EPTWho's your daddy?
Hello, my name is Stephen, gamer ID "nOOber" and member of the oh-so-popular Starcraft 2 parody boy band "Viva la Dirt League".
I'm 28 years old, so basically if I was in a game of Defence of the Ancient, I'd be the ancient most of you would be defending.
I'm an avid fan of video games. I consider (some of) them a legitimate art form, and something that has a potential to do a lot of good in the world. I am also a father. I have a 4 month old daughter named Scarlet who is the most amazing person in the world apart from my wife.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9NRQR.jpg)
This is my daughter Scarlet, wearing a pair of Razer Orca's (kindly donated by Razer in thanks for some of the music videos I've been involved with as a member of Viva la Dirt League - YOU ROCK RAZER!)
In this blog my goal is to share my experiences of becoming a dad. I guess as most of the community are young males, it might be of some interest if you are thinking of having kids yourself; or maybe you're just a saddist and want to read about all the sleepless nights I've had; whatever your reasons, welcome.
Part I - My Wife
(Because this isn't strictly about having a baby I've put it in a spoiler)
+ Show Spoiler +
On April 16 2011 I got married. Natasha was a classmate of mine from when I went to drama school in 2005-2007. We hooked up in the first year, and we're still together today. It's been pretty awesome; it was a lot of hard work for many years... but then we just found this place where we just trusted each other and could start getting on with life.
A big turning point for us was when she decided she wanted to be a teacher. The best teacher's college in New Zealand is in Auckland, but my job was in Wellington. So she went up to Auckland and we stayed together over long distance. I visited her once every month or so, and man it was like meeting a stranger every time - very weird. Then in the latter part of that year I was asked to go to Sydney, Australia and work on a project for 3 months, which I did. My employer was fantastic about it and even flew Tash to stay with me twice during that time - and at the end of it, I decided to move to Auckland (still working for the same company, at the new Auckland office).
Tash and I moved in together in a tiny little apartment (52 metres squared) that my dad actually bought (coincidence). So we rented off my dad, she worked, I worked, and after surviving 9 months apart we were very certain that this was it and it was time to get on with life.
In 2010 we decided to get married. It was all romantic... we actually had a fight about it. I was trying to save for a super expensive engagement ring, and she was impatient of waiting... so I ended up asking her, without a ring, in the middle of a huge argument. I got to do some romance later when I presented her the engagement ring(s) (we went with a pair of small bands with diamond studs, very cool). She went out to get dinner and when she came back I'd filled the house with candles, got down on my knee like they do on the movies and asked her. Then we drank a $120 bottle of champaign (it really just tastes like any other $12 bottle) and being a but drink, I managed to get wax over all of our furtniture - and when I tried to clean it up with an iron and a paper towel I burnt a black mark on our ottoman.
The wedding was on April 16 last year as I stated earlier, a surreal experience with about 60 of our friends and family. It was such an unusual day - I was so nervous that it was like an out-of-body experience the entire time until the moment we finished our first dance (which we had choreographed for months beforehand... so intense). Then I kind of "landed" back on Earth and had an amazing night.
A big turning point for us was when she decided she wanted to be a teacher. The best teacher's college in New Zealand is in Auckland, but my job was in Wellington. So she went up to Auckland and we stayed together over long distance. I visited her once every month or so, and man it was like meeting a stranger every time - very weird. Then in the latter part of that year I was asked to go to Sydney, Australia and work on a project for 3 months, which I did. My employer was fantastic about it and even flew Tash to stay with me twice during that time - and at the end of it, I decided to move to Auckland (still working for the same company, at the new Auckland office).
Tash and I moved in together in a tiny little apartment (52 metres squared) that my dad actually bought (coincidence). So we rented off my dad, she worked, I worked, and after surviving 9 months apart we were very certain that this was it and it was time to get on with life.
In 2010 we decided to get married. It was all romantic... we actually had a fight about it. I was trying to save for a super expensive engagement ring, and she was impatient of waiting... so I ended up asking her, without a ring, in the middle of a huge argument. I got to do some romance later when I presented her the engagement ring(s) (we went with a pair of small bands with diamond studs, very cool). She went out to get dinner and when she came back I'd filled the house with candles, got down on my knee like they do on the movies and asked her. Then we drank a $120 bottle of champaign (it really just tastes like any other $12 bottle) and being a but drink, I managed to get wax over all of our furtniture - and when I tried to clean it up with an iron and a paper towel I burnt a black mark on our ottoman.
The wedding was on April 16 last year as I stated earlier, a surreal experience with about 60 of our friends and family. It was such an unusual day - I was so nervous that it was like an out-of-body experience the entire time until the moment we finished our first dance (which we had choreographed for months beforehand... so intense). Then I kind of "landed" back on Earth and had an amazing night.
