A Baby is born! (A father’s perspective)

So you all heard that Yvonne’s water broke. Well not much longer did she give birth to a beautiful baby boy.

June 27, 2007, 22:45
Caleb Joshua Wong is born
6 pounds 13 ounces
18 inches long

So I must start from the beginning. That was 3 and a half weeks ago when Yvonne started bleeding. Apparently she had lost her mucous plug. Of course we not knowing much about pregnancy and labor start looking this stuff up on the net. We find out that labor is imminent! That’s a sign that labor should be starting soon! It could start the next day. Or it could start a week from then. At least that’s what I read.

So the next day comes and goes. And then the next day. And then the one after that. And then a week goes by. Yvonne still is bleeding periodically. But the OB says that’s normal and labor can start at ANY TIME. So again, 2 weeks go by. 3 weeks….

Where’s the baby?

3 and a half weeks later after we were expecting an early baby, Caleb finally decides he’s had enough of it and breaks out only 2 days before the due date.

Thanks for making us worry, Caleb.

So at 5pm yesterday, Yvonne calls me at work telling me her water broke.

(Now for those of you who are ignorant of this fact, like I was before this child, the water breaking is NOT typical for labor beginning. In fact, only about 10 percent of labors does the water break before the labor actually starts. Most water breakage occurs during the middle or end of labor when the baby is about to give birth. So when you see all these movies about the mom’s water breaking and them giving birth 5 minutes later, that just don’t happen. It’s all a lie. Mostly at least. Anyways…. I digress).

We knew what to do if the water broke and we were early. But the baby is full term and the water breaks, we didn’t know what to do. So again, the internet is my friend. I read that labor usually begins within the next 24 hours. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes 24 hours later. But sometime within that period. So I figure that labor for the first child usually lasts 12 hours. And she just broke her water, but she’s not necessarily in labor yet. So I decide I didn’t need to rush home just yet. And neither did Yvonne. “Take your time,” she tells me.

So I go do some 3v3 and 2v2 action WoW before going home (I suck by the way). And then proceed to go home at my normal time. I figure if Yvonne was in lots of pain, she’d call me by now. It’ll only be early labor now anyways.

By the time I get home at 7:35, she’s lying on the ground of bathroom writhing in pain, like the kind of pain she used to get with your tummy. So it’s serious time now. But that’s weird. It’s only been 2 and a half hours. Early labor usually lasts longer than that. For the next hour and a half, she’s fighting it hard. Definitely active labor. This labor is going fast. I call up our doula and soon after she arrives, we decide to go to the hospital.

We get to Queen of the Valley at 9:20pm. Now here’s the part the kind of got me mad. After getting admitted, they wouldn’t let me be with her for another 30 minutes. And she was in so much pain the she couldn’t stand or sit. It was brutal. Transition has started, and I couldn’t be there when it did.

I finally got into the room with her at 9:50pm, and she was working hard. Moaning and groaning. Honestly it sounded as if she was dying. If she had gotten shot the abs, that’s the kind of sound I would think she’d make.

Transition to pushing didn’t seem like a change at all. It was painful throughout. And the doctor wasn’t even there yet. He was on his way. But Yvonne was moving too quick for him! After 15-20 minutes of pushing, the baby was out and crying and in Yvonne’s arms.

Now for those of you who have never witness an actual labor, that is quite an experience. I know you high schoolers have seen the video giving birth. Or even if you watched Knocked Up, you saw a glimpse of the baby crowning. Yeah. I saw all that. And those videos/movies are nothing compared to real life. In those videos and movies you saw, you could see the pain. But those were easy. Yvonne’s… Not so easy. But she did great. Spectacular. In all honesty, I should have been complete grossed out. Yet, I wasn’t. God must have had something to do with that.

Seriously though. It’s gross. It’s nothing like what I seen before. I think the grossest thing was when after giving birth to the boy, the placenta has to come out later. It’s just this big ol’ bloody glob that shoots out. It’s quite disgusting. Yet I wasn’t disgusted by it. Strange, huh?

Anyways. I must go shower and brush my teeth. This has been one long post! Hopefully you’ve made it this far! 🙂