October onward

Lyra Alice is born ... 2 weeks ago!

It's a bit late but here's our lovely daughter Lyra Alice! She was born on the 16th October at 3.58pm.

She's 10 minutes old in this picture and still covered in this fine hair called vernix which falls off soon afterwards .. makes her look like a monkey!

We had a home birth with labour starting on Sunday early evening ... we panicked for a few hours unnecessarily as this was only the beginning - I spent 2 hours filling the birthing pool up with a bucket while Les started moaning about some abdominal pains or something! The mid-wife was called over, early ... twice ... Indeed we spent a good few hours of in bed after the mid-wife ordered us to rest. Eventually it was time for the pool and lesley worked hard for another few hours ... unbelievable respect to any woman going through it. Jeez, the pain they endure is unreal.

Eventually we were into second stage labour, we thought we had at least an hour left so the mid-wife had the bright idea of getting out the pool for a walk to let gravity help us out ...

... Lyra was born on the bathroom floor 5 minutes later in what the mid-wife said was the fastest 2nd stages she'd ever seen. Lesley was standing trying to walk so we could get back in the pool when she just popped out! The cord was wrapped around her neck four times but she was ok. I was completely unprepared and have to say it was without a doubt the weirdest and most amazing thing I've ever witnessed. She was completely white and alien looking ... didn't seem real at all. The cord was weird too, lke a twisted rubber hose with thin wire running through it ... was hard to cut through.

Anyway ... Lesley is well ... she only had a little bit of gas, quite remarkable really.

I had the unbelieveably dull task of emptying the birthing pool ... it's huge and I had a bucket! Eventually I worked out how to siphen the water ... and got a right mouthfull!

Lots more pics going up on Flickr over the next few weeks no doubt and if anyone was wondering about the name, yes, it was inspired by the Philip Pullman 'Dark Materials' character but after looking into it I was pleasantly suprised to see it is also the name of a constellation of stars, which is up my street without being too hippy.

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

posted by Lee Probert @ 6:52 pm