Day One : It's Time

First of all, sorry for waiting for so long before I started blogging. I could blame on the cryptic instruction about how to hook up blogger to my website hosting service. I also blame on the fact that taking care of Max is a whole new different experience in which blog posting did not exactly fit in. I could also blame on the fact that I spent most of my free time to be with Renee for various reason. But at the end, I have nothing but myself to blame. As I have argued many time on many subjects, " You always have a choice, you just made it without knowing it or admitting it" So, without further a due, the birth of Max Duan.  

"Oh, by the way" 

It was Sunday morning and I was sound asleep. (almost 4 a.m.) I suddenly woke up to a bright light. "What the..." It was Lianxin turning on the light and asking to wake up. "The BOSS system downstairs is playing music for some reason" I listened, sure enough, the iPod somehow turned itself on and is playing my collection "the 60's music". I got up, it was around 4 in the morning. "It must be Renee's work" I thought to myself. She is getting used to iPod and likes to play with it. As I was on my way out of the door, Lianxin said

"Oh by the way, I think I am having contraction"

Still pondering about the meaning of this, I went downstairs. Sure enough, Renee turned on the alarm clock on the iPod to 4 a.m. Turned off iPod, I came back up. I woke up more during the process, realized the implication of contraction, and figured out the right question to ask

"how many minutes apart?"

They were five minutes apart. But we didn't want to raise false alarm, so we waited for an hour. During the period, the contractions were very regular with five minutes apart. At 5 am, we called the doctor. Based on the past experience, she recommended checking us into the hospital. We checked us in through the ER and went back to sleep. Nothing more exciting happened after that. By 8 a.m., the nurse decided to send us home because it could just be a false alarm. Looking back, we think our mistake was not to walk around but lie in the bed, because the moment we collected our decorations and got moving, it got worse. By 9 o'clock, it was so bad that Lianxin had to call the doctor again. The nurse was really apologetic for sending us back, because by the time that we settled in the same room, it was apparent that the child birth was immanent. That is when I got a chance to update the Facebook status (She wouldn't let me take a picture) We were ready to use epidural but the nurse was afraid it was too late already. Figured that we had nothing to lose, and that the pain was really unbreakable even to watch, we requested it anyway. That was a smart move. The epidural kicked in pretty quickly and Lianxin was able to take a break from the pain. Very soon, the nurse announced that everything is in order and brought in the doctor. Within just two rounds of pushes, Max was born. I couldn't resist but took video of the whole thing, really cool. After the baby is wiped clean and put back to mom's chest, I went back home to pick up the grandparents and Renee. Renee was not exactly sure what is going on, and was a little bit jealous. Two days before, I toured around a Toy R Us store and bought her a little model car, Romone from Cars. It did not exactly work its charm, because Renee was not too impressed, especially not with the noise. 

Max was 6 pounds 6 ounces, and appears to be ready to come out. He figured out the art of latching on with a few tries and never had problem ever since. Pretty soon, Max had three bowel movement and got all the black stuff out. It feels like the same thing over again, especially so at the moment I set the alarm clock for three hours later with blood-shot eyes. The night was pretty tense, as we are trying to figure out Max' feeding habit. He cries a lot. We ignored it for one round but I couldn't hold it. So I dragged his cart by my bed side and did what I did with Renee - Patting him while sleeping sitting in my bed. It sort of worked. 

Our life of a family of four thus started.