Morgan's first week at home

It's been a week now since Morgan (aka Roald) came home. A week full of adventure and joy... Well not really, besides visiting the maternal grandparents and going to the pediatrician it's been a week mostly composed of sleeping, eating, crying and taking baths. The pediatrician provided some positive news though, Roald is now 3,520kg with a healthy growth rate of 30-40g / day.

Here are some samples of Roald's first week at home:

Sleeping in daddy's lap while daddy is working

Sleeping in his own bed

Going outside in the "scarf" for the first time

Sleeping on the sofa

A favorite past time activity, looking at the ham leg

Wearing his first shoes: Van's from aunt Anna

A visit by Steph

Wearing lion pants

Taking a bath

Lying on his playmat

Yet another bath

Drying after taking a bath

Coming home

After many more visits (including a surprise visit from uncle Fabien from Aberdeen), baths, feeds, nappy incidents etc. it was finally time for Morgan to take the big step and move home.

Final bath at the hospital; always exciting

The last night in Morgan's own (hospital) bed

And the last night in mummy's bed

But before going home, the carrycot had to be tried and Morgan had to be dressed in his outdoor (bear)suit. As exciting as it was to be outside the clinic for the first time in his life, Morgan managed to sleep through the whole 1h walk, including the sunshine, the rain etc. But at least his parents got some training.

Sleeping in the carrycot is tested: the result is very good

In order to go out Morgan has to wear an outdoor (bear)suit

And we're back in the carrycot!

Ready to leave the clinic at last

Once at home there were many new things to discover, including Moose the cat, Morgan's bed, the TV room and let's not forget mummy's bed!

Home at last!

First meeting with Moose the cat

It's nice to sleep in your own bed

But it's nicer still...

...to watch TV with mummy and daddy!!

Morgan's first days

It's been a busy few days for little Morgan, many new things (besides being born of course). Here are some samples of his first few experiences

First time in daddy's lap

But that made Morgan tired...

Then Morgan had his first visitors: his maternal grandparents

And he got to sleep in mummy's bed

Then it was time to get weighed; Morgan did not like that

After the first bath it's nice to be all covered in a towel

Then it was time to get measured (52cm)

Then Morgan "changed" his clothes for the first time

And finally back to mummy's bed to rest after a long exciting day

Roald is born!

On October 14th at 21:19 CET after 2 days of blood sweat and tears, Morgan Joakim Mether (aka Roald) was born! But let's rewind a few days at first to describe the somewhat long process.

On Wednesday morning (or the night between Tue and Wed) Sandrine starts having contractions around 4am. At 6am she wakes Max up to tell him about the contractions. He tells her to go back to sleep until they are every 5 mins. At 7am the contractions are more frequent and neither is sleeping any longer. At 10am it's decided to go to the clinic. There Sandrine is put under monitoring for quite a while, dilation 1cm.

First monitoring session

However around noon the contractions slow down a bit and Sandrine is given a room. At around 8pm with no more frequent contractions it's decided that Max should go home and Sandrine stay at the hospital. At 11pm Sandrine calls Max as the contractions have been going on frequently for several hours already and getting stronger. At midnight it's back to the delivery room again and the dilation is now a huge 2cm. However around 2am the contractions slow down again.

After a very poor night (sharing an 80cm wide bed) it's back to the delivery room again at 10am. Contractions are coming back albeit very slowly. In order to increase the contractions acupuncture is used.

Acupuncture in action

The contractions slowly gather in strength and at around 3pm Sandrine is put on epidural. Some hormones are added to increase the strength of the contractions, however it's still advancing slowly.

A ball is used for relaxation

Then at 8pm while Max is desperately looking for tea a call comes from Sandrine: the water just broke and I'm dilating 10cm. So no tea for Max and straight to the delivery room. A first sequence of pushing is done for about 40 min but with just a small result, it's decided to take a break for 30 min before continuinng. At the same time the epidural is slowly fading and the pain increasing. At around 20:55 we start pushing again and after a lot of effort, blood sweat and tears Roald is finally born at 21:19!!!!

Roald is born!

As his dad, Roald is immediately hungry and eating

Roald gets his first clothes

The end result is... well he might not be beautiful, but at least he's cute

Roald sleeps in daddy's arms

After a somewhat calm night Roald wakes up in his own hospital bed

Turn baby, turn

As previously reported Roald has decided to sit in breech position. We have tried to persuade him to change position but he is as stubborn as his parents. We have tried: manual western medicine, acupuncture, osteopathie and doing weird brasilian movements. But alas, to no avail, Roald remains in his "first class Air France armchair".

There is good news in all this though. We have also done various measures and it turns out that Sandrine's wide hips turn out to be useful after all and are well adapted for a breech delivery. Hence we're not forced to do a planned C-sec but can do a "natural" delivery. The risks remain higher of course, but we're optimistic.

Roald in breech position (clearly)

Last minute renovations

As a last great idea a few weeks before the due date we decided to renovate our flat, or at least one room. It started as a simple idea of getting rid of the fitted carpet. What we found underneath proved unusable so we had to get a new parquet. We decided to fix it ourselves... Maybe not the best of ideas. With the help of Thomas (he did 90% of the work) we managed to do it. We also decided to paint the walls, install a new cupboard etc.

A lot of work...

Here are some images:

The bedroom has been emptied and the living room is...well not livable (unless you're Moose the cat)

The floor is gone, the walls have been painted. A first look for Roald as well.

Laying down the new floor

After 4 days of blood sweat and tears it's all set. The winning team celebrates.

This wasn't the end of course, there's still the cupboard, the shelves in the closet and moving all the stuff back. But that's another 2 weeks...