The Birth of Alexandros

This birth story holds a special place in my heart because of two things…

The first thing being I remember Danae and Rodrigo and I have our first chat on Zoom. They had a lot of questions and were worried about the journey ahead. I was unusually surprised when they chose to work with me.  As we worked together, I saw their worries ease somewhat as they absorbed all the information that I shared with them antenatally. Their confidence grew but the questions didn't stop. In the end I told them that it’s not the mind that gives birth but the body and the body knows exactly what to do so my recommendation was to try to turn their thinking brains off. 3 days before we all met Alexandros, I remember them sending me their newly revised birth plan and me writing that labour could happen that day or in 3 weeks and advised them to make friends with the mystery. 

The second reason, their birth holds a special place in my heart is because almost every month or two since the birth they will send me updates through pictures, videos and voice notes sharing how much they are thriving. I’m seeing them in their garden for a paella party in a few weeks after their summer in Europe and cannot wait to pull faces at Alexandros and hear all about their travels. Read their story with a pot of tea and some biscuits. I am sure that you will agree that they are excellent story tellers.

The birth of Alexandros, 25.01.25

By Danae

24 January was my due date. I knew only about 4% of babies are born on their due date but I woke up with a feeling. I started the day by preparing a big pot of ragu, intending to store in the freezer for when baby is here and time to cook would be at a premium. As I was cooking my parents arrived and we spent time together. The midwives had advised me to do some walking every day to help baby descend, so in the afternoon I took a long walk with dad for about 1.5hrs. It was challenging. I couldn’t feel the bones in my hip and had to hold dad’s arm throughout to help me walk. As we were walking my sister Eugenia texted suggesting we all meet for dinner together, as we wouldn’t know when the next opportunity would be. I had the ragu ready so we planned for her and Anestis (her partner) to come over after work and for us to eat all together. 

Rodrigo had planned to meet his friend Tom but in the end he stayed to have dinner with us. We had a really lovely time, Anestis and Rodrigo prepared the pasta and we all ate around the table, the first time to host a family meal since the holidays, and I was happy to have prepared a meal with a lot of love for everyone. After dinner, around 19:45, Rodrigo left to meet Tom at the pub, and I stayed home with my family laughing and chatting. I was telling them how for nine months I had been trying to convince baby to be born on 25 January, as I liked the symmetry of the date: 25.1.25. We would later find out this was also a special day this year when all the planets were in alignment. 

Between chatting and laughing, I started to feel the first contractions, it must have been around 20:30. I started describing them, and at first they thought I was joking because we had just been discussing how I had wanted the birth to be on that date... It felt like very mild period pain, but they were constant, and coming and going, with breaks of feeling completely normal in between. I started doing the funny walks across the kitchen, and breathing, doing figures of eight, and Eugenia started measuring the contractions on her phone. They were about 5-6' apart at that point, some even 15', and lasting between 10' to 60', with most about 30'. 

I didn't want to worry Rodrigo or make him come home, especially if this was going to be his last drink at the pub with a friend for a while. But feeling the urge to be active I gave everyone in my family little tasks to help finalise the hospital bags: Dad was on lemon squeezing duty and Eugenia prepared the electrolytes mix to put together lemon energy drink, while Anestis helped fill the dates with almond butter and prepare other snacks. Mum, Eugenia and I then went upstairs to pack my clothes and night dresses. The contractions were still happening, still mild and manageable with just breathing and moving, giving us time in between to orchestrate the hospital bags operation. 

Around 22:00 Eugenia gently nudged Rodrigo to start coming home, still saying nothing about my contractions. He came back around 22:30, and at first thought the men were joking when they told him what was happening. My mum then came down and told him that this was serious, and he came up to help finish the packing. We texted Thando (our doula) at this point, it was 22:38, giving an update and heads up that labour had started.

I knew this first stage could take many hours or days, and contractions were still very mild, so we decided to take it easy, have a shower and try and sleep until the morning. My family left around 11pm and Rodrigo and I had a relaxing shower together and got into bed. The contractions intensified and he was keeping the times, I was still managing them just with breathing but slowly started also vocalising and squeezing a wooden comb. 

