Jireh was born 38 weeks and 3 days, about 2 weeks earlier than his expected date of birth, at the Eastern Health Hospital in Box Hill , Melbourne. I remembered leaving my work meeting earlier and going with Shannon to her fortnight checkup. The midnight, upon examining Shannon's tummy noted that she was concern the baby has not grew in size. A 15 minute check up ended up into a 2 hour long examination, as the midwives hooked Shannon onto a CTG machine. We were then told to return the next day for an ultrasound scan.
The next day, we returned for the scan. Upon examination, it was concluded that the baby in Shannon's womb was smaller than the average tolerance and within 4th percentile in size. Our heart sank as we were told there could be a risk with small babies, IQ and overall health. We were also told that we should consider a induced birth as there is no benefit in keeping the baby in the womb any longer. We gave our consent and returned home to prepare for the overnight stay in the hospital.
That night in the hospital, Shannon had a "balloon" inserted to start dilating her cervix. It was a very uncomfortable experience for her. She had tears of agony running down her cheeks as instrumentation were inserted. After that, I also remembered Shannon staying up that night as she spent hours going through google reading on the risk associated with under weight babies (probably not a good thing to do just before delivery). I remember her crying. At that time, we both prayed for baby, that he will be healthy. I also made a promise with God.
The next day, we were woken up at 6.30am by friendly midwife. She told Shannon to take a good shower as that would be her last opportunity until after the delivery. We were taken to a spacious birth suite. I took out my phone to play some Spotify music just to calm Shannon down. Shortly after a young Indian Doctor came in and removed the "balloon" and informed she was 1cm dilated. Her water was also burst too at that point (though there wasn't a lot of water observed). At approximately 9am, Shannon was then provided with hormon drips to start her inducing contractions. Her contractions started 30 minutes after and got exponentially intense. Shannon used laughing gas throughout her initial 3-4 hours. But as it got so intense, she whispered to me that she needed epidural, something she decided not to use initially (as she was worried this could affect the baby).
At this stage, Shannon was tossing and moaning with pain. I stood next to her helplessly as she cried in pain with tears flowing downs her cheeks. The midwives (including an intern) were there supporting her , and coaching her how to push. All I could do was run around getting her water, be her cheerleader and hold her hand tightly (I remembered at one point about to cry in pain, as she squashed my hand uncontrollably)
We were fortunate, that the anaesthetist was only 5 minutes away from us and Shannon received a jab through her spine. Though we could have gotten the epidural quicker if the midwives knew how dilated she was (one said it was 10 cm dialated while the other said it was only 3 cm). After the epidural was applied, Shannon confirmed that the pain she was feeling was now only a 1 out of 10.
Shannon tried to push for another 2 hours (from 1.40pm). The midwives confirmed that the baby was at the entry point but Shannon was exhausted at that point and could not further push the baby out. The midwives eventually paged the doctor where they then used instrumentation (a pair of large "pliers") to pull the baby out.
I monitored the doctors as they weight the baby. It was 2.68 kg and we were so happy. The doctor confirmed that the baby was healthy and Shannon was in good healthy too. Though they had to make an incision to so they could "pull" the baby out.
That day was one of the happiest day of our lives as we saw Jireh born into this world. All the pain that Shannon had seemed to just disappeared as she received Jireh the moment he exited her womb. Jireh - we love you very much !
