The first 3 weeks

Almost 3 weeks since the birth of Charlotte. Time for a quick update.

We always knew the arrival of a newborn would take up a lot of time, and bring a bit of stress as well. I think, given the circumstances, we have dealt with these first 3 weeks fairly alright. We focused on the big things, did not fuss too much about the little things, and everyone's still alive at the end of the day. Which is always a good thing.

The biggest obstacle this time round, I feel, is the presence of a two-year-old, who has suddenly lost his status as the youngest - and therefore, by default, the most pampered - member of the family. Seeing everyone giving all the attention to the baby must not have been easy for Gideon. He can't even be with his beloved mummy whom he had been previously given unrestricted access to all this time. Instead, mummy is always with this little bundle of noisy cries and smelly diapers, and does not let him near them most of the time. Who does this little baby think she is??

Add to that, the fact that he's at this phase of his life where he's challenging everything, demanding everything, testing his boundaries, saying "No!" to all requests. Yes folks, the urban legend called "The Terrible Twos" is not a myth, it's real, and "terrible" is probably an understatement. Well, I guess it's not the same for all kids. When Gareth was 2, the display of impetuousness and rebellion wasn't as bad(or maybe I just have a bad memory). But Gideon is truly a handful, and easily the biggest headache for us during this period.

But we do manage the best we can, we try to give him whatever time we can have for him, especially myself. He still is closer to his mummy though, and cries inconsolably at night sometimes when he wakes up demanding for my wife to comfort him. When I try to be the one to do so, he cries even harder, the little brat. It's all good, it's all good, I'm not upset, I'm not jealous. I know it's just a phase, he can't quite control his feelings(wait till he finds out who gives him pocket money, the little....)

I'm on leave during this period, to help out my wife, be that extra pair of hands, and I am also hoping to catch up on my assignments for my fellowship exam retake later this year. It's chugging along slowly, too slow if I'm honest, but I try to look on the bright side of things. I've got other things in my life that are more important. My family has got to come first, and even if I don't make it again this year in my exam, so be it. It's not exactly the best of times for me to be dealing with the exam at this stage in my life. I guess it's no excuse in the eyes of others, but hey, it's my family's opinions that matter, and I just want to be there for them as much as I can.

That's why one entire afternoon was spent taking them out to see Kung Fu Panda 3 during the holiday week last week, and also almost one whole day spent bringing Chloe and Gareth to the Hasbro toy warehouse sale(Clarissa had pre-school, and we were also going to get her birthday presents, so we didn't want her to see what we bought first). My goodness, we spent almost 3 hours queuing to get inside, and almost 2 hours queuing to pay for the toys. But they had great fun running through the toys, and this was one time in which I allowed them to buy almost whatever they picked out. Gareth could hardly believe his luck.

Anyway, apologies for no pictures of our exploits, and also of Charlotte. I'm writing this outside of home(I'm supposed to be doing my assignments), and my pictures are still locked in my phone, have not put them in the computer yet. May do so at the next post.

So that's that for now.

THE day

Well, it was a long day today.

Today was the day my wife was scheduled to deliver our fifth child. Her obstetrician was only willing to wait until today, at 39 weeks + 2 days of gestation, for natural labour to occur. My wife has mild gestational diabetes, and he did not want to take the risk of waiting too long. We kind of knew it was going to come to this day, because in all her previous pregnancies, she's never really had natural labour, they all had to be induced. So true enough, by this morning, my wife had no signs of natural labour, so we went to the delivery suite in the hospital to be admitted, right after the kiss goodbye:

Missed out on Chloe and Gareth because we forgot to get them to kiss the baby before bringing them to their school.

Anyway, we made our way to the hospital, where my wife got admitted into the delivery suite as planned. The obstetrician broke my wife's waterbag, and we then played the waiting game, to see if she would go into labour after that, because the waterbag breaking tends to stimulate the womb into labour.

As my wife and I suspected, she didn't really progress, so induction of labour commenced. This meant giving some hormones intravenously to stimulate the womb into contractions. Ideally we would have preferred natural labour, because induction is usually more painful.

We also had another decision to make: epidural or no epidural anaesthesia. In her first 2 pregnancies, my wife did not have any epidural, but they were really painful, so we thought we would give epidural a try in the 3rd pregnancy, since everyone who had tried it sang high praises about how wonderful epidural was. Unfortunately, my wife's epidural experience was bad. The dose was not enough, and she still experienced pain during the contractions, and she had bad side effects after the delivery. So we didn't have epidural for the 4th one. Now, we were deliberating whether to give it another try, because the 4th pregnancy was really painful and difficult. We then decided that if the nurses or the obstetrician were to ask if we wanted epidural, we would say yes, otherwise we would not ask for it ourselves. As it turned out, the only question that was close to it was, "So you want everything natural right?" That didn't quite count, so no epidural then.

It wasn't completely natural though, because she used nitrous oxide to help with the pain:

Good decision too, because as it turned out, the 2nd stage of labour was really quick this time round. My wife went into strong, regular contractions, and reached the point of wanting to push the baby out pretty soon. After the nurse did a check of the cervix, she muttered something and hurriedly rushed out, before returning to say she had informed our obstetrician to come. By the time he arrived, the head of the baby could be seen already, and just upon wearing the gloves, the baby popped out, at 4:08pm, weighing at 3.17kg. My wife did have quite bad pains, but at least it was really a lot quicker than the previous pregnancies.

The baby broke out into little bouts of cries, and was put to mother almost immediately, which was what we wanted, to strengthen the bond between mother and baby. After awhile, she was taken by the nurse to clean up and wrapped up nicely for presentation:

We went off to the room in the ward, while our baby girl was brought to the nursery for examination and monitoring. After my wife settled down, I went back home to the excited kids, and brought them over to see their brand new sibling.

My parents-in-law were also there(my mother-in-law was in fact taking care of the rest of the kids for us, and I brought her along with the kids), and my father-in-law prayed for Charlotte(the baby):

I like the way Chloe laid her hand on Charlotte during the prayer.

Thereafter, it was taking turns carrying the baby:

It was nice seeing the kids all getting excited about Charlotte without any sense of jealousy. Except maybe Gideon, who seemed to want to be as close to his mother after seeing her carrying Charlotte in her arms. Even so, he seemed to like her, and was willing to hug her when we asked him to:

So that's the first day in the life of Charlotte, our latest addition in the family. The days ahead seem daunting, with a lot more things that need to be done now that we have a newborn baby in the house. But hey, we'll go through them as a family together, and there will be so much more joy and happiness as we grow together.