Introducing Ada

In the interests of keeping this post short(-ish) and sweet, I’ll only post a couple of photos here. Those with an insatiable appetite for more (read: family and close friends) can get in touch with me and I can send scads of pictures your way.

Calling in the Calvary

(Yep, that’s a pun, a common species of the genus paternus humourus - otherwise known as the “Dad joke”.)

It was around 10pm when Ada began to use the suggestive power of contractions to let us know that she’d decided on her birthday. With the phone support of the Calvary hospital midwives, we felt pretty calm about it all and waited around at home for as long as Julieanne felt comfortable before jumping in the car and making our way to the maternity ward.

I still had a certain amount of anxiety about the drive to the hospital. There’s a lot of variation as to the length of labour and I think this, along with stories of people delivering in cars, was the main source of my worry. In retrospect, I didn’t have anything to worry about. We got in the car and I drove the route I had many times before on the way to our ante-natal classes at Calvary. Since it was still pre-dawn there were no other cars on the road so the 15 minute drive was very easy.

When we got to the birth suite we settled in while Jennifer, a very calm and quietly, comfortingly authoritative midwife talked to us about what we were expecting, answered our questions and was generally reassuring. She was indicative of the other midwives, Sandra and Cindy, who helped us: warm, professional, and capable.

The labour itself was very intense and exhaustingly tedious all at once. It was frightening seeing Julieanne in so much discomfort and pain but I found if I kept reassuring myself (and her) that it was all okay and for a purpose I found it easier to take. Looking back now it’s all a emotionally charged blur but I do remember not being able to think about much other than the labour nor imagine an “afterwards” while it was happening. It was one of those experiences that really kept me focused on the present. I can only just begin to imagine what it was like for Julieanne. One thing that kept us from completely freaking out was that the intermittent monitoring consistently showing Ada was doing fine.

Fortunately, there was an afterwards and we were very relived once we had Ada with us and were - all three of us! - moved to our room on the maternity ward where the staff were also wonderful. I stayed there with Julieanne and Ada from Sunday night through to Friday. It was really useful being able to stay at the ward and learn the basics of nappy changing and bathing while not having to worry about cooking or cleaning. It was also great to be able to have the midwives take Ada off us periodically so we could catch up on some sleep, especially the night after the labour.

Eventually (and a tad reluctantly) we left our little bubble at Calvary and returned home to the cavalry. Well, to be honest, our mum’s didn’t have actual horses with them but they were both wonderful reinforcements. My mum (henceforth “nana Bev”) had come down on Ada’s due date, the 16th of October, and had been waiting around for ten days for her first grandchild to show up. Her and Julieanne’s mum (“nana Marg”, also a first-time grandmother) made the transition back home and to our new life extremely easy. A stocked fridge, a clean house and plenty of doting were all very much appreciated.

Thanks mums!

What’s in a Name?

Three years ago during our honeymoon, Julieanne and I had had a few glasses of celebratory champagne and started talking about eventually having kids. After a few more glasses we started throwing around names to see what we both liked. One process we hit upon was to think of famous and not-so-famous figures - be they writers, fictional characters, scientists, politicians, or musicians - and see how we felt about their name. Our other somewhat tipsy line of enquiry was tracing through our family trees to see if there were any names we thought appropriate.

Ada’s first name is borrowed from Ada Lovelace. She lived through the first half of the 19th century and is largely considered the first programmer due to her work with Charles Babbage on his analytical engine. Her second name, Molly, was chosen to remember Julieanne’s grandmother on her mum’s side.

We kept these choices of name to ourselves during the pregnancy and so there were a few surprises when we broke the news. None were more surprising than when my mum told her mum the name. “What did you say?”, was her reaction. It turns out that Ada is also the name of my nana’s late sister who everyone - including myself - knew of as “Bub”. To top it off, Ada the older was also born on the 26th of October. A very happy coincidence!

Those who know me will find it slightly strange that I didn’t scour the web looking for other meanings associated with the name Ada. Partly this is because I find them fairly spurious. For example, “Mark” is named after Mars, the warrior God, and so means “warlike”. Hmm… The other reason for not looking is that we didn’t want to find out anything that might dissuade us from our choice. Some friends speculated on its origins and found out that “Ada” is Germanic for “noble”, Hebrew for “adornment” and African for “oldest daughter”. So we had no need to worry after all.

Sleep, and the lack thereof

Don’t get me wrong. Ada gets plenty of sleep. However, it turns out that new-borns never really sleep for more than a few hours at a time. This poses a difficulty at night when Ada decides she should party (or at least feed) like it’s 3am every night while her fuddy-duddy parents would rather keep sleeping.

I think we are slowly adjusting. The first week or so was quite hard, even with the energising buzz of newly bestowed parenthood, but now we seem to have adapted to this new, permanently semi-dazed state and can function at a basic level. Sometimes fully formed sentences and coherent thought can be a bit tricky and we’re bumping into things more than usual but we can still feed ourselves and Ada so things aren’t dire yet.

I’ve heard that sleep and memory are inexorably linked: without enough of the former the latter will suffer. My current (probably befuddled) theory is that evolution, in its typically pragmatic style, has taken advantage of this to ensure people have more than one child. I’m having trouble remembering what happened yesterday so I’m sure that by the time Ada is old enough to sleep properly all this somnolent deprivation will have been been forgotten. All we’ll have to remember this time are some very cute pictures and video and we’ll say, “Aren’t they so cute at that age?” and boom! Ada has a sibling!

Minor grumbling aside, this very besotted dad-in-training is very happy to be a parent and the not-so-minor adjustments to our lives to make room for her come very easily.