Time surely flies... Fei just turned 3 months and he has come a long way from the tiny little baby he was just a few short weeks ago.

Mentally speaking, he is showing more and more personality. He can entertain himself for extended periods of time, and he is genuinely really happy when a familiar face appears in sight.

It's getting quite obvious that he got his mom's temper, unfortunately. He is most of the time a really happy baby but if something happens that he doesn't like, and the situation isn't fixed at the very instant, he tends to get very upset and make a lot of noise.

Fortunately he is good at calming down too. We've noticed he is especially easy to calm down by talking, which is a little surprising. For whatever reason he seems to like me quite a bit and often it is enough that I pick him, look him in the eyes and explain what is going on... I guess he probably doesn't understand what I'm saying, but it works. He will go from crying to kind of loud talking, something like telling me what happened. I usually respond to him, telling I agree and I understand how he feels, which amuses Wen a lot. Usually after a short conversation like this he starts to smile become the usually happy baby he is!

Physically he is quite a strong boy already. He likes to do "sit-ups", which means that he gets up from laying down to sitting position, assisted by someone pulling his hands. He usually finishes the movement by attempting to stand up by straightening his legs. He can pretty much do this, especially with slight support, but I don't like to let him stay that way so I just continue the movement and lead him back laying down. And then we do it again. And again... and again!

This concludes my "Brand New Dad's Life" blog. Thanks for reading!

I'm not going to stop writing though. I will start a new blog, which I intend to write directly to Fei for him to read when he gets older. I got this idea from my mom who just recently gave me a kind of a diary she wrote for me during my first year. It was short, but it was very interesting to read.

You may have noticed XIHA Life has a new logo. What do you think? Would you believe the idea for the logo came from our little Fei!

As I wrote before Fei loves to look at plants. Flowers are ok, but he is most interested in green leaves. A lot of people like watching the beauty of the nature, but we're talking about a baby less than 3 months old here... so this kind of proves there is something naturally beautiful about green leaves! There's no way he could ever have learned it from somewhere... it's built in!

This important realization helped us a lot when designing the new logo. We had been through a lot of symbols, from speach bubbles to smileys. All kinds of "web 2.0" buzz... but nothing seemed to be universally acceptable, as we couldn't even agree to it inside our group.

Finally it was Wen who realized that tree leaves would be a symbol that fits best what XIHA Life is. We thought of Chinese Rose as well as Maple and Birch, but eventually decided on Palm Tree as is kind of a symbol of "Good Life" that most of the people will immediatelly understand.

Fei has already shown a lot of personality. He's quite much like his mom; he knows what he wants and wants it now. He's not a tough baby to handle though. As long as he gets enough attention he can be quite an angel.

He likes it a lot when I talk to him and he often talks back. He when he talks (in baby language, for now) he looks straight into eyes and obviously tries hard to talk like I do.

However, there's something he absolutely loves more than anything else - he is totally in love with nature!

From the very early on he has enjoyed looking out of the window, as well as looking at the plats we have indoors. One of his favorite things to do so far has been to stare at a Chinese Rose we have in livingroom. It's pretty tall, kind of like a tree, and he seems to never get tired of watching it.

Couple days ago Wen moved another Chinese Rose next to our bed to see if that would entertain Fei. Sure enough, today he was on the bed for more than an hour at a stretch looking at it, sometimes talking to it and often smiling!

Smiling, that's a thing he does a lot now. He always smiles when he sees me. That makes me feel very good, so I often go just to say hi to him even during the day when I'm working, just to see that beautiful smile!

I can't believe Fei is already more than two months old. And I also can't believe it's been more than a month since I updated this blgo the last time!

A lot has happened during the last month. First, we got a piano. We have a piano back in China but it would be quite a lot of work to transfer it here so now we have a new one. We're still looking for a piano teacher who could come visit us couple times a week. The plan is to find someone who can teach me and Wen and then play something for Fei, to get him used to piano music (rather than just having him listen to people practicing... which might make him hate piano music!)

Another, perhaps even more interesting thing is that we placed an ad for hiring native speakers in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Finnish and French! We have already hired French and English teachers and interviewed quite many Chinese.

