STUART WILLIAM HEATON - BORN AUGUST 25th 2007

See also Elizabeth's page here.

 
Here is the inevitable collection of photos that the birth of a baby always inspires these days. It is presented as a web page so that you aren't forced to wait ages for it all to download in your email.
 
Details at Time of Birth:
 
     Name and Occupation: Stuart William Heaton – Baby.
     Age at Birth: -4 weeks 5 days.
     Born: 11.41am, Aug. 25th 2007 by Caesarian section following attempted induced delivery.
     Weight: 4lb 4oz or 1.93kg.
     Mother: Knackered but recovering well.
     Father: Knackered and rapidly deteriorating.
 
Stuart's Day of Birth:
 
     Placenta and Elizabeth's innards (optional).
     Parents plus 3 minute old Stuart.
     Elizabeth plus Stuart later in the day.
     Dad plus Stuart.
     Stuart's best picture - maybe the only one you need to look at with the possible exception of the next.
     Stuart next to dad's hand - he's quite small, as indeed is dad's hand!
 

Stuart With Hiccups on Day 4:

     Video Clip (2.5Mb)

Stuart's Day 6:
 
     Stuart drowning in pullover.
     Eyes open (slightly out of focus).
     Hearing test.
     Premature babies need extra blankets!
 
Stuart's Day 10, About to Come Home:
 
     All 3 of us.

More Photos of Stuart follow the two heart-rending stories which describe life and the state of the house during Stuart's birth and first few weeks:

AND THEN THERE WAS THE CAT...

Elizabeth's (or was it Stuart's?) waters broke on July 21st (first day of John's 6 weeks holiday), almost 10 weeks before Stuart was due. This was the reason why Stuart was 5 weeks early in the end but in the meantime Elizabeth was in and out of hospital (mostly in). This meant that John spent much of his holiday in visiting the hospital, plying Elizabeth with clean clothes and toys to play with. Much of the rest was spent with the cat...

During the first half of the year the cat had suffered roughly monthly bouts of a sore mouth, resulting in him not eating his food properly. The cure for these had been to take him to the vet and get an injection of whatever cures sore mouths in cats. This cure worked well for the pain but since he'd found it painful to eat he was left each time with a fear of eating his food in case it bit back. This latter complaint could be cured by spoon feeding him (literally) until he'd regained the confidence to eat normally, a process which usually involved his eating new things that he didn't associate with the pain.

During July the cat suffered one of his turns which meant that by the end of July and the first half of August John had to spend considerable amounts of time spoon feeding the cat with a wide variety of different things until the cat would eat normally again. Much experiment revealed that he would actually eat Sainsbury's cheap and nasty tuna fish, sometimes mixed with mackerel in sunflower oil or sometimes in tomato sauce. This particular bout of mouth pain also left him frightened of eating in his normal place and indeed anywhere in the house but he could be persuaded to eat in the garden. Not only that but he was fond of leaving the freshly laid tuna fish and eating one or two day old fish. All this meant that the garden had several piles of rotting fish placed at strategic points and that John had to keep moving them around until he found a place where the cat would eat them. All this was very time consuming and took up much of the time when John wasn't visiting Elizabeth in hospital.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL...

Over the period from five days before Stuart was born until 12 weeks afterwards we had builders in, extending the kitchen (followed by several weeks of tiling and painting). It wasn't planned like this. The builders were weeks late and Stuart was almost 5 weeks early. So, while Elizabeth was in hospital, "relaxing", John was managing the household and clearing the kitchen for the builders. Not only that but John decided that the bathroom was far too disgusting to allow a baby anywhere near it so he'd been renovating that as well. The following pictures show the state of the house around the time Stuart and Elizabeth came out of hospital on September 3rd. Needless to say they stayed at a friend's for a few days.
 
Front Room

     Towards the front window.
     Across the room.
     Opposite to the front window.
 
Back Room

     From the kitchen.
     The piano.
     From the front room.
     From the stairs towards the window.
     The tunnel built to allow access to the central heating and snails.
     From the stairs towards the kitchen.

Front Bedroom and Working Space

     Right hand side.
     Diagonal view.
     Working area.

Bathroom

     From the landing.
     Bath and wash basin.

The Garden

     Elizabeth's sweet peas.
     Elizabeth's prize peonies.

AND NOW, ENOUGH OF THE SOB STORY...

The cat survived, of course, and the kitchen was eventually more or less finished (the fridges finally being installed on December 22nd and 23rd, 5 months after the start of the job, and odd little jobs remaining). It remains to be seen if the peonies still exist. Much of the junk in the rest of the house was removed. Nevertheless, it was possible to remove much junk but leave the majority. The task for the immediate future is to make the rest of it childproof.

     The cat (a bit scruffy but he is 16).
     The kitchen, towards the sink.
     The kitchen, away from the sink.
     The front room (still crowded, but inhabitable).
     The back room (compare with "From the front room" the "Back Room" section above! Still needs decorating, though).

More pictures of Stuart and the family:

Elizabeth has put some pictures here but I shall put some of my favourites below:

     Enjoying a pint! (aged 3 weeks).
     Stuart with Granddad Ted (John's dad).
     Stuart against dad's hand (aged 7 weeks - compare with day of birth).
     Eight week old Stuart with Granddad Bill and family.

At age 17 weeks Stuart learned how to operate a rattle and was therefore qualified to use any computer with Microsoft Windows on it. Here is his first novel. Quite a masterpiece!. Here is Stuart captured in the act of creation of the aforementioned novel, and let's face it, creating is one of his strong points!

Postscript: the cat turned out to be suffering from cancer in the mouth and unfortunately snuffed it on February 25^th, 2008 aged around 16¹/₂. Since we had kept the cat and Stuart separate Stuart was denied the opportunity to give the cat's tail a proper pull but no doubt there will be other chances.