Day 4

@ 4:30 AM, Jane already felt some contractions. They were strong enough to wake her up early in the morning. We were still in the Mother-Baby room which is a floor above the Labor and Delivery room. At around 5:30 AM, the contractions were consistently 2.5 minutes apart. The nurse in charge started to contact the doctor and asked for his advice on what to do next.

By around 6 AM, we were moved back to the triage room (waiting room for deliveries) at the Labor and Delivery floor. Nurses attached heart rate monitors for the baby and contraction monitors for Jane. Her contractions subsided for a bit, to the point they were not being detected by the machines.

At around 7 AM, the contractions came back, and this time, they were 6 mins apart. The nurses checked if there is any cervical change and they confirmed that she's 1 cm dilated already. They then decided that we have to be moved to the labor and Delivery suite. They're regular sized rooms with all the equipment needed to deliver the baby.

From this point on, Jane can only have ice chips - no food or water. They hooked her up with an IV to give her nutrition. The doctors are still on the fence if Jane is already undergoing labor or just some regular contractions. So at this moment, we are just waiting to determine if this is the real thing or not. But to be safe, they gave Jane magnesium medication which will help develop the baby's brain faster in case she delivers. The side effect though is that it will relax her soft muscle tissues, which will lessen her contractions. The doctors didn't want to suppress her contractions anymore since they don't want to mask any signs that the body is giving that it's time to deliver the baby. But since there's a chance that the baby might get delivered that day, they weighed that the benefit of the medicine to baby is more than the risk of relaxing Jane's contractions. True enough, her contractions slowed down to about every 10-12 mins apart, and they were barely strong enough to register on the monitor.

At about 10 AM, the contractions came back but they were still 6 mins apart. The nurse checked her and there was another cervical change and she was already 2.5 cm dilated. Since the contractions are not that frequent yet and it took her about 3 hours to get an additional 1.5 cm cervical change, they still can't confirm if this is already an actual labor and didn't want her to take epidural yet. They didn't want her to risk taking epidural without being sure that she's already in labor, so they gave her a different medication to relieve some of the pain, but the side effect was that she'll feel groggy much like when someone's drunk.

At about 11 AM, Lola Adeling, Tita Vilma, Tintin and Pong came to visit her. We were able to sneak them in at the Labor and Delivery room for a couple of minutes. They brought us additional food, but Jane wasn't able to talk to them for long since she still had some effect of the medication. By the time the medication was starting to wear out, the nurse had to lead the visitors out already.

By about noon, Jane's contractions were back to about 3 mins apart. The nurse checked her again and she's now 5 cms dilated. She then put a call to the anesthesiologist to have her on epidural. Her OB also dropped by and explained to us that usually at this point for normal term babies, the mother to be would already be induced to help along the delivery of the baby. But in our case, since the baby is premature, the Doctor wanted to let the normal process take place since we wanted the baby to maximize his time in the womb.

Jane had to endure the whole labor process for as long as she can to give the baby more time to develop and lessen the risk of the heart rate of the baby dropping due to stress during the delivery. We had to wait till the baby is at the lowest position before she can start delivering the baby. She was already 8cm dilated at about 3PM and was already 9.5 cm dilated by 4PM. She was given epidural in between at about 3:30PM.

The baby at this point seems to have fallen asleep though and stopped the progression of the cervical change. The nurse gave her oxygen at around 4:30 pm to wake the baby up and help her to reach 10 cm. By around 5PM, she reached 10 cm and the doctors and nurses for the delivery started to assemble. There were doctors and nurses from the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) waiting to take care of the baby once he's born.

At around 5:10, Jane started to go in labor. She did really great, it took her only two pushes to get the baby out. By the end of the first push, baby Eidan's crown was already showing. On the second push, baby Eidan popped out! It was a great miracle to be witnessed. I was given the privilege to cut baby Eidan's umbilical cord, and after that, the NICU doctor and nursers took over in cleaning up baby Eidan. We could hear Eidan crying and Jane was overwhelmed and started crying herself - we were told that premature babies usually have problems with the lungs and the first sign if the baby is alright is if he cries after birth, and boy can Eidan cry!

Jane was being cleaned up by the delivery doctor while this was happening. After Eidan was cleaned up, the nurses brought him to us for a couple of seconds so we could meet him before they take him to NICU and take some pictures. Jane wasn't able to hold the baby yet since she was shaking so much from her hormones during delivery so the nurse just held Eidan close to her, but I was able to hug and carry my son for the first time. It only took seconds though since they had to take him down to NICU. Jane was left to recover in the room for about an hour before we were led to NICU for a brief visit then to our recovery room. During recovery though, our nurse (also named Mary, a Filipino), gave us the chance to take some pictures of the placenta where baby Eidan was living inside Jane's tummy. They kept the placenta for a week in case the baby needs some special enzyme that they can take from the placenta before discarding them. Our nurse also brought us down to NICU to see baby Eidan and help us move our stuff into the recovery room. Once we were settled in, we got the chance to get a brief rest and was finally able to eat. At around 7:30PM, Joy, one of our very good friends here in IL visited us and brought us some newspapers for the day so we could use the headlines on the day Eidan was born on his baby book. Joy was also able to visit Baby Eidan with us when we went to NICU and take some photo op.

Here are some more pictures of baby Eidan -> http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070334&id=1405760739&l=24da5dadaf