeff, Trisha, Otto and of course, Ralph.  I promise all kinds of new Otto pictures after the holiday.

Otto and his new bud, Ben.

Noggins

December 3, 2011
Ottos acquired skills: Smiling, cooing, eating
Working on: Sleeping

Dad's achievements: 41 chapters read.  161 to go.


Studying for me has become a bit like Otto falling asleep.  At first, I will do everything in my power to avoid it.  I whine and fuss, I eat to comfort myself, I may even cry a little.  As hard as I try to avoid it, though, I know it's inevitable.  Eventually my will breaks, and I study.

And just like Otto's sleeping it's been a progressive learning process.  At first I could only read an hour or two at a time.  Then miraculously I read for four hours straight.  Then a few days later, five hours.  And pretty soon, it's not that unusual to read 8 or 10 hours at a time (That analogy doesn't quite work, because Otto can't sleep for 8 hours at a time yet).

Otto needs props to sleep.  He has his swing and his white noise.  For my studying, it's coffee and music.  I'm really happy I haven't lost the ability to listen to music while reading.  I'm discovering and re-discovering all kinds of great music and it's made me kind of happy about spending most of my day tethered to my computer.  Right now I've found that metal and hardcore punk provide the right amount of angst and motivation to get through page-turners like "Peripheral Vascular Disease" and "Fever."  As much as I hoped metal would put Otto right to sleep, though, that's not the case (nothing ever works quite as well as it does in sit-coms).

Christmas has seeped into our house, despite all the pre-occupation with studying and parenting.  Our tree is up.  Otto was awake for a little family decorating time.  We've got some new Christmas music circulating this year, which is nice because as much as I love Christmas music I have a pretty low tolerance for only one album over and over again for an entire month.

Unfortunately, Otto's first Nog's Eve came and went pretty uneventfully.  What's Nog's Eve, you ask? It's a holiday celebrating the "specialness" of Egg Nog.  In order to protect Egg Nog's "specialness" you should only drink it for one month a year (i.e. December).  Therefore, a proper Nog's Eve celebration involves getting together with friends on November 30th, counting down to midnight and enjoying your first glass of cool Nog for the year.

If you're really interested, read this: http://chrisramblingon.blogspot.com/2007/12/nogs-eve-brief-history.html.

We didn't celebrate this year.  Too busy.  I hope we're not so lazy with Otto's first Christmas.

Speaking of Otto, he's turned into a little ball of sunshine.  He smiles, and laughs, and coos.  He makes eye contact.  "Big deal!" you say?  You can do all those things, right?  Well, let me get sappy for a second.  There's something in a baby's smile that just can't be described.  If you could put it in a bottle you'd be a millionaire.  If you don't believe me, I dare you to watch this video and not feel that something inside.

Notorious O.A.K.

Wow.
It's been a really long time.  Sorry about that.  I've been...preoccupied.

Otto is 8 weeks old now!  Can you believe it?  I can't.  It FEELS like it's been much less time.  However, most people agree when they see Otto, it LOOKS like it's been much more time.

Otto is fat.  There, I said it.  Well, maybe not fat...just big.  Really, really big.

Trisha takes him to a mom's group on Tuesdays.  Some of the babies there are weeks older than Otto, but he's still the biggest one.

Today I was showing off pictures of him at work.  A medical student asked me if he was 6 months old.  In my mind I shrugged it off as the medical student not knowing anything about babies.  I scoffed, "No, he's only 8 weeks" (subtext: you know-nothing-med-student).
To which she replied, "Oh, really? because my 5 month old isn't nearly that size."

He wears it well, though, don't you think?  He's solid.  And if he weren't big it just wouldn't be the same.  Like Chris Farrley...no wait, that's not a good comparison.  Like Drew Carrey...no, he wasn't great big or small.  How about, Elvis...no, he was much better small.  Andre the Giant (Anybody want a peanut?)?  Maybe Santa?

I know...like Dolph Lundgren! Remember Rocky 4 when he was HUGE and AWESOME (albeit the bad guy, but still pretty cool) but then he made a bunch of lame movies like I Come in Peace (AKA Dark Angel) and he lost a bunch of weight and it just wasn't the same.  Otto's like that, but not Russian and not a bad guy and not a boxer and not really able to stand or say one liners...

Never mind, no comparisons.  He's big and he's beautiful and I love him to pieces.

He's also already too cool for me.  Trisha took him to Victoria last week-end with her mom and her sisters to celebrate her mom's birthday.  Then, I worked a lot this week and was busy with a bunch of other things.  I hadn't seen Otto much for a while.  Tonight, though, Trisha had to run errands.  It was supposed to be just the boys at home tonight.

