Liam is born

Our son, Liam Thomas, was born, 17 days late, on 15th June 2003, in the St Franciscus hospital, Rotterdam. Here he is with Mum and Nonna in hospital, only two days old.

It was a difficult birth for Valeria by emergency caesarean, during which she lost half her blood. Happily, Liam came out healthy (and Mum recovered in time), and the first thing he did was rip the oxygen tubes out of his Mum's nose. Should have taken it as a warning...! (Kidding.)

We got him home to our house, after a week in hospital. The Dutch system arranges for a professional carer to come to your house for a few hours each day in the first week to look after the new baby, including supervising bath-times (pictured above), but they also - get ready for this - clean the house. You have to pay for this service upfront, and it's not cheap, but you claim all the money back from your compulsory insurance. All very Keynesian.










These two pictures of him asleep were taken ostensibly to provide his beleaguered and catatonic parents with actual documentary evidence that he could sleep, and therefore could do so again!

The first six months were horrendous for sleeplessness. Liam would wake up every two hours or so, day and night. 'Course, on this occasion the flash on Dad's camera woke him up - how naive could I have been?!

There were times when I would come home from work during the day, to relieve Valeria so she coudl sleep. I'd take Liam out in the pram or, if I had loads of work on, sneaked him in to my office, and hoped he wouldn't wake up.

We tried everything to get Liam off to sleep. In desperation one time in that first week home, as Liam lay shrieking like a banshee in my arms, I remembered that lullabies worked, and so I started singing 'Your love is the place where I come from', by the very marvellous Teenage Fanclub (have a listen here). No special reason, it was just our favourite song during Valeria's pregnancy, and we had been playing it a lot. Well, Liam stopped screaming instantly, and looked up at me with an inquisitive expression that seemed to say, "where have I heard this before?!" He must have heard it in the womb: our son, already into Teenage Fanclub, and not yet a month old. I was very proud. It wasn't a one-off either, the soothing power of Teenage Fanclub worked almost every time!