With French, Wen and I are both studying it. Meriem, our teacher, spends two hours at a time teaching us and then about one our playing with Fei, talking and singing in French. Even though Fei is too young to speak even single words for many months, he is already forming the basis of language.

We want to help him by giving him "language baths", opportunities for him to communicate with native speakers of different languages. So far the experience has been extremely positive. Fei absolutely loves playing with Meriem and listening to French!

English is a little different since we both speak quite fluent English, but Wen just wants to practice her English skills with a native speaker. This gives a chance to Fei to listen to English as spoken by someone who has no accent!

Chinese is something I will need to learn. My Chinese is still very limited so basically I am looking forward to similar arrangement in Chinese as Wen has in English. Wen's mom is coming tomorrow to stay with us for a month and I was hoping to improve my Chinese before that, but it seems I am running late from the schedule...

Oh, and Fei has been growing fast! One week ago was his latest appointment with the nurse. His weight was 6410 grams and length 59 cm. I'll need to check with the growth curves to see how that compares with the previous readings but the nurse was very happy and said everything looks perfect.

Until next time!

Fei is now one full month old. We held a birthday party yesterday to celebrate the occasion, as is the traditional Chinese way to do. Our party was western style though, a small party for the closest friends and family. The birthday boy probably didn't really know what was going on, but he behaved really well the whole day so the guests must be wondering if he even knows how to cry...

In Chinese tradition, the baby is protected and cannot even be seen by anyone until he is full month old. At that point the family organizes a party and the friends and relatives get a chance to see the baby for the first time. The next important party in the baby's life comes at 100 days old... just over two months to go!

This week Fei has been very much a daddy's boy. He started to want to be in my lap a lot, being unhappy at almost everywhere else. Kind of funny but also really nice, of course.

This also gave Wen some much needed privacy and she has been able to venture out to do some shopping couple times in the past few days. I can manage with Fei about three hours just fine, but then of course he will already be quite hungry and that is something I cannot help him with.

On Monday we had the second checkup with the nurse, by the way, and it turns out Fei is growing really well! He is already 55.5 cm long (or can you say "tall" for someone who doens't know how to stand yet..?) and weighs 4540 grams! In about 12 days he has gained 530 grams, which as far as I know is pretty good!

Fei always knows how to behave. He actually has quite a temper and can get really angry if he doesn't get what he wants right away, but every time someone else has seen him he is like a little angel! Well, of course he is a really sweet boy, but it's quite surprising to me how he seems to know when it is appropriate to demand attention and when it's enough to just be cute.

Yesterday Fei seems to have caught some cold as his nose was making a lot of weird sounds and his breathing seemed quite difficult. Babies mostly breath through their nose so this can be quite uncomfortable for them. I called the health advice line (100 23 - a very useful number to know in Finland) and I was told it's most likely not cold, but milk which sometimes can get into babies nose and make it hard for them to breathe.

The suggested treatment was steam, so we ran some hot water in the bathroom and spent a while in the steam. This seems to have helped, as he is feeling much better now. As a precaution we also bought some "cooking salt liquid", which should clear the nose without too much discomfort. It seems we don't need to use that just yet though.

The day after tomorrow we will have Fei's one month celebration... should be fun!

Check out Wen's photo album, she took a whole bunch of cool photos of Fei and I! (www.xihalife.com/photos/by/wen)

Little Fei is already three weeks old. Can't believe how fast time goes. I am realizing I haven't even updated the blog since the birth announcement... I will try to do some updates retro-actively but we'll see how that goes!

Fei is doing great! He is eating and sleeping, and growing fast. He has an amazing spectrum of facial expressions. I think he might become an actor. It's really quite amusing to look at his face, which keeps showing a lot of emotions. It's like he would really want to talk but is unable to...

I've been trying to balance between doing work and being a dad. Fei sleeps most of the time so it's not too hard yet, but when he is awake he can keep both Wen and I pretty busy! He eats a lot which means he generates a lot of byproducts, so to speak. Sometimes stuff is coming out faster than we can manage... and sometimes he waits to make his move just when the diaper is removed.