By 2am the contractions had become much stronger. Rodrigo had counted 45-60' every 4' for an hour, and they were of growing intensity. After a particularly intense one, I went on all-fours moving in cat-cow. Rodrigo attempted to place the TENS machine on my back and that's when he saw blood on the bedsheet. He sent a photo to Thando, communicating with her discreetly so as not to worry me. He then called her and she listened to my sounds. She spoke to him on the phone privately, saying (as he told me afterwards) "Don't panic but you really need to go to hospital now. I will meet you there.". Rodrigo called the hospital and told them we were coming in.

I was in a trance getting up to get dressed, and put on the first things I found. The walking down the three flights of stairs in the house and getting into the cab felt like the hardest walk I've done, but apparently I still had the nerve to demand from Rodrigo that he orders a black cab (recalling my notes that this was the best option so I could continue labouring on the way), and was disappointed when it was a Bolt XL waiting for us instead. I got into the back seat and immediately put my knees up on the seat, holding the head of the seat and squeezing the wooden comb, vocalising loudly. I would later find out I was going through transition at that point, and the urge to push began. 

As we got to hospital I had to wait for the contraction to pass to get out of the taxi, then another one before I could get into the lift. We checked in at MFAU and as Rodrigo was checking me in I had to go on all fours on the floor. I was confused, I was feeling like I wanted to push but thought this was surely impossible. In triage I couldn't get up onto the bed by myself and asked the midwife to help me, but she said I had to do it myself as she had back issues (that was my only negative memory from the entire experience). She seemed very relaxed, probably thinking that I was just another first-time mum coming in at 1cm and acting as if it’s a big deal. I managed to get myself onto the bed and she said in complete shock "You are fully dilated, is your birth plan birth centre? We need to get you there now." She called the birth centre and asked them to prepare a room, and I heard her say on the phone "This woman has come in fully dilated".

I refused the offer of a wheelchair as I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting down, while my semi-shut down brain was trying to process the fact that I was already 10cm.   Again I had to wait for the contraction to pass before I could get into the lift. By the time we arrived in the birth suite (room 3) of the birth centre on the 3rd floor of UCLH it was around 2:45. I jumped straight onto the mattress on all fours, while Rodrigo shared the birth preferences with our midwife Giulia - "Yes, we're not going to have the time to look through these, just tell us the basics". They asked me if I wanted them to fill the pool, noting that it would take 20' – “We are not sure you have that long”. They started filling it anyway, or maybe it was Rodrigo that asked them to, and the sound of the water flowing helped calm me down and bring me deeper into the zone. I was squeezing Rodrigo's hand and then another’s. 20' into squeezing it I looked up and it was Thando's calm face - I hadn't realised she had entered the room or that it was her hand I was squeezing. The pool was ready and I got in. The warm water helped, I got some rest, and was pushing holding onto the rail. I stayed in the pool for quite a while, and I was getting a bit restless as not much seemed to be happening. I tried different positions, and felt completely uninhibited. Small pieces of poo came out as I was pushing, in the pool and on the floor whenever I moved in-between. Rodrigo told me later that one of the student midwives had a net to scoop them out, and in one funny moment during labour she stepped on one of my poos, she was very confused whether she should interrupt her duties to clean it up. Crowning happened once in the pool, Giulia showed the head to the students in a mirror, and then to Rodrigo.

After about an hour of pushing, the team suggested I empty my bladder to make some space and help baby move down. I went to the bathroom but couldn't feel much down there, let alone pee. They brought a catheter and took the pee out. My waters still had not broken and they suggested they break them to help make more space. I was getting impatient but Thando suggested we give it some more time – “You’ve been pushing for an hour, take your time”. Everyone was very encouraging saying “You’re doing beautifully, it’s going very well”, but I was still confused as to why baby wasn’t out yet – everything had been progressing so fast up until that point, and I recalled the stories of babies born just after a few pushes.

