T’was the night before…

Baby Eve, the night before the C-Section and the birth of our first child. We decided to celebrate a little and have one last night of freedom. We gathered up all the in-laws, nieces and nephews and headed out for tea.

It is kind of surreal to know that this time tomorrow our lives will change forever with the birth our first child. Everyone’s telling us how our lives will change and how we will lose so much sleep in the coming months as they laugh at our naivety of what we have got ourselves into, but I think we have a pretty good idea. We know the hard work in front of us and we also know the rewards that will come from that. So I’m looking forward to this next chapter in our lives raising mini me.

Next time I post I will be able to introduce our new son/daughter to the world. 14hrs to go… time for me to bank some sleep…

Baby Names

Always a difficult thing to do, but so much more when its your first child. I personally don’t find it to difficult as I think a name should have some personally meaning. By this I mean perhaps a relative that you are close to or someone that inspires you.

As this is our first child, it’s the first time we have gone through this process although we have had to name many pets which proved to be just as difficult for my wife. When we bred our toy poodles she struggled to come up with names for them so the last one was called ‘Z’,that’s right just like  the last letter of the English alphabet. Which seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment, with Natalie Portman naming her son Aleph after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

I’m not a fan of weird names or “unique” names, I go by a simple rule of if you cant find it on a coffee mug in your local gift shop then its not a real name. A lot of celebrities have named their children weird names like willow and apple. To me I just think of that child going to school and having to always explain that yes their name is a little fruity.

So I think if we have a girl we have settled on Adelaide Rosalie Hannant. Adelaide being our home town, and a place I hold close to my heart and Rosalie being my grand mother that I was very close to and unfortunately passed away a few years ago. Our big problem comes with boys names, which in a sense is a bit odd as I come from a family full of boys.

The other problem is Fiona is hunting for a name that just pops out and grabs her, which I just can’t see happening. She has been trawling through all the baby name website and even bought a baby name book but still hasn’t found anything that just grabs her. So her next plan of action is to see if any thing comes to mind once the baby is born and see which name fits it then.

I’m hoping we have this sorted out sooner rather than later, but as my wife tells me we have 6 weeks to fill out the birth certificate and we can change its name as often as we like until then.

Early Arrival

At 36 weeks our baby is still in the breech position with no real signs of it spinning around so its been recommended that Fiona has a C-Section. So the 8th of July we are now booked in and getting ready for our early arrive.

With the baby now being delivered 2 weeks early we have the screws tightened up on our plans with the baby change table and chest of drawers still on back order! We had a baby shower last weekend which was a great afternoon for Fiona, her friends and her family. On Sunday we headed down to Shornecliff beach for a photo shoot before Fiona pops, and yes she’s very close to popping I think.

Will have some photos to show soon, hopefully before the baby arrives!

Baby Strollers and Cots

We finally started to look into getting the nursery furnished and setup. After an entire weekend of looking around and seeing how expensive baby gear is we made our first baby purchase.  Almost $1200 later we have a baby cot, change table and chest of drawers. Although $1200 might appear a bit on the sharp end its actually about mid range with a lot of these baby suites being sold for $1400-$2000.
Just when I thought we had got the big items finalised we started looking  into a baby pram and car capsule. These items combined are collectively known as travel systems as the capsule clips into both the pram and the car. These systems start at around $550 and go right thru to $1600 and remember we are talking about just a pram and a car capsule. Of which the baby will grow out of the capsule really quickly. So quick you can actually hire car capsules rather than buy them.
So once again after spending a lot of time going through baby shops as well as the Big W and Target I think I have narrowed it down to a couple of models. Mum and Dad have offered to put some money in towards these items which is great, but it also means we need to consider even more carefully how we spend the money.
BigW sell a Steelcraft Orion stoller which in my opinion isnt as good but it does have a bigger shopping basket underneath and is around $100-$150 cheaper than the Safety 1st Shuttle system even when you include the Infant Carrier.