A visit with my dad and some sad news

Hi all. FYI on the jinx stuff, Leo has gone back to feeding heavily in an early-morning burst, but still sleeping relatively well (with a little help from our friend the swaddling blanket), so I guess it's so far, so good.

I wanted to blog briefly about a quick visit I had with my dad earlier this month. Two years ago, my dad was able to chain a trip to Winnipeg for a family reunion together with a visit out here to see Max, who had conveniently arrived early enough to allow this to happen. Earlier this month, through a much sadder coincidence, he was again able to visit during the first week of his grandson's life.

On the 2nd of July, my cousin Joe died in a motorcycle accident in Manitoba, north of Winnipeg, at the age of 49. My family was shocked and devastated - Joe was a wonderful person, a great mix of mature and fun-loving, and I always looked up to him. I found out about the accident on the day Leo was born so July 3 was certainly a bittersweet day for me. Obviously, Holly and I were unable to go to pay our respects in person, but my dad was able to fly out from BC to pass on our condolences. Sudden losses like this are the worst to take and I can't imagine the impact this has had on my cousin's wife and kids. Here's a picture of him with Max from this past Christmas.


Joe leaves his wife of 25 years, Wendy, his two kids Terri and Jason, his extended family and a huge group of friends. Rest in peace, Joey.

Possibly the only positive to come out of this tragedy was that after attending the wake, my dad was able to take some time to pop out here and visit with us. After arriving on a Saturday night, we spent two days wandering around town, eating good food (dim sum and The Works! Awesome!), checking out the local farmer's market and catching up. Given how tough it is for my dad to get out here, it was wonderful to be able to get the opportunity to acquaint him with our new life - Leo, the new house and the new neighbourhood.

Here are some pictures from my dad's visit:


Max and his grandpa at dim sum. Max ate like a horse, as it was his first full-appetite day after being sick.

Max and his grandpa with Max and Winston (the horses) at the Lansdowne Farmer's Market. Oddly enough, Max wanted to get on Winston, but not his namesake.

Grandpa, enjoying a little Leo time.

Grandpa, getting his storyteller on. I bet it was a truck book.

Daddy musings

What a near-month. As Holly mentioned in the last post, this has been a whirlwind three-week period and I'm standing here (I am actually typing while standing) looking at the calendar, dreading my return to work next Tuesday. It seems that all the unexpected Max care combined with me being laid up with back problems for a few days has really impacted the amount of things we wanted to get done during our time at home together. I suppose it's a good reminder that life can't be planned etc. etc. Despite all this, it has still been wonderful to be able to spend this time together, ushering our little Leo into the world and I feel really fortunate that our work situations allowed us this opportunity. Also, don't let the above paragraph leave the impression that we haven't enjoyed all of the extra time with Max. He's at a really fun age these days, full of energy, new words (you should hear him say SHOES and BOY) and love for his little brother. Yesterday, Max held Leo for the first time and you should have seen the look on his face. I don't have the pictures on the computer at the moment, but when I do, I'll put them up.

Over the past few weeks, I've been blown away with how different this experience has been on us the second time around, particularly mentally. I keep thinking back to Max's first few weeks, trying to remember if he behaved the same way Leo does and how we dealt with it. No matter how I slice it, I feel like everything related to Leo's care has been much more laid back than it was with Max. Likely 90+ percent of this can be attributed to the fact that we at least have some experience this time around (although everyone warned us that it doesn't count for a lot if the kids are really different). I still think back to that first moment, getting home with Max (OK, not the one where I almost dumped him onto our driveway from the car seat...a few moments later), where we put him on the bed and just kind of sat there, staring at him and thinking "Now what?". With Leo, we already knew about diaper changing, holding babies, the wear and tear of an altered sleep "schedule".

I've had a horrible past of putting some things into writing and then effectively jinxing life, so I get that saying the following comes with a bit of risk, but here goes anyway: I feel like we've been exceptionally lucky with Leo so far. Obviously, his first two weeks of ex utero gestation weren't very taxing, but now that he's started to be awake and aware a bit more throughout the days (and nights), he's still relatively soothable (like his older bro was) and he seems to spend a lot more eyes-open time just lying there and scoping stuff out soundlessly than Max ever did (although that may be revisionist history). We are lucky that Leo is in good health and a capable breastfeeder, which should allow Holly to more or less follow the same feeding timeline she did with Max.

