Introducing... Preston ShenHao Too.

ITS A BOY.

3.84 kgs, (or 8 pounds 7)
52 cms long
healthy as.

We did it! Wow, we finally made it. I just posted some pics if you really wanna see!
And what a couple of days it has been. I've just managed to steal away from Birthcare, and I am hoping that Belinda and Preston are getting some sleep - neither of them have had much of that since Friday. I've hacked into the baby blog and am gonna tell as much of the story as I can before I fall asleep.

DAY ZERO

So, it all starts on Friday morning, at the bright and early time of 7:30. We were to show up at the Womens Assessment Unit of Auckland hospital for an induction, bright and early, and prepared for a long day.

We had packed lots and lots of stuff, just to make sure we were prepared. A bag of food/snacks, with all of Belinda's essentials (cheese and crackers, fruit, nuts, drinks, museli bars, etc), a bag of clothes for the hospital, a bag of baby clothes, another bag of clothes for post-natal, and my laptop.

Friday started with a lot of monitoring. The on-site midwife wanted to hear the baby's heartbeat, and check Belinda's contractions to see what was going on at that point in time. There was a steady heartbeat, around 130-140 most of the time, and there were contractions going on, not very strong - but fairly often.

This monitoring went on for a good while... over half an hour before our own midwife Jan Clifton turned up to get things going. She gave Belinda some medication to bring on the labour, and pretty much left us to it (as far as I can remember). The medication is meant to take anywhere from 4-24 hours to bring on labour, so we had no idea what would happen.

After that it was down to hourly monitoring to make sure that both Belinda and Baby were handling the medication properly, and up to us to pass away the time for the rest of Friday. We went on lots of walks to make sure Belinda kept moving, checked out the hospital and surrounds, and kept ourselves busy. We ate some great food from the grafton shops down the road, Belinda kept working on a Mr. Men CrossStitch Alphabet Chart that she had started a while ago, and we churned through a heap of Alias Season 3 DVDs that we had bought especially for this.

After a loooooooooooooong day, we decided to try to get some sleep, and prepare for the next day. Belinda was starting to feel a bit of pain by that time, and I had to sleep on a lay-z-boy. Unfortunately for Belinda, she was starting to move into real Labour before we went to sleep - so it wasn't a very good night for her. We had brought along a TENS machine which gave her some pain relief, and one of the midwives was extremely persistent (read: annoying) that Belinda take some panadol.

During the night, every time I roused a little Belinda was in a different position, or milling about the room. She was extremely uncomfortable. The best part though, was that we were expecting this level of discomfort, and it just reinforced the fact that the baby was coming. YAY!

DAY ONE: 17/12/05

Fast forward to the morning, and Belinda was really really sore. It was very hard for her to speak, so all I could do was give her massages, and make sure she was OK. We asked the midwife to call Jan back in for an assessment, and hopefully things were already underway.

Jan finally arrived back in at around 8-ish (memory is hazy here) and gave Belinda an inspection. She was 1cm dilated. After the whole night of effort and pain, we had hardly progressed at all. Poor Belinda.

Well, we needed to move things along, since Belinda was in a whole lot of pain, and things needed to happen. Belinda's waters were broken, and Belinda was moved to the Delivery Unit down the hall. There was a little mucousa when the waters broke, which usually indicates that the baby is a little distressed.

It was about 8:30 by now, and we put Belinda into the shower to try some water for pain relief. I got into my togs and kept the water on her lower back, which was one of the most painful parts at that time. Belinda was starting to buckle with the pain, so we requested an epidural for pain relief. We wanted to do our best to avoid pethidene, which we heard had strong negative effects on the baby.

The epidural for those of you who don't know, is placed directly into the spine. Pain relief is administered through a small tube, and is able to be topped up every now and then. I highly recommend it!

So belinda was placed on a drip (which included some syntocinin - which helps bring the labour along as a synthetic form of oxytocin), and had a couple of blood samples taken. Then she was asked to stay as still as humanly possible while this epidural was placed into her spine. Thank goodness for a fantastic anaesthetist, it all went smoothly and within a few minutes belinda was OK. She started chatting again, and could have a brief sleep.

Fast forward to 11:15 am, and our first inspection after moving to the delivery unit - OMG 6cm! WOW! A sigh of relief (kinda) from Belinda, we were making progress. Epidural was topped up, and belinda could relax.

Fast forward again to 1:30pm and our second inspection: and well, we could see the baby's head. I gotta tell ya - now that was exciting. Belinda was still under pain relief, everything was fine, and Jan basically told us that we would just start pushing. It was a flurry of activity as Jan got everything ready, we prepared Belinda, and Helen made her way over to help me out.

BIRTH

There's not a lot to say about the rest of the birth. Belinda did remarkably, but since she was still under pain-relief, it wasn't too difficult for her. She could still feel what was happening (thanks to the epidural's light dosage), and just pushed with the contractions. Each push made some progress, and we needed to adjust position slightly over time to help the baby along.

After an hour of pushing, and an episiotomy, the head was out, then the body, and it was all over! The pain was definitely enormous for Belinda for the last few pushes, but she did extremely well, and was all OK. Once everything was under control, I jumped on the phone to the direct family, then rushed back in to help. Belinda needed a few stitches, and Jan did everything to clean up in no time. Baby was perfectly healthy, opened his eyes, and yelled at us straight away. He fed within 20 minutes or so, once Belinda was all OK.

Belinda had lost a lot of blood, and was fairly pale white. She threw up as soon as she sat up, so I did my best to slow things down a little for her. I sent out a mass-text to everyone in my phone, and did my best to ignore the half hour of constant ringing from it. Sorry if I didn't get back to you, but my attention really was on Belinda and the baby. We slowly packed up - Belinda was taken out of the hospital in a wheelchair, I brought along the car, and we moved to Birthcare (the Auckland Central Post-natal care facility).

Belinda was greeted at Birthcare with a gourmet meal, and once we were all settled in, we had some visitors etc etc.

I went home at about 9ish... extremely exhausted, and hoped that Belinda would get some sleep. Tried my best to email pics, but I was too tired, couldn't find Belinda's blogger password, so I gave up and hit the bed.

DAY TWO - 18/12/05

I got to birthcare at 8:30 ish. Belinda had had a rough night, with lots of screaming, feeding and so on. Our baby is HUNGRY. He's also LOUD. It's great. His cries make us really happy, cause we know he's healthy! I'm so proud, and am laughing out loud as I write this.

Today was a long day, and I don't really have much to write. We did our best to keep the baby happy, despite his constant hunger. There were lots of visitors, and gave everyone their chance to meet the baby - who we announced as Preston ShenHao Too. We'd come up with the name around August or so, before we heard of 2 other occurences of it. Mum had actually chosen it amongst others, and had emailed us a list. We loved it straight away, and have been calling him that at home whilst in the womb.

Belinda has only really had a few hours sleep in total over the last 3 days, so hopefully there are no more visitors for a few days. Her pain relief is wearing off too.

Feeding is easy for Belinda (relative to stories we have heard), and Preston is latching on really well. Preston is feeding every hour or two, and is the loudest baby in the building. honest. I gave him his first bath this evening, much to his discomfort. He's clean now, in outfit #2, and hopefully asleep.

I left at 8:30 pm, and we had a great day overall. All the grandparents are absolutely stoked, everyone who has visited is really excited for us, and we're adjusting to the baby really well.

Well, what a day! Hope you enjoy the pictures posted above this, Belinda will probably post a little more in a couple of days when she is out of Birthcare.

In the meantime, I'm gonna get some sleep.

Dan.