NOTE: This should have gone up earlier, but blogger was misbehaving. Bad blogger. Meh…
We awoke as normal at 8am.
This is a lie. Tracy woke up at 8am in a complete break with normality in order to wish her dad a happy 68th birthday. I rolled over and went back to sleep.
I am told that the house was all abuzz with the news that Lauren’s labour had started and surely we would be celebrating two birthdays today rather than just the usual one. I was made party to the wonderful news when I rose at a slightly later hour. On a day of recording facts, the record remains unsure on when this actually was.
Pretty much the whole rest of the day was spent in anticipation of more news which was notable in its absence. We went out for lunch with Tracy’s dad to celebrate his birthday with Heidi - one of his newer employees. We kept ourselves busy by running errands. We kept checking phones to make sure they were switched on.
The news finally came while all four of us present were sitting around playing cards. The phone rang at about 9:30 our time and we all figured it would be news of some kind. We were all on tenderhooks as Bart gave us the details. He sounded like he hadn’t slept in a week - he’ll be able to give us a demonstration of what that really does sound like in about a fortnight I suspect, but anyway…
Kirsten Marie was born on the 28th of December weighing 7lbs 8oz. The birth itself was a traumatic affair, involving a prolapsed cord, an emergency c-section and a lot of stress and worry (of which we were all blissfully unaware at the time). A prolapsed umbilical cord is a very serious birth problem and can have serious consequences if a c-section is not done immediately. The mortality rate in a first world hospital (I have found out subsequently) is a sobering 10-17%. Luckily they were in an excellent hospital and everyone did their jobs properly which meant that everything turned out well and we can now breathe a significant sigh of relief.
This was cause for celebration and in addition to champagne, I also managed to wet the baby’s head with a whisky miniature left over from Bart and Lauren’s wedding!
Needless to say everyone’s very happy and relieved and we can’t wait to get up there and see her.