12 Feb marks a major milestone for the entire family with the birth of Nathan Chan at 10.03am. But the drama started the night before around 10pm when the contractions started. From then it was a real roller coaster experience for his parents and the grandparents.
Before that Andrea had requested that we prepare some jello for her to have as sustenance during labor. Connie was supposed to cook that night but the call came in even before the jello set.
We all rushed down to the hospital but the dilation was so slow that we were advised to go home and come back the next day. Furthermore only Jon was allowed to be in the delivery room with her. So reluctantly we left but even before we could drive out of the car park, Jon called to say that Andrea wanted to come out and be with us. So we all turned around and headed up the delivery area again.
Andrea was determined to deliver naturally without any pain killer but we could see that she was in intense pain though dilation was extremely slow. We stayed for a couple of hours after which Andrea really had to go back in and rest as the pain was getting too intense.
We went home but for the rest of the night, we slept fitfully half expecting a call from Jon to say Nathan was delivered. It wasn't until early morning to say that the gynecologist was coming in to deliver Nathan. So we rushed down again at about 7am. But we had to wait for another 3 hours before we could see Nathan being wheeled out of the delivery ward to his room.
We went through the whole range of emotion - excitement when we first heard that Andrea was going into labour, to pain as we shared the intense pain of her labour, to anxiety as we did not know what was happening through the night and finally the joy of seeing Nathan - healthy and full of hair!
When Jon was born it was an amazing miracle to us - how we could instant love him and want to protect him. Nathan's delivery brought us to an even higher level of love! This day will always be a special day in our lives along side our wedding day, the birth of each of our son! Praise God for the miracle of life!
Thank you Jon and Andrea for sharing with us this wonderful day!
