5 months later

After mounting pressure from its massive fan base, I have decided to resurrect Nappies and Networks. Yes, after 5 months in "no-update" limbo, fresh life will be breathed into this blog.

You probably haven't been wondering why nappies and networks has been silent for 5 months, but I'm going to tell you anyway. In one word - prorities. Although I like blogging, it just isn't that important and I've had lots of other more important things to do. So have my priorities just changed? No, I just have 5 lunch-breaks to fill, and for some reason beyond my comprehension, my colleagues don't seem to want to eat with me every day of the week. So you are now my lunch time companion.

First of all, and this is a priority - we stopped washing our clothes with our nappies sometime in July. You learn these things by experience, but it seems even an extra rinse in the machine isn't enough to get rid of all of the wee from the rinse water. When summer came there were a few occasions where the odd whiff of nappy was detectable from my t-shirts, and that was enough for us to make a complete u-turn on the nappies and other clothes decision. After a couple of normal washes my t-shirts recovered from their excretion encounters and they're now totally wearable again. I doubt very much that anyone actually decided to do the same based on my advice, but on the odd chance someone did, they should now stop doing so.

We generally now only stick bibs, washable wipes and floor cleaning cloths in with the nappies, and we wait until we have as many nappies as possible before putting on a wash. The net effect of this is to make the nappy supply chain a little more lean, which some enterprise process managers would no doubt approve of, but the just-in-time approach is always risky and we've run out of dry nappies on a couple of occasions. Howver the back-up plan is to use a disposable, which isn't the end of the world, is it?

http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=41857
http://www.prlog.org/10197577-the-real-dangers-of-disposable-nappies.html
http://www.huggies.com.au/ourproducts/TheEnvironment.asp

;-) No, it really isn't, but we think it's still good to minimise our use of disposable anything. (I bet they don't take into account www.usednappies.co.uk in their energy calculations... anyway...)

Here's what's happened since July, when I last posted on nappies and networks :

July : Sleep more, read more, blog less
August : Holiday with lovely people
September : Look for a different job and a nanny.
October : Start work and start nanny crisis 2.0.
November : End nanny crisis and start enjoying new job.

So yes, sadly I've given up the priviledged primary child-care role for another IT job. I'll blog on our experience of LB's new nanny at a later date.
For now I'll finish on the decision to stop being a full-time (or 80%) child-carer, and return to full-time paid work. I think these are the main factors in the decision :

i) It was what we always intended me to do, but the option of not going back to work was always there
ii) I think I'm actually better at solving IT problems than entertaining and caring for children all day. Kind of like comparing apples and watermelons, but I can say I definitely feel more competent at solving IT problems than caring for LB, when comparing myself to other people.
iii) It's good for LB to have exposure to other people, and other children. His new nanny is French and so he's now learning French during the day.
iv) We would have needed to make significant changes to our budget if I was to stop working permanently. Not a show-stopper, but definitely in the list.
v) I might have found it quite difficult being at home most of the time over a long period of time.

So the resurected Nappies and Networks has the same name but a new shape. Although it'll still be about nappies and networks, it's now from the perspective of a Dad out at work from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday.

Truth

I took LB to the doctor at the PMI the other day for his monthly check-up. The PMI is a kind of 'Ministry of Babies' for the French government. They are there to ensure that you are feeding only purées to your baby, that they are sleeping only in their own bed, and that their first words will be 'Vive la France'. Oh well, one out of three isn't bad.

Normally LB is weighed and measured by a puericultirice (makes raising children sound like you're growing fruit - but anyway), however on that day the two puericultrices were busy on the phone (nice ruse) and so the lovely Dr Fed* had to step in and do the lowly stuff instead. I dumped LB on the scales and announced to anyone who cared to listen that he was 'lourd'. This was both a relative statement, he's obviously not that heavy compared to a fully loaded oil tanker, and an attempt at affectionate humour, but these critical aspects of my statement were totally lost on Dr Fed. She raised her eyebrows quizically at me and stated that we would check his curves, that the curves are the truth, and that they would confirm if he was in fact 'lourd'.

