Berlin, 25.10.00
I actually meant to write late last week just to say that I was going to write again soon but we'd been incredibly busy with my starting a new job at the end of August, a sudden decision to move to a new apartment at the end of September, both sets of parents arriving for overlapping visits during the move, trips for a wedding and family reunion on successive weekends before and after the move, and so on and so on. Combine it with the last months of pregnancy and it was a stressful and busy time. Plus we don't have a phone at home yet thanks to fucking Telekom.
Anyway, I was going to do it Friday at work but I forgot to bring the FTP password with me and then all of a sudden something else happened. So here's the announcement:
Everyone,
I would have sent this out last night, but almost four weeks after moving we still don't have a phone hooked up at home, so it had to wait until I came into work this morning (thus settling the bet over who would deliver the goods first, Annette or Deutsche Telekom).
After a lengthy, rather painful by the looks of it, and not at all exemplary labour, Annette delivered the baby by caesarean at about eight o'clock Tuesday morning, 24 October. Vital stats as recorded: 3.5 kg, 51 cm in length. (By no means a record: earlier that night some poor woman gave birth to a 5.1 kg baby, 61 cm long. We heard the screams from quite a distance.) I will save the obstetrical details for those truly interested, except to say that if we wrote a children's book about the experience, I would call it "The Little Cervix That Couldn't".
Anyway, she's here, and the important thing is that both mother and baby are completely healthy. We are thrilled enough to have (almost) completely forgotten the ordeal.
Our daughter's name, for those of you who don't already know, is Madeleine Sarah Timm Anderson. Pending review and approval by the Standesamt.
Yes of course there are pictures!
The first was taken about an hour after birth, the second later that afternoon.
Madeleine's first reaction upon being handed to me was to kick and claw her way out from under the blanket. Her personality outside the womb is no different than it was inside! My first reaction was puzzlement and fear of accidental dropping, but I put this down to fatigue. She's cute, in a vaguely pug-like sort of way.
Annette will be recovering at the hospital for a week. She and Madeleine will come home at the end of the month, at which time I'll work some half-days to help out. There's no phone in the room yet (sound familiar?) so you can't talk to her directly. For anyone in Berlin, I'm sure she'll be bored out of her skull very soon and would love a visit. She'll be out of email contact until she can sit up to type in bed.
Right, that's enough for now, I'm eager to go over for a visit, now that I've recovered a bit myself. Thanks to everyone for their kind wishes already sent.
Regards,
Scott
