It's a baby boy!

The important stuff: male, 6lb 8oz, born at 6:45am. The crazy stuff:

• Ruthie started getting painful contractions at about 4:00am, which is an obscene time of the day to be woken up. Maybe about 7 minutes apart.
• We made a phone call to the hospital, and they said exactly what we were expecting them to say - "Go and have a warm bath, and phone us back if they get more regular".
• Ruth made an executive decision and decided that this time the baby wasn't kidding, so we had the fun of waking Ruth's parents by telephoning them to ask them to come around and babysit Hannah while we went to the hospital. Unfortunately, we phoned their old telephone number first, and it rang three times before we realised, so our apologies to whoever it was in Witney who got woken up at 4:30 this morning!
• At about 6 o'clock, Ruth's parents were at our house, looking bleary eyed. We were heading for the car, also looking bleary eyed (but with a wild glint!). Contractions were about every 2-3 minutes.
• We got to the hospital at 6:23. The baby arrived at 6:45. This baby was not going to hang around for anyone. We're so glad that it wasn't rush hour, or we may have needed to have the car valeted tomorrow...
• There was a problem with the afterbirth not wanting to go anywhere, which meant that the doctors had to do a bit of extra work on Ruth, but it all went smoothly and mother and baby are doing really well, and hoping to come out of hospital tomorrow. Our huge thanks go to the staff and midwives at UWCM for their great work - we can't fault them!
• The baby still doesn't have a name, so any suggestions gratefully received! We know it's definitely a boy, because the first nappy change that he had also involved a mini fountain all over Ruth's hospital bed.

This one is going to be trouble...