eden (at the) park

After Monday morning's update, Bronwyn and Eden did indeed come home that day. That I've not been able to blog has reflected the change in life that has resulted! Each day has been different. Monday night was incredibly disrupted sleep, much crying, and no longer than about 60 to 90 minutes of unbroken sleep for either Eden or parents. Tuesday night not quite so bad, with a four hour sleep early on though not much undisrupted time beyond that.

Ahh, last night though! Bless you Eden. Finishing a feed at 10, he was in bed at 10.15pm. I was woken with a nasty shock to the sound of loud sobbing—but coming from Bronwyn, not Eden! Put it this way, developing a milk supply can be uncomfortable. So, somewhat in contrast to our original plan, we woke Eden in order to feed him, some 4.5 hours after he'd gone to bed. It took an hour to feed, and a further 45 minutes to get him back to sleep. We were amazed when he then slept from 4.30am right through till we again woke him, five hours later, at 9.30am! Oh boy... we've got a sleeper on our hands. All right. :)

After farewelling his Grandad, who headed back north for work today, we gave Eden his first sunbathe this morning: five minutes each side till Golden Brown. (Actually, the golden may be a little residual jaundice...) Buoyed on by 9.5 hours of sleep and the glorious Wellington weather, we even ventured out with him down to the botanical gardens to see the tulips. Eden did remarkably well for a six-day-old, snoozing mostly as per his primary role. What a great day.

Finally, I'd like to welcome our invited guest blogger, Eden's own Grandma Halse, to give a thoroughly unbiased opinion...
 

Being Grandma sure is fun! Eden David Babbage is the cutest, sweet smelling, soft skinned, funny face puller, baby I've met. David and I just love him to bits. Today I went with Bronwyn and Duncan as they took Eden to the Botanical Gardens, his first outing! He was great at pulling the crowds. Duncan had him posing by the tulips which were in full bloom. It was a lovely sunny day and Eden behaved perfectly - but then I would say that wouldn't I?

Grandma (Jenny) Halse

family

“Family” has meant different things to us at different times. Bronwyn and I have been married over eight years now, but this is a new kind of beginning. Now we are three, and things are different.

Eden met some more family today—his NZ-based grandparents. What a joyous time. I'm thinking how much more we can share with our parents now, not least as we start to understand how they see us, through the way we view Eden. Wow. And we love him sooo much. As do his grandparents. No doubt the other pair, in Australia, are deeply jealous... :)

Eden had his first bath today, which he appeared to find deeply traumatic until he was actually in the water, after which things were fine. In contrast, he didn't even wimper when he got his (five or six) heel pricks... gee, do you think he was enjoying that feed he was getting at the time?

Maybe Bronwyn could somehow feed him while I'm getting him changed for the bath...

money-back guarantee not required

We've decided to keep him!

It's been primarily a day of responding to Eden's needs for regular switching from eating to sleeping, while we recuperate from the events of yesterday. (I also returned the DVDs that, inexplicably, we didn't find time to get back yesterday.) Eden's feeding well, and is settled and appears happy basically most of the time. When he starts to get upset, he's quickly reassured. He loves cuddles and seems to have his mother's even-keeled temperament. While people who know me now might be suprised by this, I also seem to recall my mother reported I only cried if there was a reason. Whatever the reason, Eden is delightful.

It was a posture something like this while coming down the birth canal that ensured that, while Eden arrived fine, his mother would require a subsequent surgical procedure one of the hospital midwifes reassuringly described as “almost as bad as a caesarian” this afternoon. Ironically after virtually no intervention during the actual labour and delivery, an anaethetist was called in to perform a spinal block for the procedure. This done, he somewhat dramatically enquired, “We're ready... Where's that Dr Mystery?” It turned out the good Doctor Mistry was a surgical registrar, not a Bond villain. However, she appears to have done an excellent job according to all subsequent reviewers, and Bronwyn seems to be making excellent progress.

