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.