In the end, it was just over an hour.

Just over an hour between being asleep on the floor of Auckland hospital, to standing, bewildered under the delivery suite lights, helping to dress my newborn son.

Mava had been induced on Sunday – the scans had suggested that all was ok but that our baby was small for his age. We spent an oddly serene day waiting for the induction medication to kick in. They give you a dose every two hours until you go into labour but sometimes it takes a few hours to work and sometimes it takes days. It was actually lovely, in a way. Mava and I both read for hours in-between the doses. We went for coffee and a stroll in the domain, Mava constantly assessing baby’s every shift and every hint of a contraction.

My goodness, though, when it happened... it happened. Zero to one hundred. A blur.

I won’t labour you with all of the details but it’s become clear to me that there's a reason every parent has a birth story. It was surreal. It just felt like a week’s worth of crazy experiences happened in the space of fifteen minutes. It was beautiful, wild, traumatic, thrilling... it was animal. All these things.

Mava was incredible. I felt so proud of her, and yet so helpless at the same time.

And weirdly through it all, I felt calm. I’m not bragging. I’m not saying calmness was a good response – honestly I was probably just a bit stunned – and it turned out our son was too when he came out. They hurried him off and chucked him on the oxygen and he regained his colour. I took my cues from our amazing midwife and the other hospital staff. She wasn’t freaking out too much and so I didn’t either.

The scans were right – our son was small for his gestational age. But he what lacked in size he made up for in his capacity to feed. There can be no doubt he has inherited my skin tone, my hair colour, and my appetite. This morning is the longest I’ve been away from him in his life, but at five days old I know him well enough to know that right now he is probably feeding. Isn’t it incredible how instinct works? Out of the womb, almost blind, and yet he absolutely throws himself at the boob. Head back, mouth wide, latch! Who taught him that?!

A few random takeaways:

1) The placenta. Wow. That thing could feed a family of four.

2) We had three nights in hospital and a couple more in Birthcare afterwards. If our experience of the New Zealand healthcare system this week is anything to go by, it is being completely held together by migrant workers: Indians, Filipinos, Europeans, South Americans, Pasifika... they were fantastic. For all the justified concern over the health care system as a whole, we had a really positive experience and felt so grateful to the people working in what are often very tricky conditions.

3) Women's bodies, eh? To have the capacity to grow an entire human being, from his skinny little frog legs folded up at his belly, to his tiny little fingernails to the lightest fur on his pink little cheeks. To grow him, birth him, and then, having done it all, having done everything... to immediately switch to nourishing him day and night.

What can I tell you about our son? He’s got his mum’s eyes. He sucks his thumb. His first music was the Koln Concert and he made sure to stay up to watch Will Young and Tom Latham score centuries against Pakistan. His name will be finalised soon enough. When he’s bulked up a bit, he’s got a long list of visitors waiting to meet him, too.

After five nights away, yesterday I put our son in his carseat and drove him home. His older brother ran home from school and cuddled him on the couch. Through the madness and exhaustion of the week, running on caffeine, sugar, and love, we sat there together, a family. It was perfect.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s no more iconic a reality franchise than The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills – which is back for its 15th season.

And there is perhaps no Housewife in history that has a heftier and more prestigious CV than that of Bozoma Saint John.

Boz joined the series last year off the back of a 20-year run as a marketing executive working with brands like Apple, Netflix, Uber and Pepsi and has been recognised by Forbes as the world’s #1 most influential CMO.

She quickly became a fan favourite for her ability to bring boardroom realness to the drama of the 90210.

She joins Jack Tame to chat about authenticity, watching herself on TV, and marketing.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As a little kid, I always slept terribly on Christmas eve.

I’d try and go to bed early. I’d tell myself that the sooner I went to sleep, the sooner I’d wake on Christmas morning. But sure as anything I’d be up all night, listening for any sound of activity on the roof.

Together with my three little brothers and sisters, we’d be desperate for mum and dad to throw open our bedroom doors at first light, and we’d scramble down to our spindly-and-slightly-off-centred Christmas tree to see if Dad’s old football socks had been attended to by Santa.

I suspect this Christmas eve will be another poor sleep. Not because I’ll be excitedly listening for the sound of shuffling reindeer on corrugated iron, but because it’s my first Christmas morning with our ten-month-old son.

We’re taking both our boys to their cousins’ place. Five kids. Average age: four-and-a-half. Our eldest is already fizzing. Our baby will have absolutely no idea what’s going on but will sure as anything wake up a minimum of three times in the night to demand cuddles and a feed.

Christmas is a kind of touchstone for our family. Like many Kiwi families, it’s the one time of year when all of us (or at least as many of us as possible) are in one place at the same time.

Weddings, funerals and Christmas are the only occasions we’re all together. And Christmas is the only regular date.

As a child you never think of this stuff, but as you grow older you are gently confronted by the reality that for better or worse, the numbers in the room change.

The grandparents whom I shared Christmas day with as a little boy are no longer with us, no longer sitting on the couch, sipping their coffees and wryly commentating as the kids tear into the wrapping paper. Granny was a very active woman. Every Christmas morning after we’d stuffed ourselves with chocolates and junk, she’d lead a brisk stroll through the neighbourhood as we worked up an appetite for lunch. Dad and my grandad would stay at home and race through a cryptic crossword.

Now it’s different. For the kids it’s more or less the same. All magic. A whirlwind. A blur. But for the rest of us, a new baby just reinforces our awareness of having stepped up a generation.

Where once I was struggling to sleep through the night on Christmas Eve, now it’s my boys and their cousins. My parents have become the grandparents sitting on the couch, sipping their coffees, wryly commentating proceedings. My siblings have become the parents, the aunts and uncles. People who once were there, are not. New, excited little bodies have taken their place.

There’s sadness in it. But there’s something quite beautiful about it too, placing yourself in a generational context like that.

It’s a circle of life thing.

It’s funny that it comes at Christmas. Other cultures and religions probably have many more of these moments. But we’re a bit short on touchstone traditions. For me at least, Christmas is a short little window every year where the busy lives in my family are about as aligned as they’re going to be.

It’s a touchstone where if you want to, you can step back and observe what’s changed in the family. My son’s first Christmas will mean seeing myself in a slightly different light… not as a kid, or a gift-giver, or someone setting stocking sunder the tree, but as a bridge between different generations of the same family, hoping the spirit of these traditions will continue for many years to come.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.