Welcome Asher Iain Zawadi!

baby Asher Iain Zawadi

I’m writing this through the bleary- eyed, emotional newborn haze of exhaustion, elation, love, soreness, relief and shellshock…
we were (and still are!) == thrilled== to welcome our lovely son,== ==Asher Iain Zawadi==== into the world at 4.08am on Friday 30th August weighing 6.7lbs.
Asher is Hebrew/ Biblical for happy, Iain is a tribute to my late brother and means God is gracious, and Zawadi is Swahili for 'gift'...

Asher Iain

Of course, we can’t help comparing the experience of giving birth in Kenya nearly 3 years ago, and with Uganda’s infant and mother high mortality rate and hearing first-hand too many personal stories, we feel relieved to have been able to have benefited from the amazing NHS system and caring medical staff here in the UK…

Claire the wonderful midwife

Some of the more striking differences was…
pain relief- gas and air- during labour…(thank you Lord), though really I didn't know how to use gas and air seeing as it was my first time, instead I used it as somewhere to clench my teeth. Later on during a minor op by the senior midwife, I did feel the benefits of gas and air when I sucked properly on it and David told me I looked like I was cross-eyed and high.

…the paperwork and accountability when we were moved from the delivery ward on one floor to the recovery ward to ensure that the baby we had brought to the ward was the right one. In Kenya we had heard stories about baby swapping, either from people who couldn’t have children and would pay a nurse to steal a new baby, or from a mother who had a stillborn baby and would pay a nurse to swap it for a live baby on the ward. Thankfully, it would have been pretty obvious if someone had tried to swap Amelie when she was amongst her newborn Kenyan peers…

…Then there was the car-seat ordeal when we were leaving the hospital, a baby can’t leave the hospital unless safely strapped into a car-seat, which meant my sweet friend who had come to pick me up and has a phobia of lifts had to run up and down the 5 storeys to fetch the seat… a far cry from bundling into an old banged-up car and holding the new bundle on my lap whilst bumping down the dust road…

Life in Uganda seems far away at the moment, and hard to comprehend life there in a few months with the 2 little ones. I received an email today with a picture of the girl who helps us, Lilian, who is also due any day, and I can't help wondering and worrying for her delivery and circumstances...

There seems to be so much to squash into the remaining few months in the UK, and the last 7 weeks here have felt like a whirlwind of highs with special times with special people, and the challenges of constant packing and repacking and moving... we are so relieved that Asher waited to arrive when we had at least unpacked in Reading rather than arrive on the M6 (or in Doncaster...)

Amelie has coped well with so many changes in the last few weeks- over 10 different beds, a different culture and now a little brother. She has almost lost her strange Ugan-glish accent and loves all the playparks dotted around and stimulating places and things to do... (and we are enjoying the novelty of cbeebies)...

Lovely big sis

Legoland!

growing Burnell clan