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