At this point I must explain to my fellow foreigners that 'the curves' are a set of statistical graphs at the back of a child's medical file which state normal healthy weight and length ranges for each month of a child's development. Each time you go to the Ministry of Babies your child's height/weight is plotted against the graph so you can see what is normal and therefore discover how abnormal your child is. I can't be bothered to find out on what data these curves are based, but there will be some associated small print stating when and where the data was collected to create the curves. Anyway, the point is that Dr Fed declared these cuves to be the truth.

Now to some Christians who both think and talk to much, a statement like that would be like blood to a shark, but I didn't take the bait because (i) I'm only a Christian who talks to much and (ii) I suspected that Dr Fed wouldn't really have appreciated a digression into 'What is truth?'
However, in full awareness of my cowardice, I am prepared to write a blog post on the quite farcical notion that some statistically derived scientific findings could be called the truth.

First of all Dr Fed's truth is based on a sample of French children, and what is true for French children is not going to be true for the whole world.
Secondly, scientific findings change. When the time comes for a new study to be carried out with a wider scope and better funding then new results will be published. Will they then become the truth? What happens to the old truth?
Thirdly, we are an evolving species (so science tells us ;-), so how do we know that the current truth is up to date? Maybe babies are bigger this decade?
Fourthly, what about changes in the context? What if babies born today are going to be less well fed in future due to global warming so that we should actually give them less food now to prepare their body chemistry for life on fewer calories?

My current best example of when truth is nothing of the sort, is sterilisation of baby feeding equipment. If you buy a baby bottle from your pharmacy, the instructions will tell you to sterilise. In the public hospital they now tell you not to sterilise, and just to wash. If you read on forums on the Internet, the accepted wisdom is that you should sterilise until 4 months, however I've read a report that says sterilising anything can cause more health problems later in life. So should we sterilise things or not?
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2334984
This paper from 2007 from York University found that 9 scientific studies have been carried out into this question since 1962 and that they all had "methodological weakness". They summarise that there is a lack of good quality evidence to decide one way or the other! So 9 scientific studies have resulted in what exactly? The truth or just more confusion?
What if there was methodological weakness in the statistical analysis of weight and length of children in France?

So, in summary, I think it would be reasonably accurate to describe the curves as "the latest scientific opinion", and that this scientific opinion is a useful guide in judging whether an infant is gaining weight in a consistent way. As for being the truth, well I'd rather have old wives tales any day.

* Name changed to preserve anonymity.

Cloud computing

I was having a rant the other day about cloud computing (hi Richard, hi Robbie) being mostly vaporous nonsense, when Richard said it could be useful as a way of putting a technical concept into words that a non-technical business leader could understand, and allow them to see how it relates to their business. So I thought I would compile an industry overview from top technology leaders on "what is cloud computing?".

These are some of the top people in the industry that spend lots of their time talking to customers, so they should be able to articulate this clearly right?

Oracle Larry Ellison > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0
(Thinks it's bollocks.)
Microsoft Steve Ballmer > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODE8-D-ABb0&NR=1
(Thinks it's about the way the application is written and delivered, but isn't 100% sure)
Cisco Padmasree Warrior > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkSPi_pybgc
(Inaudible, but thinks it's about abstracting SaaS, so agrees with Steve a bit - but with you buying lots of IT gear underneath to hold it all up in the air)
IBM > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw3QjGgDLvI
(Thinks it's about bees, but actually their explanation just sounds like grid computing to me)
rPath : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBd14rjcs0
(Thinks it's about pay as you go, and virtualising your applications (what?), a bit like a Hybrid Taxi. Gibberish)
NASDAQ > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghwFvIQlASY (part 1)
(A distribution channel to global/retail audience)
HP > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghwFvIQlASY (Part 2)
(Thinks it's a different approach to delivering capabilities to allow businesses to reduce costs and create new value. Aaagggghhhhhh. Run away!)
Everyone else > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PNuQHUiV3Q
(They think it's about having things that are out there, apart from the Google guy who just says it's about not knowing where stuff is. And here is the post referred to by the female CEO who can only say what it isn't http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/03/13/15-ways-to-tell-its-not-cloud-computing/)

Personally, I think it's any scenario when you could reasonably represent a particular set of technology, services, data or applications as a little cloud if you were drawing a picture of it, most probably because you don't need to think about the details of what's behind the cloud.
So there.

