If I were to continue this post in French, the title would be followed by ‘le divin enfant’. I won’t go that far but our newborn grandson has made a much-anticipated entrance.

Vincent Raymond Philippe was born on June 10th, just sneaking in (or rather, out) a couple of minutes before midnight. Not sure whether this was thanks to a Herculean effort on his mother’s part to avoid having two family birthdays on the same date or my advice that Friday’s child was possibly more advantaged than Saturday’s. Or perhaps it was his own choosing.

Anne, Vincent’s maman, fully gave herself up to the process of bringing this beautiful little boy into the world. A midwife herself, she was calling the shots throughout the entire 24-hour labour, which she pulled off with only a little help towards the end. Seems the little fellow was not optimally positioned for an easy birth and despite every effort to help him turn around he was facing the wrong way (not breach but head facing skywards instead of towards the mother’s back).

We finally met our grandson last week. He is the picture of a newborn baby, absolutely perfect in our eyes and those of his parents. To us he looks a lot like our son, Elliott, only a little smaller. Vincent weighed in at a healthy 3.6 kg whereas our son was a bouncing 4.7 kg. A kilogram of weight on a baby makes a big difference (especially to the mother, ha ha). But he also gets a lot from Anne as clearly Vincent is quieter and more cooperative about feeding and sleeping already after barely two weeks. To be fair this may have more to do with his mother’s determination and patience than genetics.

Anne and Elliott live in Aigle, a town at the opposite end of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) from its namesake city, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. We’ve been making frequent trips to that area lately as we’ve decided for various reasons to move back (more details in a future post). By early next year, we will be living just 30 minutes away from our grandson and his parents, with this beautiful view to boot.

Ain’t life grand?

The only struggle for me was deciding what I wanted to be called. Grandma was already taken by such memorable personalities in our family that I didn’t feel it could ever be me. Vincent’s French grandparents will be Grandmaman and Grandpapa. I thought about various clever and non-traditional options but in the end I have chosen ‘Grandmom’. For my husband, the jury is still out. I jokingly suggested Papito but he just shook his head and said there will be plenty of time to figure it out before the little one is old enough to call him anything.

Please join us in welcoming Vincent!