Harriet Lily Semple Burdekin Arrives...

...in the bath of all places!

About 24 minutes old, out of the bath and tucked up in bed for a snuggle

So, the latest (and last!) little Semple Burdekin bobbed into the world at about 2:10am on Thursday 2nd May 2013.  She weighed in at 3.6kg (7lbs 15oz in old money), so she's our biggest by over 10oz, although she's still a tiny beautiful little beastie!

Hannah was fantastic!  Labour kicked off about 11pm in earnest and she got into the bath about 11.30pm.  The plan had been for the little one to arrive in the living room, but in the end there just didn't seem to be a good reason to get out of the bath, so an impromptu water birth ensued.  Fortunately the bath is large and the hot water tank was full!  We had got around to calling our midwife, Jo, just in time, as she arrived about 5 minutes before Harriet did.

The wee beastie catches up on a little shut eye on her first morning

We used hypno-birthing techniques and while I don't think Hannah will say it was a painless process, she was wonderful throughout.*  She frowned twice and gently squeezed my hand once during contractions, but apart from that really did stay completely relaxed.  Reuben and Tilly were just the other side of the corridor from the bathroom but stayed asleep until their usual wake up time.  It was lovely to get into bed with Harriet straightaway afterwards and even lovelier to see Tilly's face when she came into our room in the morning and found a baby sister in our bed!

We really weren't sure on the name front for the first day or so, but we've tried out Harriet for a day  now and it seems to fit her rather well.  The name means 'Home Ruler'; maybe it will help offset her inevitable youngest child syndrome (Reuben just laughed when we told him the meaning of the name - I don't think he was convinced).  If you look it up on Wikipedia there are many, many variations and contractions of the name (including my personal favourite - Yetti!!)  We're not quite sure what she'll be called generally, we'll just see what comes naturally (Reuben spent the first 6 months calling Tilly Gecko - so I've no idea what Harriet will get).

Seems bizarre that it was only 2 days ago as we've been asleep more than twice since then!  Harriet herself has been doing some splendid daytime sleeping and rather less splendid guzzling in the wee small hours followed by sore tummy wriggling and grumbling.  But today we've had some more wakefulness during daylight hours so we're hoping that Hannah has managed to pack more calories into her and she'll sleep better tonight.  Some wonderful friends took Reuben and Tilly off to play with their children on Thursday afternoon and today so we've had a couple of peaceful interludes at home.  The midwife has been round to visit us three times and Harriet and Hannah are both doing really well.

So quite how did you fit in there!

Harriet tries 'finger' for the first time

Reuben meets his littlest sister for the first time - seems okay so far!

The first nappy is changed - the audience may have over reacted slightly!

Lovely flowers - thanks to Dave's colleagues

Tilly is a very interested 'Big Sister'

*'Painless' it was not, but it was manageable which was more important.  And Dave was fantastic at helping keep me calm and focussed.  I know I wouldn't have had such a wonderful experience without him - HB.