Containment

Isaac Asimov wrote the three laws of robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

I'm writing the three laws of nappy changing:

1. A nappy changer may not allow poo or wee to escape from the nappy area or, through inaction, allow baby to come into contact with poo or wee.
2. A nappy changer must keep baby happy during nappy changes, except where doing so would conflict with the First Law.
3. A nappy changer must protect itself from poo or wee as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I identified this hierarchy of priorities during about 2.4 seconds this morning. I was in the middle of a precision nappy change, of which I already knew the nature but not the scale, and at a critical moment LB decided to perform an ice skating move known as a triple toe loop. Where he learnt this move is still a mystery to me. Anyway, he skillfully removed his right sock with his teeth whilst easily evading my desperate attempts to respect the first law, he then performed a perfect landing and planted his left foot in the middle of the offending substance. We made brief eye contact before both turning our attention to the, now toxic, left sock. He attempted to parry me with his right foot, but being much bigger and stronger I was able to avoid the parry and grab the left ankle while in mid-flight toward mouth. Sometimes it helps to be an 84Kg brute.

The third law was now lying shattered on the floor, and the second law was 0.5 sec away from going in the same direction. Fortunately at that precise moment, LB lost all interest in his left sock and became fixated on the piece of wood his mobile is suspended from. This gave me the window I needed to neutralise the threat and return the world to its correct order. I first identified all of the containment failures - some of which might just have been bits of soggy weetabix, but better safe than sorry - and brought up a new containment shield (nappy) . Finally I cleaned the parts of me which were offending both the third law and my nose.

My adult brain sometimes wants to rebel and rearrange the three laws of nappy changing, but of course I have no choice. After all, I'm just an adult - I'm here to serve.

Paradigm shift

I was recently discussing the tension of two conflicting aspects of childcare whilst savouring a pint of Foster's... I say savouring, but let's face it, there's not much to savour in most lagers and especially not Fosters. Here's another attempt...

I was recently discussing the tension of two conflicting aspects of childcare whilst quenching my thirst with a pint of the cheapest draft available. The two conflicting ideas were that i) babies from birth to 2 years old just need unconditional love, and that ii) that it may possible to over stimulate young children by giving them too much undivided attention.

(I'm aware that some reputable child psychologist or doctor has written that it's not possible to spoil babies under a certain age, but for the sake of argument let's say that it is still possible to over-stimulate them so that they come to need a constant stream of frequently changing stimuli to be content.)

So then the tension is, that as LB's primary carer I want to give unconditional love by being available when he cries, and by playing and generally spending time with him, but I don't want him to become over-stimulated and unable to play quietly on his own. ('Neglect vs Spoiling' if you like, at risk of over-simplifying the debate.)

So I suggest there are two ways of dealing with this tension - a traditional way and an alternative way (although these terms are maybe only relevant from a Western European perspective).

Traditional way:

Going straight to the point, if you are going to let a baby learn to be content on its own, then you are going to have to ignore it at some point or other. Unless you have a particularly passive baby, then at some point the baby is going to ask to be picked up, and either you respond or you ignore it. For obvious survival reasons, babies are genetically programmed to behave in ways which make adults want to pick them up, and they're very effective at it. However if you respond everytime then you risk overstimulating, or creating an expectation of adult attention on demand.

This could be best summarised as the 'cry it out' philosophy. Whether during the day or the night, baby wants attention from you, but you want them to learn to be content on their own, so you let them cry it out. Eventually baby learns that crying has no effect, and so goes back to playing/sleeping or whatever.

