It comes with great pleasure to announce the arrival of my first born son, Oscar James Jobling.

Last Monday, my wife and I made the last journey to Walsall Manor Hospital as a twosome for her to be induced for the birth of our first born child. Unfortunately, Lizzy had been struggling with a pelvic problem during the latter months of pregnancy which caused her great discomfort and made her pretty much immobile. I won’t go into the technical (or medical) side of it but the doctor thought it only appropriate to book her in to be induced now the pregnancy was in its 38th week and the health of the baby seemed perfectly fine.

After a long day of waiting around for the inducing to take its cause, her waters broke just as we were watching Vernon Kay cover The Paul O’Grady Show on Channel 4 (isn’t daytime TV great?!) and the labour commenced. It was now time for the Journey of the Unknown. How long was labour going to last? Was it going to be straight forward or were we going to encounter complications? Was our little bundle of joy going to be born on the Monday or Tuesday? Would it be done in time for a late night supper?

Well, after 6 hours of contractions, gas and air, no swearing (amazingly!) and just half an hour’s use of pethidine (not in the original birth plan but became evidently useful), little Oscar James arrived just after midnight at 12.18am on Tuesday 24th October 2006. He was a Scorpio rather than a Libra. He was born exactly six years since his mummy and daddy first met (to the day!). Our perfectly healthy 6lb 3oz baby boy had entered the world and brought tonnes of happiness to his entire family.

Thankfully, his Nanny was on hand as the second birthing partner throughout and helped his Daddy keep Mummy as calm as possible for those six hours of pain. I spent the entire evening chanting “In… Out… In… Out…” while Lizzy puffed on what must have been gallons of near-pure oxygen. At the end of what seemed like days, our little son appeared on the bed after two big pushes.

It’s been a five days since Oscar arrived in our life. There have been a couple of noisy nights along the way but progress is much better than normal. He has only lost an ounce since he was born (babies can lose up to 10% of their weight in the first week!) and the midwife is really happy with the health of Baby and Mummy.

Life is never going to be the same ever again but, so far, it has been more amazing than words can describe. I’m sure there will be some trying moments to come and I’m sure I’ll never be able to afford that LCD flat screen I’ve always wanted. But I don’t care. I’ve been blessed with the best thing that life can bring anyone.

(For those who wish to see more photographs of Oscar James and his family, I suggest you pop on over to my Flickr account and add me as a Friend or Family Member. It was the quickest way to get the photos out but I’m not much of an advocate for public baby photos online for obvious reasons. I hope you appreciate my concern.)

I’ve just gone to check my RSS feeds in Bloglines and one of my regular subscriptions is the BBC Entertainment News feed. It amazes me how much “entertainment” news is either going through the courts or only getting exposure for illegal activity.

Here are the headlines I’ve been subjected to this lunchtime…

• Ono sues record groups for $10m
  Yoko Ono is suing two music companies for $10m (£5.35m), claiming she is owed royalties from John Lennon record sales.
• McCartney to contest abuse claim
  Sir Paul McCartney will “vigorously” contest claims he violently abused Heather Mills in their marriage.
• Mills silent over divorce reports
  Heather Mills refuses to comment on newspaper allegations that Sir Paul McCartney violently abused her during their marriage. (OK, the last two are related but it looks to be quite important at the moment!)
• Keane’s singer back after rehab
  Keane singer Tom Chaplin says he reached a crisis point before entering rehab for drink and drug treatment.
• New pressure on MP3 website
  Music downloading site AllofMP3 defends itself from charges it is illegally distributing songs.
• Doherty’s drug progress ‘mixed’
  Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty’s solicitor describes his battle to come off drugs as a “mixed bag”.
• Universal Music sues video sites
  The world’s biggest record firm is suing two websites which it says allowed users to trade pirated music videos.
• Bono in court over Stetson battle
  U2 singer Bono appears in a Dublin court in a dispute over memorabilia, including a Stetson hat.
• Madonna defends baby adoption
  Madonna defends her intended adoption of a Malawian baby, saying she acted “according to the law”.
• Arrest warrant for actor Snipes
  Actor Wesley Snipes faces eight charges of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service in the US.

Obviously there are some really topical issues in there and some quite sensitive news depending on where you stand (I’m not here to judge). I just find it ridiculous that it seems the only way to qualify for top entertainment news these days is by making a big deal of something that is classified as morally wrong.

There’s my observation for the day. Carry on as you were.

Things have been a bit crazy of late but I’ll spare you the details. Instead, here’s a quick bullet point version of what’s going on in my life:

• My dad was in a fairly bad bike accident the other week. He’s on the mend now but he’s got to be really careful with his spine as its broke at the bottom and if he puts too much pressure on it, he could be crippled for life. Massive shock when we found out and went up to Stoke to see him but he’s much better now which is making life for the rest of family alot easier.
• Following that, my car was broken into last weekend. Some little shit ran off with my SiPod and cost me £75 excess on my insurange to get the driver’s window replaced. Makes us wonder whether moving into this estate was the best decision… especially with baby on the way!
• Good news of late came in the form of our second baby scan. Everything is going according to plan and baby is healthy. We do know the sex of the baby but I need to keep it quiet as my mum is looking forward to the surprise and I know she reads my website every now and then. Anyway, that has cheered us up loads at a time that is quite lacking in good news for some reason.
• Its my birthday on Wednesday so I’m looking forward to that. No crazy plans but it will be nice to get out for a meal with some friends in the evening. Unfortunately, the boss has arranged an Intranet Away Day for the same day so I won’t be chilling in the office with a pub lunch but sitting in a stuffy Fire Community Centre with a bunch of Web nerds arguing about the best technologies to use! Ho-hum.
• We are still working every hour God sends to get my new business venture up and running. We are very close to launch now adding the final touches but my partner is such a perfectionist, it is holding us back slightly behind schedule (as it normally is with Web Startups). Details will follow shortly - just perserve!
• For those that are interested, World Cup KickOff has been phenomenally successful. For something that started out as a small personal project getting Microformats to work with Outlook, I’m so proud of what has become of the service. I’ll write up a full report of the project once I find some spare time and the World Cup has well and truly settled but I just want to thank everyone for all their kind comments and bug reports. It means so much to me to finally create a website that other Internet users have appreciated to this extent and I doubt I will ever match the success (watching a website creep up to 8000 uniques in just one day is a truly astounding feeling!). Anyway, thanks again.

That should do you for now and keep you interested for the time being.

Some might say I’m still too young, some might say I’m stupid. But most of those who have already been told have had nothing but congratulations for me. Last week, Lizzy found out that she is pregnant with our first child.

There’s not much to report on at the moment but I felt that this is such huge news that I had to voice it somewhere. We kind of decided last month that we are both in an ideal situation that is suitable for the arrival of the third member of Family Jobling and it would be nice to start trying for a baby. To me, this meant that I was ready and would welcome any “surprises” into our life. To Lizzy, it meant Project Baby could commence and her ovulation days were planned out for the next six months.

By the by, everyone is ecstatic at the news, no more so than myself and my (now) glowing wife. The first 12 weeks is the most sensitive period where things can change just like that so Lizzy’s putting her feet up and getting me to do most of the work around her. A small price to pay for the blessing of a child in our life.

We have already discussed and pretty much decided on names but I’ll save that announcement for the big day (which is looking like November 3rd at the moment but this needs confirming by the doctor).

Here’s to nine months of a premenstrual wife and our baby-to-be. Cheers.