Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what the next year will look like. Maternity leave – full-time mommyhood.

Full-time with our little milkface and the notorious 24-hour day, during which there is no distinction between day and night. It’s pretty surreal. I feel like a dog with an electronic collar.

I get zapped if I wander too far from my owner.

We spent the last few days snowbound in Shediac with Justin’s parents, which of all the places to be snowbound must be the best. I had just put Evan down for sleep after a feeding, and was about to select from one of my sleeping-baby-approved activities:

• Sleep
• OR eat
• OR drink water
• OR wash self
• OR dress self
• (...UNTIL baby wakes)

Then Justin came to me with his coat on and said, “Quick! Mom needs butter and beer, and we’ve got the cellphone. Let's go!” … and off to the grocery store we went. Our first time leaving the baby.

It was weeeird.

Me and my husband, driving in the truck. Me with no belly. Us with no baby. Not even a carseat in sight. We could almost imagine none of it had ever happened.

Justin asked if we should make a break for Mexico.

We got the butter and the beer and drove down to the public wharf for no reason, just because we could. We returned inside of half an hour to find Evan sleeping soundly under the expert ear of Grammy Dianne. And so passed our first baby-free adventure.

Sometimes I feel claustrophobic with my new collar.

I want to roam, cruise the neighbourhood with my other doggy buddies, find a few new sniffs and get into trouble at the dump. But my owner prefers me to stay close and behave. My life is divided into two-hour chunks, and that’s on the best of days. If I leave, I have to be ready to dash back panting and stressed, knowing a hungry Evan is feeling abandoned by his new pet.

Even if this new life sometimes feels a little restrictive (understatement of the year…?), I'm unconditionally devoted, no matter what he dishes out. No matter how ragged I get.

How very doggish.

I figure so far, we’re holding our own. Evan and I have only had one episode of simultaneous wailing.

The Entity only replaced our jackpot baby for a 24-hour period, teaching us two valuable lessons: First, as long as the good days outnumber the bad, you’re doing well. Second, God created the Baby Bjorn for a reason. And that reason’s name is Evan Alexander. He hates getting in it, but the moment Justin steps outside, he’s down for the count.

• We’re changing diapers in the subconscious. The other night, Justin woke from a dead sleep, shot up in bed, and cried urgently, “Is it poop? Is it poop?”
• Evan’s sense of humour is developing well. About half of his diaper changes involve him peeing on one of us with impeccable aim and timing. And here’s how we know we’re becoming parents: we find it entertaining.
• We take video of of the baby doing Absolutely Nothing.
• I’m already planning halloween costumes.
• Last night, Justin said, “It’s crazy how happy it makes me when he farts.”

It all started when I said in the hospital room, "Well, at least I didn't throw up". Shortly after which, I threw up.

For the past ten days, we've been waiting for the inevitable: the moment where some entity arrives at our home and switches our gentle, pliable little baby with the 'real' Evan - the one who lives up to all the stories we've been told about how tough the first two months are. Because until now, we figured we'd been having it pretty easy.

He'd eat, fart, burp and poop, and then go back to sleep for three hours. Then he'd wake up and repeat. We could just about set our watches by him. We started saying, "Maybe this is just our sweet luck! Maybe this is really his temperment, and we just hit the baby jackpot!"

But something's changed.

He's actually yelled himself hoarse. It would be funny if we weren't so tired. He's tired too, but doesn't seem content with much.

Here starts the boot camp.

Awake in the middle of the night, I tell myself: there is no such thing as sleepless nights. In fact, there is no longer such a thing as ‘night’ at all.

Our day starts at midnight, and ends 24 hours later. It might only be a matter of semantics, but it helps. The sleep adds up that way.

The thing that I’m most starved for is to be able to be a mother and a wife at the same time. Because right now, I can only manage the one that involves beastfeeding. Err.. breastfeeding.

I feel hopelessly droopy, drippy and smelly. My body is doing undignified things. My butt hurts. My boobs hurt. They are gigantic, just in case you were wondering. They stand up like melons. Petrified melons. Hugging Justin is like trying to make Barbie hug Ken.

Don’t even ask me what it’s like to get dressed – every day with great optimism, I retrieve a pre-pregnancy piece of clothing from storage. And every day I have to pack it away again. (Today's dressing mantra: just because you can, doesn't mean you should...)

Then, in the middle of what used to be the night, my son looks up at me, his eyes roll into the back of his head, a single drop of milk rolls down his cheek, and he smiles. I know it’s only gas, but it still makes me melt.

I guess my expensive jeans can wait.

When I was a kid, my friend Jenny Mae and I used to skip through our neighbourhood. Why? Just because.

Sometimes you just get so jazzed up with being outdoors, you can't help yourself. It's one of those purely goofy, joyful things you just don't do as an adult. What a shame.

Yesterday afternoon I came close to skipping. I put on a pair of normal-person jeans (hooray!), my winter shell that I haven't been able to wear in months (woo hoo!), and bent over with ease to (shock of shocks!) tie my shoes. I went out for a walk on the most perfect, sunny winter day. Crisp and cold, just enough to put roses on your cheeks.

I felt like I could walk for hours, like with every step I took I might leave the ground. It made me so happy to be outside, to breathe deeply and to know that I'm a mom. Just about felt like skipping.

