Dave's blog

Well, he’s here! It was a long old process, as births often are, but our first child finally arrived at 8pm on 15^th November 2011. We’re going to call him Douglas Tom Arthur Hamilton. I know what some of you may be thinking about his name, I thought it myself when I saw those initials but no, he isn’t named after the universal reagent 1-O-(4,4′-dimethoxytrityl)-6-aminohexanol often abbreviated to DTAH. Hmm, bit of a geeky joke that!

His name, in part, is influenced by Douglas Adams. However, this was really as Ellie was looking through our books reading out names of authors until we hit on one we both liked, rather than us both being obsessive fans. It could have been different if she’d stopped at Martin Crawford or Charles Dowding (or Kurt Vonnigut for that matter!).

My bad tummy did progress throughout his birth which meant I puked when the ambulance arrived at the hospital and puked not long after he was born.  Despite this I still held Ellie’s hand throughout the delivery and just about held it together to pretend I was feeling fine (although I think she saw through it). Once he was born they handed him to me and any illness I felt just vanished. I just looked at him and cried with pure happiness, everything else just melted away. If it wasn’t for Ellie shouting ‘oi, show him to me!’ I would still be just sitting there staring at him now.