adventures of a new kind

you can't imagine how challenging it is to even try and blog about my little darling's life. he is now 11 days old and everything in our life revolves around him. it's feeding, burping, changing diapers, expressing breast milk all day long... of course then there's the daily baths and time taken to get him to nap too. which leaves us with NO time left for anthing else. i feel like a cow... just being milked for all the goodness to feed our son with :)

anyway since i have little time to blog now, i'm just gonna summarise the adventures we've had in the last 11 days:

teats, teats and more teats!
ethan now has close to 30 teats that cost us a couple of hundreds. how did we end up with so many teats? well... the clever little bugger can actually tell the difference between latex and silicone teats, as well as teats for wide-necked and standard-necked bottles! so after many days of trial and error, with the hubby running down town to get the teats 3 days in a row, the teat fiasco is finally over.

crap!
hubby was fortunate enough to have our little darling's crap spray in his face during one diaper changing session. that came about in the form of a "shart" - yes... ethan decided to shit and fart at the same time! the "fountain of pee" episodes are too many too mention, but luckily we were forewarned so we did not get showers of blessing from our son.

anyway he's been sleeping more soundly thro the nites now - with probably about 3 feeds during the nite. the 1st nite was a nitemare as i was trying to do exclusive breastfeeding and the poor guy was hungry like a wolf. upon the PD's advice, we decided to give him formula till my breast milk came in, and now that i have the supply, the smart little one decides that he prefers the NUK teat to mine instead! so now we are feeding him thro milk bottles all the time. and that explains why i have to pump every 3 hrs...

but we can tell he's a really intelligent boy... he's already observing the people around him and listens most intently when we are talking, as if trying to figure out what's happening. he loves his daily baths and lies quietly in his cot looking at his mobile every morning after his bath.

the feelings we have whenever we look at him just cant be put into words. suffice to say that he truly is a little treasure...

there's always a beginning...

so after 9 months of waiting, he's finally arrived. baby ethan that is. i can't believe i'm seeing him for the first time and it's a bit surreal. i cant help thinking about how amazing this creation is...just 2 people in love and voila you've got a child! anyway, here goes the prologue to this story:

14/9:
12.30am checked in at the hospital and admitted straight to the delivery ward, shortly after which a nurse came to insert a pill to soften the cervix

6.00am nurse comes and gives an enema

7.30am doctor arrives and breaks the water bag; at this point i'm only 2 cm dilated so estimated time of delivery would be around 3 or 4pm only given that this is my 1st child

8.30am intense contractions start and are only 2 min apart!

10am asked for gas to relief pain as i couldn't imagine continuing like this till 3pm

10.30am pain was too much to bear, so called nurse to administer epidural. however when the nurse checked, she found that i'd already dilated to 7cm so it was too late for an epidual. she recommended pethadine injection which i of course readily agreed to!

10.45am doctor came and said i could start pushing

11.07am ethan appeared after 5-6 pushes

and here is our little darling:



BIODATA

Date of Birth: 14 Sep 2006
Time of Birth: 1107hrs
Duration of Gestation: 38 wks
Mode of Delivery: Vacuum Delivery
Weight at Birth: 3435gms
Length at Birth: 50cm
Head Circumference: 33.5cm