A New Addition

I've been meaning to update this blog for a few weeks now, but have had some distractions. Actually, one major distraction! I finally had my baby, after waiting so many weeks. I think I've said it before, but I was really expecting him to come early. In the end he came four days before my due date!

On Friday January 28th at 6:05am we welcomed into the world the newest member of our family, Atticus. He was a healthy 3.435kg at birth - I think that's about eight pounds in the imperial system. The labour and birth itself was so different to my first! I endured over 20 hours with Dante and so was expecting this one to be about 10 hours (as I'd been told that the second one is about half the length of the first, usually). Well, I must have been in pre-labour for a while and not really noticed, because I had my first contraction at 2:20am when my waters broke. When I called the hospital at 3:15am my contractions were already less than 10 minutes apart and when we arrived there at 4am they were 2 minutes apart. By that stage I was 4cm dilated. In the end, the official timing of the entire affair, including stage 3, was 2 hours 42 minutes. I was absolutely amazed! And the best part was that I felt really good afterwards - I was walking around a few hours later.

So, he is almost two weeks old now and we are doing pretty well. We are getting some sleep at nights - not a lot, but enough! Atticus is thriving. His "gor-gor", Dante, has been really good, too. We have our moments, but over all he has been really good and quite helpful, sometimes ("really useful", he'd probably say). I wasn't sure what he thought at first, but the teachers at childcare told me the other day that he is initiating conversations and telling people that he has a little brother, "and his name is Atticus". It made me so happy to hear this!

I can't help feeling blessed that I have such a wonderful set of boys. I was sure that I was going to have a girl, but it's good having a son, too! He looks almost exactly like his brother - it's eerie. On some occasions I actually feel like I'm holding Dante, and the last 3 and a half years were just a dream! I can't wait until Atti grows up and the boys can play together, but I also don't want to miss any part of this early stage - he'll never be this small again!