Welcome to Sylvie

Our beautiful daughter Sylvie was born on Saturday 29 October at 11.50 a.m. weighing in at an impressive 9lb 4oz! She looks just like Joe did when he was born, full head of hair but is taller than he was, 55cm long.

Unfortunately at some point during delivery she inhaled some meconium which has coated her lungs making it very difficult for her to take in oxygen. She was taken to the ICU in the Neonatal Unit at the hospital almost immediately where she has been ever since. She is sedated and on a ventilator. Her condition is poorly but stable. She has tubes to clear her stomach fluids, tubes to feed her, tubes to do everything! We can't really touch her at the moment, her eyes are kept shut to stop them drying out so we don't even know what colour they are. Because she is kept paralysed she is retaining a lot of fluid, especially around her eyelids. Simon and I got quite a shock last night when we went to see her, she looked like she'd been boxing. She is slightly yellow too but not jaundiced so far. Her cathater was taken out today so that is a positive sign.

We are exhausted, physically and emotionally. We don't know how long this situation will go on for. We just have to take everything one day at a time. Mark and Vic have been fantastic, they looked after Joe all day on Sunday so that we could stay at the hospital, cooked us lunch and dinner, babysat last night so that we could go in and say goodnight when Joe had gone to bed. I can never thank them enough for what they've done. Conor and Liz were also wonderful - dropping everything (pints I think) at 1am on Friday night to rush from Dulwich to Teddington to babysit Joe. We went straight to Kingston hospital and Conor & Liz got Joe up and played with him all day. Huge thanks.

Joe is at nursery four days a week for the time being and he's been wonderful. Its so nice for us to spend time with him, little monkey that he is, after being at the ICU surrounded by babies that can fit in the palm of your hand. Whenever we have news we'll put it on here but there might not be any change in her condition for a long time, it's just a waiting game from now on. Thank you for all your offers of help, if there's anything we think you can do for us we will let you know, just appreciate that at the moment we can't really plan anything past the next 24 hours.

Thanks for all your support.