Welcome - Bienvenue, Anastasia!

Plaid Eggnog is delighted to officially welcome Anastasia Carys Golding Page!

Little Anastasia was born on Wednesday, August 10th. Her birth took place by planned C-section, as we found out around week 36 that she was breech (head up instead of head down), so a regular delivery would be very difficult and require going to Saskatoon, a 4-hour drive, for the birth. As it was, our closest hospital was Melfort, a 2-hour drive, so that's where Anastasia was born.

We were blessed to have an excellent team in the operating room, and what a large team it was! There were 4 doctors (1 surgeon, 1 assisting him, 1 doctor attending to Julie, and 1 doctor attending to Anastasia) and 5 nurses. Julie was awake during the procedure, with Steve alongside and dressed in scrubs like the medical personnel, and a screen separating us from seeing the operation in progress. We particularly appreciated the super-capable surgeon, Dr. Hanekom, who kept popping his head over the screen to make jokes during the surgery, distracting us from what he was really doing over there.

When Anastasia was born, just a few minutes after the operation began, the surgeon said, "It's a girl!" and lowered her over the screen for us to get a first glimpse. Then her attending doctor whisked her away for tests (which she passed with flying colours). Meanwhile, the surgeon took another 45 minutes or so to look after Julie, as a C-section is considered major abdominal surgery that involves going through 7 different layers. All went smoothly, though, and soon all three of us were reunited in the recovery room, and our life as a family began in earnest. We look forward to Julie's full recovery from both surgery and birth, in about another 4 weeks.

Julie happily bids the hospital goodbye, 3 days after the surgery and birth.

As you can see from the official birth announcement, above, we chose Anastasia's names carefully, not just for their pretty sounds (although we think they are pretty-sounding, too), but rather for their meanings. 

"Anastasia" is Greek for "resurrection" - the hope for the future that all Christians have to look forward to, when we will all be physically resurrected like Jesus has been already, with a perfect, physical body, to live forever in joy, with each other and God, on a perfect planet earth. (See 1st Corinthians 15 and Revelation 21 in the New Testament, for more on this amazing future!) We hope that this name will be a permanent reminder for Anastasia - that all of creation was created by God and is good, and that she has an amazing life ahead that will last forever.

"Carys" is a Welsh name, meaning "love." We chose this spelling because of its Welsh connections, as Julie's paternal grandmother's family is from a Welsh background, and we also personally loved Wales and the Welsh culture when we visited the country in 2008. But the name is also "Charis" in Greek - meaning "grace" or God's great love and mercy, given to us undeserving humans, even when we are far less than perfect (or, amazingly, even when we are truly rotten). We hope this name will remind Anastasia that she is loved by God and by us, forever, no matter who she becomes or what she does. She is our - and God's - dear daughter.

Finally, we chose as her surname the combination of both our names - Golding Page - to help Anastasia to see that in our minds, and according to the Bible, men and women (and hence our family histories) matter equally. So we hope that her combined surname will remind her of the equality of male and female before God, as well as in our own little family circle.