Eli

Hi family,

Photos of the lovely Elijah James Arthur Edwards attached. Born @ 4pm AEST on Wed 30th January 2013. Weight 3.6kg (aka 7 pound 15), length 51cm,

Details for those interested: I went in on Tuesday morning (29th) as scheduled, and had already started to dilate, they gave me one dose of prostagin and kept me in for observation, and I progressed throughout the day. Unfortunately on Tuesday night we ended up in this awkward situation where I wasn't technically in labour far enough to go to the labour ward, but they insisted I stay in the maternity ward, and the in the maternity ward nobody else is allowed to stay overnight. So they kicked Shane out and left me alone. However as you can probably imagine I did not cope well with 5min apart contractions stuck in a hospital room by myself with nobody to talk to!! (We were doing great before he had to leave - he is a good support person!!) Part of the problem was the shift change in the evening, the daytime staff were great but I hated the night midwives and they pretty much thought I was making the whole thing up and treated me like a wuss. They kept telling me "get some rest, we're inducing you in the morning so you need to be well rested!" and I was saying "yes, I get that, but I'm telling you I'm in labour now and I can't sleep." So that bit sucked. Finally at 2am Wednesday I was prowling the corridors and managed to be violently ill in the passageway in between labour & maternity, so had staff running from all directions. The maternity midwife I particularly disliked said to the head labour midwife "She wants to come to you anyway!" so the labour midwife kindly took over suggested I come into a room with her and take a shower, after which she checked and confirmed I was 4cm dilated and put me to bed with some painkillers. She was a very nice midwife. At 5:40am my waters broke, and then they checked I was 5cm, they called Shane but by then I was still so exhausted and stressed from the night before that I couldn't cope, so around 9:30am they gave me an epidural and I had a nice, pain-free nap until 1pm. It was so nice in fact that when the midwife attending me finished her shift at 1pm I said to her "thank you so much for your help, it's been a lovely day".... in retrospect those must have been some good drugs. Just after 1pm they confirmed I was at 10cm, and then they switched the epidural off and waited until I got all my pains back before the fun part which took around 90 minutes and was not in fact very fun at all.

Eli came out very coneheaded, but he seems to have gone back to a more normal size now. He has Shane's nose, chin, ears and I think possibly going to have his eyes. He also seems to have his personality, he's cool as a cucumber. The midwives said "Calm mother calm baby" but I personally think it might be the other way around - I'm chilled out because he is! Yesterday afternoon they transferred us back to maternity, and my favourite midwife Jane was back on which was great. The night staff were rubbish again but as I didn't need them for anything it didn't matter. I kept thinking something stressful would happen but it all went great. He's feeding well. I got up this morning and changed him, fed him, then had a shower and breakfast while he happily lay in the bassinet watching me! Shane had a nice sleep-in today and came to get us at lunchtime.

We are now at home, discharged around 1pm. It's still the honeymoon period but I'd rather get home and organised now while things are going well and while he's still so chilled out, long may it last! So they did all the newborn baby checks and my physio checks etc this morning and sent us on our way. Midwives will visit the next couple of days and then again if we need them. So far the big challenge is keeping him cool on this delightful 30 degree afternoon.... but that would be a challenge regardless of when we came home!

Anyway, hope to see you all soon so you can meet the little guy!

Love from
Natalie & Shane & Eli