JD Cowling

My Chinese name is 高樂滔

Here’s my Chinese name (you can click for a bigger version):

In Cantonese it is pronounced Go Lohk Toe, and the tones are important to the meaning:
Go (high tone) - this means “tall”; I have the same family name as daddy.
Lohk (low tone) - this means “joy” or “happiness”.
Toe (high tone) - this means “unending” or “overflowing”.

Taken together, my two given names carry the impression of a river flowing with joy.

In Putonghua (Mandarin) it is pronounced Gao Lè Tao with the same meaning, and tones
Gao (high tone),
Lè (low tone, pronounced like the French “le”),
Tao (high tone).

Add comment April 30th, 2006

New photos

There are some new photos up.

1 comment April 29th, 2006

Cause for celebration

I’ve just raced through the 1kg mark! I’m a big boy now. See my growth chart for the rising trend.

Since yesterday I’ve been getting a bit less help breathing. I get 4 hours on the CPAP machine and then 4 hours with just a nasal cannula. The CPAP is good because I don’t get so worn out just breathing, but on the other hand it’s bad because I sometimes swallow quite a lot of air but haven’t yet got the hang of burping.

Add comment April 28th, 2006

One month old!

I’m one month old!! You can see my latest photos and growth chart. I weigh 875g (1.9 pounds) now.

I had a bath today. I told the nurse that I neither needed nor wanted a bath, but she didn’t seem to understand. But I reckon I got through to her eventually, and she put me back in my incubator so I could have a nice little sleep.

Add comment April 23rd, 2006

Infection

I had trouble with a bacterial infection this week. On monday I had a slightly high temperature, and slight breathing problems, so the doctor immediately started giving me antibiotics. When my blood tests from monday came back they showed that I had been suffering from an infection with coagulase negative staphylococcus. But the infection has already cleared up, it only lasted a few days. I’ll still need to take the antibiotics for another 7 days, and at the moment I’m back on the CPAP machine.

Add comment April 20th, 2006

Slowly growing

I’ve been slowly growing over the last two weeks. Today I was 760g.

My dad told me he really wants to show a graph of my progress (he’s a bit excitable when it comes to statistics), so here’s my growth chart (17 April) as a .pdf file. He’ll try to keep updating this site with new versions as time goes on.

Add comment April 17th, 2006

Photos (day 23)

You can see some photos from my 23rd day over on the photos page.

Add comment April 15th, 2006

Growing spurts

My weight is 735g (1.6 pounds) today. Actually I was 730g on Monday, so I grew a lot (65g) over last weekend, but not so much in the last few days.

Add comment April 14th, 2006