The problem, or rather my problem with this approach, is that it appears to severly compromise the 'unconditional love' aspect of baby care. Any talk of 'it's best for them in the longterm' seems to be at best optimistic guesswork (it may well be true, but how on earth do you know before it's too late?) and at worst it's just a stock answer which hasn't actually been thought through.

Alternative way:

Before I start, I realise that this is not exactly revolutionary stuff, and that a large alternative movement exists which has thought through these kind of issues and come up with solutions. Also every child & family is different, so of course I'm generalising in all of this. However this point-of-view is where my family and I have come to in our relatively short experience of raising a child, and it seems to be applicable even to single parent families or babies with brothers or sisters.

So the paradigm shift is very simply, baby carrying. Also known as baby-wearing. We're not talking about holding baby in your arms, but in some kind of sling, cloth, bag or harness. This concept completely changes the range of possibilities when responding to a crying baby, and more specifically, it allows you to stay in physical contact with a baby whilst effectively ignoring them. This is the compromise we were looking for between unconditional love and overstimulation.

My small amount of research on this issue has revealed that some cultures have embraced baby-carrying, and others have largely ignored it. Swaddled babies tied to boards and hung from trees was a common practice in the west by all accounts, and the bouncy chair with safety harness is probably the modern equivalent. However the Chinese and many African cultures have used baby carrying for centuries, perhaps out of necessity due to the hot climate where babies need to be fed frequently to prevent dehydration.

Whatever the history and the original reasons, baby carrying around the home today seems to offer a great way to offer the best care to a baby whilst getting on with life. LB was very happy to watch me making a salad on Tuesday while strapped to my back. He would occasionally peer over my shoulder but generally was very content just looking around. I would occasionally pass him a bit of cucumber as an acknowledgement that he was there, but it wouldn't have been necessary. The physical contact between parent/adult and baby tells him everything he needs to know - ie that someone is looking after him, that he can trust adults to look after him, and that the world is a safe place. I would love to have your comments on this topic - and if you think I'm totally wrong then please do feedback. I'm listening and fully aware I have a lot to learn from billions of other parents across the world and history.

As I write these words, LB is sitting on the floor beside me trying to get my attention. He's been happily playing with Sophie for 30 minutes but he's had enough of being ignored and is now letting me know about it. Time to practice what I preach...

Best practices - part 2

Nappy care
----------------
Are you ready for this? We wash LB's nappies in the machine with our other washing. Yes - at the same time. Any friends of ours reading this will no doubt be re-evaluating their closeness to us.

A few reasons why we do that.
Cost. We don't want to put the machine on half empty, and it takes several days to have a full load of nappies. Regular washes also means you need to buy fewer nappies.
Smell. We don't want to leave dirty nappies hanging around too long. Neither will you.
Ecology. We don't want to put the machine on half empty - less water used etc.
It works. Quite honestly, if there was even the slightest hint of nappy smell in our clean washing then I would have contested this practice - but there isn't.

What we do is to use the pre-wash feature of the machine with a tiny amount of detergent so all the wee etc is washed and rinsed away before the main wash. Again, we're not extreme about it, so really soiled stuff goes in a separate wash and of course we scrape off any solids into the loo before washing.In fact I emptied the machine last night following a wash which contained post-apoocaliptic fall-out, and the only non-LB washing in the machine was a pair of my socks.... which are obviously at the bottom of the laundry hierarchy.

Detergent
--------------
We use as little detergent as possible for very practical reasons.

Beading : Detergent residue makes fleece repel water, and so the fleece liners in the nappies don't let the wee through and it just runs out the side instead. This is a Bad Thing. Use less detergent and the fleece works acts as a permeable membrane (flash-back to GCSE Biology...)

Nappy rash: Detergent residue can cause nappy rash, which is a misery for everyone. Less detergent also helps here.