Eden met his cousin Fin for the first time this afternoon, pictured here with his Uncle Tim. Fin seemed somewhat distrubed by suggestions he might have been traded in by his Dad for a newer model, but I suspect in the long run they'll get on famously... We're sad though that Fin and his parents are moving to Hamilton this week, meaning they'll see less of each other at least for the next little while.

Hospitals the world over seem to be plagued by the same problems, including the urgent need for staff on night shifts to talk loudly while they wash noisy dishes in the early hours of the morning. The ward Bronwyn's in has the additional excellent historic piece of the original foghorn from the Titanic, wired to the nurse-call buttons so it is activated any time anyone on the ward needs the help of the nurses. Eden seems to like the way the room shakes whenever the foghorn is activated, though his mother finds it somewhat hard to sleep at such times... so she's still had little sleep, and has been feeling pretty exhausted.

Tomorrow Bronwyn's parents arrive, so Eden meets his first grandparent. Cause, he'll be twice as old by then so well experienced enough to cope with it...

eden david babbage

Eden David Babbage was born this evening. We're so excited to have finally met him! He's named after his great-great-great grandfather Eden on Duncan's side, and after his grandfather David, Bronwyn's Dad. We feel amazingly blessed and are thankful he is healthy and is part of our family.

This cute little man was a shade early. His father Duncan and grandfather Humphrey were both born on the 10th of their birth months, while his mother Bronwyn, grandmother Lois, and uncle Tim were all born on the 23rd of their birth months. And since no one was willing to wait till the 10th of October, it was inevitable that he'd be born today...

For those who like the details, he was finally delivered at 5:52pm weighing 3.29kg (7lb 4oz) after a relatively straightforward labor with minimal intervention. Baby Eden then relaxed while a few medical complications created for the mother in the final stages of labor were resolved by staff. Both are now well and all of us are most happy. Bronwyn and Eden will be in hospital for at least the next 48 hours, and I can't wait to bring them home...

Eden is sooo cool! And did I mention he's cute?

i'm dreaming of a white... tuesday

And it's not the ethnicity of Karori residents I'm referring to, who are robustly multicultural even if unambiguously middle class. Rather, it's the fact that the weather forecast has snow in Wellington down to 400m tonight, and our latest estimates suggest that our house might well be at that altitude! There's a southerly storm sweeping the nation, and in 30 minutes today at my work the weather suddenly changed from sunny and calm to driving rain. The rain has eased off but there is now a bitterly cold infiltrating wind. We've woken up with the house literally in the clouds about three times in the last fortnight, so I'm pretty confident we could see snowmen here by morning. Sure hope my bus still runs...

We're settling in to the new house, trying to get all the basics sorted before the baby arrives. Statistically that's less than two weeks away now, but we're already well within those error bars on the deliveries statistics stem-and-leaf plot. Yikes. On the weekend I screwed some 25mm x 75mm lengths of wood to the wall inside the cupboard-laundry here, as the space between the studs was too wide to hang the dryer on. (And what would I do with a dryer on, anyway?) Attaching the wall mounting bracket to that, I turned to actually getting the dryer on. Fisher and Paykel obviously saw me coming, because for this step their instructions say in big letters, YOU WILL NEED HELP TO DO THIS. Yeah, yeah. But I'm big, so maybe I can do it myself I think? Ha. Several strained muscles later, Saturday night sees the washing machine in the hallway, with the dryer half into the laundry cupboard propped up on two dining chairs. Ah, and a series of gouges in the plaster of the rear wall of the cupboard, and some ominous aluminium-residue marks where I've dragged the conduit up and down the wall trying to lift the dryer into place.

