#diARyofaGoOgleDad - #4 [We have teeth!!!]

Ladies & gentle men we have TEETH! 

well 3 tiny little ones.

As i write this piece the little man- Excuse me! 'The Emperor' has been speeding around the house like a reckless driver in his stroller why? I will get to that bit later..

Its been seven (7) months of parenting adventure with this little man, and from my end in all this time i may have succeeded in instilling my 'daredevilicity' in my son..lol if thats even a thing.

In my last post #diARyofaGoOgleDad- #3 (The Learners!) i left off at the hospital, a lot has changed since then as one would expect, and unfortunately i haven't had the luxury of time to write about it but i will try now to summarize my 7mnths in the next paragraph.

So in 7months, i.e. about 850 diappers, 7 big jars of Aptamil formula, and probably thousands of mililitres of breast milk later this young man has become an unstoppable ball of energy..lol 

This hasn't come as a surprise to me however we saw signs months ago that he seemed to do things ahead of his time a good example would be his circumcision, yeah that was done way ahead of the 7 days and he handled that pretty well, then the vaccines.. The young man quickly became aware every time we walked into either of our hospitals and placed him on the exam bed that it was time to get pricked. 

He has also displayed certain fears like the fear of blenders and drilling machines (cos we moved recently)... The sound just terrifies him. We didn't realize he was terrified by grinding noises until we noticed how tight he clings and lets go when these machines come on and go off. So to help him every time his mom worked the blender, i would carry him close enough to it so he would see where the noise was from and possibly make him touch it when it was turned off to help him over come the fear. 

Finally in the 7months he has become so addicted to be being thrown in the air that these days he makes me feel like thats all i'm really good for i.e. throwing him in the air. He is always quick to stretch out his arms to me so i can throw him, hence the term 'daredevilicity' which i used earlier- simply put the boy has lost his fear of heights and free fall...lol

The last 3months have been about teething- constant drooling and 'ikanra' along with plenty of Pican teething syrup.  The constant itching of his gum and chewing of every thing in sight is just hard to keep up with, lets just say one of the remote controls in the house didn't make it out of his teething phase alive. 

A while back we started feeding him mashed solids [potatoes, bananas etc.] bit by bit and today for the first time he had Amala and Ewedu, one meal i personally can't stand but my son 'fell my hand' today when his mom fed him Amala, i was half expecting him to turn away in disgust but what did he do? He licked his lips every time like he just discovered the secret to human existence...lol. Which brings me back to his Speeding in the stroller, which i saw him do for the first time today all cos someone tasted Amala, i tried to make a little video of the little 'Amala Bandit' but he was like little Flash leaving glowing amala streaks..LMAO. 

So now I'm thinking maybe the next time we try to feed him Amala we just might need some LASTMA officials at the house...

The Google Dad,

- @gozzim

#diARyofaGoOgleDad- #3 (The Learners!)

So this Christmas day, the Emperor of the Daniels' dynasty turns 6months, so i will dedicate this installment of the series to Nigel the one on whom this entire series is based and the many readers who keep gingering me for more...lol.

So in my last piece of the #diARyofaGoOgleDad #2 of a google dad i said i was going to share the story of how God saved my family from the Negligence of some medical practitioners. 

The thing is, some of these people are negligent not because they haven't been properly trained but because they tend to be over familiar with medical procedures that they trivialize things, they are over worked or they generally lack motivation. After my wife was wheeled into the O.R for the Caesarian i said i found a way to keep an eye on them despite my being locked out. while she was laid on the table i noticed all the activity and stylish delay all cos the Epidural had to be administered. Enter the maniacal and negligent midwife/ nurse who i had earlier picked a fight with for some comment and behaviour she displayed while my wife was in labour first i need to mention that the hospital in question is a very very good hospital in Ikoyi, and that this same hospital offers services as afar as Helivacs/Air Lifts of critical cases to other countries. So the question of why we didn't go abroad shouldn't matter at this point cos without Health insurance abroad there was no way i could afford all that at that point in any country. 

So back to the midwife- after uttering a few words in pidgin- 'abeg no shake o!' she stabs my wife in the spine with the Epidural injection, fortunately for her i didn't see that 'cos she was behind the gurney with my wife on it which was by now standing at steep angle. But i heard my wife scream 'take it easy madam'. at this point i must have been boiling small small. But so as not to distract them i managed to keep my cool and then the Doctors started after a few minutes they discovered after cutting through that the chord had wrapped round my son's neck which we didn't know. if only we had insisted on a 3D scan during labour we would have found out. and of course our genius Drs. (4 of them by the way) didn't think to suggest or check. Thank God she wasn't forced to keep pushing as  it would have been a different story.

