The days are rushing by and in 23 minutes Stephen will be nine days old.


He was born at 10.15pm on Monday the 3rd of September. This is also his Grandpa Glynn's birthday.

Here he is with his siblings.


With his Dad:


And with me:


There are more pictures here.

After all the uncertainties and angst of the last nine months I was totally unprepared for how fiercely and immediately I would love him.

Seems there is nothing in the world more beautiful than Stephen's face after a feed.

He was born after a short straight-forward labour. My waters broke at about 6pm just as I was finishing off cooking the supper. I phoned Peter to get him to hurry home, finished off packing some things for the hospital, and told the kids tonight was the night. The kids erupted in an excited frenzy. We went in to the hospital at about 8pm (my sister-in-law came to look after the kids as planned) and Stephen was born at 10.15pm. Only the last hour was really difficult - that sort of forget-what-its-all-about-and-why-you-are-there difficult.

Unfortunately I had a post-partum hemorrhage resulting in two or three hours of major, rather scary, pain and dizziness. (Squeamish scary gory details omitted.) Seems this is quite common at my age if there have been several previous pregnancies. As a result of the blood loss my haemoglobin level is very low so I am not feeling well physically despite being incredibly happy. I am experiencing shortness of breath (walk across the garden and have to stop to rest) and intense headaches. I am on an iron supplement but it will probably be 2 or 3 months before I am fully recovered. Apparently a normal haemoglobin level is around 12 (whatever that may mean, 12 what?), and my level after the hemorrhage was 8.9, and it is only possible to go up about 1 'notch' a month no matter how much iron supplement one takes. Still I am feeling a little better this week than last week.

It is weird feeling this happy and this crappy at the same time.

And now, since Stephen is nocturnal, I should be getting to bed and snatching a bit of sleep before the first of many wake-ups.