Family invasion II

Long time, no blog entry. We apologise for that!

Since the last entry Dave's mum and sister has been here for a visit. They came on Thursday and left Monday and as always the days went by too fast.

They arrived in the afternoon on Thursday so we didn't have time to do much, but both Joyce and I got a haircut at least. Elias was very kind to his dad and slept the whole time I was at the hairdresser. After that we went to Joyce's and Juliet's hotel where they checked in and Dave and I got to open loads of presents for Elias. Everyone are so kind!!

On Friday Sweden celebrated "Midsummer" so basically everything was shut and Uppsala felt a bit like a ghost town. Most people tend to go out to the countryside for midsummers where they gather a group of friends and eat and drink loads. We walked around in town and looked at all the closed shops before going back to our place for lunch and some Elias-watching. For some reason it never gets boring to look at the boy...



While Joyce and Juliet was here we managed to play quite a few rounds of "Categorically speaking", give Elias his second bath and see some traditional dancing around the midsummer pole. Unfortunatelly the weather was pretty crap so we couldn't go for a nice picknic like we had hoped.

Family invasion

On Thursday night my parents finally arrived after the 800 km drive from Luleå and Elias got to meet his grandparents for the first time. He might not quite understand who they are yet, but grandma Inger and granddad Stig were very happy to see him.



On Friday we took it quite easy, went in town and had fika, played a lot of cards and of course admired Elias! On Saturday Angelika, Per-Anders and the dogs came. Auntie Angelika was very excitd to see her nephew but it took a little while before she dared to hold him.
Bacon was very interested in what Angelika was holding, maybe it was a stuffed animal he could play with??

On Saturday evening we went out to a restaurant to celebrate mum and dad's 40th anniversary. We were a bit nervous how Elias would handle it but be made us very proud. He slept right through the starter and main course, then woke up for a feed and then settled down again.

Eating in restaurant.

And he shall be called Elias

We have finally decided on the name Elias John Webber. We have had the name Elias in mind since day 1, but when we found out that it is one of the most popular boy's names in Sweden at the moment we were a bit put off. In the end we decided to go for it anyway though since we both really like the name and think that it suits him.

Today we have been to "BVC" (Child care ward) where they weighed and measured him. He has grown very well indeed. He now weighs 3490 grams and is 52.6 cm tall. Already a big boy!

On Sunday my cousins Therese and Erika visited us for a few hours which was very nice. Elias wasn't very social though, he slept the whole time. Not that we have much to compare with, but so far he feels like a very easy baby to take care of. He still sleeps for quite a few hours after eating, giving us plenty of time to rest, read email, write blog entrys, and do other stuff.

On Monday we celebrated his 1 week-day by taking him out for his longest outing so far. We walked to Stadsparken and had a picnic there with Anna and Jacob. It was very relaxing and nice. While there we also had our first public feed and public nappy change. There are quite a lot of firsts at the moment ;-)

Relaxing in the park..

Tomorrow night my parents are coming which we are looking forward to of course, and on Friday my sister and her boyfriend are coming as well. Unfortunately the weather forecast doesn't look great for the weekend, but I'm sure we'll have a lovely time anyway!

First week

Almost a week have past now since the birth of E (name not decided yet.. two candidates starting with E at the moment). Since coming back home on Tuesdays the days have just flown by. I guess we aren't doing much really but time still seems to go really fast.

The first two days we basically set up camp in the bedroom and almost didn't go anywhere else. We did go down to the garden a few times to have coffee and get some fresh air and Dave did a few trips to the shop, but apart from that we didn't move around much.

On Friday we had a checkup with the doctor at the hospital. They weighed him, checked eyes, took a blood test and some other things. Everything looked good. A hearing test was also performed and the right ear is ok, but the left one they couldn't get a reading on, probably because it had some amniotic fluid or something else in the way. We are scheduled to do a new test of the left ear on June 19.

On Friday we alse had our first guests around, Anna and little Jacob. It was nice to finally show our little gem off! On Friday night we also went around to Emma and Henke's where they were having a BBQ and E got to meet a few more of our friends. He had actually met Sofia already in the hospital because she started her very first day as a midwife on Monday morning. Had he been a bit later she could have been the one delivering him!

On Saturday Kajsa, Matthias and Vilmer came around and we sat out in the garden (in the shade!) and had a nice fika. We waited patientally for E to wake up but he actually slept for 4 hrs straight.. In the end they had to give up but there will surely be plenty of more opportunities to meet E when he is awake. It got a bit worrying in the end that he slept so much and we decided it was probably best to go in where it was a bit cooler. Ever since E was born we have had amazing weather with temperatures around 30 degrees in the shade. It is a bit hard to handle because we can't do much else than keep him in the shade and not put much clothes on him but it is still pretty hot.

Heavy sleeper

Today my cousins are coming around which we are really looking forward to and in the coming week I am sure we will be venturing out more and more.

E has been really nice so far and slept for quite long periods. Normally he eats and then sleeps for 2-3 hrs so up until now I think we are both happily surprised and had expected to get a lot less sleep and to be more knackered. I guess he doesn't really have a routine yet though so things can change any moment... The only complaint we have at the moment is that he seems to have perfected the art of weeing as soon as we change nappy. He is like a fountain and wee seems to go everywhere.. ;-) He has weed on both us and himself numerous times the little bugger.

