The Birth of Linnae. (also known as the cutest baby in the world) For those of you that have kids already, please excuse my layman's explanation of the proceedures and what not. Also, it's not been run through a spell checker, so back off all you grammar nazi's out there! Hopefully I'll have a copy of this for our daughter when she gets older. I'll try and add more to this as things go. Perhaps turn it into a shrine to our little baby girl! On December 24th, I was at work, and Alice was at her parents who were taking her to a doctors appointment for me. At around 9:00 or so she headed to the doctor to find out about getting induced on the 26th... you see she had developed quite high blood pressure, so to make sure baby wasn't damaged by this, and to make sure she was ok, they'd decided to figure out best time to induce. So her doctor checks her out, and sends her off to the hospital for a second opinion on if she's ready for induction. That doctor's bedside manner was a bit rough... and boy did Alice complain about his internal exam... more on this later. After our Christmas office lunch concludes, I pick up Alice at her parent's place to take her home. I find out its been decided that she'll be induced on the 26th if they can take us. WEEE Baby is coming! We get home about 2pm or so, and I start to putter around, browsing the internet, talking to people online, cleaning up baby's room etc etc. Suddenly, Alice says "I think my water broke", and I'm like "What do you mean you *think* your water broke?". We get into a friendly laughing discussion about gushing fluids... at which time she pleasantly reflects "Looking back now, I think it broke around 1:30 or so, while I was at my dad's place". Looking at the time I realize that she's not started complaining about labour pains yet... YET. We start discussing how the rough second internal exam may have brought it on, perhaps by rupturing her membranes. So we call the on call doctor, who advises us to wait until labour starts becoming regular then head into the hospital. About 45 minutes later it does. Quite a pleasant wait I must say... all happily nervous and anxious, bags are all packed and we're just waiting for things to start. And boy do they start. For the uneducated, Labour starts when the cervix starts to actively dilate and stretch enough for the baby to come out. Alice has been at about 3cm dialated for a couple of days now, and 10cm is when the baby's ready to come out. 10cm is when the woman is allowed to "push" the baby out. Anyway... the onset of labour... that's when the pain starts... and boy did I hear about it. So it starts to begin, and we've called the doctor to get more feedback. Waiting for her call back I decide to visit the little boys room... as I'm in there, Alice walks by looking in the door. "You'll pay for this". She then walks past again "Oh yes, you'll pay". By now, the labour is pretty regular... 2-3 minutes between contractions, each contraction lasting a minute or so. Doctor finally calls back and suggests we head to the hospital! The drive in was pretty good, nice and calm, timing contractions all the way. We got to the hospital at about 5:30 pm. By now, I'm quite impressed by how my wife is handling this. She loses focus during contractions and bears the pain well. We check in, and she gets admitted into a delivery suite. Funny story... another woman walked in all done up for a business meeting, her husband in tow, and proclaimed, quite calmly mind you, that she's been in labour for 2 days now and she'd like to be admitted... ha, that's not labour, my wife's in labour. So now we're in a nice cozy delivery suite, it's about 6:30pm or so, and the first exam reveals that Alice's at 4-5cm... halfway to being ready to deliver. Great! Soon though, Alice succumbs to the pain and asks for an epidural. Even though it's a horrible procedure to watch performed, quite frankly I'm damn glad for it. She was having back labour (which is when labour pain is mostly on the back and is quite painful), and wasn't coping too well. I was a bit worried that she wouldn't have enough energy to push the baby out when it came time. Six hours later, around midnight, the next internal exam. Wow, 5-6cm! Wait... this is not cool. She's essentially stopped progressing naturally, as the baby's not fully engaged in the pelvis and helping to push open the cervix. They hook her up to an oxytosin drip (the hormone/chemical that causes labour) to increase the strength of the contractions. This begins to work. So for the next 10-11 hours we wait for her cervix to dialate. Let me tell you, labours a lot easier for both parties (husband and wife) with an epidural in place. So... finally around 10:30AM on Christmas day, the doctor does a final exam, and says that she's at a point where she can start to push. At around 11am, she really starts to give'er at every contraction. Pretty soon, can see peeks of hair on the top of baby's head at each push. Eventually, she's at a point where she's again, not progressing though. The baby's "turning the corner" but isn't quite past the pubic bone. A second doctor comes in, and starts suggesting an episiotomy. Again, for the uneducated, or those not skilled in