They suggested I try a few squats. Rodrigo tells me everyone was very amused when I took this so seriously and did about ten squats in a row. "Don't you want to rest?" NO. I kept going. Eventually I welcomed breaking the waters. I had to come out of the pool, went back to all fours on the mattress. The pushing started feeling a lot more effective after that, with every breath I was exhaling longer, Giulia and Thando by my side guiding me through, and Rodrigo helping me with the breaths and DJ-ing Ethio-jazz and Malian kora. After a few more breaths, the head came out, and then immediately after the body. Giulia gently encouraged me to slow down the pushing right at the end, and held a compress to help prevent tears, which worked. A little salamander came onto the bed to the sounds of Toumani Diabate around 4:40am, and from pale white sculpture was transformed into life. We took him in our arms and were looking at him for a good 10-15' minutes before we took a look to find out the sex. 

I was still so uncomfortable and just wanted to get the placenta out, so I turned around and did. After that I felt much better, and the midwife examined me and confirmed I had no tears, but still needed some stitches inside the vagina, so I went on to do that while Rodrigo held the baby for about 45', DJ-ing to Mozart's clarinet concerto. I then came back to the bed for the first feed. Thando was very helpful with that, showing me how to establish a good latch, which now looking back four days later I think has made a real difference in my positive experience of breastfeeding. 

I don't remember much after that. A warm breakfast of butter on toast and hot chocolate around 7:30am, some sleep, a shower, meeting one lovely midwife after another: Winfred, Rachel, Miriam, Maathai... Snacks, looks at baby, and eventually moving to room 5 next door (including a quick faint when I decided to get up as if nothing had happened) and getting a visit from my parents and Beatriz (Rodrigo’s mum) around 6:30pm (the two grandmas came in first for the first 20'). My parents had just read in the papers about the planetary alignment that day, and also informed us that in the Greek Orthodox calendar, 25 January is the feast of St Gregory. Εγείρω means to awaken, and in modern Greek γρήγορος means swift, quick, a fitting coincidence for the speed and ease with which Alexandros came into the world.

Rodrigo went out with Beatriz for dinner and I stayed in the room with mum and dad. He returned a short while later and we had a restful full night's sleep. The next morning we started preparing for our discharge, with little Alexandros, this time in a black cab. Flowers, sashimi, jamon and champagne waited for me at home and we all had an amazing lunch together, the three of us, Anestis and Eugenia, my parents and Beatriz.

By Rodrigo

In the lead up to Saturday I was too busy trying to finish up work to think properly about Danae or the birth of the baby. I had given my first keynote lecture on Wednesday 22 Jan, and our handyman Tim had been working all week long to get baby's room ready. I had to arrange my momentary handover of responsibilities as convenor of the IHR seminars, which involved attending a session on Spanish art history. I started to put together a chapter, and to my dismay I discovered that over the pasts months I had written a chaotic series of texts that amounted to 17,000 words, and which I now had a week or so to digest before Baby arrived. In short, I was praying for an early February arrival of Baby Alex. I had started to feel the pressure. Danae had other plans, though, as she valued calendric symmetry in the birth-day combination above all other things. Alexandros appeared to comply with mama’s request.

The night before the birth I had scheduled a Friday evening with Tom, but this plan was delayed and D's family got together for a meal at 6pm, which I eventually joined. We joked about the fact that this Friday was indeed the due date, and that 25.01.25 was fast approaching (would the baby arrive at the right time?). We ate a slow-cooked ragù that D had felt the urge to make over the 24 hrs prior. She had gone to our local butcher, Stella's, and ordered 2kgs of short rib (!!) to make a massive stockpile in case we needed 4kg of sauce for any eventuality. On the morning of the Friday 24th she started slow cooking the ragù -- and apparently also the baby. We all joked about D's determination, her ability to get her way, and drank a very nice glass of Chianti Torre Al Tolfe to our health and future.

