Some more pictures of Liam

(posted by Elizma)

Our gorgeous boy is growing by the minute. As the following picture proves. He wore this bodysuit the day we picked my parents up from the airport. It had feet and fitted him perfectly. A couple of days later, the bodysuit's feet were getting a bit tight and we removed it so that he can still wear it. When we put it on him again 2 days later, this is how it fitted!


A few days ago, we also gave him a bottle for the first time. He gulped it a bit fast and almost drowned! I've now started using the Habermann bottles we bought a while ago and they are MUCH better. He can regulate the flow - which he can't do with 'ordinary' bottles. He didn't like the 'mechanism' very much, but made do once he realised what it contained ;-)


Here is one of him sitting in the bouncer Jenni and Colin kindly lent us.


Sleeping with Daddy before he goes off to work...


Very happy in my car seat


Sewing curtains with Ouma Zet


For more photos, click here.

Starry feet

(posted by Elizma)

Look at the little stars on the soles my feet...

Meeting my friends from the NCT

(posted by Elizma)

We spent the afternoon on Thursday with all the moms from our NCT group to meet all the little ones. Liam was as ever the sweetest thing and slept the whole afternoon. All the other mothers were feeding and winding and consoling crying babies and Leon and I sat there twiddling our thumbs.

We tried to take a picture of all of them, but we could not wake Liam up. So we got some really cute ones.



From left to right: Liam, Cassia, Jenson, George and Holly. Note how the boys are already making advances on the girls!

Father's Day

(posted by Elizma)

Sunday was Father's Day in the UK as in South Africa. It was REALLY nice to have both our fathers here for once. And of course it was Leon's first fathers day as well. He just made it...

We had a lovely braai and strawberry meringue on Leon's request.

It's also wonderful to have my parents over. They're visiting for the next 6 weeks. That means Liam will be 2 months old before I'll be on my own with him for the first time!

Meeting Oupa Danie and Ouma Zet at Heathrow Airport.

Father's Day with the cute outfit Oom Louis, Tannie Liani and Alika bought me.

The very proud Fathers - Liam has one name from each of his Oupas.

Settling in

(posted by Elizma)

Liam is settling in nicely at home. He's really just a pleasure (apart from his habit of not wanting to sleep between 22:00 and 02:00 at night), but once he's off, he sleeps a good 5 hours at a stretch. We're not complaining!

At the moment, Leon and I are taking it in turns to get up in the night, but that might change when Leon has to go back to work in a week's time. We'll just have to see how that goes... Luckily my Mom and Dad will be over from South Africa by that time.

In the meantime, we've already had our first outing to town yesterday and Liam had his first experience of Starbucks - Mom's favourite coffee place. We also went shopping for some blue things - Mom wanted something to stop people having to ask or refer to him as a she/her.

And today we all went to the optometrist for Leon to have his eyes tested. Afterwards we again went for a coffee in our local Italian coffee shop. He really enjoys travelling in his pram and sleeps all the time.

My only complaint is that he seems to grow by the minute! Is anyone aware of a little pill I can give him to keep him this small...?

More awake every day

Waking up with Daddy

My first bath

We just can't stop staring!

(posted by Leon)

As most of you know by now, our beautiful baby boy, Liam (William Daniel) was born on 1 June at 02:09 weighing in at a healthy 3.67kg / 8.1 lbs. He is absolutely gorgeous and we cannot be more in love.






For more photos, have a look here and here. Obviously pick a few random ones to see - as there are quite a few there - we definitely don't expect everyone to gush over our little one like we are definitely doing! :-)

Elizma started having very mild contractions at 2am on Saturday morning (31 May). She woke me up at 3am (how dare she!?) to help her with the Tens machine. Then she let me sleep until 9am. Very kind of her. Unfortunately at 11am-ish Saturday morning, the contractions mostly stopped, and stayed away for about 4 hours. The afternoon they were back, but still rather mild, though not comfortable (before I get in trouble!). At 10.30pm I called the hospital to say the contractions are 8-10 minutes apart, and was told to put her to bed with a paracetamol. However, within 30 minutes the contractions were coming thick & fast (2-3 minutes apart) and the pain had gone through the roof. I called the hospital again, and a slightly sceptical sounding midwife agreed for us to come in "to check her out".

Well, they had spare rooms at the delivery ward and we were shown to a room for the check. This was around 12.45am Sunday. The midwife, a lovely Indian lady called Indearah, did a quick check, only to find Elizma was already 8cm dilated!! Within minutes, she was happy to tell Elizma to start pushing. I'm very proud of "my woman" who duly pushed little Liam out in record time, with the official time of birth recorded as 2.09am -- a mere 1h30 after arriving! So much for water births, pain reliefs, birth plans, etc. We're not complaining, though. I'm reminded, however, not to make it sound easy, as, I'm told, it was hell on earth, but at least the hell only lasted for a very short time.

We really look forward to introducing him to all of you at some point in time...

(Update after a few days at home:) Liam seems to have settled down beautifully into his new home, and is giving his mum & dad endless pleasure, who, as the title says, still can't stop staring at this little miracle. I'm sure every new parent feels this way, but our little boy is the most beautiful baby we've ever seen. :-)

We'll post more updates and photos as & when, so please check back regularly! And to our UK friends, please feel free to pop around anytime to meet the newest Cowle.