I was actually kind of excited when Otto woke up from his nap.  We were going to hang out.  So I cuddled him.  Crying.  I bounced him.  Screaming.  I walked him around.  Hysteria.  I concluded it must be that he was hungry.  I set him down to make a bottle, but as I'm making the bottle I realize that he's not crying anymore.  Lying flat on the ground and staring at the ceiling is somehow more comforting than hanging out with dad.  Tear.  Sigh.  Gentle sob.

Away with Type A

*Disclaimer: For some reason this post is really hard on engineers, residents and people from Kingston. I’m still going to post it because I think it’s kind of funny, but to those included in those groups please realize a lot of it has to do with me having a bad week.*

It's been a while.

I've actually been away from Trisha, Otto and Ralph for five straight days. It was kind of tough. Otto was kind enough to learn how to smile about an hour and a half before I got on a plane. So for about eight hours of travel time (with lay overs) I got to picture all the smiles Trisha was getting without me. I would have been jealous if I didn't consider all the diapers she was getting without me.

The one thing I thought I might benefit from was four nights of uninterrupted sleep. I thought I would come home rested and ready to study and parent and doctor. I was wrong.

Let me explain. This "vacation" was in Kingston. Why does anyone go to Kingston, you ask? Great question.

I'm from Winnipeg. I get it, it's not that rad for a lot of reasons, especially to people who have never been here. But Kingston is a whole different kind of joke. Kingston, it would seem, is not really a city at all. It's a city sized frat house.

The entire population exists in Ugg boots and jogging pants by day. By night, it's a mix of jersey shore-esque douchery, hippy dippy stoner prep ware, or the foreign grad student look. Over lunch I heard a group of thirty-somethings discussing their favourite ultimate Frisbee tournaments. We walked passed several houses with enough boxes of empty beer bottles out front to build a fort. One such house had three young men who had obviously just woken up. They were sitting out front staring blankly and speechlessly into the two PM daylight. At least one of them appeared to have slept in the back of his father's Suburban, which sat open next to them half on the lawn. This SUV contained about four pounds of whey protein/creatine, a pillow and an economics text book.

The sidewalks are peppered with splatter marks and on at least three occasions these splatter marks still contained fresh vomit. It is easy to presume that most of those splatter other marks were also made by some sort of bodily fluid. At least all the old buildings are classy.

Everyone wears school jackets. I didn't think anyone wore school jackets. Not only do they wear them, they torture and dye them by faculty-specific colours in some sort of ritualized dorkishness. On a nerdiness scale it makes Comic Con look like the Super Bowl. At first I thought it was just the engineers. This seemed acceptable to me because in general that faculty has a well known, nation wide communal thought/personality disorder. But it goes beyond engineering and even includes...medicine. If you ask me, there is a severe vacuum for a counter culture movement. If you’re wanting to start a revolution, Queens University is in desperate need of someone with independent thought and who ISN'T willing to sacrifice personal safety or fashion sense in the name of school spirit.

I think a great tag line for Queens university might be, "Queens: Is this the real life?" or, "Queens: I don't want to break free."

The reason I was at Queens was for a national review course for the Royal College licensing exam i have coming up in May. If you think it's stressful spending time around a one month old, try spending 5 days crammed in a room with overconfident, type A personalities from across the country that are either:

A) discovering that they don't know everything or,

B) trying to prove they do know everything.

I can make fun because I'm in no way immune to this, but on the "stressed out" spectrum of emergency medical residents I can pretty confidently say I'm way below average.

In all, a lot of people were able to put their neuroticism aside and I got to meet some descent people and I also got to spend some quality time with my fellow Winnipeg residents. That said, I missed Otto and Trisha and even Ralph like crazy.

It's really nice to be home. Otto is HUGE! It's amazing what can happen in 5 days. If it weren't for FaceTime and being able to see him for a few seconds each day, I may not have recognized him. He's still smiling a lot, which is a lot of fun. Today is Halloween. We dressed up. Don't you just hate it when parents force their own nerdy agenda on their children?

The Cloud (Otto's one month birthday)

WE MADE IT! Otto's first month is in the books. Happy birthday, dude. Mom and dad love ya.

Otto Month One from Jeffrey Klassen on Vimeo.

Since I last posted I've gone back to work. I had an amazing four weeks hanging out with Trisha, Otto and Ralph, but I can't avoid the real world any longer.

That means I've essentially stopped getting up at night. Don't be too impressed. My overnight involvement has been tapering off over the course of a couple weeks. It's not for lack of wanting to help, but more for lack of having breasts. Eventually it ended up being me sitting on the floor reading a comic book waiting for my 20 second opportunity to burp the little guy. My wife very kindly started insisting I go to bed. She's the best, by the way, although sitting and reading comics on the floor in front of her at 4 am, I may have been more of an annoyance/disappointment than a help.

