Sophie Rose - One Year On

Sophy's Rose first bloom, October 2012

My blogs this week are likely to be a little disordered, so please bear with me, my friends!

I tried to write this blog yesterday, on what would have been Sophie's 1st birthday, but there seemed to be a gremlin in the system and I wasn't able to access my blog.  Perhaps that was meant to be.

Sophie - an early scan

I heard the term "Angel Day" used this week, as opposed to birthday or anniversary, and I think I will adopt it from now on.  30th of October, Sophie's Angel Day.  I've been pondering the custom of celebrating birthdays - another year of our lives lived, and thinking about what a worthy tradition it is, since life is way more precarious than we in the western world appreciate.  Certainly way more precarious than I realized, before 29th October 2011, when an ultrasound confirmed that Sophie's heart was no longer beating.  It's worth celebrating every additional year beyond birth that our children live.  Before the discovery of antibiotics in the early part of last century, infectious diseases were the leading cause of death of children.  These days, if a child dies from a microbial infection, we in the western world tend to be surprised and outraged, and demand to know why.  Due to advances in medical technology, we think we have the "right" to a health baby, and a healthy life.  Medical technology is marvellous, but we do tend to think it can cure all, and things like pregnancy loss and disability only happen to other people, not to us or people we know.

In countries much less affluent than ours, people see death on a weekly or even daily basis, it is not a stranger to them, and I believe they are much better at accepting it, and dealing with grief (I will write a thesis on this later!!)  In our comfortable world, we use family planning to determine the number of children we have, and medical technology such as physiological intensive care keeps people, babies included, alive, and sometimes they do recover and go on to live long lives.

Since I'm indulging myself today in this monologue, I'll go on to tell you that, had Sophie been born alive, she would have most likely only lived for a few minutes / hours, or gone straight to the neonatal intensive care unit and died there.  I've often reflected on how grateful I am that she died in utero, and we didn't have the added trauma of seeing her slowly slip away with many tubes attached to her.  But maybe we would not have minded that, as long as she was still alive.  We will never know.  You see, Sophie died from a viral infection.  When an ultrasound confirmed that her heart was no longer beating, it looked like a simple case of "cord accident", as the ultrasound showed that the umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around her neck several times.  A senior Obstetric consultant advised us to consent to an autopsy, since, in his experience, whenever there is a cord problem, there is almost always something else going on, and restriction of blood flow is simply the last straw.  He described to us that you can take an umbilical cord, tie it in a knot, pull it tight, and as soon as you let it go, the knot springs open again, due to the gelatinous Wharton's Jelly present in the cord.  The only case of death due to true cord accident that he had seen in his career (where no other cause could be determined) was a case where, due to a genetic anomaly, there was no Wharton's Jelly present in the cord.  And he was correct in Sophie's case.  Autopsy revealed that a viral infection ravaged her body.  She had severe anaemia, and evidence of inflammation and viral infection in every major organ in her body.  Yet despite this, she grew to a normal size, moved normally in the womb, had a heart rate within the normal range, and to all outside observers, was a normally developing baby.  Isn't the human body amazing that it can do all this despite fighting for its life?!?  Both Sophie and I were tested for all the microbes (viral, bacterial, fungal) that are known to cause sickness and death in babies, but none of the tests were positive.  And do you know what - even if the virus had been identified, and I lobbied the government to introduce viral testing of some sort for all pregnant women, it would not have changed the outcome for Sophie.  There is precious little treatment for viral infections, even in our medically advanced world.  Medicine can provide physiological support, but the fact that viruses hide inside our body's cells makes killing them difficult.

The odds in most Australian baby books tell us that 1/4 pregnancies end in a loss before 20 weeks, and 1/135 end in stillbirth (death in utero between 20 weeks gestation and birth). Pretty scary odds, that you don't want to dwell on too much when you're pregnant or trying to become pregnant.  Due to the nature of genetic recombination and assortment that occurs when sperm and eggs are generated, every individual that is conceived is unique, and contains a genetic code that has never before been tested.  You don't know whether that code is going to "work" or not.  It may, by chance, contain disruptions in genes essential to life.

