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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Birth of a Tiger


We had a lot of snow that year!
Waiting for our Tiger to arrive in 2003 felt like forever!! Tiger is our firstborn, our ground breaker in our parenting journey, and like most first time Mums I told a lot of people the "actual" due date, instead of my due month. And I showed BIG, so we all kind of expected that the due date would be more like the last date.

We had bought a 6 acre property a few months earlier, with a beautiful four bedroom, bullnose verandah home. Our dream home, in Cooma NSW. My Mum came to stay with us for the two weeks before Tiger was born. Since Tiger wasn't in a rush to arrive, we spent those two weeks raking leaves in the paddock and burning off, chopping down dead trees and thinning out the weedy ones. I distinctly remember sitting on the ground trying to saw through the base of a little tree (only as thick as my calf) with my gigantic belly in front of me, thoroughly getting in the way, making the task twice as hard as it should have been. One would have though that all the action should have got something going, but it didn't!

Mum and Christian even had time to put together our massive bookshelf. But finally it came to Sunday August 31st, and after church Mum said she had to go home for some Uni assessments. We were both so disappointed, but decided to leave the plane ticket buying till after our traditional Sunday afternoon nap.

I didn't nap well. I couldn't get comfortable. When I finally got up I had the worst back pain, and felt in a daze...until I saw my "show" a minute later. Finally I understood that the aches meant labour! Christian and Mum were ecstatic!

We sorted out plane flights, for Mum and Dad (he was anxious to meet the new little one), then, as you do, went to town for supplies and DVDs. I remember having some pretty huge contractions in the video store, and trying desperately to cover it up. Being so HUGE, people had been ushering me out of their stores for well over a month now with the words: "Don't have your baby here!" 
Such a gorgeous happy little Tiger!

We hired Lord Of The Rings (the first one), we thought we were in for a long night, so we might as well enjoy it as much as possible!

We tried lots of ways to help things along during labour. At midnight, with no progression other than significantly more pain, Mum sent us to bed to rest. At 2am, realising that I had 10minutes to drive to get into town, and that I needed help with the pain, we drove to our country hospital.

Further checks confirmed that labour had not "properly" started as I had not reached 4cm dilation. Baby seemed fine, and so we tried out gas. Disgusting stuff!! I didn't like how weird it made me feel. Tiger was keen to avoid detection on the handheld doppler, so I was strapped to a monitor. The nurses also confirmed that Tiger was posterior, however, I was already labouring leaning forward or on my knees, so there was nothing else to be done.

At 6am Christian's GP/Obs colleague and friend David was called in to check on us. By this stage I was resting on the bed, with Tiger's heart under constant monitoring. Due to my level of pain, which with constant contractions was not abating, we consented to an epidural. As they were prepping for this David asked for me to use the gas. I didn't want to, so Mum and Christian held the mask to my face as I moved my head from side to side. I don't think it offered pain relief, but I became so drowsy that I felt I was in and out of consciensness. When finally I was asked to sit on the edge of the bed I told them I was going to be sick. Then for the first time in over 10 years I vomited...all over the newly scrubbed nurse. For the first time in David's career the epidural was instant and perfect. The pain relief was wonderful, God, our Heavenly Father provided in an amazing way.

Soon after, Mum saw David as he left the room, and our usually happy, easy going doctor was worried.
He's a real thinker, our Tiger!

The nurses started prepping me for a caesarean. I asked them to wait for the doctor to talk to us about it. David came and told us that Tiger's heart rate had dropped during a contraction and whilst this was normal, his return to a normal heart rate had been exceedingly slow (over five minutes), I had merconium in the waters, I had not progressed in dilation at all even though the contractions were on top of each other. Christian and I had prayed that should intervention be necessary it would be really clear cut. David was worried that we might lose our baby if we didn't move fast.

Within half an hour we were in theatre, and David announced "it's a boy", Christian responded with: "His name is Enoch Matheson Fandrich." We both cried to see and hold our wonderful little boy. David then sung "Happy Birthday" to our little man.

We named our Tiger after Enoch in the Bible, the seventh from Adam, who walked with God, and didn't die, because God took him, and who (according to Jude) prophesied about the coming of Jesus. We continue to pray that our delightful young man continues to walk with God his Heavenly Father.

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