It's all happening here Richie! Births, deaths, and lots of nappies!

Hello blog-world!

My apologies for the terrible slackness in getting a new entry to you. However with a new baby, and the whole Christmas & New Year period, it's been terribly difficult to find any time for such things. Plus, I think this is going to be a LONG entry. There is much to tell!

So first things first, I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. I don't think Boxing Day will ever be the same after the tsunami disaster - it's hard to imagine the scope of that tragedy. Over 175,000 people dead. It's like lining up the entire population of Hobart and killing them all. Incredible - and horrific. And while it is fantastic the way the world has come together to help the devastated regions financially, can you recall a similar effort for the Great Tangshan Earthquake in China in 1976 where an estimated 400,000 died? How about the Bhola cyclone that killed over half a million in Bangladesh in 1970? Given the scale of this disaster, it's hard to image the devastation that must have occurred in the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake that killed 830,000 or the 3,700,000 that died in the flood of the Huang He river in 1931. Apparently there was a early outbreak of the bubonic plague around 550 that was known as the "Justinian Plague" that killed 100,000,000. How depressing this whole thing is - let's change the subject!

Now, I'd like to introduce Kristen Elizabeth Wigg to the world. (Photos coming soon.) She finally decided to stop messing around and make a definite appearance on December 20th, 2004 at 6:06am. (Monday's child is fair of face!) She weighed in at 3.685kg (8lb2oz in the old measurements) and 53.5cm in length (around 21 inches). She made quite a dramatic entrance too - but I'll start back at the beginning.

If you've read the earlier posts, you'll be aware that Linda had had several false labours. The mother of all false labours was on Saturday the 18th. The bloody thing was going all day and as usual, Linda was saying that this time it was "definitely the real thing". The fact that she wasn't being incapacitated during the contractions as she had been with Chelsea made me think otherwise, and as usual I was right. (God it hurts to be this good.) At around 4:30pm everything shut down and we had a normal Saturday night of going down to the local mall, drinking cask wine from a plain bladder and starting fights with the Ringwood bogans. Then Sunday was completely uneventful. We went to bed reasonably late on the Sunday night - around midnight. I was just finishing "The Da Vinci Code" novel and was still reading at 1:00am when I looked aver to Linda who had her eyes half open even though I could tell she was still asleep. (If you've ever seen a picture of a dead person with their eyes open, you'll know the look I'm talking about. Looks freaky.) So I sort of woke Linda up by asking her if she was OK, and even though she hadn't had a contraction yet, she calmly looked at me and stated "the baby's coming". Weird. But sure enough, within 60 seconds the first contraction hit. This time it was for real as Linda was reacting the same way she had with Chelsea. So phone calls were made to Linda's mum who was on Chelsea-sitting duty and we got ready to leave for the hospital.

We got to Birralee at around 2:30am and went straight in to the delivery suite. Pretty nice deal - big double bed, bath, shower etc etc. Even though you're not allowed to video the birth in case of a malpractice suit, I hid the camera under some clothes. Linda hopped into the shower as the hot water helps with the pain.

Now, something about deliveries - most women who have had more than one child will say that the second is better as the delivery takes less time. What they don't appear to tell you is that the same amount of pain is packed into that shorter time frame and therefore the whole thing is more intense. Because it was the middle of the night and Linda was so tired, she wasn't coping well. To make matters worse, the water still hadn't broken, so the whole thing was trying to come down a dry pathway. Ouch. So I was doing the usual helpless male thing and rubbing Linda's lower back and trotting around getting Linda drinks of water etc.

By 6am there was still very little happening. The head was still about 7 or 8cm up the birth canal and the doctor manually broke the water. Linda had been lying in the traditional position on her back and the poor woman had completely run out of steam. She was trying to push but just had no energy left at all. Her constant pleas of "someone help me please!" were really starting to get to me and I just felt so completely helpless.

Anyway, the midwife brought in something called a commode which is like a toilet seat on a wheelchair. It's not meant to be used as a toilet, but is something that can help in difficult deliveries as sitting upright lets gravity do some of the work as well. So Linda hops on the commode and I'm facing her while sitting on the edge of the bed and holding her arms. Suddenly she lets out this almighty push and as I look down between her legs (excuse the graphic imagery) I see the mountain of material gush out. It was just a huge WHOOSH. I had no idea what had just happened - in fact (if you'll excuse the grossness of this statement) I thought she had crapped her innards out. That's what it looked like. So I'm freaking out, and the midwife has this stunned look on her face and suddenly yells at me to run and press the emergency button. I tell you I was like Carl Lewis at the '84 LA Olympics as I ran over and slammed that button as hard as I could.

