Out little daughter, Katherine Elizabeth Botha, was born at 8:04pm last night (Saturday 8 March 2008 for those of you reading this after today :P ).
I thought I'd share a brief overview of how the day went, as this seems to be the question most people ask ;)
Heather says she started feeling the contractions at about 11:30 on the Friday evening. She had a warm bath (supposed to help), and even went for a walk around the complex. I was totally oblivious to all of this, sleeping right through until about 5:30 Saturday morning!
We went for a walk around our little duck pond and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise, hoping that the walking would speed up the contractions Heath was feeling.
It was about 11am when we felt the contractions were fairly regular, and Heath was pretty uncomfortable. So we took a drive down to the hospital. The attached Heather to a machine that measured the baby's heart rate and the strength of the contractions. We were very happy to see the machine's name was Fiona (thanks for helping Fi :P)
Murphy's law took over, though, and the contractions slowed. After checking Heather's cervix, the sister said she thought this was still latent labour, as the cervix hadn't started to dilate yet.
And so began a VERY rough afternoon. Heather wanted to go home, as hospitals aren't the most comfortable of places. So home we went. We now had the difficult task of letting everyone know that things had been put on hold. The one bonus of this, was that everyone we notified could start praying for us.
After a bit of a nap (between contractions), we started keeping time again. But poor Heath wasn't coping all that well. but even with contractions coming at regular intervals of 5 minutes (lasting about 45 sec to 1 minute) she still didn't want to go to the hospital. Eventually, just before 6, I managed to persuade her that maybe we should head down to the hospital.
Getting there, they put her on the machine again (called Bo-bo this time). Murphy had obviously left the building, as the contractions were nice an strong and regular (peaking at about 127 for those that understand things). I was asked to go get the documentations from admissions, and went on my merry way, expecting to spend a long night at the hospital.
I arrived back at the ward about 20 minutes later, to find the sister saying "I was just going to call you, this baby is coming!". Heather was totally dilated, and was trying very hard not to push until the gyne arrived. She'd been so far dilated when she arrived, they hadn't been able to even put in an epidural for her!
My wife did excellently. She pushed when she had to (until she was red in the face sometimes). The gyne was SO impressed with her. He said he had almost nothing to do, as she was listening to her body so well. The last little bit was the most difficult, but it was so beautiful to be able to watch our little baby crowning, and being brought into this world.
I can only give glory to God for everything that happened. Going from no dilation at 11am to complete dilation by 7pm is nothing short of a miracle. Thank you to everyone who was praying and supporting us. We're privileged to be in the wonderful family of God.
I'm very glad to report that mommy and baby are both doing exceptionally well.
And daddy is looking forward to taking his little princess home
