He is finally here

I don't know if I can still proclaim myself to be a blogger or not, seeing how I have been away from this blogland for quite some time. I have been reading some of your blogs without leaving any trails, if any of you are still going to read this.

Well, like the title says, my son has finally arrived (but not my maid). He was born at 9.05pm on Thursday 29 January 2007. And like all things last minute, the name has not been finalised yet due to one interesting late entry. Of course, Arman has not been received mutually so we had to find another name and it was almost certain to be Aryth though yours truly is not really in full agreement with it. And the last minute entry that was adored by both is currently Shaqeef but I have googled, wikied, answered and tried many other avenues but could not find a meaning to it. Can somebody more enlightened than me or speak Arabic, Latin, Turkish or whatever language that is tell me it does not mean anything bad or even better means something really well? Thanks in advance.

A little story on the delivery day itself. We went for a regular check-up at around 10am that day when the O&G informed us that wifey was already 4cm dilated and advised us to admit her ASAP. Which we did not because we had to go to the immigration office to get the approval letter for our maid to be sent to the agency. Which we did and when wifey was finally admitted at around 3pm, she was already about 5cm dilated. Settled all the administrative stuff and I had to leave her alone in the delivery suite to mail the documents (and had cendol while I was at it), pick up the other 2 from their daycare and inform Athyra's babysitter if she could stay overnight (well, she had not much choice then). By the time I got back to the hospital at around 6pm, wifey was already 7cm dilated. By 7.30, the midwife told me that she was already 9cm dilated even though the baby was way up the passage and took down my mobile number and told me that I could go for dinner and she expected the delivery would take place at around 8.30pm and I could go out for dinner first. Which I did, with the 2 children when she called me at around 8.20pm saying that the O&G was there to deliver the baby already when I was on the way back to the hospital.

By the time I got into the delivery suite, they were already packing up saying that they have exhausted all avenues (including vacuuming) to deliver the baby normally and wifey will be moved to the operating theatre. At least I was glad to be informed that I could go into the OT.

There I was, suited up and video camera in hand, only to be told by the paediatrician who happened to be the medical director of the hospital that no photos/ videos were allowed in the OT. But at least I got to witness first hand how they actually cut open wifey's womb (not very gently occassionally) to see the elongated vaccumed head of Shaqeef popping out of the incision at around 9pm while maintaining my composure. Well, out of 9 people in the OT, only the paed, one medical auditor who sat in the corner without doing anything and I were the males around and it would be so not cool to be fainting at the first sight of blood and I survived watching closely all the butchery in progress. And the anaesthesiologist where quite a looker too. Digressed too much there.

Only after the paed left, assuring me that the baby is fine, everybody in the room said now I could take some limited videos/ photos of the baby and the mother but not how they stitched her up. Which I did but not quite the ER, Nip/Tuck or GA kind of videos because they did not allow those too.

So, to cut a long story short, while Athyra is such an angel during the day, she is not quite so at night and I ended up sleeping with 3 girls at home during the night. And Alyssa was not even late for school the day after while keeping the breakfast and bekal tradition intact.

Wifey would stay at her sister's place until Thursday when hopefully we can borrow her sister's maid and tonight, I'll be sleeping with 2 schoolgoing children alone and hopefully I can wake up myself upon hearing the alarm clock at 6am tomorrow morning.

Some useless trivia for you:

1. The first C-section delivery for wifey. Some grand entrance he's putting up there.


2. While Alyssa's and Amelya's age gap is 23 months, they were born on consecutive years (2002 and 2003) whereas the 15 months separating Athyra and Shaqeef are 2 years apart (2007 and 2009).


3. On wifey's side, 3 of her sisters has only 1 boy in their family while on 1 had none (with 4 girls) and 1 had 4 boys and 3 girls.


4. On my side, Shaqeef is only the second boy by Arwah Matsah's 3 sons (and 8 girls to go with it). Plenty of boys coming from my sisters though.


5. At the rate of RM120/ month, my salary would possibly deducted until the boy goes to school by the KompeniKedekutElektrik that now limits the maximum claims for C-section deliveries to slightly more than 3k only.


6. Quite unrelated to the post but my last entry was posted on 22 December 2008 so this must've been the longest break I took for submitting an entry.