Welcome to the World Audrey Grace Hickman

Audrey Grace Hickman born 24 August (10.35am) 3.28kg (7lb 2oz) 53cm

Little Audrey decided to come into the World on Friday!

Amy started having slight contractions on Thursday evening around 11pm. We went to bed, knowing that the next day was probably going to be the 'Big Day'. Sure enough, around 4am the contractions had got much stronger and closer together. We rang Maria (the midwife) at 5am (poor Maria) who suggested that Amy took a warm bath for an hour and then called her back (that way Maria got an extra hours sleep?).

When we called back Maria advised us to get to the hospital (the contractions were around 3-4 mins apart and VERY strong).

Pene and Mike had offered to drive us to the hospital, so they got a call sometime around 6.30am(!) and we headed off.

When we arrived at the hospital Amy was in quite a bit of pain, but there was still a fair amount of beuracratic paperwork to fill in - even though we had already 'pre-registered' a couple of weeks ago to try and avoid this (this is Poland after all).

Maria was incredible and helped both of us so much. Amy took the drugs on offer and we went into an orange (old gold?) birthing room. We won't go into the nitty gritty, but Audrey was born 3 hours later.

We were SO happy and surprised that things went so smoothly and quickly, as we had been fully anticipating a 27 hour labour (we'd been reading too many horror stories in baby books)...

The hospital was fantastic. We had our own private room and Amy had a great bed that zipped up and down into various angles. (Trevor was a bit more taken with this than Amy!). Trevor was able to spend the two nights we were there in the room on a comfy fold out bed. We spent 3 days in the hospital and were waited on by assorted nurses all of whom were fantastic.

We came home on Sunday night and are now getting used to the idea that we are parents and are responsible for our beautiful little girl :) :) :)

To look at some (more) pictures of Audrey click here