Eventually, I made it to our local, The Somers Town Coffee House, and we chatted for ages, over three pints (!). There were many things to catch up on. Just as I was finishing my pint I received a text from Eugenia, asking me if I was planning on staying longer. I was just leaving, I replied, and within ten minutes, around 10.30 in the evening, I was at home. As I arrived Yiannis and Anestis greeted me and I initially thought that they were joking when they told me that the contractions had started. I remained skeptical - is D too much in her head? She has wanted 25.01.25 for nine months now, so maybe is stressed about whether it will happen? I trust her body, not her paranoic mind, I told them. We will see. I tried to remain as calm and relaxed as possible in the situation. But bags for hospital were not fully packed, and certainly not packed under my supervision, so D had totally overpacked, planning for every scenario, and now everything needs to be taken to hospital. That would come back to haunt me as I scrambled around the maternity wing in UCLH, carrying five bags and trying to catch up with Danae, as she walked through the hospital corridors pushing the baby out and screaming her lungs out and asking for my assistance. 

As the contractions were very mild and every 6 minutes, we planned to rest as much as possible to get prepared for labour. We took a shower, put on our PJs and tried to sleep. I genuinely thought about dozing off and leaving D to manage the contractions, but every time I was close to sleep another wave would take over. The contractions were still 4 or 5 mins apart, but they were long, about 45 seconds each. They were still mild, or, perhaps Danae just has a really high pain threshold. In any case around 1.45am the contractions accelerated, I switched on the light to try to put the TENs machine on D's back to help her ride the waves, and immediately noticed that there was blood all over the bed. I panicked internally, but tried to stay calm externally. I called Thando and put her on speakerphone to calm Danae, and we had a brief chat. Meanwhile, Thando and I texted and it was made abundantly clear to me that I needed to call the hospital and get a cab to UCLH as soon as possible.

As I was ordering the cab, Danae kept insisting that she only wanted to go in a black cab -- because her pregnancy yoga teacher had told her that it was the optimum mode of transportation for a labouring woman. But at 2am on a Friday evening there were few cabs available and willing to take us on a 10minute journey from 29 Goldington St to Euston Road. The closest black cab was in Temple near the Thames and 17 minutes away, and I was freaking out about the blood and whether baby was OK and if he would be born at home or on the cab, so I just ordered the earliest possible ride. The scene in the Bolt XL van I ordered was like out of a movie. First of all Danae wasn't impressed with my choice of ride, but she eventually realised that she was not in a state to argue, as she was going through the transition phase while I loaded the overprepared bags all over the 7-seater van. She was pushing the baby out as she screamed on her knees over the seats of the Bolt cab. The driver was not phased a single bit; he was softly chatting over the speakerphone to his wife in Urdu or maybe Pashtun, and as he chatted away he drove slowly and under the speed limit through the empty streets of central London. He even had the time to stop, let another car through a bottleneck, look back at us, and check if we were wearing our seatbelts, at which point he asked me if we could put them on (!!!!). Danae, on all fours and pushing out a baby, was having none of it. I responded that evidently we were not in a position to attach our seatbelts, and if he could please hurry to the hospital. The driver then cautiously drove to Euston Road, at which point he started asking me for directions, because he was lost (the hospital is on Euston Road) and couldn't interpret the sat-nav directions to the maternity entrance. I was not exactly available, I was trying to do breathing exercises with Danae as she screamed increasingly loudly, but I nevertheless stopped what I was doing to orient the driver (he then said, 'you should pay attention to your wife, not me').

