Jacob Daniel

This is a reproduction of my blog post from HERE
Well its finally happened after about 40 weeks and 6 days of hard work from Kathryn especially and me too, God blessed us with a healthy and very bright eyed Jacob Daniel, born at 1.57pm on Sunday 29th July at hospital by C-section. (We had hoped to go to birthing centre and avoid the hospital environment but due to the breech it wasn't an option, although the 5 weeks of antenatal classes there were a great preparation, along with the books from my sister Kristen who had a similiar experience last year). Massive! thanks to the family and friends who have encouraged and supported us both in many! ways in recent times. Especially want to thank Kathryns Mum and sister (and later on her husband), and also my parents and sister Sharon who shared this special day with us, and encouraged and helped in many ways, they have really been a great source of strength for Kathryn and I both on the big day and in the months leading up to it. So huge thanks to you!

We found out by ultrasound on Thursday 26th July that Jacob was in breech position, they tried to turn him to the correct position, but were unable to do so. We then booked in for a C-section in a weeks time. However God and Jacob had other ideas, and were obviously keen for Jacob to enter the world before then, so around 2am on Sunday 29th July Kathryn started to get regular labour pains. When I woke around 0630, I stopwatched Kathryns labour pains (contractions) at about 7-8 minutes apart, and lasting for around 30-40 seconds, and she experienced a "show" soon after. I phoned the hospital and we drove the 30 minutes there, which being a sunday morning wasn't a heavy traffic time, praise God! We arrived around 9am, Kathryn had another ultrasound to confirm he was still in Breech position, and then the process of emergency C-section began.
Jacob was born 3.4kg (7.5 pounds) and 50cm long, (click HERE for kg to pounds converter) and it was a reasonably traumatic process, as he was in breech position, and poor Kathryn had to go through a lot for him to get out. I really was hurting for her deep inside, and boy was he keen for a feed when I first got to see him. Kathryn eventually got to give him his first breastfeed and he got stuck into it for about 15-20min. So Kathryn began a rather long difficult recovery (in hospital for 6 days for starters), but Jacob was finally ready to say hello to the world, so below are four initial photos representing our brave new world. May post a few more later...

These photos from my Dad from last night and were taken a few hours after birth, I will have to do a whole webpage as I know there will be thousands more photos to come, and I am sure Kathryn will do some scrapbooking pages on our firstborn too! So something to look forward to in the coming months!
Here are some photos my sister Kristen took a few days after the birth; ...
2 weeks later Kathryn and Jacob have settled in back home for a week now, and he is continuing to feed well and gain weight at a fast rate. He is a fantastic, alert, bright-eyed little bloke!
...


Update; At 6 weeks Jacob is now starting to make a few cooing noises some non-verbal sounds (not crying), and moving his arms and legs around very strongly, His neck seems stronger too...He is very alert at times and grips your finger hard, sticks his tongue out at us sometimes repeatedly, and sometimes we see the beginnings of a smile...The steady stream of breastfeeding (Kathryn doing wonderfully well as a mother with that and other things!), and dirty nappies is chugging along like a steam train...
Tummy time seems to be helping and thanks to everyone for all the wonderful things they have given or lent to us. Also big thanks to everyone who has visited, or helped with babysitting, it means a lot to us! Exciting fantastic and challenging moments ahead!
Hopefully Jacob will one day grow up to know,respect and serve the Creator Triune God, and go hiking and climb mountains just like Kathryn and I have done...Maybe some kick to kick who knows.
Here is a photo of our little family at church on the night of the "cradle roll" where Jacob was added to the list of little ones who might go to sunday school in the future. He got a book called "God made colours".

Hey this a running blog primarily but there is a lot of reasons why I wanted to post about this major event in our life...
***Update***: as of May 2008 Kathryn and I both have facebook pages on the net. Kathryns facebook page (Kathryn Phillips) has many photos of Jacob on it. My facebook page (Jonathon Phillips)(@ http://profile.to/jonathonphillips/ has an old photo of me summiting Mt Toolbrunup in 2002 on it, here it is below;--> ....Although I do change my facebook main photo sometimes...You can get to Kathryns facebook page from mine.