Born: 26 June 2000, 9:30am
Weight: 7 pounds
Mum: doing exceedingly well!
Family of Five
Everyone asks, "How are you?!! (coping with three kids under five). Well, as good as the birth was, is how good being a family of five is. Danny and Simon are really wonderful with their new baby brother. Simon brings the nappy sacks and wetwipes when Ian's being changed, and Danny is so caring and sweet!
Before going to work this morning I asked Danny if he'd like to carry Ian. I was nearby, and had to make sure Danny didn't whack Ian's head on the kitchen counter as he proudly and happily lugged him accross the room. But otherwise he did really well. When it was Simon's turn I decided to stick closer. It was obvious that he was a bit heavy for Simon, but he carried Ian 'round the same as Danny had done (with me inches away to catch if needed).
People have been really great, loads of friends have pitched in and made supper (tea=UK) for us so that we didn't need to cook for more than a week. It's been great spending that extra time that would be used cooking or shopping to just "be familiy" instead!
Birth
A friend of Lucy's gave her a glossy magazine all about birth and labour, filled with lots of testimonials by ladies giving full accounts of their experiences. One was titled, "The Whole Truth About the Big L".
If medically explicit information is too much for your disposition, please skip this section. The birth went so well, I want to enthuse about it--in a bit of detail..
Reading thru this mag made me so thankful! Lucy has always been very fortunate when it comes to labour. Maybe she has a high pain threshold/ tolerance. Maybe she just looks on the bright side, but thinking of the contractions as, "better" when the got stronger (better because the bigger they are the closer she is to the birth and having it all behind her!).
Her chosen method of pain relief, as recorded in her "Birth Plan" was "yelling"--but she only took doses right at the end, maybe the last 10 minutes before Ian was born.
The midwife was someone with loads of experience with homebirths and she really hung back and just let Lucy get on with it. Afterward she said she could tell by watching Lucy's posture and sounds where she was in the process, but she never even did an internal or measured how many centimeters dialated Lucy was or anything.
We finally actually asked her how far on things were going, and she said, "You can push whenever you feel it's right to".
10 minutes later, an hour after the contractions really kicked in, Ian was born and Lucy was holding him. No tears, no complications!
God is so good!
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->
