Boy to man

This time 18 years ago I was sat in a hospital ward feeling euphoric.  After the trauma of Em's birth 18 months earlier I had delivered Tom with the help of a fantastic midwife and the support of my husband, no medical intervention, no ventouse delivery, just me, 3 minute contractions and a bit of a sting; at one point, when delivering my 9lb 2oz son and being urged to push by the midwife I said "I can't, it stings" understatement, much?  Tom arrived after a mercifully short 6 hour labour and a ten minute third stage - the hard bit where you have to push an elephant through the eye of a needle.  My first thought on seeing Tom sat at the other end of the bed was "dear god, is there a child attached to those testicles?" Man-sized balls on a baby is something to behold!  He was utterly silent as the midwife lifted him into my arms and as I moved him up onto my chest he let out the most massive roar and then snuggled in and lay there looking at me, eek am welling up typing this, I remember it so well!  I had made a boy! I was quite convinced that Emily Louise was going to be joined by Laura Jane, not Thomas Oliver - thank god it was a boy as Laura Jane looks painfully twee now with the benefit of hindsight!  Tom was born at 5.57am on Sunday 9th January 1994 and we took him home later that afternoon and began life as a family of four.

Sweet jesus, check out my hair! This would have been around 6-8 weeks before he arrived.

 Today Tom turns 18, my little blond boy is a man.  Watching your daughter turn into a woman is easy, you know all the stages, you can plot when each change is happening and you know what the outcome looks like.  As a woman seeing your son turn into a man is quite odd.  One minute he's a warm, squishy bundle of boy that wants to sit on your lap and have cuddles and the next he's taller than you and in need of a shave.  That said I did once ask Tom how old he thought he would be when he would decide he was too old to hug his mum, he replied that he would never be too old to hug me and I said "I want that in writing".  Half an hour later Tom handed me this: 

Bless him! And he's been as good as his word, I still get hugged! 


This is Tom and I on the Tuesday after he was born, so he would be 2 days old. Note to new mums, shopping trips with a toddler & a 2 day old are never going to end well!

I look so young!

Emily was very proud of her baby brother.

Tom was possibly slightly less enamoured of his big sister.

In the PeterRabbit outfit his grandma and grandad bought him, aged about 11 days.

And that boy is his daddy!

Oh he was gorgeous, those chubby little cheeks!

With his big sister.

Matching chubby cheeks and gormless expressions!

Oh god, I can feel this smooth little head, which was prefectly hand sized, oh I miss him this small!

These melt my heart, his 2nd Birthday when the Thomas the Tank Engine craze was at its height!

With his friend Joel, making good use of my new tea towels in the playgroup nativity!

 My favourite ever photo of Tom, taken when he was about 3 at playgroup, bless him he had cried and cried and the photographer was getting to the end of his patience and I decided to say the one thing that at the time that could make Tom laugh without fail "Donald, where's your trewsers?" in a very poor Scottish accent - I said it, he smiled and the photographer got the pic, if you look close up you can still see the remains of a tear in his eye!

The blond curls from his first hair cut, clearly making sure he was looking nice for our trip to Cornwall for his first Christmas.  The next day he knocked one of his first teeth out and we had an emergency trip to the dentist to try and cement it back in, it didnt work and you can see the gap in his smile in the pic above!


And now my baby looks like this:

My gorgeous baby has become a handsome man. 


Happy Birthday Tom! xx

Huge thanks to Grandma for scanning loads of photos from her very precious family photo albums so I could include them in this post, thank you mum xxx 

UPDATE - few pics from the Birthday cake and card session.  Thank you for all your lovely tweets and comments xx