Bram Solomon Stein-Blumberg is born

Our first son was born at 8am on January 21, 2011 weighing 8 lbs at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, where Sasha, Mia and Eve were also born. Pamela made it look easy and the team worked like clockwork, pushing us along with minimum discussion: we hung out in the family room from 6pm to midnight wondering when she would be induced. A waiting granny who went to camp with our doctor was Mia's supply teacher last week. Small world. She was waiting for a daughter who is a good friend of a close neighbour. Smaller world. Induction at 2am, scary epidural went well at 3am, painless onset of contractions and three big pushes approaching 8am.

This is our last child and first boy and we wonder what we have gotten ourselves into after finding a groove with Mia and Eve. He had his fingers in his mouth in a few minutes and the birth was so quick he wasn't hungry. He seemed very content and happy to latch. The past is everywhere as I walk around, a momentarily open NICU door filled with isolettes, posters for a palliative support study supervised by SickKids NICU nurse Lori Ives-Baine, and a dusty blackboard listing family centred research projects for 2007. The breadth of birth support is truly staggering.

Earlier, we went for dinner on Elm at the Queen and Beaver and the lamb kidney's were a bit rich in retrospect. We walked under the CCCCU windows on the way home but decided not to walk through SickKids as we did while Pam was in labour with Sasha. After we were transferred to a room on the 10th floor, Bran fed and we unwound as a parade of nurses and doctors visited the next bed. As we brought Mia and Eve to visit and our bed turned into a temporary carnival of love, 2 feet away a mom and her twins were all struggling. But we were home within 36 hours and while the difficult bits (eating, sleeping, parenting 2 older sisters) seemed to slip into place over the next 3 days it took almost a week to choose a name. Bram is named in loving memory of Pamela's cousin Brandon Grajycer.