Wet Chook Productions: The Arrival of Owen

After 41 weeks of pregnancy our son arrived on Thursday 29 September 2011. He was delivered by c section, which was not the original plan. I went for a check up on the Tuesday and was told that the head of the baby was not engaged and I would therefore need to have a c section, which was a bit of a shock to me. It turns out that the reason for this is that the head of the baby was quite large, it measured 40cm. Our midwife, Judy, said she have never measured a head that large. So I am thankful that I didn't go into labour otherwise I would have been in an awful mess!

We named our son Owen John Glenn Butterworth. We were thinking of Harry, but Owen was on the list and he seemed to suit the name when Colin said it, so that is what we went with. John, comes from my father and Glenn comes from Colin's Grandfather. I have two middle names so we decided to go with two for our child.

Owen weighed 10 pounds 5 ounces and measured 54cm in length. The c section went well and before I knew it I had my son draped across my chest in recovery enjoying some skin to skin time, which is an absolutely magical experience.

The Mid Wives at the LGH were marvellous, I cannot say enough about them. We went home after five days in the hospital to face the shock of realising that we had a small human that we were responsible for. I can honestly say that this was a complete shock to both our systems and I was convinced that we had made a huge mistake. But things have gotten alot better and I think we are coping quite nicely now.

Owen has changed so much since he was born and continues to change everyday, which is amazing to watch.

Owen is the first grandchild for all parents and they are all really happy. However my dad is the dotting Grandfather and obviously loves Owen to bits and looks forward to when he will be able to do some painting with him (my dad does oil paintings of Tasmanian landscapes). This is my Dad holding Owen as his first visit in the hospital, I love the look on Dad's face!

One of the things I look forward to is dressing little Owen for an outing because he is in triple 0 in clothes I can put him in some cool outfits. I particularly like this one:

My brother, Matthew, was down from Queensland last week and although he doesn't have a paternal instinct in his body, he did have a hold of Owen (only because his wife, Heather, who couldn't come down wanted pictoral evidence of Matthew with Owen).

There have been many photos taken of Owen and I am sure that many more will be taken. But one of my favourites is when he was looking really crabby, this photo always makes me smile:

I was determined that my child wouldn't be having a dummy, so naturally he has a dummy! It calms him down at times, which helps in trying to get him off to sleep. His dummy is called David and he loves it to bits (at times, other times he doesn't want to know anything about it).