Gwen has taken over 300 photos over the past two days.  Here are a few of the keepers.  The pictures of Aidan in the elephant costume are photos are about the only pictures that we have of him in his Hallowe’en costume (other than the few from the actual night).

Since the birth was so quick, we were able to bring Aidan and Gwen’s mother Lorraine up to visit later that evening.  Both were quite eager to meet Quinlan, but Aidan’s excitement was palpable.

Of course, he wanted hold his little brother.

I spent the night at home with Aidan and Nana while Gwen and Quinlan spent the night in the hospital.  When I returned the next day, Gwen had her blood sugar level tested and it came back a little high.  As a result, we were led to believe that they’d be spending another day.  When the doctor came in, though, and reviewed Gwen’s chart she was pretty enthusiastic about getting us out of there!  So, we gathered up our stuff and took some obligatory photos:

We have a picture just like the next one but of Aidan:

We got Quinlan and Gwen home — less than 24 hours after he was born! — and there was more brotherly love:

And, even the next day (ignore the wild hair please), Aidan was interested and helpful:

I think we’re off to a good start.

This year Aidan ‘got’ Hallowe’en.

He picked his costume out with his mother several weeks ago while they were at Old Navy … he wanted to be a bat, but they didn’t have any in his size.  Instead, he chose to be an elephant.  And, was quite happy to be an elephant.

Nana and I took him down to the False Creek Co-op to Trick-or-Treat since our neighbourhood here in Fairview is *awful* for Trick-or-Treating.  Case in point: we got a total of 4 kids all night long.  Listening to some of the people down at False Creek, by 7:30 pm some of them had gone through 150 or more.

Anyway, Aidan had a grand time, knocking at the doors (yelling “Knock knock!” each time) and mostly greeting everyone with a “Trick or Treat!” and a “Thank you!”.  There were a few occasions of raiding the candy bowl before the person actually offered the bowl, but it was pretty good.  And, he was pretty excited to be getting candy, often telling me “Look at all the candy I got!” as he left houses.

The rain held off and it was pretty warm to boot.  By the end of our hour out, he was getting tired and spooked by some of the costumes and decorated houses.  The excitement was wearing off and his toddler mind was starting to process some of what was happening around him.  There were a few houses with ’scary’ music playing that he shunned, and by the end of it, any moderately sinister pumpkin was enough to disqualify a house in his mind.  No matter, he had plenty of fun and got more than enough candy.

The door of last house we went to was answered by a cute little girl about his age wearing a bee costume.  He just stopped and stared at her.  I don’t think she even got a ‘Trick or Treat!’.  She looked at him and happily gave him some candy.  He continued to stare.  She gave him a big smile and asked “Want more?” and proceeded to give him more.  I had to pull him away.  After the door shut, he turned to me and said “That was a very pretty bumblebee!”.  We headed back to the car for a short drive home and in addition to admitting he was tired (he never does that!) he also told us about the pretty bumblebee.  Very cute!

One week ago, Quinlan made his entry into the world.

The day started off pretty hectically.  Gwen was trying to get to a conference down at the Wall Centre for 9am and Aidan was supposed to go to the Preschool Curiousity Club at Science World at 10am.  Gwen’s mother was scheduled to fly in at 1:30pm.  It was shaping up to be a busy day, but we didn’t anticipate just how busy.

As we were getting going in the morning, making sure all the bodies were up out of bed and on their way to being presentable and less hungry, Gwen came to me with one of those looks on her face.  Immediately I knew what she was going to say:

I think my water just broke.

That was 8am.  With Aidan, Gwen’s water broke the night before she actually gave birth the next night, so we didn’t know how much time we had until things got interesting.

She tried to convince me that she could still go to the conference (she had won a free pass) but I wasn’t having any of that.

At 9:30am, she tells me:

I think I’m having contractions, but I’m not sure.

With Aidan, the contractions were pretty obvious.  And painful … a lot of back pain.  The idea of not being sure about contractions was confusing at best.  So we started timing the contractions.  And we called our friends Tomer & Carla to put them on notice that we might need them to come and watch Aidan while we went to the hospital.

Now, I’d been stressing out over this for the past week.  It was literally keeping me awake at night, worrying that we’d have to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and scramble to impose on someone to watch Aidan while we were there.  We had a list of people to call, but I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to call anyone and instead Gwen’s mother would be able to watch him.  Of course for that to happen, the hospital trip had to happen after 1:30pm on the 25th.  Which was 5 days before Gwen’s due date.  Aidan was earlier than that and I’d heard that the 2nd came quicker.

Which brings us to 11:30am on Saturday the 25th.  Gwen’s contractions were coming at 8 minute intervals.  At 11:40am, that had shrunk to 5 minutes, the magic number for going to the hospital.  I called Carla and asked her to come, and um, could she come quickly please.  By 11:50am, the interval had shrunk to 3 minutes.

We rushed to the hospital (a pretty short drive up the road) and entered the maternity admissions of BC Women’s Hospital at noon.  It took us an hour to get through admissions and assessment, the whole time with Gwen’s contractions coming a mere 60-90 seconds apart.  Assessment judged her 3 cm dilated (10 cm is the magic number when the tell you to PUSH!) but the baby’s heart rate was dropping (and recovering) with each contraction so they decided to not take us to the Cedar maternity ward with its primo private rooms where you deliver and recover in the same room.  Instead we were taken to a standard delivery room on the maternity ward.  At 1pm.

The nurse got us to the room, and started to get things sorted out.  Then she checked Gwen again.  8 cm, and Gwen was involuntarily pushing.  So much for the epidural.  So much for the doctor that was supposed to deliver the baby.  Instead there was a flurry of nurses and a resident paeditrician (the doctor made it for the very end).

At 1:10pm, Quinlan was born.

I knew #2 was supposed to be quicker, I think this was extraordinary.

For the next hour, the doctor busied himself with suturing.

And, keeping up with the theme, we were released the next day and were home less than 25 hours after leaving for the hospital!