Then the cellphone rang in my pocket, and before even saying hello I could hear Evan's hungry "Waaaaa!". And my joyful, almost skipping-worthy excursion turned into my first post-natal sprint.

The first time I saw Evan, I felt much the same way I did the first time I saw Justin. It wasn’t quite the thunderbolts and lightning that I expected from falling in love. It was more a profound sense of peace and contentedness, a relief and recognition at finally discovering that person that you always knew you’d meet.

Evan is such a gentle, old little soul.

He’s been a wonderful and patient teacher, showing us how he likes things to be. Luckily we all seem to be on the same page so far – we all like quiet days, naps, Miles Davis and bare skin. I think we’re slowly getting the hang of it, especially handling his tiny, floppy body. It will take us some time before we feel confident, but we’re learning.

His arrival did all start with a splash after all.

At 3:09 AM Wednesday morning I woke from a deep sleep and speed-waddled to the bathroom faster than I have in nine months. Minute-long contractions started immediately following – one, then another in fifteen minutes, another in ten, another in five and then every 2-3 minutes. Since they became regular so quickly, we were on the road to the hospital within about half an hour of waking up.

Although I didn’t necessarily have my heart set on a natural birth, I did want to have a few tools and methods on hand to see how far I could get before needing intervention.

With this in mind, I’d been practicing a self-hypnosis program for labour for a couple of months, amounting to an hour and a half of breathing and guided relaxation every day.

It was wonderful, kept me from getting all tense and tangled up in fear. We got to the hospital with hypbirth in tow, in the form of a series of CDs on a discman that helped me through contractions. This raised lots of interest from the nurses who hadn’t seen that kind of method used before, but they were very encouraging. I had steps to take, things to do to cope. My mind was kept busy and it helped both time and pain pass so much more easily.

Shortly after getting settled in at the hospital, we realized that baby was posterior-facing, resulting in what’s called back labour for me. All the contractions were radiating through my lower back – in fact, I felt almost nothing across the front.

For about four hours, contractions were about a minute long with only 15-30 second breaks between them, during which the pain in my back didn’t abate. At 8:30 that morning I asked for an epidural, which was nothing less than heaven-sent. Hypbirth got me to five centimeters, or the halfway mark – which made me very happy. Back labour is, from what I’m told, particularly relentless.. and I felt proud that I got as far as I did.

By 3 PM that day, I was fully dilated and we all waited patiently for our little boy to turn. Hoping that a few good pushes would corkscrew his head into the right position, I got down to work – but not before baby’s heart rate started to drop.

He was starting to go into distress, and that’s when the day changed.

An obstetrician walked in the room, looked at the fetal monitor, and said, “Alright Kate, we’re going to wheel you into the O.R. now for a probable c-section. See you in there in a few minutes.” Until that moment, I hadn’t felt scared, out of control or vulnerable.

Five minutes later I was being strapped down to an operating table with about fifteen doctors looking on.

The day so far had been nothing but positive, wonderful in just about every way – and although I had tried not to have too many expectations, an unplanned c-section wasn’t what I had imagined. But when it comes down to it, it was not my birth experience – it was Evan’s. What he says goes, and he was getting tired.

After being given a c-section-worthy dose of freezing, the doctor decided to try forceps as a last resort. Maybe it was the threat of a major operation that did it, who knows – but three pushes later, Evan was born.

I feel great about the day, and don’t regret a single thing. It was everything and nothing like what I expected, all at once. The nurses felt badly, I think, that there was a fair amount of intervention I’d been hoping to avoid – everything from the IV and an internal fetal monitor to the episiotomy and forceps – but every decision was made with my and Evan’s best interests at heart.

The surest way to have a dramatic birth experience is to be dramatic about it, and I see no need.

The thing that surprised me most was how much you have to surrender yourself when you have a baby. Not unlike being a baby, I suppose.

You need someone to soothe you, wipe up after your messes and take care of the most vulnerable pieces of you. We were in such caring, thoughtful hands. The nurses were our cheering section, our advocates and the first official fan club of our son.

Not coincidentally, they also prompted our first ‘Good god, we really *are* parents now…’ moment, when they told us Evan was one of the best poopers they’d ever seen.

We felt so proud.

Evan Alexander Inglis is now snoring on his dad's chest after a couple of very interesting and tiring days.

We're all happy and healthy, so proud and blessed. Thanks so much to everyone for the good wishes! We're filled with fascination and awe, and can't wait to introduce him properly to everyone.

We're going to tuck in now for a few days and get to know each other, and we'll make our way back into the world once we've had a chance to get our sea legs. Love to all.

Today my doctor swept the membranes, which means she gave things a bit of a poke and swish to move things along.

Being dilated just over 2 centimetres and 80% thinned out, I'm apparently a good candidate to have this work.. although it doesn't always. But it's well worth a try to avoid a hospital induction, so I'm hopeful. She said my 'bag of waters is bulging'.

Yet another one of those weird pregnancy-reality moments: I have a bag of waters. Ewwww!

If this does work, contractions should/could start within 24-48 hours. I'm feeling very crampy now, especially in my lower back. But it's good. Everything at this point is progress, little milestones that mark the start of this incredible journey.

I feel like I'm standing on a stage and everyone I know is in the audience, watching and waiting for something interesting to happen. Every now and then someone yells out, "we're waiting!"

I hadn't felt differently until last night. Baby is quiet. Strangely so. Is it possible to still be in denial?