Dear Husbands/Men if you have the stomach for it,- NEVER EVER! leave your wife alone in the hands of any Dr. whether Nigerian or Foreign. Keep an eye on them however you can. I said this before and i would say it again: These doctors will cover for each other to protect the Hospital from law suits as evidenced by one of our doctors. Their business means a lot more to them than the lives they are trained to preserve.

So after about 17mins in the O.R i heard a light cry of my son at that point i was scared and didn't know how to process the feeling. I was also deeply worried about my wife too. Nigel was brought out by the Pediatrician and taken to the resuscitation room at that point i went after her to observe her pump out the fluids from his system and clean him up. 

Just a few months before that day my wife shared a story of a close friend of hers who lost her baby because the pediatrician wasn't on ground to resuscitate and suck out the fluids. Think of how painful that is- for a woman to carry a baby for 9months/ or even less and then lose it to senseless unprofessionalism. so this story was on my mind when i stuck with the Pediatrician as she did her thing, after two tries she handed over to a very nice young nurse who by now i had developed a rapport with. I begged her to do the suction thing one more time to be double sure there were no fluids left and she did, cleaned him up and dressed him. I finally got my chance to hold my son.  That was Heaven! if there was ever a point where i was at my weakest and 'humblestest' lol it was that moment. At that moment i had a new level of appreciation for how awesome God is. That he sees us through such a fragile state to adulthood with or without support is simply amazing. So i held my son for the first time even before his mom got a chance to, which wasn't fair anyways but hey what about Grace is fair...lol and then the google parenthood began. About 15minutes later my wife was also wheeled out of the O.P shivering heavily which had me concerned, i would later find out from her and HealthTap that the Epidural does that to the body.

For two straight days my son and wife didn't Eat after birth partly cos my wife was really wiped out by the procedure and all the meds. The guys at google HQ would testify that that in the 3 hours after my son was born somebody with a certain IP made extreme use of their servers. Cos after all i had seen i could no longer just take anything the doctors said without verifying from Google and Healthtap.

What lessons can you learn all this today?

1. Certification doesn't always guarantee Professionalism. Stay on your minders.

2. Never allow frustrated or tired looking Doctors/Nurses/Midwives near you or your family members, thats how many people have died at hospitals

3. Again double check everything you are told. Get a second opinion.

4. get some medical apps on your phones like 'HealthTap' it might come in handy.

Next time i will share the 6month journey from leaving the hospital, the sleepless nights, my sons appetite and more. Thank you for reading along.

- @gozzim

#diARyofaGoOgleDad- #2 (The Welcome!)

This is my third attempt at writing a second installment. I did try to write last on a flight back to Lagos last week but there were just too many distractions. 

So in my previous post i mentioned that you could never be fully prepared for bringing a child into the world not even if you had all the money in the world saved. I recall a conversation i had with IK sometime last year in his car about children, paying, school fees and bills, and how much sense it made to start saving in anticipation of having babies after marriage. That conversation would have made much more sense sense if Nigeria were not so much a peculiar country.

So here we were after 9months of adapting to the psychological and physical changes my wife was experiencing we were almost there. Between visits to a very outspoken Indian Gynecologist and an Elderly Mischievous Nigerian Gynecologist, my wife had no short supply of physical observations to tender, chief of which were her weakening pelvic bones (we had since found out from the internet that it was totally normal). we eventually made it to the 24th of June, at which point my wife was a little over 9months. We had developed a private joke where i called her a 'kidnapper' for holding my son hostage in the oven and not letting him out...lol. 

So that morning we visited the Doctor to get a final verdict, this was only after we had been earlier advised to wait 2weeks for the process to begin naturally. There was still no sign, no broken water, nothing. I was beginning to get worried so while at the Drs. i flipped out my phone and clicked on the HealthTap app on my iPhone to double check some of the medical mumbo jumbo this Dr. was 'spewing'. After that day's consultation we were advised to go get her stuff (which we had already been driving around with for months) and come back later in the evening for her labour to be induced. Little did i know this was me being ushered into a new realm of fear and uncertainty i had never ever experienced.

Don't get me wrong, over the years i seem to have developed a thick skin, call it intentional stubbornness, the things that tend to terrify people hardly ever makes a dent in my Armour of courage but mehn i had no idea. So that evening we went back to the hospital and i felt like my anxiety switch had been flipped on prematurely. 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm nothing then shortly after the nurses walked in and put in some lines and then more waiting till late at night. 

