Rob's Blog

Some time ago I discovered a website – MyDaddyCooks.com – which features videos from a dad who includes his toddler (aged 2-3 depending on the age of the video) in the cooking of the meals he cooks for his family. I loved the idea, but thought there was no way I could keep Izzy’s attention long enough to be able to cook anything edible with her. I also had obvious concerns about the safety of a toddler in a kitchen.

Despite my misgivings I was keen to give it a go, especially as Izzy was starting to take more of an interest in the goings on in the kitchen. The first thing I cooked with her was a simple sausage casserole. I prepared all the ingredients (including browning the sausages) in advance and laid them out on the kitchen table. Everything was done cold and safe. I sat Izzy down on her booster seat and we started.

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This was originally written for the Dads’ pages of the NCT Warwickshire newsletter, but I wanted to share it here too. I’m going to share the story of the birth of my second child Lara who was born at the end of November last year. I wanted to tell it from a dad’s perspective, but I wasn’t planning on taking as big a role as I did.

Firstly a bit of background. When our first child, Izzy, was born in 2009 Abby (my lovely wife and the real hero of this story) had false contractions a couple of weeks before the real thing. Not knowing any different we journeyed to the birthing centre. The contractions eventually subsided, and when the real thing came it was clear there it a big difference between false and real contractions. In the end Izzy was born in under four hours of Abby’s waters breaking so we knew a second one would come along pretty fast.

After Izzy was born we moved down to Leamington. After the lovely experience of giving birth in a midwife-led birthing centre Abby didn’t want to give birth in hospital so she suggested a home birth. I was more than happy to agree, after all hospital is somewhere you go when something’s wrong, and there’s nothing wrong with most births is there? We hired a pool, set it up, and all was ready.

At about 6pm on Saturday night, Abby started having mild contractions. We were obviously quite excited, but aware it could be some time, or that they could even stop entirely. I bathed Izzy and put her to bed as normal, with Abby’s contractions continuing irregularly. Not knowing what the next few hours would bring we had a reasonably early night.

The contractions started to get a bit stronger, and I helped put the TENS machine onto Abby. We still weren’t certain this was it, but it was looking more likely that the new baby would arrive that night, and we even allowed ourselves to get a bit excited.

By midnight the contractions were really affecting her, and we started timing them at about a quarter past. Still, I asked Abby (at the height of a contraction) “are you sure these aren’t real” and she replied (with actual words – something she would not have been able to do last time around) that she wasn’t sure.

At about 12:45 we decided it was probably going to happen that night, but would probably be some time as the contractions weren’t strong enough. I suggested I run Abby a bath to try and relax her and let her get some rest (and maybe even some sleep). I ran the bath and removed the TENS machine (making sure I turned it off first – something I learned from Izzy’s birth – a top tip). Abby had another, stronger, contraction and then started to climb into the bath. Before she even sat down she shouted to me “call the midwife – it’s happening”. Thinking she meant she’d just decided that they were definitely real, I got my phone out and started to dial.

As I was finding the Labour Ward number in my phone, she told me (with a bit more worry in her voice now) “cancel that, ring an ambulance”. At a glance I could see a little blood, and I helped her out of the bath. I calmy (well, relatively calmly) told the operator that my wife was having a baby. I think their first reaction was to assume I was overreacting and that it seems bad for everyone having a baby, but I knew Abby wouldn’t have said to call an ambulance for nothing. It wasn’t until I was following the operator’s instructions and Abby moved her hand out of the way that I could see how keen Lara was to see the world – her head was crowning!

I was told to “apply gentle pressure to prevent tearing”. In fact I was holding her in. As soon as I released a little pressure Lara was born gently into my waiting arms with a couple of pushes from Abby. She was so keen to exit that she came out with one hand up by her shoulder!

I instinctively knew everything was ok. Our new baby was crying, and Abby was barely bleeding (in fact I don’t remember any blood at all). My first thought was to make sure Abby knew everything was ok too, so I just kept saying “you’ve just given birth to a healthy baby girl”.

The call to the ambulance was logged at 00:57. Lara was born at 01:00.

We now were in a rather comical situation. Abby was stark naked bent over the wash basin. I was stood behind holding Lara, who was of course still attached. I knew an ambulance would turn up soon, but they wouldn’t be able to get in if I didn’t let them in! There weren’t even any towels in the bathroom. Izzy (who had been woken by Abby’s cries as she got out of the bath) was in her room crying.

