(I’m sorry to have waited a week to have posted this, but you’ll understand we’ve been pretty busy. I’ll timestamp it for July 28 anyway.)

We present to you Xavier Gélinas!
8 lbs 2 oz, 21 inch. Born July 28, 2006, at 20:52.

His grand-parents have been very keen on photographs, and grandma put up a full album of his first/second day at the hospital. Here it is : http://picasaweb.google.com/lucie.prov/BBXavier

LABOUR

Labour was… well, labour – there’s no way around it, it seems – but we’re very proud that he’s here with us now and all healthy. Quick notes on the induction/labour: We got to the hospital at 7:30AM, as planned, and the induction started at 8:30. They’ve used Cytotec for the induction, which is a little pill they insert… well, you know. 6 hours and 2 pills later, the OB/Gyn decided breaking the water would be the best way to go. A lake of amniotic fluid got out, THEN I can vouch that the pain level of contractions really went up a notch (or 9).

We switched rooms and they’ve monitored the contractions and the baby’s heart rate. Unfortunately, the latter tended to drop during contractions, which was worrying (though I did have my mind occupied with the contractions, I’m sorry to say). It turned out that the only thing that helped was for me to lie on my left side during labour – so that’s how I spent most of the next 6 hours.

After a while, they gave me a drug for relaxing (not sure what that was… didn’t take much notes, and Frank was quite busy massaging my lower back until his arms almost gave up). Then we were 10cm dilated and started pushing (well… I did). However, baby’s heart rate was still dropping at times, so the doctor suggested an epidural, because he wanted to get it out quickly, and was expecting using the ventouse and cutting. By the time the anesthesist came, though, the head was starting to show. The anesthesist – bless him – was quick and efficient (I didn’t feel a thing) and then contractions got a little easier to bear. The doctor did his part with the ventouse and the cutting – and I did some more pushing – and baby was here!

We stayed at the hospital until monday, July 31st, when we brought Xavier home. He’s been doing well since – minor some drama and cries at time, mostly concerning nursing and sleep deprivation. But it’s been a week now and we’re all adapting to one another quite well – with lots of help from the grand-parents (thanks mom!).

I think we’ll be just fine. And happy.

Baby is still not here.

Yesterday was Frank’s birthday – he was really hoping the baby would come then, but no luck. We had a dinner party with his family, though, which was fun (and kept our minds occupied, at the very least).

We’re scheduled tomorrow morning for an induction, so we’re a little anxious, but very excited that we’ll see our sweetie at long last. So we’re going to bed early, to try to get as much sleep as possible – which will prove difficult, with heat and humidity not playing along.

More news to come… well, when we have a chance.

If it was true last week, it certainly is now as well: we can’t wait (for baby to arrive).

We are struggling to distract ourselves, and I for one can’t concentrate on anything, which makes distraction time… well, distracted. With amusing thoughts like things that could go wrong, foetal distress signs I could miss, ‘how come the baby is not moving right now?’… etc. Truth be told, we also have more enthusiastic moments, when it feels like Christmas eve… every evening. At the very least, we know he’ll be here Friday – doctor said to check in at the hospital Friday morning, if baby doesn’t show up until then.

But that’s 4 long distracted days away.

Well, here I am, sitting in the heat, waiting for a contraction…

I stopped working last friday. Now I’m supposedly on vacation, but really I’m more on standby until baby comes. It’s 4 days until due date, so it’s any moment now.

As I don’t have huge amounts of stuff to do, and Frank is still working, I’ve been doing some laundry, unloading the dishwasher, browsing the government’s website to learn how the new parental insurance plan works (this will be our source of income while we’re not working and taking care of baby), and looking at some sites where we’ll put up my parent’s house for sale, as well as slowly starting a little scrapbook for baby and, well, doing some lounging and napping… in short, I haven’t been very productive. And to make it all more fun, there’s some horrible heat wave going on (87 f in the house yesterday), and we don’t have a pool or A/C to make it all better.

Oh well. Soon enough we’ll have compensation
(We’ll try posting when we have news and pictures to put up.)

We have modified the emilieonline.com blog to make it a united family blog. You’re now stuck with me, who will be posting here as well

Baby’s due in a week. Yoohoo !! We can’t wait !!

We think we found the name, now. We’re keeping it a secret, both because we don’t want to jinx it and because we’ve already revealed it’s a boy, so we want to keep one element of surprise.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t have all the pre-requisite I wanted for the baby’s name. It even has less of them than some other suggestions. But it seems to click and, most importantly – and very surprisingly – we both like it. Which will have to be the deciding factor.

I was hoping for a name:

1. Lovely, both for a child and a grown man
2. Rare and unique (ie. not in the most popular names list)
3. Bilingual/Multilingual
4. That fits with Frank’s last name
5. With a little twist in it… you know, a little special
6. With a touch of classical
7. That Frank and I both love
8. That doesn’t need to be spelled out or repeated every time it’s mentioned
9. Perfect

The name fits criterias 1, 4 and 6. It passes ok for criterias 3, 5 and 8. It’s not at all, unfortunately, fitting criteria 2 – which was truly important for me – but it fits criteria 7, which somehow gives it criteria 9.

So – sigh – guess he’ll just have to endure not being the only one of this name in his school. Added bonus is that I have an ancestor who had that name, and also it seems to blend well with the timelessness of François’ and mine names – which is the best start for our little family, surely. We could be living in any century with these names. (Hum, that gives us a whole ‘time-traveller’ feeling… quite cool.)