I Am Now Officially A Father

On Tuesday the 20th march 2007 at 6:13 AM, my wife gave birth to a son. My son weighed a healthy 3.58 kg and had a length of 52 cm.

Below is printout of the events taking place as accurately as I remember:

19th march 6:00 PM – My wife stars feeling bad and has stomach ache. She has irregular premonitory pains. The timing between the contractions is anywhere from 5-15 minutes.

20th march 1:00 AM – My wife’s pain gets worse and the contractions are still irregular between 5-10 minutes. I grab the bag which we’ve already packed and we drive towards the hospital.

20th march 1:30-5:00 AM – The midwife at the hospital regularly monitors the heartbeat of the baby, while the contractions become more intense. At this point, it was very painful for my wife. The midwife was saying that my wife’s body is getting ready very fast compared to other new mothers having their first child. This was of course good news for us.

20th march 5:00 AM – The delivery has now started, and my wife follows the instruction given by the midwife on how to push. My wife does the best she can, and I can see how difficult it is. I like to lift weights, and each of my wife’s contraction and pushing would be equal to my 1 repitition maximum in every set. I stand next to my wife supporting her and wiping her with a wet cloth to remove her sweat. She continues to push for a whole hour, but the last part seems to be impossible. The midwife can see the top of the baby’s head, but it cannot be pushed through.

20th march 6:00 AM – At this point, my wife is exhausted and the midwife calls the doctor, as she can see that my wife’s pushing is not enough to deliver the baby. The midwife tells me that the doctor will most likely choose one of two options:

1. Inject some medicine into my wife so that her contractions become stronger and thus she pushes harder
2. Use a suction disc on the baby’s head and help with the delivery by pulling

By using the suction disc, there is a chance that my wife will need some stitches afterwards as its likely that she might tear a little. Additionally it was likely that a lump would be created on the baby’s head, which would disappear after 1 week. She assured me that no harm would come to the baby.

The doctor arrives and decides to user the suction disc. The doctor fits the suctions disc, pumps it so a vacuum is created and the disc is fitted solid to the baby’s head. She then proceeds to pull simultaneously with my wife’s pushing during her contraction. The doctors pulling looked very rough to me and to be honest I was very scared and concerned for the baby. Surely this could not be healthy for my baby.

20th march 6:13 AM – With the doctor pulling, the baby is finally delivered. It was so relieving to finally hear the baby cry and to know that it’s over. The midwife congratulated us and told us that it’s a boy. She put the boy on my wife’s stomach and he stopped crying. The midwife cut the navelstring and gave us a small break so that we could appreciate this special moment. After a while she started sewing my wife to close the wound/tear that was created by the fierce pulling. Surely there was a big lump on my baby’s head and I asked the midwife and the doctor again, whether this had damaged my baby. I was especially concerned for damage on the brain, neck, or spinal cord. Both the doctor and midwife assured me that there was nothing to worry about and that this was standard procedure in cases like this. The midwife eventually checked the baby, weighed it (3.58 kg) and measured the length (52 cm).

20th march 8:00 AM – After a couple of hours my wife and the baby was moved to, what they call, the baby hotel, where the mom and the baby rests and the new mothers are taught how to feed their baby, how to bath them and other common baby tasks. Because both my mom and mom-in-law were staying at our house, we had a huge support from experienced moms. The nurses could see this, and allowed my wife to check out the following day.

21st march 11:00 AM – Finally I could bring my wife and son home from the hospital.

So that’s about it. I’ll have more to tell once I get some rest and get into the routine of being a new father. And so the journey begins…

You can read my wifes diary entry here.