Stains : Breast-fed babies have green/yellow poo which even Ariel Ultra has a hard time with. The best way to get rid of these stains is to leave the nappies out in the sun for an hour or two. Even the winter sun is more effective at clearing these stains than strong detergent. Amazing, but it works.

Of course using less detergent is also a good idea for the eco/cost reasons, but that wasn't why we started doing it.

Smell
---------
We have a pedal bin (Brabentia, I think) for dirty nappies, and this does a good job at keeping the smell in for a couple of days. We throw them in dry - no soaking etc. We found a tip of putting a cloth with a few drops of tea-tree oil at the bottom to combat the ammonia smell and it does seem to work.
We have some washable net bags which we use to line the bin, and then we can just throw the whole bag into the wash without having to handle the dirty nappies a second time. The nappies fall out of the bag during the wash process - the bags in question are designed for this. A quick Google tells me these are called 'Nappy Mesh Bags'. Here's one: http://www.babykind.co.uk/nappyessentials.htm#nappymesh


Wraps
---------
Cotton nappies have impermeable wraps which go around the outside. We rotate 2 or 3 of these for about 3 or 4 days as they generally don't need to be washed every time. We put the ones not being used to air. We found the One Life size 1 wraps enormous for a new born, and so we got some smaller ones for the first three months.

Boosters/fillers
---------------------
We only have experience with the former, but the exact configuration of boosters in the nappy depends on whether you have a boy or a girl. Boys need more absorbancy at the front for a fairly obvious anatomical reason. Quite often the front of the nappy is totally soaked and the back is completely dry.

Wipes
---------
We also use cotton and fleece washable wipes, rather than disposable wipes. Same reasons as why we use washable nappies really. We use a bowl of water to wet the wipe when changing LB. No need for soap or any products - although we do clean as throughly as possible to prevent any skin irritation. My neighbour who is also a stay-at-home-Dad just sticks his daughter under the tap of the sink/bath to wash her. Even less washing!
Thought that a useful photo for this post would be a picture of our nappy draw with everything labelled - then you can get an idea of volume of stuff we have....

Top left > Bibs. You can never have enough - even when you think you have loads, you will need some more.
Top right > One -life cotton nappies (rolled for storage)

Middle left > Liners. Roll of paper liners at the top, and a stack of fleece liners underneath.
Middle right > Just visible are the HuggaBuns hemp boosters that we find the most effective.

Bottom left > Cotton boosters. These clip into the one-life nappies, so very easy to use.
Bottom middle top > Stuffable nappy pile
Bottom middle bottom > Wipes. Cotton ones underneath with fleece ones on top.
Bottom right top > you can see a one-life wrap poking out.
Bottom right bottom > just a box of bits, like thermometre etc.

That's a big post, so I'll leave the best practices there for now. Will come back with some more on baby carrying next.

General update for today is that LB had melon for breakfast, which was a remarkable success. I also thought I would share my latest nanny-Dad top tip. This one is called 'how to get the housework done while just putting your feet up and watching Top-Gear you-tube clips...'.


:-)

Best practices - part 1

I've been asked (hi Claire) to share some ideas about cloth nappies, baby carrying, and some of the other strange habits we've recently developed. Content warning - some of the following will probably disgust normal people, but if you're the parent of a new baby then you won't even notice. If you're not quite yet the parent of a new baby and are put off by the following - don't worry - your tolerance levels to previously toxic and repulsive substances will be genetically altered during the birth process. Moving on...

So here are our best practices (From years in the global IT sector I now hate the term 'best practices', but it allows me to communicate what I mean. ie. It worked for us once and was an acceptable solution given the minimal project budget - we didn't document it and the risk analysis was non-existant - if you do the same it might work for you too but don't blame us if your company fails overnight as a result.)
Anyway - I'll just get on with it...

nappies
-----------
Our approach with nappies was to balance ecological concerns with practicality. We're not hard-line cloth nappy militants, but we're convinced that shoving a bin-bag full of nappies into the ground once a week is a bad thing. There's also the minor concern of industrial chemicals on baby's skin etc... although to be honest, given some of the things he's put in his mouth at 7 months, industrial chemicals are the least of his worries.

