As of exactly 3 weeks ago, I have officially became a dad to a baby boy, Benjamin Thomas Kai-Yeh (凱業) Cheng. It has been one heck of a exhausting ride so far! Let me relive the days…
Pre-labour (August 16th)
Dez was having regular contractions throughout most of the week, but they weren’t show-stoppingly painful. On the morning of 16th, she woke up at 4am feeling that her water may have broken. She didn’t wake me up because, well, it wasn’t an emergency.
After I woke up, she told me, but she was still unsure. So we decided to continue our day as planned, which was a pretty packed day. First, I had to go to Sears with my family to do some family portraits (that they won for free) at 11:30am. Right after that, Dez and I went to Stonegrill with them to celebrate my grandma’s 90th birthday. It was during lunch that we decided that it was best to call the doctor to see what they want to do.
After lunch, we went home, and Dez took a shower while I caught the last little bit of PGA Championship, which Tiger lost despite leading by 2 strokes going into the final round. It was pretty surreal, since he’s won 14 of 14 majors that he led or co-led into the final round. It was bound to happen, but I didn’t think it was going to happen so soon.
Dez finally called the doctor, and we headed to BC Women’s for a check-up at 4pm. Yes, her water indeed broke! But all the vital signs were normal. The cervix was not yet dilated, and contractions were not frequent enough for her to be detained. So, after getting discharged an hour later, we went to VanDusen Botanical Garden to watch a Rajaton concert which we bought the tickets for 3 months earlier.
So from 6pm to 9pm, we sat on a picnic blanket, waiting and listening to a cappella. Dez held up surprisingly well, and the music was great.
After the concert ended, I picked up some food from my parents (they went to some restaurant for dinner as it was my grandma’s birthday) and decided to go to work! Yes, I brought Dez to the company at 10pm because we anticipated that I wouldn’t be able to go to work on Monday, and I had about 3 hours worth of code merging to do before I could finally close a defect that I had been fixing for an entire week. So we went, and I finished while she played a game on the Nintendo DS.
We got home at around 2am and went to bed.
Labour (August 17th)
While I was still half asleep at 7am-ish, Dez told me that I shouldn’t go to work that day (it wasn’t completely decided the day before). The doctor called to tell us to come in, and after a brief breakfast, we headed to BC Women’s at around 10am.
The doctor on call for that morning was none other than the interim doctor who looked after us during our first pregnancy/miscarriage.
After a series of check ups and hooking up all the equipment, we found that Dez was still not dilated enough. Since the water was broken for over 24 hours, they decided to induce labour, which meant putting her on the IV with oxytosin. After getting a little lost looking for the cafeteria at BC Women’s, I finally got food and headed back to the ward. At 1:30pm, oxytosin started to do its job of increasing the intensity, frequency, and duration of the contractions.
Contractions got harder and harder to ignore, and before she knew it, they became unbearable. By 4pm, Dez decided that an epidural was necessary, and the procedure was done to basically anesthesize the region around her hip. It worked as advertised – no pain.
So we continued to kill time while the contraction kept going on to dilate the cervix. I had some movies loaded onto the iPhone and we watched Yes Man. It turned out to be a better movie than I expected.
At 7pm, the nursing morning shift ended, and our very friendly nurse passed us to another very friendly nurse, who happened to be Dez’s friend’s sister. It turned out that Dez messaged her friend before heading to the hospital, and her friend called her sister to make sure she gets Dez as her patient!
By 9pm, Dez was pretty much fully dilated and ready to push, but it wasn’t until 10pm when our nurse suggested Dez try pushing. After the first try, she was extremely impressed with the progress. After the second try, she had to call the doctor because the baby was going to be pushed out any minute!
After some scrambling to get things ready, and lots of praises for Dez for being such a pro (because first timers often take a long time, which can last for hours), baby Cheng was freed (actually, more like evicted) from the cosy womb into this world.
Yes, I was in the delivery room. Yes, I actually witnessed the birth, from the tip of his head to his entire body getting pushed out with the umbilical cord attached. No, I wasn’t forced to watch. I chose to watch (it didn’t last very long anyway). People seemed to be very worried about me fainting, but no, I was perfectly fine. Yes, I cut the umbilical cord too. I called our parents too.
Before I knew it, I was taught how to put a diaper on him. Dez was very alert the entire time, and was soon on her feet as we headed up to the maternity rooms.
(to be continued…)
Interesting Tidbits
Dez handled the labour extremely well. At least in my eyes. When she was first asked to rate the pain, she gave it an 8. She later told me it was probably a 10, but she thought maybe it would be worse, and she didn’t want to say 11, so she said 8 instead.
Epidurals (or any medical procedures/treatments) are not 100% risk-free. We were glad Dez had no scary side-effects from it. Dez felt that if she wasn’t induced, perhaps she could’ve toughed it out. But the induction increased the frequency so much that she had no time for a breather, she had to use it. Something like 85 – 90% of the induced women choose epidurals.
Neither Dez nor I had the baby’s gender in mind when it was lifted and handed to Dez. The nurse said “look”, and Dez said “oh, it’s a boy!”, and it was seconds later that I realized what they were talking about.
When I called my parents (after 11pm), my sister picked up (while my dad also picked up, but pretended to not have picked up, which was annoying). My dad asked what time he/she was born, and that was it! I hung up without telling them whether it was a boy or girl! It was hilarious. When I called Dez’s parents, her mom asked if it was a boy or girl. She didn’t ask the weight or time. Funny priorities.
In the Chinese calendar, I was born on the 6th month, 29th day. My dad’s theory was that boys usually born on odd days, while girls are born on even days. This was true for nearly (if not all) everyone from my dad’s side of family. Weird. And baby Ben did not ruin his theory, as he was born on the 27th day. He missed my lunar birthday by 2 days.
It was merely minutes after the birth when Dez suggested having another baby. She wasn’t even totally un-nauseous yet. The doctors were still sewing her up!! I didn’t even know how to hold the baby!! And she was talking about having a 2nd one??
In retrospect, both Dez and I agreed that she was meant to give births. As a first time mother, she probably was the top 5 percentile in labour duration or something. It was like chicken laying an egg! 
Not to mention she’s had “pre-milk” starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy, so she wasn’t like some other mothers who had trouble feeding their babies. The nausea she experienced was probably some evolutionary baby-protection measure that stops Dez from doing anything strenuous.
Baby Ben was 7 lb 6 oz. Head circumference was 34 cm. Head to butt was 51.5 cm. All the physical stats were pretty much on-the-dot average, perhaps except his full head of hair. Even during the pregnancy, his estimated size was riding on the line of 50 percentile. There are, however, many other features of his that are not very average (that we later found out), but that’s for another day.
No, I did not cry. Occasionally during the pregnancy I would imagine the birth and my eyes would tear up, but many times I would just feel happy. I always wondered whether I would cry on the day. Nope, I didn’t.
One thing I secretly (or not so secretly) wished he would be was a Leo. I’m a Leo. Leos tend to be more straight forward and not beat around the bush, and we let our emotions hang outside. I can deal with Leos, probably better than Virgos. But really, either would be fine. I just think it’s easier for me to understand Leos than Virgos.
So, the winner of the official baby bet is Jeff, with Roger being a close 2nd, lost only by half a pound.
We monitored and monitored and good thing it never went up too much. In fact, after we turned down the temperature in our room at night so that he could cool down, he woke up chilly. Turns out he got cold. It took a day or two for his temperature to rise back up to typical range.
