Ash's NYC: And Then There Were Four

Well for all you 16 blog subscribers I finally have something different to talk about other than Dasha. I'd like to introduce Flynn Hudson Jones to the blogsphere. It's been an adventure over the past week with the arrival of Flynn. Let me run you through the roller coaster ride that it was.

The fun started on Wednesday 12 of June. It was actually his expectant date. During the day there had not been a lot of movement at the station. This however changed at about 6.30pm when Tracy;s water broke. We didn't know it at the time as it was far from the Hollywood version a.k.a Niagara Falls style gush. We ended up heading to the hospital at around 9.30 to get Tracy checked out. She was hooked up to a monitoring machine at it was at this point she had her first contraction.

We went home to get some rest. As the waters had been broken we were planning to have bubs induced the next morning. As it turns out this was not needed. Around 1am the real contractions started kicking in. These gradually got stronger and stronger. We tried all the pain management techniques we'd learnt in our classes. Around 4.45am Tracy comes out with a 'I need to push' statement. I wasn't going to argue and didn't think the Neutral pad was the best place to have a baby so we jumped in the car and motored up to the hospital.

Now in a normal scenario that would be a fairly easy trip but not having an off street park meant the car was a country mile away. With Tracy rolling on the bathroom floor in pain I shot off like Usain Bolt (for at least the first 20 meters before realizing I was not Usain Bolt) to get the car. It was an eerie journey to the hospital with Tracy having no less than three contractions and incredibly low visibility due to the fog.

We made it and they put us into one of the birthing suites. They were planning to hook up Tracy to the monitor again and do other things. The Midwife was gone for what felt like a century and I had Tracy saying she was going to drop the bundle. I went and grabbed on and she came back and checked Tracy and was shocked to see she was 10cms dilated. For those not in the know that means she was ready to drop the bundle.

I wont go into the gory details but they say childbirth is an amazing experience and I can see why. Flynn entered the world like a cannon ball and the midwife just managed to catch him as he shot out. The first thing I looked for was to see what gender he was and one of Tracy's few memories from the event was hearing me scream 'it's a boy.'

Tracy did an absolutely stunning job and I'm really proud of her. She managed the whole experience with no pain relief although I think she really wanted some after my attempts to distract her with some Bon Jovi covers by yours truly.

So Flynn Hudson Jones was born at 6.46am weighing in at a tidy 3.42 kg's. He was practically hairless which was a shock considering his father and incredibly cute. Tracy spent two days in hospital recovering. We've got nothing but praise for Royal North Shore Maternity. Very caring and considerate staff who did an excellent job of looking after Tracy and Flynn.

My days were spent taxing between the hospital and home. We were going to send Dasha to sleepover at someones place but in the end he stayed home. He was an incredibly well behaved bow wow during the whole event. Day two we put Flynn in a singlet for the day. I brought it home that night for Dasha to smell. That went well until he thought it was a toy and wanted to play tug of war. It probably took Dash a solid 48 hours to calm down he was a little agitated to begin with but more from the excitement I think. He's subsequently turning into the real guard dog and always follows his little brother around and want's to know what he is up to.

The final thing I'll end with is a story from when we did the birthing class. As part of this we did a tour of the maternity ward. While waiting to start this we were hanging around the entrance and we saw a family leave the hospital. The father was carrying the new born and the thing that struck both Tracy and me was the smile on his face. It was priceless. Having now done that walk myself I can understand his happiness and I dont think I've stopped smiling since.