LB's mum did lots of research on t'Internet. Lots and lots. There are tons of forums out there with parents (let's face it - mainly mums) sharing their experiences of nappies - what worked and what didn't. We first purchased a few different types of nappies second-hand from www.usednappies.co.uk, and then tried them out before ordering vast quantities (also second hand). My brother-in-law enquired whether that meant that another child had previously shat in the nappies. I replied in the affirmative. We got them delivered (previously washed :-) to our parents' and my sister's addresses in the UK, and then asked them to bring them out during the obligatory first visits after LB's birth.

The hits for us were One Life cotton nappies and wraps, and we also had success with Lolipop stuffables. The common feature with both these nappies is that you need some kind of booster/filler, which is an additional absorbant cloth which is used to soak up liquids (and you thought there was only one sort of liquid??). The hemp+cotton boosters with which we had the most success were actually bought with nappies which consistently leaked for us (HuggaBuns) and so we abandoned the actual stuffable nappies and just kept the boosters.

Stuffables, all-in-ones, ... lots of jargon. I don't know a single place where all this is explained clearly, but if you search for 'cloth nappies' and then browse the shops, you'll soon figure it out. Feel free to post any specific questions in the comments section and I'll try and answer them.

In part 2 I'll explain how we care for our cloth nappies and keep them working effectively...

What's wrong?

What I've learnt since quitting my Web Architect/Management job 2 weeks ago is that babies are both simpler and yet somehow more complex than SharePoint. As I was discussing with another nounou-Dad a few days ago, a 7 month-old child has a limited set of needs... I came up with a basic list of 6 possibilities.
Food, drink, sleep, entertainment/play, touch/hugs and clean nappies. When baby is crying, it has to be one of the above - dead simple right? Well, the reality is that these things invariably come two at a time, so you have 15 basic combinations of things that can go wrong. Still, 15 possibilities is manageable.
However, a bit like with Microsoft service packs, teeth can arrive from nowhere and throw you into chaos. And then if you get a cold virus thrown in to mix then you're left scratching your head and wondering if you'd be better outsourcing.
The possible permutations (or combinations, I never know which) suddenly explode and you're looking at 56 possible things which could be wrong.

This is what happened to me on Tuesday. My logical approach to keeping LB happy was severely tested, and I came out of the experience feeling totally helpless. Fortunately this happened at the end of the day and I was able to stick him in the buggy and go and meet his mum on her way home from work. The sighs of relief from both LB and myself were audible.

Babies prefer USB

So after this idea was raised for the third time in a week, I decided to relent and commence blogging. I suspect that this will be a short-lived affair and end up in the blog graveyard categorised with the well intentioned 3-posts-in-three-days-and-then-silence blogs.

Anyway the goal of this 'ere blog is to record the long summer ahead, which I will be sharing with my 7 month-old son (let's call him LB) and an array of technology. I am told (I haven't bothered to check) that there is a lack of materiel written by Dads for Dads on the Internet. I know of Dads.info but maybe that's a bit dry and factual. Anyway, I imagine that it's relatively unlikely that the outcome of the particular recipe of 1x balding IT infrastructure engineer, 1x unbalding teething baby, and a generous helping of alternative/biblical/eco/vegetarian/French philosophies, has been documented. Maybe that was for the best because this is going to be tedious and mainly a record of how many ml of milk I've managed to inject down LB's throat today.

So here am I, with one bored baby, 43 washable nappies, 3 laptops, 1 server*, 1 desktop PC, 1 DD-WRT router, 1 neufbox, 1 DSL connection and 1 procurve Gb switch.
Samuel has been entertained for the last 20 minutes by taste testing different I/O interfaces generally used for human-machine interface technology. After a totally uncontrolled study, I can state with authority that babies prefer USB to PS/2. I failed to capture the disgust that PS/2 generated on his face. Here is photo proof for the USB theorem.



Better go, the technology distractions are starting to fail...