It's funny how nighttime changes as you progress through adulthood. When you first get married, nighttime is an incredibly useful resource for either working or having fun. You can go to late concerts or just hang out with friends, occasionally making the sacrifice of being a little tired the next day. As far as the work part, nighttime is always in your back pocket to study for six hours or get a presentation ready and coffee is a completely practical sleep substitute. You're able to do that because (a) you are young and (b) there is always an upcoming buffer time when you can sleep and catch up.

After a few years, though, it's less easy using nighttime usefully. Sleep becomes more and more valuable and, for some ideosyncratic reason, those buffers become fewer and farther in between. Pretty soon you'd rather watch a bad Jackie Chan movie at home than go to a late concert and drinking coffee after 3:30pm seems as risky as sharing needles on Furby Street.

This progression towards sleep dependence continues into your late twenties or early thirties and then, as if by some cruel joke, God gives you children.

For the last month, nighttime has been a looming cloud that is ominously and inevitably approaching. At around 8:00pm we begin frantically trying to predict how this storm cloud may play out, like a weather man with binoculars and a twelve sided die.

"He's eating now so I should cut him off early so he eats again at ten. We won't bundle him so he only gets a light sleep now but we'll double bundle him later. I'm going to close my eyes, but don't let me fall asleep. Turn the heat down one degree now then up three degrees in twenty minutes. And why are you jiggling him in a right obliquely horizontal, 33 beat-per-minute frequency now? That's his 9:45 jiggle routine!"

But it makes no difference. It gets dark outside, and your house turns into a twilight zone of sleep deprivation and disorientation.

How long have I been asleep in this chair? Is it today or yesterday? Did I just change him or did I just think about changing him? I think he just said, "mastodon."

My wife and I stagger through the fog, occasionally having intelligible interactions with each other. In fact, I have apparently had entire conversations at night I can't remember in the morning.Trisha says I've even given some good advice. I've gone to the bathroom, checked on the dog, and taken out trash at 3 in the morning and woken up the next day remembering nothing and wondering why I'm tired.

So in conclusion, let me say thanks again to my wonderful, beautiful wife for taking on "the cloud" on her own. Love you.

Is he broken? Did we break him?

I have noticed that I really haven't had a conversation with anybody in the last 4 weeks without talking about Otto. That's normal, I think. At least, as far as I can remember from all our friends who had kids, once you've had them that's what you talk about.

What I didn't expect was how most of these conversations would go. I expected to be proud and to talk about how cute he is and all the cute stuff he does...but that's not what we talk about at all.

Conversations about Otto are mostly about seeking guidance. You see, we may talk about something cute he did or a cute feature he has, but that is promptly followed by the question, "Is that normal?"

Having a kid is a little (very little) like owning a complicated, high maintenance, adorable computer. Talking to friends is like phoning a computer help line...except you don't really know if your computer is broken or not. In fact you don't even know what your computer is supposed to be doing, but your concerned that whatever it is doing is not correct. You're proud of this computer and you show it off to everyone that comes to your house, but you can't figure out how to print or how to save or how to plug it in. Whenever your computer does something that concerns you, you are convinced it is because you didn't program it right. And you're pretty sure you only get one shot at programming it and if you screw it up your life will be ruined. The irony is that the people you have sought out for help own a completely different brand of computers, and are equally concerned that they screwed their computers up, they've just had them a bit longer so they know the bugs.

(That was a long analogy...sorry. I think I am working through some frustrations with Apple this week).

He only sleeps 3 hours at a time...is that normal?

He eats SOOO much...is that what your kid did?

His poop looks like this? That can't be right, can it?

When I hold him upside down and jiggle him in a counter clockwise motion he makes a sound like: vrrrrrrrrrrr. Do you think he'll have asthma?

Lucky for us, EVERYBODY is ready to give advice.

"My kid slept 6 hours a night from the moment he was born and it's all because I did 14 jumping jacks before I breast fed and then whistled "Patience" by Guns and Roses to put him to sleep."

"You can't swaddle him like that or he'll develop weak shoulders and probably be depressed when he tries to do push-ups as a teenager."

"I've heard that soother causes fibromyalgia in 62% of children."

Of course, a lot of comments are followed up with something like, "Oh, wait, that's not right, I can't really remember. Maybe we did the opposite."

(Note: Very many people have given us very useful advice and we thank you very much.)

And then there's the books you get referred to. One will say that you MUST hold your child constantly for three months. Another says if you even touch your child before age 3 they will probably never go to college. Feed your child exactly 13 minutes BEFORE they start to cry. Never feed your child until they've cried for an hour and half.

In the end it's all very confusing and frustrating and you cry a little (a lot) from time to time.

The embarrassing part is, well ... I'm a doctor.