In the past few nights he has started sleeping through the night with only one feeding in the middle, which is great. He still seems to get pretty active around midnight and will refuse to fall asleep until about 1-2AM, but beyond that he usually sleeps 3-4 hours, eats, and then goes back to sleep.

He likes taking bath and he absolutely loves receiving gentle baby massage. Generally speaking he's a really happy boy who only cries when there really is a reason. On Monday we'll have the second check up with nurse, so well know his weight and how tall he is...

Today we got a nurse visiting from the health care center, taking a look at how Fei and his mom are doing. It was a little bit of work to get someone to come over as our regular nurse is on holiday. In the end another nurse volunteered to come and so Fei was checked up more or less in time.

So at 12 days old Fei's weight is 4010 grams. The most important thing about this number is that at this point the baby is supposed to be heavier than at birth (the weight goes down quite a bit during the first few days) so we're doing ok. The nurse was very pleased with the way Fei behaved and said he looks like he could be older than just couple of weeks.

She told us to start giving vitamin D to Fei from the time he is two weeks old, as the amount of sunlight (the natural source of the vitamin) is way too low during the winter. Vitamin D is needed for the calsium to sink in, to make so he will get strong bones.

The next nurse check up will be in couple week's time...

Fei was born in Helsinki on December 21 at 10:30 AM! At birth he was 53 cm tall and weighed 3900 grams. He was much bigger than the doctors had estimated, which made the delivery quite a bit more difficult than anyone had anticipated. As a result we stayed in the hospital for a total of one week and returned home only yesterday.

The week was very eventful, but most importantly both Fei and Wen are doing very good and we are all home now. I will fill in the events of the week later, this is just a quick note that Fei has arrived!

Photos can be found here: www.xihalife.com/photosets/854/
More to be added soon!



2007-12-28: New photos uploaded to the album. Here's a couple for a sample, click on the photos to see more. Quite interestingly Fei is becoming more like me these days with eyes turning a little towards green/gray and the hair becoming lighter.

So we started our family life at Ward 61 in Naistenklinikka (women's clinic) hospital. This is strictly for families only and the dad needs to stay the night there too. The ward has quite minimal staff, during the night there are only two nurses, so most of the things work on self-service and the dad's role in that is important.

We got a room at the "old side" of the floor. This means there was no TV in the room but since we don't watch TV at home either it wasn't an issue. The room was nice, pretty good size. Kind of like a hotel room, just equipped with hospital necessities.

The foor was good at every single meal (I'm writing this after returning home, by the way, if you're wondering about the "was" part). It was on self-service basis so at every meal time I went to the kitchen and got food for Wen and myself.

Fortunately Wen somehow fell in love with the Finnish food so we didn't have to worry about where to get Chinese food to the hospital! Food had been one of Wen's biggest worries for the post-delivery time... she thought she might not be able to accept the hospital food, right at the time when she is weak and needs a lot of food to recover. But right from the beginning, at every meal, she ate everything with a good appetite!

Blood test

In Saturday afternoon we got a surprise - the hospital wanted to take blood samples from Fei to make sure he doesn't have any infection. He seemed perfectly healthy so we were asking what is going on. They told us it is a routine procedure every time when there is morethan 17 hours from breaking of the water to the delivery. In our case there had been 18 hours!

We protested at first, since the baby could have been delivered at least 5 hours earlier if only the night nurse wouldn't have insisted on waiting. We really didn't want any extra blood tests on our newborn, but gave up fighting it when we were told it is always a risk when the water breaks early, even if we spent all of that time in the hospital delivery room. Needless to say Fei didn't enjoy the test...

The result - CRP counts very high

So this was a shock - couple hours later the nurse returned and said the CRP counts, which are a sign of an infection, are very high. Normal value is 3, and an upper limit before something is done is 10... Fei's tests came back with 68! The pediatrician wanted to take another blood test right away to see if the counts are going higher or lower.

At around midnight the results came back higher. I can't remember if it was 84 or what, but in any case I had to take Fei downstairs to Children's hospital's baby care unit for check up. The pediatrician checked him but couldn't find anything wrong. The said babies this young don't have good immune system show they also don't show symptoms early enough... it would be too risky in her opinion to wait to see how it goes so she decided to start antibiotics.