Abby waddled to the bedroom with me following close behind (still holding Lara you see). We then did some complicated twister moves to untangle ourselves so Abby could sit down on the corner of the bed and I could get them both warm. Lara went straight to the breast for her first feed (before the ambulance operator even had a chance to suggest it).

I’d like to rewind for a moment if I may. When Abby told me to ring an ambulance one of my first thoughts was that she may get taken to hospital in a rush. I was aware that Izzy was asleep in her bedroom and if we didn’t have anyone to take her I would have to leave Abby to go on her own. My parents only live a couple of miles away, and were already on standby, so while on my phone to the ambulance operator, I grabbed Abby’s phone and dialed my parents. Unfortunately I couldn’t speak to them (my other call was a little more important), so I just put the phone on the floor in the hope they would at least get up (if in bed) and ready to go, even if they didn’t set off. This meant they heard everything, but had no idea we were on our own! When I did pick up the phone (after the untangling stage) the first thing my mum said to me was “is the midwife there?”!

I went downstairs to open the door for the ambulance. Two turned up. My first reaction was that they’d messed and sent too many, but then I realised there were actually two “patients”: mummy and baby!

Five men traipsed up the stairs (one of the ambulances had a trainee on board). Poor Abby was sitting naked (although admittedly under a quilt) on the corner of the bed when they came in! They soon saw that they weren’t really needed. One crew went back down to their ambulance and the other did a quick examination to see there wasn’t too much bleeding, and helped Abby further up the bed to a more comfortable position. They then made sure the midwife was on the way.

The midwife and her assistant turned up (another trainee?) a short while later. They cut the cord (I declined, having found the first time around a bit disappointing) and gave Abby the injection to help the third stage of labour along (Abby’s request – the third stage was a little difficult with Izzy’s birth). Most of their time was spent doing paperwork, and they eventually left after 3am!

At 3:30am Lara was asleep in her crib but we both had too much adrenaline in our systems to sleep. I decided to go and pour myself a beer, knowing it would be the last one I would be able to manage for a while! The adrenaline soon subsided and I never finished my beer. We went to bed, although it didn’t last for long! The first of many broken nights.

Overall, it was quite a whirlwind experience. I have had a lot of congratulations on delivering Lara, although being quite honest all I did was catch! Abby really did all the work. Even if you discount the birth itself (which was a lot harder for her than me of course) she carried her for 9 months!

I would have thought it would be more worrying and stressful, but whether it was too quick, or whether it was instinct, I wasn’t worried at any point. Being present at Izzy’s birth helped, and of course the preparation our NCT antenatal classes gave us was great. I have heard in general if a baby is coming very quickly, there are unlikely to be any complications.

I don’t think we are planning on a third child, but if we do I think we would have to have a live-in midwife to have a chance of one being present at the birth!

After going through a period of writing a post a day, it’s now been nearly 8 months since my last post.

It’s not like I’ve not had anything going on. The latest development we’ve had is we moved house at the beginning of August. We’ve moved out of York and are now living in Whitnash (near Leamington where I grew up). We’re in a bigger house, and we’re nearer my parents which hopefully means a bit more support with some free childcare. I also don’t need to work from home any more (no more shedworking!), so I have a 2.5 mile commute (by bike or on foot) every day which means I’ll get some much needed exercise!

There is also some news which seems pretty old by now: we’re expecting our second baby in November. This is all pretty exciting, if a little scary, but we’re really looking forward to giving Izzy a brother or sister (we chose not to find out the sex again this time).

The other big news is that Abby has started a business called Izzy’s Mum selling breastfeeding clothes and accessories. She’s been spending what little free time she has sourcing some great products, and I’ve been busy developing a website. It’s still early days (things got put on hold a bit for the move), but things are looking promising.

I think I’ll try and post a bit more regularly again. I keep having ideas for posts, but never get round to writing them. In the mean time, that’s it for now (any bets on how long till the next post!?)

I quite often sell my old stuff (mainly DVD box sets once I’m finished with them) on eBay, but I know you can also sell your stuff on Amazon and Play.com (and probably elsewhere).

I’ve created this simple tool which I’m calling “Make the Most” to help be (and you) calculate which site will let me make the most profit.