I've worked in Children's Emergency. I thought I had all this parenting thing down BECAUSE I've given advice. I mean, a lot of advice. And while I still don't think it's justified to show up to emergency with your 2 year old at 3:30 in the morning because they pulled on their ear twice and then went back to bed, I do get it now (a little). It's stressful. And you worry about EVERYTHING. And I realize more than ever that when I tell a parent that it's "just colic" or that they should just "ride out the fussiness" or that "this cluster feeding is normal," going home and living with it is a whole other story.

So I think what I've leaned this week is, whether you get advice from your mother-in-law, your doctor, or a granny covered in cat hair in line at Safeway, advice and life are different.

One night last week Otto fell asleep in his swing, so we left him there and he slept 3 hours (that's his upper limit). So after we fed him we put him back in the swing and he slept another 3 hours. And then a third time. Trisha felt guilty. None of the books said that was okay. What if he got dependant on the swing? But when we woke up after actually getting 8 hour of sleep over a 12 hour period, I knew it didn't matter, it was worth it. We were both human again.

I call it the Swing Maneuver. I'm thinking about writing a book about it.

The Virtual Family Gathering

Well I hope everyone's thanksgiving was great. (all the Canadians, anyways. Don't worry, Americans, you can wait a while before you have to be thankful)

We saw a lot of family this weekend. We took our first long road trip with Otto (all the way to Morden). Ralph and Otto slept soundly all the way there while mom quizzed dad on the differential diagnoses of ST elevation on EKGs. You know, the usual thanksgiving stuff.

However, we didn't see ALL my family or Trisha's family. I feel bad because I really want to show Otto off while he is (somewhat) little. So I turn to the Internet to solve this problem (the Internet solves most of my problems...the Internet and coffee).

In order to recreate the family gathering experience, here are the Klassen Family Thanksgiving FAQ's, derived by statistical analysis of all the questions we were asked at the three family gatherings we did make it to. To complete the virtual family gathering environment, turn the heat up in your house to 32 degrees Celsius and turn two television sets on at full volume, one playing the Maury Show and the other playing the last 30 minutes of Home Alone on a continuous loop.

1) How are you doing? Are you tired?

Yes

2) How does Otto feed?

He sucks on my wife's breast until milk comes out, then he swallows it.

3) Jeff, that's not funny, I meant is he a good eater?

Otto eats in 6 distinct steps.

Step 1: He begins dead asleep. He is so completely asleep you can lift his arm up and it flops down completely limp and lifeless. Remember when the British Bulldog would get Jake the Snake into a sleeper hold and the ref would lift Jake's hand and then drop it to see if he was unconscious? It's kind of like that. He sleeps so deeply you can hold his hand over his face and his palm will flop squarely on his forehead. Of course, I haven't done this (very often).

Step 2: Otto is awoken by hunger and promptly LOSES HIS MIND! The most impressive part is the time from the beginning of step one to the end of step two is about 3 seconds.

Step 3: Otto then attempts to swallow my wife whole.

Step 4: Otto realizes he is still hungry after a whole 4 seconds of eating. He decides this is unacceptable and seems to expect instant gratification (first world problems). Once again he LOSES HIS MIND!

Step 5: With consoling, coddling, encouraging, and coercion we manage to get small amounts of milk into Otto's belly.

Step 6: Otto falls asleep with a mouthful of milk +/- poops his pants.

4) Does he sleep well?

Hmmm. Compared to his parents, yes.

He sleeps a lot like an on call surgeon: at best he sleeps 1-3 hours at a time when he can while a lot of other people look after the details of his life. He demands a lot of attention when he wakes up and nobody wants to wake him unless they absolutely have to because they're not sure how he'll react.

5) Most people ask one of the following two questions:

5a) Wow! He's so big! How much does he weigh?

Yeah, I know, he's huge! He's over 10 pounds!

5b) Wow! I can't believe how small he is! How much does he weigh?

Yeah, I know, isn't he precious! He's just over 10 pounds!

There you have it.

We also got some awesome gifts. Thanks to all my family who thought of us and got Otto something. He seemed like he didn't appreciate, I know, but he did. Trust me.

One gift I have to highlight is this toque (or winter hat or noggin toboggan for some of my international readers):

My cousin, Kaylee Sawatzky, made this hat in three hours! She saw that we had an owl theme going on in Otto's room so she woke up the morning of the family gathering and started making it and three hours later, there was a hat where there was no hat before. Amazing. He might need to grow into it, but we're excited.

Otto's inspired a lot of art and craft around our house. My mother-in-law made us stacks of awesome blankets:

My wife sewed these super owlish curtains:

I drew a couple pictures that we framed for his wall:

And I made this mobile (I call it the Otto-mobile):

Not bad, huh?

To end the post today, some awesome rock and roll dog and kid photo shoot photo shots, including laser eyes and lil' lumberjack. Otto's outfit, by the way, is the outfit I wore home from the hospital when I was born. It is very Bruce Springstein. My mom gave it to me this weekend. Boss.

Air guitar! Solo face! Intensity!