02-19-2007, 08:23 AM
It's been an exciting couple of days for me, RL-wise. In the early afternoon on February 17th my wife gave the warning she thought she was going into labour. I took a shower while she packed her overnight bags. When I came out of the shower it turned out there had been a mix-up with the cab company and it was already down on the street waiting for us. We rushed down to the waiting cab, me with untied boots and a belt hung over my neck hehe, and quickly drove to the hospital.
After the initial examination, where they checked how much she had dialated, we gathered our things and walked over to the delivery room we were going to be. It started out well, but after a couple of hours she got nauseos from the laughing gas and went off it. The pain mounted with each contraction until about eight hours into labor I convinced her to give the laughing gas another try, and it didn't make her naseous anymore so it wasn't so bad after that. Then the anesthesiologist came to give her an epidural and that was just pure bliss for her, allowing her to get a few hours of well-needed rest.
Then came the real hurdle, the part of the labor where the baby exits the uterus and enters the birth canal. (When the woman starts to push). It had gone on for about ten hours by that time, and without mentioning any details... it was excruciating for her. As the baby started entering the world it became clear that the reason the labor took so long, and was so painful, was because the baby came out with face-up which the birth canal isn't really made for. It also became clear it was a baby girl
Our daughter had a mild problem after birth whereby her stomach didn't empty the fluid, so she had to have her stomach pumped right away. Once that was done she started screaming like normal babies do to clear their passages. My wife needed some procedures done to her as well, the kind many women need after child birth (I don't want to go into details for sensitive readers), but after about half an hour the three of us were alone and could take a breather, and me and my wife could get acquainted with our little bundle of joy. It was about 4:30 am by then, and we had to wait for a few more hours before the nursery ward opened up. When we finally got the new room we just crashed. We were both pretty out of it, personally I had slept five hours during the preceeding 48 hours so I had trouble thinking straight.
Luckily for us the baby was just as tired, so we all got a good night's rest. We slept in different stages until about nine in the evening yesterday, mixed in with breaks of dinner and breastfeeding and chaning nappies and things like that. Our baby slept through last night, so there really wasn't much we could do except look at her in joy or stroke her cheek occasionally. I tried to entertain myself by reading magazines and listening to the radio while my wife slept. She woke up around 4 am and then we spent the rest of the night talking. Everything was fine with them, so when daybreak came just before 7 am today I walked home to our apartment. I've got some chores to catch up on so they can come home to a clean apartment without dishes and laundry, and tomorrow morning I'll walk back to the hospital with the baby carriage and other supplies. The plan is for us all to come home around noon tomorrow. Besides the chores I hope to catch up on the developments on the forum and get some modelling stuff done.
She'll be named Ella, after the place where she was concieved.
After the initial examination, where they checked how much she had dialated, we gathered our things and walked over to the delivery room we were going to be. It started out well, but after a couple of hours she got nauseos from the laughing gas and went off it. The pain mounted with each contraction until about eight hours into labor I convinced her to give the laughing gas another try, and it didn't make her naseous anymore so it wasn't so bad after that. Then the anesthesiologist came to give her an epidural and that was just pure bliss for her, allowing her to get a few hours of well-needed rest.
Then came the real hurdle, the part of the labor where the baby exits the uterus and enters the birth canal. (When the woman starts to push). It had gone on for about ten hours by that time, and without mentioning any details... it was excruciating for her. As the baby started entering the world it became clear that the reason the labor took so long, and was so painful, was because the baby came out with face-up which the birth canal isn't really made for. It also became clear it was a baby girl
Our daughter had a mild problem after birth whereby her stomach didn't empty the fluid, so she had to have her stomach pumped right away. Once that was done she started screaming like normal babies do to clear their passages. My wife needed some procedures done to her as well, the kind many women need after child birth (I don't want to go into details for sensitive readers), but after about half an hour the three of us were alone and could take a breather, and me and my wife could get acquainted with our little bundle of joy. It was about 4:30 am by then, and we had to wait for a few more hours before the nursery ward opened up. When we finally got the new room we just crashed. We were both pretty out of it, personally I had slept five hours during the preceeding 48 hours so I had trouble thinking straight.
Luckily for us the baby was just as tired, so we all got a good night's rest. We slept in different stages until about nine in the evening yesterday, mixed in with breaks of dinner and breastfeeding and chaning nappies and things like that. Our baby slept through last night, so there really wasn't much we could do except look at her in joy or stroke her cheek occasionally. I tried to entertain myself by reading magazines and listening to the radio while my wife slept. She woke up around 4 am and then we spent the rest of the night talking. Everything was fine with them, so when daybreak came just before 7 am today I walked home to our apartment. I've got some chores to catch up on so they can come home to a clean apartment without dishes and laundry, and tomorrow morning I'll walk back to the hospital with the baby carriage and other supplies. The plan is for us all to come home around noon tomorrow. Besides the chores I hope to catch up on the developments on the forum and get some modelling stuff done.
She'll be named Ella, after the place where she was concieved.
