Introducting Benji

Well finally Benjamin Dennis Crawford has arrived. He was born just 1 hour 20 past his official due date at 1.20am on July 12th weighing in at 8 pounds 7. Unfortunately the labor was nothing like I imagined. In fact it was just terrible. It lasted 2 whole days and in the end I had to have an emergency Cesarean and then I also lost a lot of blood which they call a hemorrhage. The problem being that Benji's head basically was stuck, he couldn't turn it and it couldn't move down and help open the cervix, and it was stuck at the worst possible angle with the head on it's widest angle at the side with his chin turned up. We have since measured his head and his circumference puts him in the 93rd percentile, meaning only around 7% of baby's have bigger heads! And combine that with my small stature especially in the hip department and I guess it was a bad match. Anyway it was so much more painful than I could have imagined and I think now that completing an ironman will never seem painful to me again! I was just so relieved though that after all the drama that Benji was in such good health.

Since the birth the recovery has been going well. They say that having a c section is major surgery and therefore I can not get straight back into training like I hoped, but instead will have to very much look after myself and rest up for the first 6 weeks, well that is now nearly only 4 weeks as Benji is nearly 2 weeks old already. I didn't find the recovery so bad. I didn't find it painful to recover from, but I felt very weak and dizzy which I think was actually the lack of sleep; that is what really hits you when having a baby. I didn't sleep for 3 days before he was born and I spewed up everything I ate and drank in that 3 days, and then afterwards he was very unsettled for the first 4 days and I slept probably 1 hour per night. That was super hard. In fact I found myself hallucinating that babies were crying outside my window. However since then he has been great. He is feeding and sleeping well and he hardly ever cries. I think we are really lucky.

So in regards to getting back into training. Well I was happy with the amount of exercise I was able to keep up throughout pregnancy. I will take it easy these next few weeks and then begin training again in the Spring, slowly building back into it. I still have the goal to race Challenge Wanaka in January, however if I find that this is unrealistic then I will aim for Ironman New Zealand in March. Hopefully I will be able to do a few short distance events by the end of this year, we will take it as it comes. I absolutely can't wait to be able to start running again. I ran up our driveway yesterday and it felt super good to have all the baby weight off, I felt so light! But at this time I am just really enjoying spending time with Benji getting to know him. I will update you all in the Spring with progress of my training.