A Blog about Oscar

My little son Oscar was born a week ago on December 16th 2005. He was due to enter the world today, which happens to be Christmas Eve, so he was obviously keen to have enough time to get his Christmas shopping done and write to Santa.
He's a gorgeous little chap who looks remarkably like his daddy Neil (and nothing at all like me). He seems pretty content with life, inbetween negotiating explosive nappies and trapped wind. I'm hoping he's inherited his daddy's laid-back attitude to life, innate kindness and very silly sense of humour. If he turns out to have more of my personality traits then he may be more of a handful! He has managed to totally enchant me already, and I'm deliriously happy to be his mum.
My labour is best described as fast and furious - after a day of timing twitches and playing scrabble (appalling scores and lots of three-letter words) I had a pretty intense 7.5-hour labour which culminated in a natural delivery without epidurals, opiates, forceps or other beasties (gas and air rocks!). Oscar's shoulder got stuck just as he was coming out so there was one scary moment when the hospital alarm went off and I looked up and saw about 15 people looking down at me. But he managed to find his way out without any harm done.
I was supposed to be giving birth at home in a lovely big birthing pool with a thermostat and filter, but was transferred in with high blood pressure in the early stages. So we drained the National Grid for a fortnight and spent our days being pool attendants for nothing! The midwives and doctors at West Middlesex Hospital were absolutely brilliant and went out of their way to help us have the natural birth we wanted, so three cheers to them (and thanks for the tea and toast afterwards).