thank you...

...so much for your kind comments. As you can imagine it's all been a bit of a shock to the system, but we're gradually getting used to having the boy around and he is good at letting us know when we're completely useless parents and take too long to do the simplest things. He really is a lovely little chap and Mr McMuffin is already using him as an excuse as to why he doesn't need to hoover or change the bedding, apparently we're just too busy! So far, the boy has been a real pleasure to have around, so we're not going to send him back, but we have reminded him that he's still on trial.

I have to say the biggest thank you ever to the midwives from my local health authority and raise a glass to the NHS, they did me proud. I was blessed to have two lovely women who understood my determination to have a home birth and went beyond the call of duty to help me to have one. Mr McMuffin and Gypsy Tart were amazing and sustained me through the whole thing.

I have to confess to an enormous amount of stupidity about birth. I thought that you were only in labour when you couldn't hold a conversation between contractions and they were coming every five minutes or so. Not true. By the time the midwife came out to me, she told me I was fully dilated and immediately offered me gas and air. I thought I might as well try the drugs seeing as they were free, but actually felt a bit of a fraud as I thought I should be in much more pain to have pain relief. Now bear in mind I'm no kind of high pain threshold martyr type, but I really had swallowed some of the horror stories about labour and because I wasn't drooling with agony thought I wasn't even close to the event. Anyway, the midwife thought the boy's arrival was imminent, but we had about another eight hours to go because he didn't want to untuck his arm and come out normally. Needless to say it wasn't pleasant and I was knackered, but again not as bad as I was led to believe. However, if I'd been told at the beginning that I'd be nineteen and a half hours in labour, I probably would have screamed for a caesarean from the start and who's to say that wouldn't have been a lot more sensible.

So, anyway we have the boy and he is just gorgeous despite his funny little hairy ears. Part of me can't quite believe that we get to keep him and I really hope that we can give this tiny little person what he needs to have a happy life.