We eventually arrived at UCLH and went straight to triage (MFAU) on the first floor. (This was one of the first times when D refused to be transported, and instead walked her way through the corridors while pushing the baby down the birth canal). The wait for the next 10 mins was horrible, with Danae on all fours in the triage waiting room pushing baby further down with no help or kindness from staff, no future or idea what would happen next. I was embracing the stalling from the triage staff, however, hoping that Thando would get to hospital as soon as possible in order to help us make quick decisions in a very fast-changing environment. Thando was not yet there, however, when one of the triage midwives saw Danae and intially treated her like a hysterical person, only to realise very soon that Danae was fully dilated. 'Oh my God, you are fully dilated! You should've come hours ago to the hospital' she retorted. We said that the preference was for the Birth Centre and she immediately called them and assured us 'Let me go see if we can sort something up, quickly'. D asked for the gown that she had specifically bought for labour, and her flip flops. I had to open the carry-on bag, that was bursting with all sorts of things packed by D. As I unpacked, I was at that point really stressed that things could turn bad - that there wouldn't be a bed in the birth centre, that we would end up somewhere else, that baby was not doing well. But after checking the heart rate, it transpired that baby was OK. The midwife asked me to go fetch a wheelchair 'please get it yourself, my back is hurting so I can't'. Not very nice of her -- I had to leave D alone with her, screaming her lungs out. When I came back into the room, D was walking, as the Birth Centre had a room and we were going there. D refused the wheelchair -- she was walking to the third floor with the midwife. 

D and the midwife from triage waited in the lift while I tried to re-pack all the bags and scrambled to catch them up. Eventually, we took the lift up, and as it slowly lifted us a contraction came in the lift and I helped D by embracing her and moving her hips and doing some breathing exercises, but the sounds coming out of the lift were brutal -- they would have sounded pretty scary if anyone else was passing by. We got to the Birth Centre around 2.50am, after another contraction half way through the corridor on the third floor, as we waited to enter the keyed doors of the Birth Centre, and then we were led into Room 3 by the midwives. We had been so lucky, this was a really nice room (the room, precisely, that we had been showed when we visited the Birth Centre back in September/October and made the decision to go for this option, as opposed to more medicalised environments within UCLH). It had low light, a birthing pool, and a nice bed/mattress to the right side of the room that could fit D and me lying down. It wasn't a hospital bed, but more like gym equipment -- a modular nylon mattress that we could move around depending on how Danae decided to position herself. 

We got in the room and we were hastily introduced to our main midwife, Giulia, and two students (D had put in her birth preferences that she didn't want any students present, but we didn't have time to discuss all of her preferences. This one slipped by me. They asked me to quickly summarise the three pages I presented to them, and I did what I could, but we didn't get to that point). The midwife explained at this stage, around 3am, that there was no possibility of any pain relief because of how quickly labour was progressing, so we just got on with the pushing. The midwife asked me if we wanted to start the pool. Her estimation was that there wouldn't be enough time for D to get it, but that we could try. (It turned out that the sound of the water filling was relaxing for D, anyway). Danae took off all of her clothes and laid on the bed, and started to push, and asked to lower the lights. I brought her a towel with essential oils and she looked at me so confused and at the same time so direct and decisive: “no, get this out of the way”. I gave her my hand as she pushed. Thando arrived, it was around 3.15am approximately, and Danae asked for music. I switched on the Bose wireless speakers I had brought, and started playing a Spotify playlist, "Birth", that I had created the week prior, and that we had tested out in our bath, as I relaxed D one of the nights previous to the birth. Songs that worked particularly well were mid-tempo, bright and optimistic, not necessarily complex (certainly no counterpoints!). We started off with Orchestra Baobab's Coumba, followed by Afrocubism's Guantanamera, which we had played also in the wedding, and our classic Arcade Fire favourite, Sprawl II. We moved between Cuban classics by Ibrahim Ferrer, Aquellos Ojos Verdes; Bésame Mucho by Los Panchos; Mulatu Astatke. As we entered the hardest part of labour I switched gears to Malian kora, both the Afrocubism album and my favourite Toumani Diabaté LP, Ali & Toumani (a collab from 2010 between TD and Ali Farka Touré in chora and guitar). The repetitive, iterative, but also positive rhythms, the journey through the kore, invited us all to enter a mystical state, not far from what I imagine a kabbalistic or sufi trance to be. D was pushing, and every now and then saying that she wanted the baby out, now! Her vocalising was at this point a little bit out of control, with extremely loud, high pitched, guttural screams. Both Giulia and Thando advised Danae that she should try to focus her energy on pushing down with her oesophagus, rather than releasing tension with her screams. Her screams immediately softened and lowered in pitch, and were longer, more sustained, in sync with the contractions -- like the howling of a wolf. 