Speaking of timelines, I was curious about what we'd written about our first few days with Max. On day 9, it seems that we first moved him into a bassinet beside our bed. Well, we're at day 24 with Leo now, and we tend to prefer sleeping with him in bed, albeit in two different rooms to reduce the chance of waking Max up (thank goodness Max, when healthy, has maintained his awesome sleeping ability!!). It seems like I wasn't so keen on co-sleeping the last time around, but it feels pretty natural to me now. This will probably change in the coming months as we get Leo used to sleeping on his own and as we transition Max to a full-size bed, which will probably end up with him crashing our bedroom a few times. It was also interesting to see that we waited almost two weeks to take Max outside for any amount of time. The first evidence on our calendar of getting out and about with Leo is a trip out for sushi on day 7, but I'm pretty sure that we took family walks even before then. Socializing Max early and often seemed to work pretty well, so we're hoping to do more of the same with Leo.

The last post in September of 07 hints at Max's first big growth spurt, when the feeding kind of got out of control (I bet this is when the 3-hours-at-a-time-in-the-bassinet action stopped dead cold). It makes sense, coming at about the 3-week mark. We think that Leo's been up to the same shenanigans over the past 4 days or so, but (again) mentally, I feel like we had such a better outlook on the whole process that it made things feel better even if, in reality, they weren't. I remember last time, really not knowing when any difficult period would end and really getting wrapped up in the badness of the moment. Now that we have a good sense of how long blips take to run their course (again, under the assumption that Max and Leo are the same sort of typical - Leo clearly has a lot of time left to ruin this), we can plan accordingly and not expend too much energy dwelling on "When will this end????" In fact, last night Leo may have come out the back end of his spurt, sleeping 3 hours with me, 4 hours with me and then another 3 with Holly through the night. Now I've surely done it - tonight is going to be 1 hour, 1, 2, 30 minutes, another hour and then straight on 'til sun-up :(

Anyway, the bottom line of all this is that, despite some minor obstacles over the past month, we are all really happy and healthy these days. Despite having to transition to single-parent (and hopefully single-child) daytimes in the coming week, we're feeling confident about being parents of a newborn again and are looking forward to getting the kids involved in more activities in the fall (gymnastics and swimming for Max, singing and mommy-dancing classes for Holly and Leo). We're really grateful for all of the support we've received from our family and friends, particularly help getting our house in order and facilitating the shuttling of Stardoms around Ottawa. All-in-all, Max and Leo are in good hands and I can't wait until they can look back and appreciate this fact.

Happy due date, Leo!

Today is actually Leo's due date so we thought we should do a quick post with some photos and tidbits from Leo's first three weeks on the outside. It is hard to believe that he has been with us for three weeks already. The days have really flown by.


Leo's first bath. He seemed to enjoy his time in the water but was not a happy camper getting out of the bath. He really doesn't like being cold. He might have inherited that trait from his dad. He also does not enjoy change time for the same reason but he seems to be getting used to it.


Leo's first lunch out with his parents - sushi of course!


Leo's first nude centrefold shoot. Burt Reynolds would be proud.


Leo christens The Works with a little accident on Dad. This child has a propensity for peeing out of diapers, outfits, etc. We really can't figure it out!


Leo enjoys his first Dovercourt-Black Friars street party from the comfort of Mum's lap. It poured rain but we were protected under a tree and a big jacket. What a blast to meet all of our great new neighbours!


Leo attends his first birthday party. Thanks to our old neighbours C, A and A for a wonderful afternoon of playing outside, lots of babies and a few too many jelly beans.


Leo meets G Don.

Max and his axe

Wow, we have been SUPER delinquent in updating this blog of late. We'll try to make up for it in the next couple of days. I feel like a load of laundry is a small victory in these early Leo days so I'll keep my expectations realistic. I've written umpteen posts in my head; I just haven't had the opportunity to get them down on the computer. The big boy (John) and the tiny boy (Leo) are sleeping right now so I thought I would take a few minutes to post this awesome video of the small boy (Max) taken at our old neighbour A's 1st birthday party this past Sunday. Max picked up this toy for the first time and this is what he did:


I love the "I'm too for school" disinterested look he is sporting too - he looks like a real rocker!

We think he picked up the guitar skills from his playgroup leader, Sarah, who plays guitar and sings for the kids.

