Flynn Mackie

Blake says:
We've got a beautiful boy! I'm really proud of my wife for doing such a great job of delivering little Flynn.

On Tuesday morning I woke up at 7am and said good morning to Adrianne, who happened to mention that her waters had broken an hour ago. In the following hours there was not much happening so I went downstairs to the gym.


Adrianne came down 40 minutes after I left and told me that the contractions had started. I'm glad she did because 20 minutes later she was on her hands and knees groaning like a cow in the back seat of a cab on the way to the hospital.


All of her drug free birth discussions went out the window as soon as we got to the hospital as the epidural was applied and had the desired effect. Four hours of not very much happening was followed by a half hour of pushing and little Flynn coming out. I won't go into the details (though I'm sure Adrianne will) but I'm thrilled to say that both Mum and boy are very well.




It was such a privilege to see Flynn born, the best moment of my life and something that i'll never forget - particularly as we took a few hundred pics, the best of which are below.


Adrianne says:
My waters broke at 6am and I waited in excitement for Blake's alarm to go off at 7am, to tell him that he didn't need to get up for work! Nothing happened from then until about 10am, when I got a few sporadic mild contractions and then a couple of stronger ones.


I went down to the gym (in our building) and told Blake I thought he should come up soon as things were starting to happen. (The books tell you that your contractions will start becoming more regular and frequent and stronger - ie every 15 mins, then 10, then 5 etc.)


However, by the time we got back upstairs I started getting very painful contractions suddenly coming every 2 minutes, then every 1 minute! You are supposed to go to the hospital when your contractions reach 5 mins apart but since mine had started straight in at 2 mins, we made haste to the hospital.


By the time we arrived (a 3 min drive) I was in agony, the pain was excruciating and I had indeed abandoned any aspirations for a natural birth. I was already in active labour at this point, halfway to the pushing stage in one hour - very fast progress. About an hour and a half later I was at pushing stage but had by then been given a massive dose of epidural (oh sweet relief!) and so could not feel the urge to push (or anything below my chest in fact).

Happy girl with her epidural (obstetrician on left)

So we waited around for 3 hours for some sensation to return - listening to music, watching TV, marvelling at how dead my legs were - but the sensation didn't return so eventually I just had to try pushing without feeling - quite strange and hard. But it eventually worked with the assistance of two nurses pushing down on my stomach and me doing ab crunches to try to push him out. Meanwhile Blake was doing a fine job of cheering me on and coaching my pushes.

And then we finally met little Flynn, which was awesome and a great relief it was all over! Blake, Flynn and I then chilled out for the next hour in the delivery suite, before retiring to our room for a bit of R and R.


Today is Flynn's fifth day in the world and he is a lovely little fella. He likes being up all night and chilling all day and his favourite past time is drinking - just like his father.

Kiwi cot

Looking like a pixie at the weigh in - he was 3.02kg (6.6 pounds)
and 48 cm long. He arrived at 4.28pm on Tuesday 20th November.

 

Mohawk - check out how long his hair is!

 

 

Flynn having a laugh with a wave in our first family photo

 

 

The Lads

More photos will follow...