Introducing......

We’re very happy to announce Mylo Jake's arrival at 4.56am this morning weighing 7 pd 5 oz or 3.34 kg. Having his birthday today on Sunday 20th September means his birth-date is 20.09.2009 – which we think is quite a cool set of numbers to be born with!

Well the latest addition to the family seemed determined to follow a very similar same path into the world as his big brother Noah did when he arrived 3 years ago, 5 days before his due date, a lovely water birth at the hospital where we again only made it with less than an hour to spare before he made his appearance into the world.

Our indication that things might be happening started with some contractions between 2-4am on Saturday morning and for a while there I thought it was all on, but they went away again as quickly as they had started which surprised me at the time. As a result, we had a very quiet day yesterday (Saturday) with the thought in the back of our minds that Mylo’s birth could well be imminent. It worked out perfectly that our friends Shannon and Guy came over for fish n chips and to watch the Tri Nations rugby last night, as we were able to discuss our potential middle of the night plans with them, which meant that Shannon could come back and look after Noah in the event we needed to go to the hospital.

I had been having very minor pains from early evening onwards but managed an hour’s sleep from 10pm-11pm before the contractions really took hold. However, they were a bit all over the place and by 1.30pm had slowed back to 8-9 min apart, at which point I thought ‘Right…I’m going to make sure things get going’ as I wasn’t keen to repeat the previous night when they had gone away again, so came downstairs and did some walking/dancing/semi-jogging around the place to help keep things moving which seemed to work a treat.

I was keeping track of the contractions but they seemed a bit all over the place, sometimes 6 mins apart and really intense and then I’d have a mini-one 2 minutes later. But it got to the point just after 3am that I thought I’d better wake Mark and call the midwife and Shannon. Shannon arrived within about 15 minutes and with a few last minute instructions we were off to the hospital (a 10 min drive away). The contractions had intensified to about 3 minutes apart and I couldn’t walk or talk through them, so it was a relief to get to the hospital and to the birthing pool although as the midwife wasn’t there long before us we had to wait a little while for the tub to fill up.

This labour was very different in that I was incredibly lucid and not in any pain between contractions whereas I remember with Noah being in a general haze of extreme pain even in between. It was a big relief to get in the lovely warm tub and think I only had about 3-4 contractions before the pushing stage started. I’m told I only had to push for about 10 or so minutes, and then our beautiful Mylo was in my arms. Mylo was a very ready feeder and we enjoyed some lovely skin on skin time feeding whilst I downed 4 pieces of toast, a warm Milo (apt really!), a milky energy drink and a brunch bar in the space of an hour!

So far I’m in a lot less pain afterwards this time with no tearing, and didn’t lose as much blood either, I remember feeling very woozy and light headed last time but was fine walking around pretty quickly afterwards today. As it turned out there were no beds in the postnatal ward, and I really did just fancy coming home to see Noah and be in a familiar environment, so after taking some time to do the formalities and recover some energy we left the hospital and were home by 8am. We greeted a beaming Noah at the front door who said ‘Here’s my little brother’ with the biggest smile on his face, and was most excited to see him…bless.

Mark and Noah have gone off to watch the Wellington Phoenix football game this afternoon (as planned) so I shall sign off there and go get some rest.

Hopefully we will be able to introduce Mylo to some of you in person over the coming days and weeks

Love to all
The new family of Four!