Antibiotics for newborn babies are given through an IV. Usually it is placed on a vein on their head, but after several failed attempts the doctor decided to put it in Fei's hand - similar to when adults are placed on IV. The doctor was quite strongly asking me to not look when she was doing it but I just couldn't let anything to be done to my little baby without me being there. Fortunately it wasn't very painful for Fei, he cried a lot less than during the blood samples.

Unfortunately starting the antibiotics also meant that Fei had to stay in the baby care unit overnight. He would be allowed to go back up with us in the noon time if everything was fine. I felt really sad. There was just nothing I could do. I felt like crying when I pushed the empty baby cart back upstairs... but I also didn't want to show emotions there, as there basically was nothing to worry about. Fei was ok, and in fact he was in the best possible place to be should anything actually be wrong.

Nevertheless, that was a very long night. Wen wanted to go downstairs check for Fei at around 3AM but I was able to talk her out of it. I visited him early in the morning and then after breakfast we went there together to feed him...  then finally at about 3PM he was returned back upstairs.

Since Wen got the epidural and didn't feel the pain anymore we were able to sleep for a couple of hours. One shot of the anesthetic only lasts for about two hours so then the pain started to come back.

At this point she was about 5cm open and getting regular contractions so the nurse decided to give another shot of the pain medication and we slept some more. Two or three hours later, at about 5AM, the pain was back again but now she was fully open. The nurse said the baby is pretty low at this point and everything was looking good.

Wen was given more pain medication to the epidural and we were told to wait until she starts to feel the urge to push. Nothing really happened. The contractions were really strong and came often at this point - you could see it on the meter - but Wen was not feeling any need to push and the nurse wanted to keep waiting. At 8AM the night shift ended so we got another nurse. Towards the end the night nurse was saying she doesn't want to start the delivery because she is going home soon, so it was time for one more epidural shot and then some more waiting...

It was already about 10AM when Wen asked if she the nurse could ask for a doctor to help... it seems the nurses just like to keep waiting and waiting. She started already feel the pain again and the baby was nothing coming out. She had tried pushing but the baby didn't really move anywhere.

When the doctor came, her first reaction was wondering why she was called in, as the baby seems almost out. She was told that the situation has been like this for 5 hours and the baby is just not coming out. Another doctor came, and they decided to use a suction cup to help the baby out.

During the first try of the suction cup it became loose and popped out in the middle of the pushing. That was one of the most horrible moments of my life... my heart probably stopped. I didn't know what had happened, but I really wasn't expecting the baby to be ripped out quite at that kind of force. In the corner of my eye the cup, hanging from a line on the doctor's hand, seemed like the it could be something.. well, fortunately it turned out the doctor had made a mistake and the cup was not placed properly.

The other doctor stepped in and we continued. Wen pushed as hard as she could and the doctor was pulling. Then, after a lot of screaming and pushing, Fei was born! The doctors and nurses immediatelly agreed he is very big, much bigger than expected. It was obvious there had been a mistake in the estimated birth size and this was why the baby couldn't get out... I was very big, same size as Fei, when I was born so they could have at least considered it... especially since Wen's only worry before the delivery had been whether she will be able to delivery the baby naturally or not given that she is quite small and western tend to be bigger on average.

After the delivery Fei was immediatelly placed on Wen's chest. He was a little blue and not very active so he received some extra oxygen, but otherwise he was totally fine. The back of his head was a little cone-shaped from the suction, but that should disappear over time. And for the record, my own birth was almost exactly like this and I ended up being delivered the same way.

We spent nearly two hours with Fei before he was weighed and measured (3900 grams, 53 cm). After that we got some food to eat and prepared to move upstairs to Ward 61, to a family room. Before going up Wen was told to take a shower, which made her feel very cold and weak. She could hardly stand, not to mention walking, so she was transferred using a wheel chair.

