Nathan does his bit for the Irish

Trips out and about

We've had a couple of trips out the last few days we started on Friday with walk out to North Berwick.


Saturday was an NCT BBQ at Vogrie Country Park. We decided to walk up there as it was such a nice day. We met up with the other girls and their partners and children who were on the same NCT course as us, clue a photo opportunity.




Finally today mum and I headed up to the Falkirk Wheel with Nathan, who slept the entire time!

Daddy tries a spot of breastfeeding!

OK so we didn't actually attach Nathan to Chris's moobs (- too many hairs for Nathan's liking!) but we did try expressing some milk as a practice run for our night out to the Tattoo on Saturday. It really would have been wise to read up on how much to express prior to trying it but hey you live and learn. We only expressed 1oz turns out it should be more around 2.5oz based on the number of feeds Nathan has on an average day. Any how couldn't resist a we photo opportunity of daddy's first feed.

Nathan's first trip to the seaside

On Monday we braved the weather, taking advantage of a rare sunny spell and took Nathan down to Musselburgh harbour for a walk along the prom. After Nathan decided to sick up his lunch all over the first snow suit, there was nothing for it but to turn Nathan into a wee bear!

Chris likes 'driving' the pushchair so he was in charge for most of the walk. Despite the wind and ever darken clouds it was actually quite warm. I do wonder though if we'll actually be able to see Nathan in any photos of us out and about with the pushchair.



We popped in on Grandma and Grandad Griffiths on the way home for our tea so Nathan got some extra cuddles.




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Midwife update

Just a wee post to let you know about the midwife's visit on Friday. The primary reason for the visit was for Nathan's first weigh in and to do his blood spot screening. You are constantly told baby will lose weight and not to get upset about it- up to 10% weight loss is classed as normal for the first week. Nathan's new weight came in at 7lb 11oz (3480kg) which is around a 6% drop from his birth weight of 8lb 3oz (3710kg), so the midwife was more than happy that Nathan's progress. The blood spot screening test went ok to and Nathan didn't really cry that much at it. The test involves a pin pick in baby's heel to draw around 5 blood samples which then get sent off to be analysed for a number of different things.  We won't hear anything back from them unless there's a problem which I'm sure there won't be.  Other than doing that she was more than happy with Nathan and mum.

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More cuddles

Mum and dad came round this afternoon and bought Stephen and Corine with them so we could 'wet' Nathan's head with a nice bottle of Cava courtesy of dad. We couldn't convince Stephen or Corine to have a cuddle but mum couldn't resist. Unfortunately for mum Nathan didn't appreciate us discussing his wind problems and on cue decided to show us how he dealt with wind. Mum's obviously a bit out of practice, chose to hand him over to Chris to deal with the nappy! We manged to get a couple of pic's of Nathan with Grandma though before the eruption.

I also thought it was about time we got some pictures with the wee man.

Nathan's 1st hoodie

OK not quite a white ned style hoodie! I found these swaddling blankets through the NCT catalogue. They are by a company called Morrck and have slits in the blanket for the harness systems for things like your car seat, high chair, rocker etc. You put the blanket in seat and slot the harness through, strap baby in then swaddle. So not only is it a nice cozy blanket for baby, it protects the seat from puke and the likes! A big thank you to Pete and Lou for getting it for us, we tried it out today for size.

1st Professional photo

I just got an electronic copy of Nathan's first professional photo taken at the hospital. I think it was took on the Monday morning so he would be coming up for 2 days old.

Grandma & Grandad Green meet Nathan

Mum and dad popped in for the afternoon on their way to staying at Stephen's for the weekend. Cuddles all around for everyone were called for - although, Nathan chose to sleep through it all only waking for a feed as mum and dad were leaving!

Nathan's in demand

Our wee man has a hectic social life already! Over the last couple of days he's had his first walk out, coffee and cakes at Dobbies with the girls from Aqua and a Griffiths clan meal up at Hillend. It'll be a busy weekend too as Grandma and Grandad Green are coming to visit.

