Well – it’s a little late for introductions given she is nearly 8 weeks old! But just for the blog record, Sophie Ann Agar arrived on Friday 26 October, just before 8pm weighing in at 3546g (or nearly 7lb13 in old money).

Unlike her big brother, she was a week overdue – making me wait it out in extreme discomfort! I ended up having nearly 6 weeks off after finishing work for maternity leave, and while I had high hopes for making the most of that, little Sophie made me feel pretty uncomfortable in the final weeks. My hips and back really suffered (turned out she was back-to-back) and I struggled to sleep – so I spent much of the final few weeks watching TV with my mum!

Once I passed my due date, I began to dread the prospect of another C-Section, but a couple of sweeps later (yuck – if you don’t know what they are, don’t ask!) and I went into labour. It built up pretty slowly over a couple of days, and my hypnobirthing breathing did the trick at keeping pain at bay – so by the time we popped into King’s College Hospital on 25 October to see how things were going, I’d made it to 4cm. Because of the previous C-Section, they kept me in – and after much persuading from Matt and I, I was allowed to labour without being strapped up to continual monitoring.

Cue a few hours lolling around in a heavenly birth pool in the hope of a natural birth at last! Sadly, after reaching 6cm, everything stopped – and the interventions began. Twelve hours later, following an epidural (heaven), them rupturing my waters and an hour of pushing, I was back in Operating Theatre 1 for an instrumental delivery (talk about flashbacks to Alex’s birth)! But this time round, the forceps worked and Sophie was born without another C-Section. Not quite the calm waterbirth I’d hoped for, but marginally better than the full surgery I think!

Here she is having her first cuddle with mummy – her face a little bashed up by the forceps:

Both Sophie and I were fine, so we thankfully only had to stay at King’s for 24 hours (a significant improvement on being stuck on the ward for the horrible first week of Alex’s life). So on Saturday night, we dashed home to see Alex before he went to bed. When we got home, he was having his bath with Grandma, so we had Sophie waiting in his bedroom when he came in. I wish I’d had a camera to record the look on his face when he first saw his little sister – it will stay with me forever. He had such a look of awe and excitement – it was so special! Here’s an early snap of the brother and sister:

Here she is snuggled up with Grandma:

And tucked up in her moses basket at home, with the cute mouse Alex gave her keeping watch (Sophie gave Alex a Gordon engine from Thomas the Tank Engine so he LOVES her!):

More on Sophie’s first few weeks coming soon…