Max vs. his body

Well, Leo has been on the scene for just over a week and in general, there's not much to report on the new baby front. The midwives told us that, because he came early, he'd be pretty snoozy in the early days as he'd still be gestating. True enough, Leo has been a good sleeper, getting up to feed every 2-3 hours, but he's been rousing himself for a couple of hours of active time in the middle of the night each day. Over the past couple of days, Leo's been opening his eyes and taking his time to scope things out a bit more. Almost certainly, he'll have more awake hours and be less easy to settle down over the coming days. In the meantime, we'll take the relatively restful time with Leo and be thankful for it.

In fact, Leo's first week would have been much crazier, had it not been for his sleepiness. Two days after Leo's birth, Max's lingering cough/runny nose socked in and he developed a fever. After three days of high temperatures, carrying Max around, irregular daycare schedules, and trying to keep Max separated from Leo (not easy - Max is hugely fascinated by his little brother!), Max's fever peaked at a rosy 103.5F. Unfortunately, his pediatrician canceled on us for some reason that day so we ended up at a walk-in clinic where the doctor took a brief look at him (no need to be brief either, I was the only person in the waiting room) and diagnosed (another!) ear infection. We filled the Amoxicillin prescription and hoped for a quick fix.

Thursday, Max was slightly better, but developed a noticeable body rash. I called Telehealth again (kind of like a triage room over the phone staffed by RNs, for those of you who are not from Ontario) and they recommended seeing a doctor within 4 hours, given that it might be an allergic reaction. Given that it was 8 pm when I made the call, this was tricky. Only one walk-in clinic was still open and I was not going to go to the hospital for 6 hours so, fortunately, Holly's mom was available to take us to the clinic pronto to get Max checked out (THANKS!!!!). Different clinic from the day before, but the same doc. Great. Once again, he was fairly brisk and, after hearing what Telehealth had to say, he gave Max a once-over and declared that he had an allergy to penicillin and that it would last the rest of his life. He prescribed new, more potent meds and we left. The only nice part of the evening was getting to hang out with Max and Grandma at Dairy Queen, trying to get enough banana split into Max to give him the medication...yes, Telehealth actually recommended ice cream for fever control. Crazy.

Friday, I picked Max up from daycare and his rash was even worse. At this point, I was pretty fed up with managing the sick Max/healthy Leo dynamic and was a little low on sleep, so caved and opted for the hospital route. Our friend J was gracious enough to drive us to and from the hospital (while narrowly avoiding a parking ticket!) so a big thank you goes out to her for facilitating the back and forth that night (footnote: After Friday night, we decided that we will be getting a car soon - this week was a bit too trying in terms of bumming rides from people. Stay tuned).

New paragraph to focus attention: for anybody in Ottawa with youngsters at home who can't face the likely 6-hour lineups at CHEO, the Queensway-Carleton is the place to go. The staff there was super friendly and are conscious of the needs of children. Many people work at both hospitals in fact and so deal with children a lot. The doctor who eventually saw us specialized in child care (I assume that's why she, and not some other doctor, saw us) and was phenomenal - particularly in the arena of keeping Max happily entertained while giving me the information I needed at a time when Max was typically asleep. If I ever need to take one of my sons to a hospital again and it's not a serious enough matter to go directly to CHEO, I will always choose the Queensway-Carleton.

So back to Max. We got triaged and registered in 30 minutes, called to the exam room after another 30 minutes and then 45 minutes (and a few stickers for Max!) later, we were seen. Not bad, IMHO. The skinny is that Max's cough and runny nose were untreatable and would run their course over time. Although the cough sounded brutal, it wasn't in his chest. His fever seemed to have subsided, but we should continue to monitor it. The rash did not look to the doctor like an allergic reaction, rather it seemed to be a viral rash associated with the other stuff going on with Max. She then said that this might mean that Max is not, in fact, allergic to penicillin, but that we should avoid giving it to him until he's old enough to have the appropriate allergy test to know for sure. Finally, she took a look at Max's ears and said that one was fine for sure, but that she couldn't tell with the other one due to wax obstruction. Memory is a funny thing, but I'm pretty sure the "fine ear" was the one the other doctor said was infected. Personally, I think he was seeing inflammation left over from Max's May-June infection in that same ear, but what do I know? The hospital doc went on to mention that the upshot was that continuing with the second antibiotic was now optional and up to us. In the end, we decided to stop messing with Max's system and retire the medication. Since then, there has been no feverish relapse so I think we made the right call.

