Beautiful baby Zachary brings blessings
April has been a month of high excitement. Baby Zachary Graham Williams, born the first week, presented as my fifth grand-child, a big baby boy weighing 4.12 kilograms and 51 centimetres long. A fine specimen and a beautiful brother to grand-daughter Scarlett. Records are important newsmakers when a new baby arrives and Zachary weighed more than a kilogram heavier than his sister, now 20 months old. He is unique, as blonde without any detectable eyebrws or eyelashes, as his sister was dark with a head of black hair, black eye lashes and dark eyebrows.
The uncomplicated birth saw new mum, Vanessa, my daughter-in-law ensconced on the 23rd floor of the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne with my son Tyson, the proud new father 24 hours after birth. We three grand-parents rostered ourselves to bring Scarlett to visit her mummy and daddy in their spacious hotel room. Vanessa was one of 14 new mothers and their babies who were under the watchful care of two midwives who occupied one end of the floor in a fully equipped nursery.
With views over Melbourne and the Yarra River, I spent leisurely afternoons getting to know my latest grand-son – my third and marvelled at the sounds of a newborn…the gurgling, the wailing and the watching, fascinated anew, with the way infants mouth towards mother’s breast. What is so intoxicating is to unwrap this tiny bundle of humanity and inspect how perfect he is, to smell the scent of a new baby, which does fade, but which triggers memories of all those years ago when Zachary’s father was my own newborn son, Tyson. The other enduring memory of those three days in Melbourne with the family holed up in the hotel room is that blissful angelic expression of a baby, only 48 hours old, once his tummy is filled.
Scarlett was unimpressed by the new arrival, initially mistaking him for a doll, similar to her own much-lover “baby’’, a newborn look-alike. However, she sprang into loud action the moment her beloved father picked up baby Zachary and she realised the body in the blanket was a living, breathing being.
Unfortunately, I missed the all-important home-coming, but I sat quietly a few weeks later observing when the mothercraft nurse visited Vanessa. Baby Zachary had gained 900 grams in just 9 days, surpassing his birthweight.