When I was pregnant with Nicole, I used to be offended if people touched my belly without my permission.  Once Nicole was born, I sometimes took offense if people touched her and cooed at her without my permission.  But now I see things differently.  A baby that makes it from conception to birth, alive, has already run a tremendous race. These people (mostly women, mostly older than me) who desired to celebrate Nicole's alive-ness were much wiser than I.  They knew how precious life is.  They knew that a happy healthy baby cannot be taken for granted.  

Sophie, just born

Now I know too.

The Delica Exhaust Project

In mid 2011, we began looking for a replacement car, one that would accommodate 3 children's car seats across the back. Our beloved Subaru L-series is too narrow, and only has 2 anchor points anyhow.  We settled on a Mitsubishi Delica.   In Australia, Delicas can only be acquired 2nd hand, or as a grey import.  We went through JSPEC, an importer based interstate, and they did a brilliant job for us.  Sadly, Sophie died while the Deli was in transit to Australia from Japan, but we went ahead with it anyway, and we are really glad that we did.
Ben compiled a long wish list of things he'd like to modify to strengthen the car for the purposes we have in mind - i.e. 4wd adventures.  The back lift and bigger wheels/tyres happened pretty soon after we got the car.  The first time I took the newly lifted Deli to school pickup, many jokes were made about needing a step ladder to climb into the car, and the hazards of underground carparks.
Ben's current project is a stainless steel exhaust system.  It has a wider bore than the standard, and some other modifications to increase efficiency of the process.  With his relatively new TIG welder, Ben has bought stainless steel pipes of various shapes, and manufactured the exhaust pipe himself.  I know that Ben is clever, but I still love the fact that I can marvel at what he can do.When he upgraded the exhaust system on his red Ford ute a few years ago, he tried to sell it to me like he was saving the planet.
 

 "Kate, I'd really like to fit extractors to the ute, it'll make the exhaust much more efficient, with less damaging emissions."

 It sounded like a fang exhaust to me, and I teased him about it.  "Ohhh, maybe!" he admitted.  That's OK, boys like their fang cars, it nurtures the adrenaline junkie in them.

    Of course, when he mentioned the upgrade to the Deli's exhaust, "fang" exhaust did cross my mind.

As we relaxed with Ben's parents last night after dinner, Ben was giving them the progress update on the exhaust project.  Ben's dad asked him "So, Ben, what kind of muffler are you using for the new one?"  Ben smiled.  "What muffler?!?" he replied.
I knew it.  A fang exhaust.

Slow Food - Part 4

I'm sad to report that Tilly, the Cauliflower-leaf-eating-chicken, died this week.  Old age I think, possibly compounded by a mite infestation brought in by the visiting chooks.  We buried her in the front garden and put some flowers on the top of the soil.  We are currently looking after our neighbours' 4 chickens, so we are not short of a chicken around here.  The first few nights the visiting chooks spent here, they slept in the diagonally opposite corner to the resident chooks.  Them and Us.  Gradually they became accustomed to each other, and now they are integrated (as in the photo above).  Well almost integrated.  I'm sad to say that "Blackie" is the bottom of the pecking order.  Did you notice the white powder on the perches and the top of the nesting box?  That's to eliminate any residual mites that may choose to hide in the wood.  Since we treated the flock for mites a week ago, egg production has moved from 2 per day to 5 per day.  What a lot of bounty to share with family and friends.  The kids have named the visiting chickens Blackie, Pearl, Flakey, and Angel.  Flakey had scales flaking off her feet - that's what alerted us to the mite infection.  That, and Blackie was pecking Flakey's bottom!  Eating mites, one assumes.  A bit difficult for a chicken to peck it's own bottom I guess.  My Clever Ben made both the perches and the nesting boxes.

The surplus of eggs brings me to the subject of today's blog, which is SLOW FOOD.  A little while ago, I committed to cooking my way through the Green and Gold cookbook, which many Adelaideans have a copy of.  I flipped straight to the puddings section, and chose Bread and Butter pudding, to take advantage of yesterday's stale bread.  It makes perfect sense when you are baking your own bread, sans preservatives, to use it the next day for pudding, that is, if the chickens haven't been given the scraps first.  Yum Yum Yum.  One recipe down, several hundred to go!