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First trip out

We our first outing on Wednesday, a wee walk around Gorebridge. Getting the push chair together was like a military operation but I guess it'll just take time to get used to! We made sure Nathan was all snuggled up in the seat first....

then attached all the various covers and hoods!

Daddy took charge of the pushchair...

and luckily we made it back home before the heavens opened. I say lucky as it was on the way back home looking at the dark clouds above us that we though it might be a good idea to leave the rain cover in the pushchair basket!

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Shelling peas anyone?

Well what a weekend. Its hard to believe its only Tuesday time seems to have flown by, it feels like so much has happened how can it be only 4 days ago I was waddling around the place with a big (ok huge) belly! Where to start? Well while we weren’t really going in for all the old wives tales on how to induce labour there are only 3 things I did that I can think of that might have encouraged baby out.

Old wives tale #1 - Friday was a glorious day so, I took Louise off for a wee jolly down to Portobello prom stopping via the coffee shop and pub along the way. We didn’t venture in for a paddle but were tempted it was that warm and sunny. Any way back to the point that was old wives tale #1 - go for a long walk (OK ordinarily that’s usually just a nice stroll but when you feel like the size of a house it’s a long walk!).

Old wives tale #2 (sorry mum) – get it on! Sperm is the hormone Prostaglandin in its natural form. I don’t think I need to elaborate further on that one.

Old wives tale #3 – ok so I made this one up - a nice glass of Fresita to end a lovely day on. And I know it’s hard to believe dad but yes there is still left over wine from the wedding in the cupboard!

So that brings us round to Saturday morning, I’d woke up at 4 to go to the loo as you do, but felt quite crampy which I just put down to having a bit of a tummy upset but after 3 trips later and an inability to lie down without getting really bad pains I thought there may be a chance that things could be happening but wasn’t really sure whether it would lead to anything. I padded around the house a bit watching TV and had a bath and made it til about 8 until I woke Chris up to suffer with me! We timed the contractions and tried to hold off but as we got them at 3 mins apart we thought we should ring the hospital. They didn’t seem that bothered and said it was up to us whether we came in or not. Being our first baby we (or I) felt better going in although having contractions in the car isn’t the easiest thing to cope with! Surprisingly triage was really quiet when we got there and I was taken in straight away for an examination and found to be 4 cm dilated – that was at 11am. We got taken up to the labour rooms to get settled in but couldn’t get a birthing pool unfortunately, the bath did the trick for a wee while but I think the pool would have eased the pain in my hips better. The pain from the contractions was all in my hips which made staying in one position or some of the active birthing positions a bit difficult. I found that getting settled on the birth ball was out of the question as I had to get off it while I had the contraction! In the end I spent half the final stages of labour kneeling on the bed bent over a bean bag but ended up giving birth on my back because my hips couldn’t take the pressure!! Chris says it took about 20 minutes in all to get the head out and the rest just followed in a couple of pushes. No cuts or tears thankfully and the only damage to mother and baby was a bit of bruising on baby’s head caused from the pushing. We chose to wait until the cord had finished pulsating before it was cut (yes Chris did cut it).



Nathan was on my chest for a good 30 mins before he was swaddled up and passed to daddy for a cuddle while the placenta was sorted out. We were left alone a while before the midwife came back to weigh, measure and give the vitamin k injection to Nathan.

His official stats are:

Time of birth – 20:27
Weight – 8lb 3oz
Length – 55cm

Here on in was a bit of a pain, it was after midnight before we eventually got to the recovery ward. There were no showers in the labour rooms’ just baths so I had done my best to clean myself off over the beide and basin but I felt a bit mingy all night. For some reason the midwife said not to have a bath but the recovery ward couldn’t understand why they’d said it or that they hadn’t shown me how to do the first breast feed. I let Chris go home by this point as it was getting on for 1am. There wasn’t much sleep to be had on the ward – not through Nathan’s fault I should add he slept the majority of the night only waking up once or twice. He was sick in his sleep though a couple of times which was a bit scary so I got the nurse to help me clean him up and put some new sheets on, only for him to promptly puke all over them too! I think I got about 3 hours sleep if I was lucky. Nathan was a bit ‘mucusy’ all the next day but one of the midwifes was going round spending time with of the each women on the ward helping with the breastfeeding and showing us first timers the ropes. Incidentally she also told me off for getting out of bed and doing too much and promptly installed me back in bed. – I did mange to sneak in a shower though before she did this and before everyone else was given their towels! The feedings been a bit hit and miss mainly because Nathan sleeps so much that you have to wake him to feed when he’d rather just sleep so ends up stopping and starting throughout the feed. We did get one really good feed in so that was encouraging. We also got shown how to bath Nathan by one of the midwife’s so he looked a bit ‘tidier’!

