Here he is – Tevye Stephen MacKay Pelfrey
Born May 6 at 3:47 in the afternoon.
Everybody is doing fine, which is the most important thing. The older kids are excited to have a new addition to the family.
Saturday there seemed to be an hour and a half where “things were going to happen” to the point where we even called the midwife to let her know. We were trying to be responsible and prevent what happened last time. Obviously it was a false alarm and Sunday morning when we called her back is was a little bit with our tail between our legs (metaphorically speaking).
Monday there was more “activity” but not nearly enough to warrant alerting the midwife. Waking up Tuesday was a different matter.
In a sad way the birth story is so… ordinary. Contractions came regularly and steadily increased in intensity and decreased in intervals. And it was taking forever. Well, it felt like it anyway.
We expected the labor to be quick since each of the previous births have had a progressively significantly shorter labor. All morning the contractions came and went, then in the afternoon they simply increased in a textbook manner.
Thankfully we had a friend who was “on call” and picked up August, Déla and Ciárán from school. When I called her to let her know that I wasn’t going to make it to school in time to pick the kids up she was in the office for a different reason and gave the phone to the receptionist there so she could hear out of my mouth that she would be picking them up.
Not only did she bring the kids home but she stayed with them in the basement and had dinner at the ready for them. I don’t know what we would have done without her.
Tevye is doing well. We’ve gotten a bit of sleep and everybody is healthy. That’s about all you can ask for.
The day after the birth everybody was hanging out discussing the family. It came out that Tevye is one of 5 brothers for Déla. Ciárán’s reaction to that? “Whoa, that’s a lot of boys.”