The midwife announced that the pool was ready and we could use it around 3.40am, but D said she didn't want to go in. After one more contraction, Thando whispered in D's ear, a bit like a horse-whisperer, and suddenly the labouring woman wanted to move to the pool, and was walking towards it. As D hadn't peed in a while, it was suggested that she try to go, with the light off. We closed the door. Thando asked me to lower the music so that we could hear what was going on inside. Eventually, D said that she couldn't pee -- I went to help her out, and move her to the pool. As she was walking towards the pool, she had a major contraction, standing and holding me, pooing on the floor. We then helped her into the pool. After a few minutes, one of the student midwives, who was now in charge of a little fishnet to collect floating poos from the pool, stepped on D's poo on the floor, and I saw the information dawning on her for a split second ('What do I do?', it looked like she was thinking, 'do I carry on as if nothing had happened or do I go and change?' Giulia noticed and told her to go change her Crocs immediately). I was very amused as I had been successfully dodging poos with my bare feet for the previous hour. We continued the pushing in the water, which helped as D felt less of the weight of the baby and the warmth of the water on her skin, in the absence of any other form of pain relief. She pushed and suddenly midwife Giulia alerted to the student that the head of the baby was now visible using a small mirror she was placing under water. She invited me to look, and I could see something but I didn't know what I was seeing, especially as also you could see D's completely distorted vagina and anus, which was shocking at first. 

D was pushing but nothing was happening, and after an hour of pushing (3.50am) the midwife Giulia diagnosed that D's waters hadn't broken and they were hindering the baby from coming out. She offered to break the waters to accelerate the process, pushing us a little to make a decision. We (D, Thando and I) asked about the risk and benefits, and it was decided that before we went for this option we would try to help D break her waters. We tried squatting in the middle of the pool with Thando and me holding D from her armpits and arms. D was told to do two or three squats during the next contraction; she did ten the first time, and then another ten squats during the next contraction (are you not tired? the midwives asked, to which D replied I just want the baby out, now). She then tried holding on to a vertical bar with her hands and trying once again to break the waters. We weren't successful, and D wanted to pee really badly, so at this point Giulia offered to do an in and out catheter to get the bladder empty. D got out of the pool and back on the bed. We tried squatting and breaking the waters again. Again to no avail. Then Giulia did the catheter, and offered to break the waters. At this point it was deemed that it was OK to do it, as D had been pushing well over an hour (around 4.15am?). Giulia got a plastic white sterilised rod, a bit like a magic wand, and she inserted into D's vagina, and within minutes things were moving. 

After the waters broke, things accelerated. Giulia stayed with her fingers pressing against baby's head and helping to direct and focus D's pushing. D had put in her birth preferences that she didn't want to be coached but actually at this stage the coaching was very helpful for D, especially as now things appeared to be moving and D liked the positive reinforcement of being told that the baby was coming out. Giulia was telling D to push against her fingers, to sustain the pushes for as long as possible, to push down with her vocalisations and breathing. D was really hurting my right hand as she pushed, but with the adrenaline I didn't even notice. 

At this stage, I started to realise that this was not an other-worldly experience, like some forms of transcendence can be (a concert, a play, a good book, Culler de Pau or Arzak). It was the fact that this was a very real, very human process, that it was hyper real, what made the experience so powerful. I saw Danae transformed -- her psychological, natural attributes and characteristics put to the service of an animalistic, feral state of being.  