At about 2am i was called that it was time and my wife had to be wheeled to the delivery room so we went down the elevator, I changed into a surgical robe and went in then the mathematical Drs and their crude Dilation calculation techniques came in..lol (wasn't particularly easy for me to watch them measure..). I had seen too many women freak out during labour in movies, and husbands pass out, ever so brave i refused to be any of those men but deep down i had died maybe like 432 times already..lol. That morning of the 25th of June was the day i realized how strong my wife was. I knew she was hard, being a former karate student but this was different. In the next delivery room a woman also in labour constantly screamed and made prophetic declarations to her unborn child to come out, my wife was almost calm ..well she was every 3mins after each contraction but all through it was more moans than screams. I began to worry that the other screaming woman would transmit fear to my wife through the walls. 

My wife had one basic rule in that delivery room. DON'T TOUCH ME! (especially during contractions). 2 of the 3 doctors who checked up on her learned that rule the hard way. I went in to that room initially half expecting to be yelled at and insulted by her during the pain, but na lie o she was even too happy to see me there through the pain when she could actually see...lol.

So for over 14hrs my wife remained in Labour, and i was up by her side all through it all, i was pretty much emotionally destroyed by the 10th hour. For someone like me who had witnessed the gore of spilled brain matter and intestines after cult clashes as a student, i thought that maybe prepared me for this but i was so wrong. After prolonged labour the lead doctor made a decision for a Cesarean to be done at that point i just wanted my Wife and Child out of this situation alive. My wife was immediately wheeled into the theatre  and the medical personnel fearing that i couldn't stand the procedure refused to let me in.

Unfortunately for them i was too emotionally vested to not have eyes on them, so once i observed they were all in the Theater I found a vantage position between one of the doors and began to peek through partly 'cos i was very paranoid and refused to give room for any negligence from them. That was the first part of this ordeal.. 

in my next post i will detail how God saved us from a certain negligent maniac in the theatre and how i found the strength to stay on the Pediatrician after my son was brought out. 

I hope you keep reading and the most important lesson of this post is:

"Never leave anything to chance, during Pregnancy/childbirth. Research everything you hear from the Drs. and know the whys and the Hows and Women ensure you have a loved one around through all this cos as i learned, these Drs. will cover for each other and the hospital to the detriment of the patient. 

I would like to know your thoughts on this post in the comments box below. Thank you for reading.

- @gozzim

#diARyofaGoOgleDad- #1 (meEt NiGeL)

Its been exactly 4months & 12 days since I became a dad for the first time (its also kind of hard for me to to imagine what life was before this little emperor arrived, like how did we survive without him?) and since then i have contemplated if writing about my experiences as a first time dad is even a wise  and safe choice. 

For a while my wife and i decided she would do the writing about our experiences but for some reason i guess she has had her hands full. My interest in writing about these experiences is not just because ours is a peculiar case of parenthood, but that it occurred to us that we are in a culture that provides support from Family members and parents after child birth, but in our case we have had almost no elderly support or 'Omugwo' as people from the Eastern parts of Nigeria call it, why? Both our biological moms are late.

My wife Dammz & the Emperor of the Daniels' Dynasty

The little we know about the right things to do in caring for a new born has been through Google, YouTube, friends and the few experienced & elderly people around us, Hence the title of this series.

This journey started late last year when my humble self scored... well the news of a baby in the human oven didn't seem so overwhelming for me like some said it would, since in my mind i had prepped even before marriage, but you see sometimes its not about your plans but about what God's big picture for your life is. 

I knew our lives and routines were about to change forever, my wife had to stay away from Caffeinated drinks (Coke & co ...lol), I had to drive her to and from work everyday which wasn't a bad experience fast forward 8months and hundreds of Google searches and Dr. Appointments later we had to start driving around town with several bags in the trunk. I have to hand it to my wife at this point, that is one very strong woman. All through the pregnancy, she never fell ill once, save for the gradual softening of her bones and the kicks she had to endure. That whole 9month experience opened me up to a new level of deep respect for women. 

I haven't said anything here some don't already know but the things i will reveal in subsequent posts under the same title about our experiences might help some upcoming parents better prepare for such a time. That said please understand that you can never ever be fully prepared for this life changing experience no matter how hard you try its okay to just do your best, attend your appointments, take the necessary drugs and precautions (for women) and hope and pray for the best. In my next post i will share some details of how i watched my wife for 13hours in labor and how God protected us from the negligence of some people. till next time let me know your thoughts in the comment box below.

- @gozzim