Part II - We made a baby
After the wedding we made a decision. "Let's not try and get pregnant, but let's not NOT try" was our motto. One week later, Tash was pregnant. Literally, the first attempt, we made a baby. It was unreal.
I remember when I found out. I actually thought we'd have 1-2 years to prepare for all of this. And then almost immediately Tash started feeling nausious, and she just started behaving differently... more cuddly and emotional. I kind of knew before we found out for sure, but I didn't want to admit it to myself. And then, at work one day, she called me. It was so crazy, my whole body sort of buzzed because I knew from that moment my entire life was going to change in ways I couldn't imagine.
Pregnancy is different for every woman. I think we were pretty lucky in most cases. One big side effect was the nausea which was quite severe for several weeks/months until Tash stopped taking her multivitamins. The moment she did that, she stopped getting sick. For whatever reason her body told her to stop taking them, and it worked a charm. That was only during the first "trimester".
For anyone who doesn't know, pregnancy is broken up into three "trimesters" which are each 3 months long. The first one is the most risky; that's when you can lose your baby the most. It's also when morning sickness is the most intense, and in terms of physical size my wife was pretty active although mentally and physically her energy levels were way down.
At the end of the first trimester I think we had our first scan. Now I was SO nervous going into this... I just wanted Scarlet to be healthy. It was one of the most nervous experiences of my life, but lucky from the first scan everything looked well and all the blood tests passed too. The second scan we got a lot of images. The place we went also did 3D video scans so we have this very bizarre video of Scarlet moving around in the womb. So strange! She looked so skinny and gaunt.
The second trimester was quite different. Tash's energy levels went through the roof. Although she started to show (quite a lot actually, she seemed to grow quite large quite early on) there was something about the pregnancy which gave her a lot of energy and she seemed very happy. It was about this time when she finished work - not because she felt she needed to but because the school year had just ended so there was no point in going back to work for 1 month at the start of the following year.
It's also worth noting that we bought our first home in preparation for this baby. It's a semi old house from 1958 which needs a lot of work. We completely rennovated the baby's room in preparation which was one of the most intense and stressful periods of my life - I was working for 10-11 hours (including the commute) and then coming home, cooking dinner, and then painting/sanding/etc until midnight - day in and day out. It was really, really hard, but we did it in the end JUST in time.
![[image loading]](https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/557212_10150924097774348_903788115_n.jpg)
The finished room.
The third trimester is when all the action happens. Tash was really uncomfortable, especially in the last 2-3 weeks. She had to pee constantly, she felt very heavy and sluggish, and generally couldn't find a comfortable position to sit or lie. Scarlet was a real kicker too - I was able to feel her kicking a lot, and even see her foot or hand press against Tash's belly at time. Having her kick away so much was a big relief to both Tash and I - it was good to have that constant feedback which told us that Scarlet was healthy.
The worst part of the pregnancy was that Tash got pregnancy related Carpel Tunnel. Her wrists got so stiff and painful that some mornings she couldn't even pick up a knife to spread butter on her toast. This was when we called in reinforcements and my mother came to live with us for 3 weeks at the end, looked after Tash by day while I worked. As time when on though and the delivery date drew near Tash started behaving really strange - she would hide in our bedroom all day and avoid mum. And so I talked to her and basically Tash had gone into "full nesting" mode and needed the house to herself to prepare for the birth. So I had to have a super awkward conversation with my mum telling her to go back home... but she took it well.
So mum left about 4 days before the due date, and we had the house to ourselves. Tash was fluffing around the house all day preparing for the arrival of Scarlet.
Part III - Labour. Not the political party, the delivery of a baby.
The due date came and went, but no baby. Then on a Monday morning, 4 days after the due date, I was sitting on a train on the way to work when I got a call from Tash saying she would meet me at the hospital.
Now her water's didn't break in the way you see in the movies. Instead, it was just a trickle which we were not sure of, so we went to the pregnancy ward of the hospital to get checked out, and sure enough her waters had broken. Because they'd actually started the night before, we had about 8 hours before the hospital said they would "taken action" because the risk of infection for Tash and the baby would be too high - so instead, and because we were already at the hospital, we opted for an induction.
There are some different ways to do an induction but Tash had to have a drip which slowly gave her increasing doses of syntocinal (I think that's what it's called) which is a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin which (among a lot of other awesome things) is the one which triggers labour. Because there had been an "intervention" she had to be hooked up to monitoring equipment to keep an eye on the baby's heart rate as well.