At 4.37am, the midwife called me to look down to D's vagina, as baby was coming out, and so I did, and saw the head of Alexandros, still not moving, still pale white -- a bit like the bust of a gargoyle of a Gothic cathedral. Suddenly, the gargoyle came alive, and rapidly baby Alexandros was fully out at 4.38am (officially, the record states 4.40am, but the video evidence says otherwise). There was a flurry of activity at this stage -- captured in a video that Thando took -- which was difficult to take in, but within a few seconds the baby was on Danae's chest. At this stage we could've checked the gender, and I wanted to, but D wanted to take her time. She waited, with the placenta still attached, for what felt like an eternity until the placenta was nearly dry to check the sex, and at 4.47 we found out that we had a baby boy. The placenta dried out really fast, and between 4.55 and 5.30am I was doing skin to skin (the so-called 'golden hour') while Giulia stitched Danae up (D was placed on a hospital bed right opposite me, so I saw the whole op, it was pretty crazy how much blood was coming out of D's vagina as the midwife stitched a tear in the inside wall). As I was with Alexandros, I also continued DJing, playing some baroque pieces on guitar, and some classical music - an adagio for mandolin and harpsichord by Beethoven played by Avi Avital, some Trivonov Bach variations, a bit of Couperin, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, the first (spring) movement of Beethoven's Pastoral. 

As the midwife finished her job, and started to clear the room for us to start the bonding process, Danae asked about her performance. 'How did I do? It felt like a very long labour' she asked, and the midwives giggled at the idea that a four-hour active labour was anything but incredibly rapid and efficient. I know well that Danae's intention was to learn how she could improve, for next time. 

Time now slowed down, but it also went by fast, as we stared endlessly at the little salamander that had just emerged from Danae. Thando helped Alexandros to latch on to Danae's breast and learn how to breastfeed, and this turned out to be incredibly invaluable, as most of our other friends who are going through the same process have all struggled to start breastfeeding. Thando left us around 6.30am, and we stayed in the room all day, resting. Alexandros and mom rested, although I was so stressed out about Alex's health so I actually didn't really sleep. I should have trusted the midwifery team, who was there on call throughout and was always super helpful. It was clear that they wanted me to learn the hard way how to clean the baby and put on his nappy. The first poo was absolutely explosive, full of meconium, tar black and gooey -- it was of the same consistency of a chocolate fondue. It took me a good half an hour and the poo got absolutely everywhere, but I managed and dressed him up in the clothes that my mom had so kindly arranged for us. I took many pictures, and wrote the messages that the family now received around 8am confirming Alexandros' birth. My mom immediately drove from Párraces to the airport, and by 5pm was in London and in a hotel, waiting for us to call them up to meet them. 

Danae wanted to go home, and as expected she tried to just walk out of the birth centre. But as she did that, her body told her to chill out, and she fainted. We decided to stay the night, in the absolutely brilliant, empathic care of the midwives in the birth centre. We were moved to a smaller, but private and quiet room, Room 5, with plenty of natural light overlooking UCL. Around 7pm I chatted with the midwives and they allowed the grandparents to come up, even though only three people are technically allowed per patient. I met Evi, Yiannis and my mom downstairs in the Maternity lobby. My mom was so excited and nervous that she got lost. She cried as she hugged me when she finally arrived at the maternity wing. I explained that we had to go into the room in two gos in the elevator; Yiannis, ever so kind, suggested that the two grandmas, Beatriz and Evi, go first. They did, and twenty minutes later I went in with Yiannis. They were so happy.

I was exhausted by this point, but even more hungry, so my mom and I went out for a bite at Tottenham Ct Rd. It felt like returning to the good old student days; which was odd, for my life was transforming in that very moment as I was becoming a parent. 

It was useful to spend that next night in the Birth Centre, as it gave us the reassurance of how to put Alex to sleep, and what was normal and unexpected about his habits - vomit, poo, cry etc. He slept for 8hrs, and so did we, and the next morning we freshened up as we prepared to return home. I went home first, had a beautiful, relaxing shower, and three espressos, and returned with more baby clothes (we had run out, and had to take every single piece of clothing that my mom suggested we initially take in the hospital bag, but I had thought it was way too much).

My mom, Danae and I equipped the baby in the bassinet-pram, left the Birth Centre thanking the team ever so much, and called for the black cab that we hadn't been able to hail on Friday at 2am.

While waiting to leave, I had arranged with my fishmonger, Dan from Oeno Maris, to prepare a sashimi feast (salmon, toro, tuna) in Danae's honour. It was the perfect ending, or the perfect start of our new lives.