28th December 2015. After a total of about 44 hours of labour, my girlfriend gave birth to my son, whom we named Daniel Louie Collins. He weighed 8lbs 15oz.
At first, the contractions were infrequent and weak, and when we went into hospital early on 27th December, we were told to go back home and wait until the contractions are 5 minutes apart. So we did.
The next day, it wasn't much closer, but we was due to go in for an induction anyway, so that's when we went in. Her waters didn't break, so they broke them with a hook thing. She eventually had to go on a drug to make her get proper contractions.
Eventually, they tried to make her give birth, but after an hour or so of pushing, he wouldn't come out. He wasn't even far down enough to come out. so they took her in to try and get him out with forceps, although they knew he wouldn't come out with them. Which he didn't. So they had to do an emergency caesarean. I was with her for most of the caesarean but they wouldn't let me in during the forceps.
At 21.18, baby Daniel was born. But he'd swallowed some poo in the womb and he had trouble breathing, so they kept an eye on him for a while, and Tracey as taken into recovery, and he was put into neonatal intensive care (NICU). Tracey also managed to get a fever and wasn't able to see him until the next day, and couldn't come home for a couple of days. Then it went. then came back again.
Fortunately i got to see him later that first night, in his little incubator thing (which was actually called giraffe incubators or something. Giraffes everyfreakingwhere). And the next day i got to feed him. Unfortunately, because he had to be separated from us, and bottle fed, he's got used to it and he refuses to be breastfed, which is what we wanted. Now he's stuck on bottles.
Anyway, he's fine now. Tracey is ok but is still a bit sore from the c-section. When i'm on the laptop (i'm on the tablet now), i'll try and put some pictures up. There's loads on my Facebook anyway, so go have a look if you have me on there