So there we were at the hospital. Nothing happened for hours. Tash had been getting Braxton-Hicks contractions for months and the ones she got felt just like that - small and ineffectual. They started to increase in severity very slowly but not enough progress was happening so the midwife had a look and discovered that (and I still don't understand this exactly) but only half of her waters had broken, and her "hind waters" were cushioning the baby's head so it couldn't properly engage with the cervex. So they burst her waters with what looked like a knitting needle with a loop at the end of it.
Now labour is pretty gruesome. You may want to stop reading if you find blood or other bodily fluids disturbing...
Quite a lot of fluid and blood came out, and then things started to progress very quickly. She was pacing around, in a lot of pain. When you get an induction the contractions come faster and stronger than a natural birth and most women end up getting an epidural. Tash didn't want to if she didn't have to, tried to cope with just the gas.
The first part of the labour is the cervex opening. The contractions come in waves which last some period of time, and then there is a rest period between them. As the cervex opens to 10cm the contractions occur at a shorter and shorter time frame. By the time Tash was at 4cm she was in a lot of pain - crying, despairing, I was beside myself with concern for her. I had to leave the room half a dozen times or so during the whole labour - sometimes I would lock myself in a toilet and just about break down. The thing that makes it so hard for a guy is that you're so helpless - the most I could do was help her up or give her a bottle of water, maybe massage her or bring her a hot wheat pack, but ultimately there's nothing you can do.
It was when the pain was making her break down into tears that we decided to go for an epidural and thankfully we got one within 15 minutes. It was insane... I was there when she got it, and then I went out to get some food for 15 minutes. When I came back, Tash was sitting up in bed watching a movie on her laptop, just chilling out. Contractions were happening (you could physically see them) but Tash was in little discomfort. It was surreal - and I was so happy that she was no longer in pain.
Maybe an hour passed, I watched Captain America on the laptop while Tash played on her phone, and then our actual midwife (the one who had been there through the whole pregnancy) arrived and replaced the hospital one. They checked Tash and she was a full 10cm. We had to wait a little longer, and then she got Tash to start pushing.
Now the pushing was crazy... it seemed like a kind of unusual action to do, and it took Tash a while to get the knack of it. It went on for some time... it got to the point where during a contraction and push we could see Scarlet's head poke out, and then it would go back inside again.
TWO HOURS LATER and the baby still hadn't come out, and the midwife was getting worried. I was pretty much going insane. We got the doctors in to come and check, and they noticed that Scarlet was in a strange position which was stopping her coming out. Tash was so tired by now that she was falling asleep betwen contractions... it was a very difficult time. I can't even describe how I felt, let alone what Tash was going through.
Within 5 minutes we had about 7 doctors in the room and things got REAL. They decided to use a Ventouse (like a vacuum/suction cup device you place on the baby's head to pull it out). They put it on, created the suction, and with one push (with a LOT of encouragement from everyone in the room, as Tash had just about given up) Scarlet's head came out! One more push, and the whole Scarlet came out! She was covered in this transparent membrane like bag which they kind of cut/slid off her, wiped her down, and I cut the cord. By the way the cord is really hard to cut - it's like a cartiledge texture and you have to snip it several times to get it.
The placenta came out maybe 3 minutes later. In the meantime I took a look at our daughter... because of the trauma of the birth her eyes were all puffed up. She had thus HUGE door-handle like shaped dome on her head where the Ventouse had been attached. She had long legs... and when I looked down she looked SO much like me that it blew me away.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FWOMn.jpg)
Scarlet about 15 minutes after she was born - eyes all puffed up. The dome shape on her head had gone down quite a bit already.
She was born at around 11 PM on May 7th 2012 - although the strangest thing happened. A moment or two before she was born every clock in the ward stopped! Seriously, like they must have been hooked up to some central computer because they all got stuck at 10:47 PM or something so on-one actually knows exactly when she was born but they put 11:00 PM down on the birth certificate.
Tash got to hold Scarlet... she looked in disbelief. There was a time there where she had lost hope, she didn't actually believe she would get a daughter, and then there she was - totally exhausted but with a daughter in her arms.
I went out and called all the family and told them. I felt so proud being able to tell them, I was crying with happiness and relief. So glad that Tash and Scarlet were safe. When I came back in maybe 20 minutes later Scarlet was already breast feeding!
I stayed around for another couple of hours and the decision was made to keep Tash and Scarlet in hospital overnight because of the stress of the birth. I had to go home (my brother in law came after the birth and helped us out, he drove me home) and I after sending some photos to my parents and Tash's family I somehow went to bed and got some sleep.
I will continue this blog soon. In the next part I'll talk about what it's like looking after a newborn baby. Does anyone know how to re-size images on this forum? Standard BB Code doesn't seem to work.
(Only 21)