Google, basically they'd cut my wife's privates open wider to let the baby out. Not a pleasant thought! As soon as Alice heard this, the regular doctor and I noticed Alice REALLY trying to get the baby out (haha like she wasn't REALLY trying before). There's nothing stopping this birth now! At around 1:23pm, the head and shoulders of our baby slipped out of my wife, and into her arms. I'd wanted to take lots of pictures around this time, but things started to move pretty quickly. To my horror, she wasn't moving at all, not breathing or anything. They placed her on my wife's belly and the doctor prepared the cord to be cut, which I got to do. As soon as that was done, his attention shifed back to the baby, who was still really unresponsive. Apgar score of 1 or something at this time. Now the birthing team kicked into high gear, they got the warmer fired up, and got the baby onto it. The doctor started working the baby, suctioning her lungs and the nurse checking for breath sounds. I was horrified, and looking over at my wife I could see she was too. All I could do was hold the baby's little hand and beg her to wake up. I've never felt so helpless in all my life. "Please baby, wake up, wake up". The doctor called for a pediatrician, who quickly arrived on the run. By now, about 3 or 4 minutes after birth, the baby was just starting to come around. Up until this point, I'd not even cared if it was a boy or a girl, I just wanted the baby to live. However, as the pediatrician started to work, I noticed she was a she. I looked over at Alice, and said "We have a girl!" We both broke into tears as I turned back to her and started saying "Please wake up Linnae, please be ok". Then she cried... a little whimper at first. Then, as she realized that she was cold, she really started to wail. And she grasped my hand. "Ohhh she is going to be ok!" The pediatrician and doctor were now noticably relaxed. "She's just fine, she's going to be just fine, she's beautiful" they kept repeating. "Beautiful?" I repy? "Surely you jest, she's only the most beautiful baby EVER". By now, I'd gotten a bit more composure, and had gone back to my wife and given her a hug and kiss, then back to baby to snap a couple pictures. I always regretted not having pictures of my first moments of life, and I wasn't about to wreck that for my daughter. It's ok Dad, I'm not bitter :-) Here's the first one of her I grabbed... oh my sweet little cone head! You see, her head got a little conical in the birth canal... completely normal, and it straightens out right quick in the next couple of days. I was a bit concerned at this time as her left eye was opening only, and her right eye staying closed. My thoughts were brain damage, and the doctor quickly confirmed that it was likely a pinced nerve and that she had full function on both sides of her body. Turns out she's just fine as far as we can tell so far. The doctors started to warm her up by this point. Put on a little toque, wrapped her up. I got to give her a first "coochie coo". While I was busy with baby, Alice delivered the placenta (warning gross!). The doctor checked her out, and found two tiny tears requiring two stitches total. So that other doctor suggesting the episiotomy? HA! You are too quick to cut! Either that, or he was just playing the bad cop. By then, the baby was doing just fine, so we moved up to our recovery room in the Evergreen ward. We got to spend the next 4 days there, making sure Alice and baby were fine to go home. They put some stuff in her eyes to protect them from germs or what not, so she had a bit of a red eye thing going on. It's all cleared up now. Notice how her head's rounding out? Grandparents stopped by soon. My dad seemed pretty happy. This is his first grandkid. Alice's dad stopped by as well, and gave us the chinese name for our daughter. He picked Mayling, after the most powerful woman in China's history. We had to tell people not to come to the hospital after this. Baby was a bit on the sick side, and Alice was really tired (hahaha tired for the rest of our lives I think). Turns out the baby got a bit of Jaundice. Oh it was so horrible having to watch her get needles for blood tests. She cried and cried, blaming us for her pain, but we knew she had to have it done. It ends up we had to have her under the blue light therapy device. This piece of kit was brand new, and I ended up instructing a couple of nurses on how to use it. Baby had to wear some blocking shades while under the light. She didn't like them much, but you gotta admit, she looked pretty cool. I think they even helped her head round out even more. Finally, our time came to go home... baby was pretty happy too! We bundled her up, put her in the car, and headed home. Pretty soon, she was under the tree, and we're settling into our new life as a family of three! I couldn't ask for a better treatment by the hospital staff at BC Women's, a better wife, or a better child. All in all, a pretty darn merry christmas. Vital Stats: Birth Date: December 25th 2003 at 1:23pm Weight: 6lbs 12ozs or 3.07 kg Length: Gotta check the docs Hair: Dark with a slight curl Eyes: Look like they're brown Fingers and Toes: 10 of each. For more images see the gallery.