Greetings from babyworld1 November 2002

First a few corrections.
When I sent the "Baby news" e-mail there was a major error which confused many of you. She was actually born on October  23rd not September, as I wrote in my shell shocked state.
News: Mary is really well and seems almost to be back to her old self again. Joyce is thriving and feeding well, especially now that Mary's chest has recovered from the initial effects of suckling and that she no longer has to subsist on the Masai blood and milk mixture. From 3.8kg at birth she has gone up to 4kg. She is still very wriggley and loud and everyone says her hands are large. She seems to have developed a healthy fascination for stripes and prefers the Beach Boys as her relaxation music. Her greatest achievement so far is managing to send a jet of poo arcing about three feet across the room from the bed onto the bedroom wall and all over her dad! 
Yesterday, after her first appearance dining in public on London's Marylebone High Street in a fetching fake-leopard-lined pouch and a white woolly bobble hat, Joyce graced St Marylebone registry office, where she was fed and changed all over the waiting room couch before proceeding to be officially registered. She would like to express her deepest gratitude to everyone for the cards, presents, e-mails and flowers, but points out this does not in any way compensate for her extreme disapproval of current home facilities and the incompetence of her parents. She is therefore only too grateful for the opportunity to interview visitors or highly skilled potential applicants for position of carer  by appointment only through her current parents. Alternatively, should anybody care to inform Social Services, she would be extremely grateful.
Best regards,
Jason and Mary
pp Joyce

Dear All...26 October 2002

Apologies for group email!
Mary and Jason gave birth to a daughter, hereafter to be known as Joyce, on Wednesday 23rd September at 06.46 hrs, from which you can all draw your own astrological conclusions on the vexed issue of which side of the Scorpio / Libra divide she has fallen and the implications of this for her personality. However, As T.E. Lawrence memorably said, "nothing is written ! "
Now for the science bit: Joyce weighed a little over 3 kilos, about 8.5 pounds, at birth, which involved about 44 hours of contractions, followed by about 4 hours of pushing and delivery, an epidural, a ventouse (vacuum pump) delivery accompanied by episiotomy and then stitches. But no caesarean: we did it! Mary rules!
So, as you might gather, Mary is still pretty exhausted and is in hospital until later today. Joyce, however, is thriving and today has finally managed to feed well after a bit of an erratic and, dare I say, operatic start on Wednesday night, which left Mary banished to a rocking chair in the nursery so everyone else could sleep . Yes, I think Joyce has inherited her paternal grandmother's operatic lungs! She kicks a lot and waves her arms about, is very Wrigley and ready to fight off any attempts to change her nappies. She is quite podgy and well-built, has a very ruddy complexion all over, eyelashes, quite a lot of light brown hair, and I think she's really pretty, despite her rather austere and disapproving expression. It seems like the facilities outside the womb don't quite meet her expectations. She seems to attract all the attention on the ward. (Probably just paternal vanity that last comment!)
It has all been very friendly at hospital and the midwives have been wonderful. Simon and Stacey from our National Childbirth Trust ante natal class turned up at hospital a couple of hours after us and have been with us every step of the way, with almost exactly the same birth scenario, so we were able to support each other. They had a 6.5 pound boy called Oliver, with a lot of spikey black hair. Toby and Amanda, also from the class, turned up on the ward on Wednesday and they are our true heroes: natural birth that morning in a pool in only a few hours and just a bit of gas and air for pain relief. So it can be done. They had a girl, a little smaller than Joyce, by the "working title" name of Hadley (not sure about the spelling).
Anyway, that's all for now, photos will follow in due course.
Love, Jason