It’s pretty simple. You decide what you want to sell, tell it how much posting it will cost, have a look at each site to see how much they are going for, and it will calculate all the fees and tell you how much profit you expect to make on each site. It has to make some assumptions, but it should give you a good idea.

Currently it only has data for CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays, but I may add more shortly (let me know if there are any requests).

Of course there may be bugs, so let me know your comments and suggestions below. I accept no responsibility for any errors etc.

Update (02/02/2010): It would seem from the comments that this was a legitimate request for an autograph! MAybe I’m more famous than I think? Original post continues:

A few days ago I got a surprising email asking for my autograph (full text below). Despite getting literally tens of visitors to this blog per day, I am by no means a celebrity, so this either there is some famous person with my name (so famous I’ve never heard of them), this person is just trying their luck sending hundreds of emails hoping to get a real one or two, or this is some new scam to get my signature and use it to steal my identity.

I’ve searched for the sender of the email (Lalit Kumar Bajaj), and I can only find a few comments on blog posts requesting autographs and not much more, but it could be very new, or could be the scammers (if they are scammers) are using multiple names.

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I am guessing with the number of invites that Google have given me that they aren’t exactly in short supply, but in case anyone still can’t find an invite for Google Wave, let me know and I’d be happy in add you to my invite list.

Once you are on Wave you may find you have no-one to wave to, so check out my list of people who want contacts.

Update July 2015: This review was written 6 years ago, and I’ve been contacted by Nortons Heating. They have expanded significantly and are no longer a one-man-band. They have a premises in York with more staff. It’s great to see a small company grow and become successful, congratulations to them!

Visit their site at nortonsheating.com for more information.

My original post is below, but be aware it’s 6 years old and representative of the current company. Read the rest of this entry »

I just had a customer contact me asking if I had any idea why his email was being rejected by the Yahoo mailservers (which also deal with all BT addresses).

The rejection message said:

554 Message not allowed – [320] (in reply to end of DATA command)

A quick Google search, and a look at the message that was rejected, told me that the time on the sending machine was wrong – it was set 1 month in the future. It seems Yahoo won’t accept mail sent from the future, so if you are getting similar rejection messages check your system clock!

I hope this helps someone.

UPDATE 2011-10-12: After Electronic Megastore seemed to be offline for quite some time I received an email last night from someone claiming to be the new owners of the site. Apparently he bought the site and/or business from the previous owners, and agrees they used to be very dodgy. He (the new owner) claims to be an honest businessman, and quite frankly I have no reason to doubt it.

There’s none of the evidence I list in my original post (kept below), and the domain ownership and other contact details have certainly changed. While I have no first hand experience of buying from this site so cannot recommend it personally, I don’t see any reason not to use it. If you’re still wary they accept Google Checkout (properly it seems, unlike the dodgy claims of their predecessors), and Google Checkout look like they have a good mediation process should anything go wrong. You can also rate the company once you’ve bought from them.

I’ve kept my original post below (I don’t like to delete things), but please be aware that as far as I can tell the complaints are for a totally different company which doesn’t exist any more.

The only slightly dodgy thing I would point out, is that the comment from a supposed satisfied customer (youngbuck) came within half an hour of getting the email from the new owner. Seems like too much of a coincidence to me, but you can hardly blame him for trying to undo the negative publicity!

Original (now out of date) post continues:

I watched last week’s Gadget Show last night (I’m a week behind), and saw their review on the Sanyo Xacti WH1 waterproof camcorder. They listed it as “from £165” which sounded amazing value, and considered buying it. Unfortunately it looks like they made a mistake on the price, as I couldn’t find a price anywhere near it.

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Last weekend we went to  a wedding (at which we had a very good time). We had Izzy with us, for the day, and of course had to feed her.

Abby was all for buying some pouches of mush, but we decided there is no reason we couldn’t continue with our baby led weaning. We chopped up some fruit, put it into small pots, and took it with us. We were provided with a high chair, which is where our first realisation comes. One problem with baby led weaning (at least with Izzy) is we can’t really use plates – she just picks them up and tips them over – we have to put the food onto the highchair tray. This is fine at home, but when out and about you don’t know how clean it is. We wiped it down with a baby wipe, but are going to get some anti-bacterial wipes to keep in the changing bag for future.

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