Cadell Duncan Linus Carden arrived quite quickly at 10:16am on Monday March 31st.
The first signs of labour woke Jo at about 4:00am. I started filling the birth pool at about 6:00am and Cadell was born not long after.
Vital stats:
Here's the birth pool being filled.
Madeleine meets her new brother.
Dad with his new baby.
Cadell tips the scales at 3.61kg.
The birth pool, afterwards.
Now that I've had a few more minutes to edit some photos and settle down a bit, here's some more stuff. First of all, his name.
We had been thinking about names for quite some time, and once we saw that our baby was a boy, we realised we had to choose between our two most favoured names. With Jo and the baby comfortably tucked up in bed, we sent everyone else from the room and had a three way discussion between Jo, Madeleine and me. We presented Madeleine with the alternatives and she liked 'Cadell'. After a bit more of a chat, the decision was made. A three way agreement.
Cadell: Welsh name meaning "Spirit of Battle" or "Small Battle". Oh dear. The fact that Cadel (with one 'L') Evans is one of Australia's best mountain bikers and is now a professional road racer had nothing to do with the choice. Well, not much anyway. :-) We happen to like the name.
Duncan: Jo's grandfather's name was Duncan. He was killed in WW2 when his daughter (Jo's Mum) was only 6 days old.
Linus: A Finnish name. Linus Torvalds is the author of the Linux computer operating system. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'Guinness', but we expect that most Australians will make it sound like 'Line-us.'
This follows the pattern we established with Madeleine's name. Her first name because we like it. The second name (Amanda) after a close friend or relative (Amanda Smith) and the third name taken from an inspirational role model (Marie, for Marie Curie.)
More Photos:
Here's a shot taken while we were still in the birth pool. The solid red cast is because the photo was taken with no flash in quite a dark room. To begin with, the picture looked totally black, but a bit of remapping of pixel values extracted the image you see. At the left, is one of Jo's helpers, Allie McDonald. Trudy the midwife has her hand on Cadell, and you can guess the rest.
The other birth helper was Mel Johns. Here she is getting Cadell dressed for the first time, and here she is showing him off.
One of the first visitors to meet Cadell was Steph Maxwell.
Here are Mum and Bub moments after getting into bed.
Of course, when you're only a couple of days old, sleeping is your number one activity.
Jo and Madeleine shared Cadell's first bath.
The indignity of a blood test made palatable by a breastfeed.
Chief digger Madeleine prepares a hole to plant the placenta under a tree.