By the way, we have also set up a skype account familywebber and we tested it for the first time yesterday and called Dave's mum who got a peek at E through the webcam. Quite exciting!

Dad's reflections

The birth was an incredible experience. When Vickan's waters broke at 1.30 Monday morning she was surprisingly calm and happy about it. She rang förlossningen and they told us to relax and come in for a check at 8; so I soon fell back to sleep. But it was perhaps only 20 minutes before things got far scarier. Vickan was clearly in intense pain, and I was forced to come to terms with the fact that I had to get out of bed. I frantically started packing our bags. I was all over the place. Vickan could hardly move and was understandably brisk in tone. Neither of us knew how far she'd come and we were worried.

Somehow I managed to get our stuff together and as ordered I got the car ready. I helped her in and we drove off. I sensibly resolved to keep my mouth shut during the journey.

We parked up. I was too flustered to operate the parking machine so we just went in. I'd managed to get her there at least, but when I was was asked to produce her papers I panicked. Of course I'd brought the wrong bag in. Vickan was in too much pain to care.

Anyway for the next two hours at least I went into another mode. To be honest, I didn't have to do much, just hold Vickan's hand and wipe her brow. There was no way she was letting go of the gas mask though, so I didn't need to hold that. It was hard to watch the final phase. Vickan was amazing. She was pushing like anything despite the obvious pain it caused. And then I watched from above and saw what Vickan couldn't see herself: the boy coming out. He shot out like a champagne cork along with floods of clear fluids. In a flash the midwife grabbed him and threw him straight to Vickan, and she was old Vickan again, the pain had temporarily gone as she held him for the first time.

Then I tried to take pictures (most came out blurred - I couldn't do anything right). A few minutes later the placenta came out. The midwife held up the entire foetal sack and placenta for us to see (unfortunately I missed that photo opportunity) and then she just left it lying on a trolley for some time afterwards.

He's here!

As most of you all probably know by now, we had a beatiful baby boy on Monday morning. When writing the blog entry on Sunday night, little did we know how fast things were about to change.

We went to bed quite late on Sunday. Dave was feeling a bit off colour and was considering staying home on Monday to recover. I hadn't felt anything out of the ordinary during the evening, a bit of ache in my lower back and quite a bit of pressure "downwards". Nothing strange though, had had that before and nothing happened. At 1.30 I woke up because my waters broke. Luckily I managed to run to the bathroom before the big flood came ;-). I called the hospital and since I didn't have any contractions she booked me in for an examination at 8.00 in the morning. About 15 minutes later I had my first contraction and they immediately started to come quite close to each other and they hurt. At 2.30 I told Dave he had to call the hospital again and ask if we could come in. The woman said that we were of course welcome but that we shouldn't expect this to be the real thing.

About 3 am we got in to the hospital and when the nurse saw me she just stated that I seemed to be struggling quite a bit. Yup! She took my blood preassure which was sky high, she wanted to take my temperature but I didn't manage to keep the thermometer in place long enough for her to get a reading and I didn't manage to get up on the scale either. When they examined me they realised to all of our surprise that I was fully dilated and from then on things happened fast. I was wheeled in to a delivery room where the laughing gas became my best friend. I was pretty much in my own world by now and maybe Dave felt quite left out. I was really happy to have him by my side though. At 4.45 the "push contractions" started and by 5.10 he was out. It was truly amazing!
I never could have imagined that the delivery could take 3,5 hrs from start to finish! It sure was lucky that it started during the night, if Dave had been at work in Stockholm he might not have made it back in time - a horrible thought!

Well, I could of course go on for hours about how amazing the last few days have been, but I think I will call it a day for now. Maybe I can convince daddy Dave to write about how he experienced it all, but don't get your hopes up too much ;-)

More pictures can be found here

football shame

Still no baby! On Friday Vickan suspected that the waters had started seeping(!). To be safe she called Förlossningsavdelningen and they pulled us in but it turned out to be wishful thinking on our part. Vickan got rigged up to a machine for half an hour that tracked the heartbeat and contraction intensity. It showed all was well, which was reassuring at least.

Yesterday we bore witness to the biggest scandal in Swedish/Danish footballing history. Sweden were 3-0 up after 25 minutes in Copenhagen. The Danes had amazingly pulled it back to 3-3 when in the 89th minute Poulsen (Dane) needlessly elbowed Rosenberg (Swede) in the stomach (ref and ball were miles away). The ref pointed to the penalty spot and was about to give the Dane the red card when a fat drunken Danish supporter ran onto the pitch and slapped the ref around the face. The shaken ref then stopped the game and awarded the match to the Swedes 3-0. The crazy Danish fan will be lynched as he has ruined his country's chances of qualifying for Euro 2008.

Today was another beautiful day. We got up late and took a picnic (consisting mainly of naughty snacks) to Mälaren (the big lake stretching from Stockholm to Uppsala). We found a quiet spot by the water on a rock and enjoyed the calm for a few hours. Now we're back home lapping up the sun on our balcony. It was sweet of the piglet to give us some extra relaxation time...