Friday, 12/12/2008

Friday night, Lina felt the contractions were becoming more regular 15 minutes apart. However the regularity dropped off on Saturday morning. About noon-ish, me, Lina’s mum and my mum went for shopping at Randwick, we left Jet with Kong, while Lina stayed at home trying to get some rest (but she couldn’t sleep).

Saturday, 13/12/2008 

After we arrived home in the afternoon about 4pm-ish, the contractions becoming regular again this time they were about 4-6 minutes apart, the pain was also increasing in intensity.

At about 8pm, the pain was getting more and more painful, when the contraction comes, Lina couldn’t walk nor do anything. So Lina rang the hospital and they asked her to come in for a check. And so we arrived at the hospital at about 8.45pm, I took the necessities back with me leaving my own bag which has the cameras, tripod etc as I thought I would need to move my car also we might get sent back home. This is proved to be a wrong decision later on.

A (rather unsympathetic and mildly irritable) midwife was examining her, she told Lina that she was still far away from the real labour (something about cervix still being shut strongly .. whatever that means). And she suggested Lina to come back home, when Lina heard this, she was so disappointed as that would mean she has to endure the pain for who knows how long. The midwife gave the impression that Lina was just being sulky, she also pointed out the fact the on the first pregnancy Lina was sent back home as well. But in the end Lina insisted that she doesn’t want to go home and stay in the hospital. The midwife did some checking and she told us that a room in the 4th floor (pregnancy day stay) is available at 11pm. Between 9.30 to 11pm, Lina found some traces of blood, but the midwife assured her that it was caused by the examination and nothing to be worried about.

And so at 11pm, we got up to level 4. The nurses that attended Lina were quite suspicious looking at the way Lina was in pain, they thought that Lina was in fact already in real labour. And so one of the nurses did another examination and she confirmed that at least Lina was 8-9cm dilated (1-2 cm away from being ready to give birth). The nurses looked at each other and said "can’t believe the people at level 1 did this again, they should’ve checked her first before sending", we couldn’t agree more. So after about 10-15 minutes at level 4, we were being sent back to level 1 (where the delivery suite is).

At level 1, we were sent to room 7 (a different room to where we stayed originally). Another midwife called Kathy was attending us, she was very kind and nice. By this time Lina was really in pain and she could barely speak. She asked for Epidural and/or any form of pain relief. Kathy was sort of advising against the use of Epidural simply because she thinks the birth could quickly happen before they can organize the Epidural (it’ll take around 45 minutes to organize it, as they have to call in the anaesthesist).

Sunday, 14/12/2008

And so Kathy broke the water, and Lina started to push and push. Kathy called the doctor in, because there were drops on baby’s heart beats and at one time, it’s vanished and she had to the heart beat monitor around to find it. I wasn’t to aware of this, but Lina was and she was quite scared. We later found out this might be caused by the cord that was somehow come around Matt’s neck.

After numerous pushes and the intensifying Lina’s screams and Lina’s grip on my hand, at 00:36, Matthew Evan Tjandrawibawa was born. Praise God!