The Best Big Brother

Max has been so very excited along this whole journey. Before we were even expecting Grace he wanted a baby pretty badly after seeing most of his friends have babies join their families. Last year during his prayers he said " Dear Jesus, if you could send a baby to our family they would have the best time"

We waited a few weeks to tell him that there would be some one joining our family. From day dot he said it would be a little sister because about 80% of his friends have had little sisters. He has been very helpful in suggesting names he really liked Isabella which happens to be the name of Ethan's little sister.

With permission of the hospital I was able to take him up yesterday morning to visit Grace for the first time. He was very quiet and behaved so well on the way into the hospital. He whispered to Grace pretty much the whole time introducing himself and giving a running commentary.

He checked her out and made comments constantly about how cute and beautiful she is. Grace opened her eyes and appeared to check him out for a while.

Max was able to help give Grace a bath with the midwife which he thought was the best thing ever.

After daycare Max and I went and bought Grace and Mum some presents. We got a really lovely purple orchid and Max picked out a Hello Kitty as Grace's first teddy bear.

Welcome to Grace!

Tonight at 6.37pm we welcomed Grace Elizabeth Batkin to the family. She was born after a very quick delivery of around 15-20 minutes.

After dropping Max off and a pretty quick trip to the hospital we landed at the emergency department looking for a wheelchair as we didn't think Jo would make the delivery room because of the distance. I left the car outside at emergency possibly with the motor running. Once we got the attention of the triage nurse who initially just looked at us strangely while I kept saying we need to get to maternity and grabbing a wheelchair for myself.

We had a nurse grab the chair and run Jo to the birthing suite. After a couple of pushes Grace entered the world. She came out face up and was quite purple but after a bit of rubbing let out a lovely little baa sheep cry.

The midwives then cut the cord and was then that they saw that Grace had somehow put a natural knot in the cord. This can be very dangerous if she had tightened the cord at some point.

She weighed in at 3805gm or 8lb 6oz which is 300gms lighter than her brother. She is 52cm long which is 1cm shorter than her brother.

On the way to the hospital during a contraction Max said " It's ok baby this is your time to come out" he also kept asking Jo during contractions what was the baby saying to her. We said that the baby was telling her that it was on the way.

He was very excited at the news and kept saying to anyone who would listen that he was a big brother of a little sister.

After quite a lot of cuddles Grace had a feed and that seemed to come very naturally and settled her nicely. She also spent a bit of time in the first hours sucking her hand and thumb. After being very clumsily dressed by her dad she and Mum ended up in their room for some much needed rest.