Thank you, everyone, for sharing advice, for the visits, calls and gifts, and all the well wishes! We’re still catching up with baby and sleep so for now, just a quick update :-)
Above is his first passport photo, taken by the hospital’s photographer at about a day old.
We flew to Bangkok at 35 weeks, since the airlines don’t let you travel any later into the pregnancy than that as a precaution against having to deal with a woman in labor on board. Other mothers in Phnom Penh have driven either down to the border at Koh Kong (via a road that goes off the grid for a solid hour, as of 2010), or else up north through Poipet into Aranyaprathet, Thailand, and then bus/train it to Bangkok. But I just didn’t think I could handle that! The road to Poipet border crossing has much improved since I’ve been through it last, but decreasing the number of uncertainties while I’m heavily pregnant is a good thing!
My first groggy thought after waking up out of anesthesia and meeting our son was a dismal, “they mixed ours up with this cross-eyed Chinese baby”, but Hubby reassured me that from the time they took him out the Chinese-looking baby hasn’t left his sight. The baby’s filling out his features now, so my mixup worries are going away :-)
We had an unplanned c-section. First contractions were at 8am and by 1030am when we arrived at the hospital I was already 6cm. Between the pelvic girdle problem I’ve been having in the last trimester and the contractions, there was no respite from the pain so I asked for an epidural. Three hours later I was fully dilated but he wasn’t coming down fast enough and his vital signs were rapidly dropping, so I was wheeled into the OR. Apparently the cord had wrapped around his neck and arm, and he was losing oxygen rapidly. WHEW!
He came with big lungs and a small stomach – they say this is normal :-\ Thankfully he doesn’t use his lung power much :-) except when he’s getting his BCG shot :-(
Here he is in his bassinet :-)