the original birth notices... in case you missed them. :)

After a very long weekend of contracting and pushing and scans and pool assembly and pushing and hospital visits and drips and pushing and pushing and plan changes, our son was finally born at 7:56pm on Monday 19 May.

He's a beautiful wee boy, and somebody had to correct the gender imbalance in our antenatal group, eh?

We were planning for a home birth, but even though Lily pushed and pushed and pushed like a champion he didn't show any signs of coming out.

He was eventually delivered by caesarian section, two weeks overdue and weighing in at a whopping 10 pounds, 10 ounces! It's no wonder the poor wee fella had such a hard job trying to squeeze his way out of there...


So the pool never got full (but Pipi was fascinated by it all the same), and we ended up about as far from Plan A as you could possibly get, but it was worth it in the end.

Thanks to Susanne and Lily's sister Lauren for their support, and Bridget of course, for all the wonderful preparation.

Lily is recovering in Hutt Hospital for a couple of days yet, but perhaps we'll see you all for coffee next week? And we'll try to decide on a name by then too!


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After not much deliberation at all, our son has been named Taane-mahuta Mitchell.


He is named after the Maori god of the forest and all its inhabitants, who separated his parents Ranginui (the sky father) and Papatuanuku (the earth mother) to bring light into the world. He shares his name with the mightiest Kauri tree in the forests of Aotearoa. You can read more about both on good old Wikipedia:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%81ne


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tane_Mahuta



It’s a lofty name for such a wee lad, but he has already shown the potential to grow into it.



The elongated “a” is usually written with an accent above a single “a”, but I can’t figure out how to insert that into this email. Anyway, he’ll just go by Taane except for on official business or when in big big trouble!



Oh, and he already has his own theme song -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9DByb0wzS8


Apparently it was hearing this on the radio so many times in recent weeks that convinced Lily the name I floated months ago was the perfect one. It just goes to show that Daddy is always right ;)


Thanks for all of your well wishes. Lily is doing great and loving all of the attention in hospital, and I managed to catch up on 10 hours sleep last night. I’ll be posting more photos over coming days in this Facebook album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39714&l=1b66f&id=680433012


Andy