George Makes his first decision

George Makes his first decision
After all the fuss surrounding George’s feeding tube over the last two weeks, with all his care having to be much more complex because he’s got this feeding tube stuck up his nose. And after we had to be taught how to use it and kept in hospital for an extra day while we learnt, and after countless conversations about how it’s never used to feed him except when he’s asleep and we don’t want to wake him up, and after the tube had to be replaced for a more permanent one once his operation was cancelled, before we left the hospital (a procedure which none of us could stand to watch), George finally took matters into his own hands on Friday night.


He decided the whole tube thing was just more trouble than it was worth, and pulled it out.


Good for him! We’d have done the same if we’d had the nerve.


I’ll bet they won’t put it back in now.


Christmas is back on
With George’s operation cancelled, Christmas is back on. In other words, we now have two weeks to buy presents and food and get cards sent out… We spent Saturday in Bromley doing our Christmas shopping – a whirlwind tour which saw almost everything done.

Public transport was a bit surreal – we were told we couldn’t get on the 37 bus because they already had 2 prams: that could be seen as a symptom of living in East Dulwich where people look at you a bit oddly if you haven’t got a pram with you, or it could be a symptom of the 37 bus which appears so infrequently that it’s always overfull. The 37 route claims to operate every 6-8 minutes, but every 30 is more like it. I’m sure this isn’t us being subjective – the people running it must be well aware that they don’t provide a service which lives up to the claims in the timetable.

On the way back, we arrived at Herne Hill station just in time to see a steam train passing through. I was pretty certain it wasn’t the Hogwarts express, but assumed instead that it was probably due in 1935, but was operated on the same timescale as the 37 bus.



George learns to Laugh
George figured out how to laugh for the first time on Saturday. It would have been great if he’d not figured it out at 3am, but his body-clock - and thus ours has been completely thrown out since being in hospital.

Laughing right now is a bit like crying. He makes the same noise, but sometimes he does it with a frown and sometimes he does it with a smile.

The hospital treatment has also had an effect on George’s feeding. Lisa was intending to carry on breastfeeding after this little hole-in-the-heart episode, but because we’ve now switched entirely to the high-fat formula milk, Lisa is less and less able to breastfeed. St Thomas’ were well aware of this issue and made sure Lisa had help and the machinery for expressing – just to keep things going while the formula feeds were being given. When we moved to Kings, that support stopped and Lisa has now all but given up hope of being able to breastfeed George after his operation.

This is rather bizarre on the part of Kings considering the fact that they were the ones who were so obsessed by the idea of breastfeeding when George was first born that they wouldn’t even offer formula milk when George was dehydrated in his first few days of life.