The moment has arrived - I am now a Dad

March 6th, 2010, 4.20am Jen gave birth to Euan Christopher Munro, weighing in at 9lbs 6oz and 20 inches in length.

He was a bit late in coming, he was due on Feb 22nd so we went into the hospital on the Thursday night at 7pm to start the induction. Jen was given something to soften her cervix, which takes about 12 hours. I had the joy of sleeping in a recliner chair (so comfy, not!) for the Thursday and Friday nights.

On Friday morning Jen was having some contractions but not enough to stop them giving her Pitosin through IV to get a good strong contraction pattern going. Our Doula arrived at 1pm. Up until then the Pitosin had been giving her constant cramps but no good patter, the Doula suggested some walking and then a squat, this brought on the contractions really strong but without much rest between them. This got Jen to about 5 cm dilated but because of the strength and frequency she decided to get an epidural.

She got the epidural at about 5pm and was about 6cm dilated. The epidural really helped with the pain and she got to fully dilated by just after midnight, after that she laboured down for a while to get the baby ready for the pushing. She pushed from 2.30 am until birth at 4.20 am on the Saturday morning. Jen had quite a lot of bleeding, probably because he was so big but they managed to get it under control.

I managed to pass out just after the pushing had started. I think the lack of sleep, lack of any propor meals for so long got the better of me. I had been half dozing while she laboured down, when she was ready to push I got up to help and shortly thereafter fainted. I watched most of the rest of the pushing from a chair nearby but for the last 5-6 contractions got up to help so I could see the baby's head coming out. When he was born there was a lot of people in the room doing a bunch of stuff, but I do remember that I got to cut the cord.

When we got the to the recovery room it was smaller but nicer and it had a sleeper sofa, after a night's sleep in that (with interuptions for feeding) I felt so much better and got to really enjoy being a Dad. We leave the hospital Monday morning, my health insurance pays for 2 days in hospital after a normal delivery.