Moving through stages

It's really nice to see a variety of people who are at different stages of the whole starting a family thing. At kapcon today I talked to people with preschoolers, with babies, and those who are about to become parents. It's really nice to see where people who are ahead of us are, and also to be able to chat to someone who is getting close to starting a family. I like that our birth story is a positive one, and while there were things that were really difficult to deal with, we don't have and 'horror stories', just things that we found tough. One of the hardest things for us was the hospital stay, and the uncertainty of not knowing when we'd be able to take Dominic home (the comment about not being allowed to take him home in case he 'fell off the perch' overnight and us and Wellington Hospital ended up on the front page of the Dominion Post was not a great way to end our third day in hospital). The actual total number of days in hospital wasn't too bad, but the uncertainty and mixed messages were hard to deal with. But apart from that probably common experience, Debbie's pregnancy and labour, though tough, were relatively 'normal', and our first six weeks with Dominic have been the best 6 weeks of my life. So, it's great to see people with new babies, people with toddlers, people starting out on the whole pregnancy journey - it helps me to appreciate how far we've come, to look ahead to what's coming up, and hopefully to be able to talk encouragingly to those who are starting out. Every baby and every delivery is different, so I don't feel like I can offer anyone any advice, but I can honestly and happily talk about how cool the whole starting-a-family thing is, and all the awesome stuff that we've learned and done so far :-)