And then, during all this waiting in the cold delivery room, Fei's body temperature dropped to below 36.5 C so he was taken to a baby care unit to rest under a heat lamp. I was allowed to follow him to see where he will stay... and then we got him to our room an hour later, so it wasn't a long separation. At the end of the day it was an amazing feeling to have all three of us together in the family room, as a real family! The delivery had been a lot harder than I ever imagined so it was a real relief that it was all over.

We had a few false alarms where Wen felt contractions and we thought if this is it... but then it all quieted down. Today she woke up to contractions at 4AM and couldn't sleep after it, but no real action still took place. We took a long walk, did some grocery shopping. just like we've been doing lately and then returned home. Wen was going to take a nap and I was thinking of eating something when she called me from the bathroom - the water had broken!

There was like "two chinese spoons" of water, like she said it, so I called the hospital and asked what to do. I was told that if it's only a little bit of water, there would be no need to hurry. We should stay home and wait for contractions to begin and if nothing happened, they would ask us to come the next day to start the labor, but only after 24 hours has passed.

Right after I ended the call Wen told me a lot of more water is coming and she basically cannot stand up because it keeps leaking. I called the hospital again but they still kept insisting there's no rush. For as long as there are no contractions we would not be admitted to the ward. They told us since there is a lot of water we can wait a couple of hours and then slowly head out to the hospital...

We didn't want to wait so I called a taxi and we got headed out to the hospital. Somehow coincidentally as soon as we stepped in the cab, her contractions started. She had been having those painless Braxton-Hicks contractions before but this was for real.

At the hospital she was place on monitors to check the contractions and the baby's heart beat. We happened to be there at the supper time too, so we were given (both of us, amazingly!) some food. People make jokes about hospital food and Wen had been seriously worried about not being able to get Chinese food during the stay... but the turkey soup completely changed her mind about Finnish food!

Couple of hours later we were moved to a labor room. Her contractions were not strong or regular yet so they were contemplating sending me home and putting her in monitoring over night. Fortunately the decision was changed and I was allowed to change as it would have been very impractical for me to go back home right when she's already having contractions and the pain was increasing.

We got the delivery room 213. The room was nice and big, with a small extra room with a sofa for me to sleep in. She was first given some laughing gas to control the pain, but that made her dizzy. She was trying a "birth ball" to sit on, but being dizzy from the gas and sitting on a ball can be kind of a bad combination.

She was managing the pain pretty well and around midnight she open enough to be administered epidural anesthesia. Epidural completely removed the pain feeling so we were able to sleep through the worst part of the opening. Which was good, as we hadn't had much sleep the previous night and little did we knew the process was still far from over...

Still no baby, but now I have a very strong feeling he will be born this coming Saturday. My method is quite un-scientific: I was born two days before the due date and for some reason I just started to feel he will be too. And hey, I was right about the gender! At the very least we won't have to wait for long to find out...

This morning we had yet another early morning wake up call and (perhas the final?) appointment with the nurse. Wen had gained a little too much weight last time and her blood suger was slightly up so this time the nurse took a blood sample to check the blood sugar (Wen had to spend 12 hours without eating or drinking, but fortunately this time there was just one blood sample, not three...)

We kind of knew it would be ok as last time Wen had just eaten a big meal before the appointment so it was quite natural to be heavier and have some blood sugar... and so it was not a big surprise that everything checked out to be totally ok! So, now we have a mom who is doing perfectly fine with a huge belly and we're basically just waiting for the baby to come out.

Today we took a little trip to the city to buy a whole load of Chinese "baozi", which is a type of meat filled breakfast bun. They well them frozen and they can be cooked by steaming. Recently Wen found those from "Vii Voan" which is one of the best Asian supermarkets around here, and ever since she's had craving for those.

My car is having some problems these days so we were thinking of taking  a cab, but cleverly I didn't have the taxi center's number on my cellphone. Wen didn't want me spend time finding the number...  and in fact she felt energetic and wanted to do some exercise so we decided to take a walk. It's been a while since we've walked as much as today! They say walking is good during pregnancy and walking at these final days can even help start the labor...

Well, needless to say it didn't work (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this) but at least we had a nice long walk in the chilly winter weather. Until next time...

Last night we thought it would be the time