Introducing Edith

Sometimes life surprises you. Two hours after I wrote the last blog post, my contractions started and seven hours later, Edith Mary Buckley joined us in the world.

Brand new

Although she was a week behind schedule, when Edith decided that it was time to come out, she didn't hang about. I arrived at the hospital at 5.30pm unsure whether I had come in too early, and after being poked and prodded by one of the midwives, they packed me off to the labour ward at around 6.45pm. That's when Edith decided she was ready for the world, and with a sudden surge of contractions it became clear that she was going to arrive sooner than any of us expected, and 45 minutes later she was born. It sounds easy, doesn't it? It definitely wasn't. But it was worth it.

She's now a week old, and we're settling in to life as a family of four. Alec adores her, which is a huge relief for us, as we'd expected him to be nonplussed at best and had anticipated some jealousy and bad behaviour. But instead he keeps bringing me blankets for her to make her 'cosy', and he loves to stroke her hair, give her kisses and he makes sure to tell me every time she cries. "I've got a sister now!" he proudly told us in the car the other day, as he looked across at his new friend in the back.

Alec meets Edith

Ok, our weekends look likely to be quite sedate for the foreseeable future, and getting everyone out of the house at the same time is quite a major operation that definitely requires four sets of hands - I can't yet envisage how it will all function once Andy's back at work or away for any length of time. But presumably we'll get used to it, as thousands of bewildered parents have done before us.

For now, Edith is still in that blissful sleepy newborn phase where a juggernaut couldn't wake them from their slumber, so we are making the most of these easy early days. Give it a few months and I'll be blogging about napping techniques and sleep training all over again.