The epilogue to all of this is that Saturday afternoon, Max finally morphed back into the son we all know and love, causing everybody else in the household to breathe a sigh of relief. Awesome.

Here are some pictures of the renewed Max as well as his little bro.

Eyes Wide Open

I think we have seen Leo's eyes a half dozen times since we brought him home - he is usually sleeping, feeding or just drowsy so he rarely shows us his peepers. I snapped this shot yesterday so I thought I would do a quick post.


Photos of his hair to follow!

Canada Day fireworks...and beyond

Hi everybody. I was all set to blog about our wonderful weekend in Toronto and Peterborough when a little something came up and so I thought I'd blog about it instead. The following is a post that I wrote starting at roughly noon on Canada Day. Enjoy.

******

OK, so first of all, Happy Canada Day. This morning, I woke up in the basement to Holly calling from the top of the stairs saying that I needed to get up. First thought: I’ve overslept and she needs a hand with Max. Then she said “something is wrong”. Oh God, what’s wrong with Max now. He’s had this cough over the past week or so – did he throw up or something? Lily just had a vet exam too and she might have done something bad or died or whatever. Then “I’m bleeding”.

Wow. Instant alertness.

Sure enough, Holly had a bit of a leakage issue and we had no idea what was happening. I’m not normally a cool head unless I have the feeling like I need to hold things together…this was one of those times. I paged our midwife who recommended we get an ambulance to transport us to the nearest hospital pronto. So two older gentlemen (not your typical firefighter poster dudes – too bad, some beefcake might have been a good thing) showed up at our door with lights flashing etc. and after a slow and thorough exam, wheeled Holly out the door on a stretcher.

It should be said that by this time, Max had wakened and Holly’s mom and aunt had shown up (thank goodness!!). Auntie BFF hung out with Max in his room while Holly, the paramedics and I made the dash.

We went to the Ottawa General on the advisement of the paramedics, given the facilities and proximity to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. By the time we got inside for an exam, the bleeding had stopped and Holly was a little more at ease. After getting hooked up to a monitor and waiting for a while for the OB on staff to get out of a delivery, we noted that the baby’s heart beat was stable and in the safe zone. Plus, Holly started having regular contractions. Not the doozies that I’m sure will be coming later, but there they were.

I went for a munchie run and came back to find our doula in the hallway. This was interesting because she didn’t know where we were. As it turns out, she was in on the delivery that was holding up the OB. Hilarious. So we were all on hand to hear that the blood wasn’t of real concern – just "bloody show" from a rapid cervical dilation. Baby seemed fine and the placenta was intact so there was no concern about an abruption. The final verdict was that Holly could be transferred to the Montfort (where Max was born) for observation as the baby was technically pre-term at 36w 5d. So yet again, foiled on the home birth. One of these days…

On the way, we grabbed a bite and Holly’s contractions got more severe. Probably from body position but who knows. I dropped her off at the hospital entrance and scurried home (just like last time) to go pack our bag of stuff. Auntie K, Auntie Me and Grandma H had done a whirlwind job of tidying up, setting up the baby’s room and throwing the remaining boxes into a pile in the basement. It was so wonderful of them to take the time to do that – thanks! Max was out with Grandma and Auntie Med at the time (edited to add - we later found out they were noshing at the Newport, one of Max's favourite neighbourhood haunts) so Holly and I still had not had the chance to see him. Oh well, we’ll see him when we get home with Baby!

Anyway, I thought it would be really neat, as time, intensity and husbandly duty permit, to live blog the remainder of the birth. As it stands, Holly, Linda (the midwife) and I are on site, waiting for the contractions to intensify. As far as we know, Holly is at 3 cm, 70% effaced. It’s just before 1 pm and by the end of this post, it should still be Canada Day, but our family should be larger.

12:50 Dr. A just came in for a consultation and everything seems to be fine. IV is hooked up with the antibiotics for the GBS. First IV was a dud as the vein collapsed. Man, Holly gives even the best phlebotomists a run for their money.

12:56 Holly laments that the day is nice and that Max and I could have headed downtown today and that this ruins everything. OK, I added that last part. It is a nice day though. Those contractions sure are getting stronger.

12:58 Holly: “come on body, you know what to do. Open up like a flower!” Gag.

1:22 After a wild goose chase to find the desk where one can activate the phone in a room, I found out that it cost $16 to do so. Yikes. I’m pretty sure it was free last time. Or maybe that was just because cousin K’s call was INCOMING.