Then I heard a sound that floored me. A baby's cry. I assumed that what I had seen was the membrane breaking and all the liquid gushing out. It turned out that the entire membrane and Kristen had all come out in one push. Incredible. However there was now a real danger. Linda was panicking and was trying to stand up as the baby was still half in the little bowl very closely underneath the seat. (The midwife had half caught Kristen as she gushed out.) The problem was that Kristen was still attached to the umbilical cord, and the umbilical cord was still attached to the placenta which was still inside Linda's uterus. So if Linda (who was very uneasy on her feet) fell over the baby would be reefed out through the commode seat and over with Linda, possibly slamming to the floor. So Linda continued to stand as still as she could as the midwife quickly passed poor little Kristen back between Linda's legs and onto the bed.

I told you it was a dramatic entrance! I never even had a chance to switch the video camera on!

Now both our kids kept us up all night while being born. All those people out there who crap on about being born at a "reasonable" hour in the early morning - YOU SUCK! You kept your poor parents up all night you bastards! :-)

Now, on to other things. Christmas was great. The tree looked good and there was lots of prezzies underneath. Santa gave Chelsea a complete wooden kitchen setup - oven, benchtop, sink, microwave, fridge etc etc. She loves it. Kristen, all of 5 days old, was given some new born stuff - musical mobile, play mat thing etc etc. Daddy was lucky enough to get the "Return of the King" special edition DVD (completing the series), some new shoes and other things. And Santa gave Linda a new watch, and some new clothes now that her body size was rapidly shrinking. Lunch was at Linda's parents house and Sarah (my sister) came as well which was really nice. Linda's parents were reasonably civil towards eachother (they're currently divorcing and have just put their house on the market).

The gang gave Chelsea and Kristen a backyard swing set which was just fantastic. Chelsea loves it, and I'm sure Kristen will give it a shot in the distant future. Funny thing happened the day after we set it up - Chelsea was swinging and a bird crap landed on the seat right next to her. SPLAT! (The seats are quite wide.) She had no idea what it was and was convinced it was ice cream. It took some pretty rapid intervention from Daddy to stop a taste-bud catastrophe from occurring.

New Year's was a Michael and Kylie's house in Narre Warren (WAY out in the sticks but is a really nice big house that was only built a few months ago) and was a good night for all. Michael, Crabs [*] and I were stupid enough to jump over to the other fence, and then moon the girls by jumping back up and sitting on the fence with our backs turned. In our slightly alcohol-modified state, we never considered that a wooden paling fence is a good candidate for a splinter generator, and my poor bottom suffered for a couple of days. The Halo 2 contest that was held the next morning helped us forget our pain though...

Not much else has happened in my holidays. We took off to Lakes Entrance for a few days last week. It was quite funny - the first time we've had a real family trip in the car and it was a sufferable experience - just. The Buchan caves were a highlight as well as the swim @ 90 Mile Beach. Great surf. If only I'd had my board I could have been carving it up in the green room and dropping in on the local grommets. (Sh!t I'm cool!)

Some sad news the other day - Miriam Hyde, renowned Australian composer, family friend and my first piano teacher, died of cancer. (Can you imagine sitting your AMEB piano exam and playing a syllabus composition written by your own teacher?) She was 91 which is a great innings, but she was one of those people who just seemed like they would keep on rolling on. It's sad to see her go. Farewell Miriam.

Back at work yesterday (Jan 17th). Currently suffering the same cold and cough as Linda, Chelsea and Kristen. Yep - the WHOLE HOUSE is sick at the moment. We're fun to be around I'm guessing.

So blog, that's about it. Now that I'm a bit less tired and a bit more on-line I'm sure I'll have lots more exciting installments for you.

Today's Dictionary.com word of the day is one for my fellow space geeks: apogee \AP-uh-jee\, noun:1. The point in the orbit of the moon or of an artificial satellite that is at the greatest distance from the center of the earth.

Talk soon...

J

[*] "Crabs" is actually Craig Tyers who had the unfortunate luck to be labelled "Crabs" by a 1 year old Chelsea who couldn't pronounce his name properly. I understand that his own parents are starting to address him as Crabs now...