Hello World: Twitter-baby Scott van der Chijs

Thursday, December 27, 2007 at 16:58 Scott William van der Chijs was born in the Wordlink hospital in Shanghai. At 53 cm and 3.770 kg Scott is a big and healthy baby, and also all health test showed that (Apgar score was 9 after 1 minute, and a perfect 10 after 5 minutes). And I am the happiest man in the world!

I twittered the whole process, from the moment we left home until Scott was delivered. Lots of people contacted me during the day because of that, through Twitter or through email and SMS. One of my Twitter contacts even called Scott a Twitter-baby! Thanks for all the best wishes and congratulations, I appreciate it very much. I will paste the Twitter tweets here – without the twitter-replies that I received during the day, in order to make it more readable.

06:46 AM Going to Worldlink hospital with my wife. Our baby will be born today! Nervous and excited.
08:46 AM In the hospital now, with wireless internet. The doctor estimates that it may take at least another 8-10 hours before the actual delivery.
08:50 AM Baby heartbeat in the womb around 160 bpm. When doctors touches belly it goes up. Very cool.
08:52 AM My parents are in the hospital as well right now. Our room is very spacious, with among others TV, DVD player and private bathroom.
09:17 AM The hospital has excellent coffee. Having an espresso now, did not sleep much last night.
09:20 AM It’s almost like a hotel here, now the nurse comes in with a menu where I can order food from. I opt for a salad with grilled chicken.
09:35 AM Installed iPod docking station on top of the TV, so my wife is able to control volume & songs she wants to listen to with a remote control
09:42 AM Forgot my headphones, want to watch movie “I am Legend” on my laptop between contractions, but don’t want to disturb my wife with the sound
10:33 AM Trying to upload pictures to Flickr, but it seems the hospital does not allow that. Both through website and uploader tool I get error msg.
10:42 AM It seems the hospital has a limit on what you can send out on their network. Even uploading by email does not work, email size too big…
10:58 AM Contractions are regular and come every 3-4 minutes now. Luckily not very painful yet. Baby’s heartbeat still at 160 bpm.
11:03 AM My wife is still making phone calls from her bed, which is a good sign. If contractions get worse phone calls won’t be possible anymore.
11:18 AM My wife wants to see what I put on Twitter, so I will show it to her
11:49 AM The lunch in the hospital was excellent. I found out that they outsource the catering to Element Fresh, so that explains it.
12:01 PM Going to watch Sex and the City on DVD with my wife (she brought a whole season with her), turning off laptop for a while
12:32 PM Dilation is not going fast enough, so the doctor will break the water to speed up the process. Scary…
12:53 PM Contractions are getting more frequent and more painful now. Will not be online much anymore, just some updates through mobile phone.
01:34 PM Sitting next to my wife, holding her hand and trying to comfort her. Labor is getting very painful now. And this is just the beginning.
02:17 PM Dilation 5-6 cm now. Labor pain is becoming unbearable, I signed the release for a (walking) epidural.
03:08 PM An aunt of my wife comes to visit in the middle of labor, bringing a big bag of food. Not sure if it is very impolite to send her away.
03:09 PM Luckily the epidural starts kicking in, so my wife is able to talk again. Contractions come every 2 minutes now.
03:51 PM A doctor and three nurses around my wife’s bed. 9 cm dilution. We’re going to the delivery room!
05:27 PM Done! Scott van der Chijs was born at 16:58, 53 cm, 3770 gram. Delivery was not easy, but mother and baby are doing very well. Very happy!

I stayed overnight in the hospital with Scott and my wife, I did not want to be alone at home while she was there with our baby. And of course she also did not want to be alone there the first night without me. Well, I did not sleep much. Every time the baby made a sound I was immediately awake – most of the time Scott was just dreaming and making little sounds, but I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. Or the opposite, you don’t hear anything and get up to check if the baby is OK. Of course he is, and if you softly touch his face and he moves his mouth or makes a sound you feel so happy.

Then when you finally sleep a nurse comes in to check Scott’s temperature or to check his sugar level (they do that 7 times in the first 2 days). Of course that wakes Scott up and he immediately starts crying loudly – imagine someone suddenly sticking a needle in your foot while you’re sleeping! Not long after that a nurse comes in again because it is breastfeeding time. You probably catch my drift, it’s impossible to sleep in a hospital with a newborn next to you.

Therefore I decided to sleep at home tonight, and leave our nanny with my wife and Scott. Luckily it’s OK for my wife, if not I would have been a zombie tomorrow. And the good thing is that I can now also update my blog and upload some of the pictures I took. I made a set of the pictures already, they can be found here.