It’s a boy!
Monday, December 19th, 2005
Cirdan (KEER-dan) Elias was born a few minutes ago, 5:43 pm at home. He is 9 pounds 6 ounces and 20 inches long.
Betsy started laboring in earnest around 8 this morning, but her water didn’t break like with her first two births. We spent the day resting and watching videos of the previous births, and we walked around the mile or so loop three times and enjoyed the beautiful, short Alaskan daytime. When she was ready for some more action after a slow afternoon, the midwives broke her water around 4:30 pm. Things happened much faster after that, and after 18 minutes of pushing I got to catch my second beautiful boy! He has a lot of hair and is bigger than the first two, and seems very healthy.
Now (11:30 pm), we’ve already changed two very messy diapers and he has nursed a lot. Beren and Liliana came for a visit and were both really excited. Lily seems a bit insecure even though she is very proud to be a big sister. Beren seems to be taking it in stride so far. I am thrilled to have a chance to spend more time with them this week.
We hope you enjoy the few pictures we’ve put up so far. Thank you to those of you who have already left your congratulations on the blog- what a hip way to hear from you! And we want to thank our wonderful midwives for another beautiful home birth, and of course for our parents, who have all given us so much support already and on whom we will continue to rely for years. We thank God for all of you, and for our sweet new baby boy!