Partners are excused from the ridged visiting times so Chris came in at about 10 and spent the day with us popping back to Danderhall for his tea before coming back with Lesley and Jean for evening visiting.

Even less sleep was had on Sunday night as there was much goings on, on the ward with a new arrival in the middle of the night who just happened to be one of the girls from the NHS antenatal class I was on, and one of the other babies having a lot of problems. This made me feel that providing the feeding sorted itself out it would be definitely be better to go home and get some decent sleep. Thankfully after a boring day we had another couple of good feeds so asked to be discharged in the early evening and were back in the house by 8pm on Monday.

Baby News -*updated more photos*

Hi everyone,

Great news Jenny gave birth to a baby boy last night at about 8.25pm. We have named him Nathan David Griffiths. He weighted in at 8lb 3oz. Jenny and baby are doing great.

5 seconds after birth

cuddles for mum

Big blue eyes

Project driveway #2

Yippee second time lucky. I managed to get a different contractor to do the kerb after the first guy never turned up and isn't returning my calls. Considering I only spoke to the new contractors yesterday they have been fab, matched the price we had before and will have it finished tomorrow. Here's the progress so far...

I think it's just the tar to do tomorrow so that shouldn't take long.

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Project Driveway

Well after a bit better luck with the weather and some help from Lesley and George we can now park a car on the new drive. There's still some way to go to finish off the landscaping of the front and sorting the fencing and gates out but it's nice to be able to see the end in sight. The contractors and supposed to be coming to drop the kerb tomorrow but their lack of contact is worrying me!

It seems a long time back now when we first starting looking at the drive and Chris got to work on his wall building skills and what with lots of overtime and a run of bad weather things slowed up somewhat (along with the picture taking!). Here's a couple of shots back in the middle of May of Chris starting the demolition work of the original wall and building the new sloped path to the front door so I don't have to bounce a pram up and down steps.

The next step was to knock out the steps and existing wall around the steps then lower and rebuild it nearer the house and joining up with the wall running along the garden at the side of the house. This was where things slowed up a bit as the weather wasn't exactly wall building weather! The area was then back filled and compacted with hardcore to form a base for the driveway slabs to sit on. Taking advantage of a couple of days of good weather and the ever closer baby arrival we enlisted the help of George and Lesley! We are now expecting compensation claims from George for Vibration White Finger!

After the good work by George and Lesley the driveway just need a wee bit of levelling out to get the right line for the slabs which Chris worked on prior to laying the slabs with George.

After a long day Chris tested out the driveway for size.

And to prove the stability it's still standing the next day!

Chris is working today but hopefully when he gets back in he'll start preparations for the driveway gates. The next stages after that are to wood clad the old council fencing along the front of the garden, get rid of the grass and lower the soil level. Build up a wall to contain that side of the garden, cover it in purple slate and plant a wee tree in the middle. Any other plants will be in containers rather than planted in the ground to minimise the weeding required. Along the side of the house a sloped path will lead off the driveway to the back garden and the existing soiled area along the side of the house and any bear soil around the drive will also be slated over.

I think one of the best things of Chris doing this himself (apart from the new wall building skills!) is that so far we've only spent £100 and we resused the slabs from what we already had and the bricks came from freecycle. The next stage will be slightly more costly as we have a lot of wood to buy and the slate.

A big well done to Chris and I can't wait to see it all finished, my life getting baby in and out the car is going to be so much easier now :) xx

Keep posted for updates as the next stages come on.

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