Say hello to Eve...

Eve, one hour old

Eve Daisy was born at 12.47am last Saturday, weighing 8lb 2oz after a successful induction which began on Friday afternoon. My second VBAC!

The birth was really quite quick, once the contractions kicked in, and the pushing stage particularly so… in fact I went from 6-10cm and she was born all within 10 minutes!

She is, of course, completely gorgeous, and gets more so every day. So far we think she looks a lot like Lilly did as a baby, she has the same shape face and nose, and she has the same slight smattering of hair that Lilly had (not the dark mop of hair that Isla was born with!)

Eve also has an extremely impressive pair of lungs and can not only already cry louder than her sisters but she also has a fabulous high pitched scream in her repertoire – so glad she is not my first baby or I would be paranoid that she was in real pain when she wails for food / has her nappy changed!

This time I was able to come out of hospital the same day, which was really brilliant. She was born just before 1am and we went down to the ward about 3am so I did spend half a night there. But we were discharged and home early that afternoon.

Once we got home, the VIP visitors arrived – big sisters Lilly and Isla, who had been staying with Tony’s mum and dad.

Lilly meets Eve for the first time

Lilly’s reaction when she saw her little sister was just incredible – I’m sure I’ll never forget it. The look on her face was just total amazement and genuinely full of love for her newest sister. She just could not stop telling her: “You’re so lovely! You’re so cute! I LOVE you Eve”, it was such a fabulous moment. And when we asked her what she thought of the name we’d given her, she said: “That is just exactly the name I wanted you to give her!”

Isla was less instantly impressed – she didn’t really take any attention of the new baby at all at first, she just carried on as normal. But in the days since then she has taken a lead from Lilly and has been stroking Eve’s head and saying “aaaaaahhh”. She also asks where the baby is quite a lot – she looks for her in her pram or in her car seat and if she isn’t there she says: “Baby!?”

To be fair, Isla hasn’t really ever seen a baby before, not one much younger than herself anyway. I think at first she really wondered what ‘it’ was – maybe another one of Lilly’s toys or something? Somebody held the baby up close to Isla on the first day and she looked a little bit scared! And at first she didn’t want to touch her or go too close. But because Lilly has been so brilliant and so loving with Eve, Isla has copied her which has been a great relief. So far we haven’t really noticed any particular change in Isla’s behaviour – we had expected she might play up more because she’d be a bit jealous – but she has actually been brilliant. It has made us feel so happy to think of the lovely close age gap the three girls will have and that the foundations are there for them all to have a really great relationship – certainly Lilly could not be a more doting big sister, on either Isla or Eve.

And in terms of how the first week has gone, I think we’ve all done pretty well. We have had a few ropey nights where Eve wouldn’t settle in her basket but prefered to sleep whilst being held. And at first she seemed to be struggling a bit with her feeding, but with a little help from a nice midwife we think we have things sorted now. But we are now on day 8 and for the last few nights we have been putting her down to bed at the same time as her sisters (7pm ish) after giving her a bath to tire her out a little, and it seems to have helped her relax and go to sleep without too much fuss. Last night she woke up 4 hourly through the night, so it was bed at 7pm then wakeups at 11pm, 3am and then 7am. I don’t think you can ask much more of a week old baby!

We have also ventured out a few times as a family of five - there are some more logistics to think about than there were when there were only four of us, but actually it really hasn’t been too horrendous. I think we are doing pretty well, so far!

There have been a few other major developments in the past week - our house move is now definitely back on, and it also looks like Tony may be going back to work for a while, but I will post a seperate entry about both of those - so all in all it feels like a LOT has happened in the last 8 days.

And yes, the family feels complete. Eve is just the perfect addition and she could not be more loved, by all of us. I am feeling very, very lucky and very much in love with my perfect family.

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