1:26 Holly lies down, hoping to get some rest. Also hoping that that IV drains soon so that she can shower.

1:34 Holly starting to drift off (good news) but has to get blood pressure checked first. Wow – diastolic down to 60. It had been on the rise over the past couple of weeks so that’s a good sign. I was joking earlier that Holly’s feet seemed to be bellwethers of the due date. Holly complained about the early onset this time around, but our mistake was that we were measuring from the start of the pregnancy, not the end. Oops. I was also joking that the last big thing she ever gets to accomplish prior to delivering is see her Grandpa F in Peterborough. Last time, it was a road trip 5 days beforehand. This time, 3 days prior. Ominous. Holly notes that she was dancing at a wedding in Toronto four days ago.

1:52 I think we are going to activate that phone. Holly would like to talk to some people locally. Linda just went for a bite so maybe Holly can get some rest while we’re out.

2:26 OK, so we have a phone now. Holly seems pretty chipper and is handling the contractions pretty well so I guess we’re in a holding pattern for a while. Oh yay – we get to listen to the heartbeat again!

3:00 Discussing names. We have a very short list, but we haven’t really debated them in a while, so that’s fun for killing time. Holly’s going to have a walk around the room now to mix things up. Contractions aren’t changing but Holly’s handling them better. What a star.

3:42 Walking is not really doing anything for the labour. In fact, contractions seem to be tailing off. But we have done a bit of a crossword and settled on names. Still no idea if it is a boy or a girl, but we’re excited to meet him or her.

4:20 Holly just got off the phone with her mom. Question “So what’s happening?” Answer “We’re chillin’” Comment “WHAT?”. Holly is actually bored. Live blogging is supposed to be to bring you the real poop, right up to the minute. Not talking about blueberry muffin runs to Timmy Ho’s or how much of the Rachel Ray magazine our midwife got through. Every birth is different, I guess. I think I was just so amped up after this morning’s theatrics that I expected this whole thing to be wrapped up by dinner time.

5:08 Just got up from a 30 minute nap. Man, was I out. Round 2 of Holly’s antibiotics just went on the IV stand and it looks like we’re about to get an exam. Cervix is still 2-3 cm and we’re not sure if the head is any lower. Debating Oxytocin to get the show on the road.

5:42 Are you kidding me? After texting with the backup midwife, the recommendation is now for Holly to go home and see how things progress. Apparently, if there hadn’t been the bloody episode this morning, then the general diagnosis would have been to send Holly home anyway, given that the labour wasn’t really in any sort of exciting stage. But the show caused everyone to believe that things were progressing faster than they actually were. Holly has also been prescribed a narcotic to help her get some sleep tonight. So the midwife’s verdict is that her gut tells her that labour is still imminent, that this is the early part of labour, but that it’s anyone’s guess as to whether it happens 5 minutes after we get home, or in a couple of days. Not what I thought I’d be writing at this point when I started this post…

5:51 The dinner tray just arrived and you better believe we’re going to annihilate it before we leave☺


Holly, getting carted away by the paramedics

Monitoring the baby

No Canada Day baby for us!
*****

So that was quite a bit of excitement. We got home that night in a total daze. Well, Holly more than me (those narcotics were wicked! Side story: the midwife injected Holly in the butt because, allegedly, that's where it would hurt the least. Apparently, injections elsewhere must result in death because that butt shot hurt!!!) but we had to ramp ourselves down from the idea that we were about to have a baby. Max had had a wonderful day with his grandma and great aunties, who fed him, entertained him and even mowed our lawn! They're the best. After Grandma and Auntie M stayed for dinner, they left Max and I to read some books to ourselves before turning out the lights.

I took the day off Thursday, partly to recuperate from the emotional roller coaster and partly to keep an eye on Holly. But, in the end, nothing at all happened yesterday. We rented some movies and generally got ready to wait for an indefinite amount of time for bambino 2 to arrive.

Flash forward to this morning. At 2:30 am, Holly got up with some contractions. Truth be told, she went to bed a little early last night because she felt a little weird and had a premonition. After about an hour of pacing around with intensifying contractions, Holly paged our secondary midwife (our primary midwife was away for the weekend) and she was told to pour herself a bath to rest and slow things down a bit. Bath or no bath, things kept progressing and at 5:00, Holly paged the midwife again. Now, for reasons that shall soon become evident, I was unable to live blog this morning, but I would like to creatively reimagine it as follows:

5:00 Holly tells midwife that hospital sounds like a good idea. Midwife suggests that she meet us there in 45 minutes; Holly counters with "an hour".