So, Sunday I figure I'm going to have to call in the artillery. On the way back from church, we're thinking who we'll drag up to ours to assist. But then I get to thinking. It's only the lifting PLUS the positioning I can't do. I can do each of them on their own. And there's really no space for someone else to help anyway. (This is a really small cupboard.) Physics to the rescue. I pile three boxes still full of books on the cupbard floor, then lift the dryer up onto them. So far, so good. Bronwyn grabs some 15cm (6 inch) high boxes we've got lying around, still full of stuff. I lift the dryer 20cm, she sticks a box under. I rest it at its new height. I lift the dryer 20cm again, another box. The dryer gets higher and higher. Eventually we move to layers of spare carpet sections, and towels, to get a finer-grained control of height. Finally, the dryer is perched just a little higher than the bracket. Much encouragement to the dryer occurs, a clang, one side is in, more robust encouragement and suddenly it is feeling pretty solid. A few boxes, now crushing rather impressively, are removed on trial. The dryer remains stoic. More boxes, no cascade of dryer excitement. All the boxes are removed. The dryer floats resplendent in the air, just the way bricks don't. (Kudos to the late Douglas Adams.) Success!

The weekend also saw me visit the Mitre 10 “MEGA” store in Lower Hutt—heaven in hardware—where I acquired a rivet gun and associated ammunition, many many window and door security devices to install with same (love those infrared-triggered laser beams), a heated towel rail that I have now wired in (unbelievably the same price as a normal one...), and other wall-mounted hardwarophillia. So we are getting sorted! We've also bought a coffee table and ordered a lounge suite, on top of the larger fridge and now-installed dryer we bought last weekend, so we're finally getting on to replacing the things we sold when we went overseas. Admittedly the lounge suite won't actually be delivered for 14-15 weeks, but we're still feeling like we're getting things ready for the baby. I hear this is because Bronwyn must be “nesting”, which presumably means I'm building a dam, with powertools, or something. Or perhaps wiring up my cave for ADSL internet? (Which still hasn't been connected here, incidentally, but that's another rant...)

So yes, the baby is growing well, but no, it hasn't arrived yet. And checking here for updates is waaay better than emailing us or phoning us right now. Oh, you haven't got our new phone number? Whoops. Well, we'll certainly be passing that on to people. Real soon. Once the baby is settled. Into high school...

Don't take it personally. We're real busy getting sorted, and it's quite nice to have some space. But we'd love to hear from you. We just may take a while to get back to people.

But I'm loving my new, slimmed-down 45-minute commute. (Twenty in the car.) Thank you, Jenny Craig?

possession is 9/10 of lahore

Ohh the argy. Ohh the bargy. I feel like I've been an unwitting extra in an episode of the new reality TV series, “When Lawyers go bad...”. This process has involved repeated discussions with our solicitor, who has been talking the vendor's unreasonable solicitor, multiple contacts with the City Council, and much frustration. I have been feeling particularly stressed, between this and everything else going on. (Bronwyn has handled it better, this one.) Finally Wednesday night I faxed a long letter to our Solicitor, instructing them to demand possession of the property, and attaching for the vendor a copy of the Code of Compliance Certificate I'd managed to obtain—a certificate they had claimed for two weeks did not exist. (In the normal course of events, they'd have been supplying the certificate to us.) Also that night my parents emailed some of their contacts and got some people actively praying for a breakthrough.

Thursday afternoon we emerged triumphant. We have the keys!

We even surprised our Solicitor, who 30 minutes earlier had finally told me over the phone that despite having a watertight legal right to possession, it looked like the vendor wasn't going to budge until at least Friday. In the morning she'd suggested I should got to the Real Estate Agent's office (I did) and simply refuse to leave utill they gave me the keys. The agent had even received instructions from the vendor's solicitor to release the keys, but that had then been withdrawn again, just before I arrived. Time passed, phone calls on both sides, and our solicitor finally said she felt that we would probably have to wait until Friday, and see what occurred. We rung off. But I waited a little longer. Something changed—we still don't really know what occurred finally—and suddenly, the keys were handed over. Relief.

Settlement, and when the vendor actually gets paid for the house, could be some time off—whenever the authorities issue the new title from the subdivision. Our solicitor holds the settlement funds until that time. And in the meantime, we have possession. And as they say, possession is nine tenths of...

We move in today, at last. For all my pushing and agitating over the last fortnight that possession was delayed, we hadn't got far. Finally on Wednesday Bronwyn helped me consider perhaps I couldn't do this on my own. Many people I know wouldn't understand this perspective, but we're feeling the man upstairs helped us out on this one...