5:10 We page the doula. Contractions are actually getting pretty rough. I mean, it was laughing gas time (6-6.5 hours in) last time before I was seeing this kind of grimacing.

5:15 We call Grandma. Conversation "Hello?" "It's time" "Yeah? What time is it?" "Quarter after 5" "And what day are we here? You'll just have to remind me" "Friday" "OK. I'll be right there". Thanks so much for being so flexible!

5:30 Doula calls us back. Is Holly having any pressure by her bum? I don't really know what this means, but I assume it's code for "go time". I ask Holly: No. (Side story: the doula was actually asking to see if Holly was very close to delivery and was calling from the freeway exit by our place...if yes, she was ready to come to our house and do the deed on-site. Problem was, she didn't have our new address and would have gotten off at Kirkwood. Phew.)

5:35 We get in ye olde Maxmobile (thanks Auntie M!!) and hit the road.

5:41 130 km/h - a little fast for the Queensway, but there's no traffic and frankly, if I get stopped there's no way I'm getting a ticket.

5:43 Reminding Holly how close we're getting to the hospital to offset the contraction intensity.

5:44:30 Vomiting! Awesome. At least Holly brought a produce bag. Am getting a little concerned now because vomiting was the last thing Holly did before pushing with Max.

5:46 St. Laurent off-ramp. Red light. I'm about to take this to a whole nother level. "Should I burn it?" "Yes". Left on a red. Sweet. Again, no traffic = awesome.

5:47 Highlight: Holly just had a contraction while vomiting so I'm one-hand driving while helping her hold the puke bag. Things are getting interesting.

5:47:30 There goes another red light

5:48 OK, respecting this one. There's a camera at the light and I don't want Auntie M to have to deal with any red tape getting out of this one.

5:49 Red light

5:49:40 Red light

5:50 "IT'S COMING!" Oh sh...

5:51 Right on Montreal

5:53Re dli gh

5:53:30 lfte onre d

5:54 Squeallll. Pulled up to the hospital main entrance loop and doula was there. She got Holly a wheelchair and, with the help of some hospital staff, wrestled it through the doors. Holly: "I can't get out of the truck". Doula: "yes you will". Awesome.

5:55 I speed off to park the car. Ticket machine is broken so parking attendant is manually scribbling times on tickets. As if. I dumped the vehicle in the first spot I saw, grabbed the hospital bag and ran.

5:58:30 The elevator door isn't closing. AS IF!

5:59:20 I get into the ward and I guess everyone knows who I am - I have 5 pairs of arms pointing me toward Holly's room.

5:59:35 Look! It's a baby's head! (I casually remark as I skirt the foot of the bed.

5:59:45 I grab Holly's hand and tell her she's doing awesome.

6:00 On push #3 (!!!), out comes our new baby. Check that time frame again. Crazy. How close were we to having a car baby? Two red lights? One no-push from Mom? I'm veeeeery relieved that things went down the way they had.

As an aside, Holly's 4 minutes or so without me went as follows: some guy came out of nowhere, once inside the hospital, and said "I'll take her. Here, hold these muffins!" Holly: "I can't hold these muffins ". Dude knew which elevator to take and which way to go so Holly got to the room in good time. Then, as with the truck, when told to get out of the chair, Holly mustered up an "I can't" but withered in the face of the medical expertise in the room. Furthermore, the doctor who delivered Max (our midwife arrived at about 6:00:40) had recently finished his residency and today was his first shift as a doctor.

Anyway, our little bundle of joy and his mom are in wonderful health. Leo Evan Stardom was 6 lbs., 15 oz. (same birth weight as his mum) when he was born at 6:00 a.m. sharp (same time as his Auntie L) and he has been snoozing all morning since popping out. He had two good feeds at the hospital and we are waiting for him to rouse himself for a third round at home. Then I suppose I'll be changing that diaper sometime later on. In the meantime, we're all at home, resting. Here are some pictures, etc. to appease the masses.


Holly, Leo and our doula about 20 minutes after birth

Our midwife, doing Leo's head-to-toe exam.

Picture one of Leo at home - that mark is a scratch he gave himself.

Picture two of Leo on our bed.