Less than 12 hours ago, I became a father and a whole new chapter of my life began. Let me walk you through the most amazing 24 hours in my life.

It began on Saturday afternoon as Pei Chyi and I went for our scheduled checkup with the obgyn. Pei Chyi was almost 39 weeks pregnant and we were eager for the arrival of Zachary, our little baby boy. Unfortunately, after an internal exam, doctor said that Pei Chyi’s cervix wasn’t dilated at all. After some tests, we left the hospital feeling disappointed that we had to wait yet another week before Muffin (Zachary’s nickname) arrived.

After a late lunch, we stopped at the grocery store on the way home. Pei Chyi suddenly rushed out of the grocery store and proclaimed, “I think my water broke!”

We waited an hour to verify that Pei Chyi was really leaking amniotic fluid, and decided to go back to the hospital to be sure. She was put into the delivery room and ran more tests while waiting for the doctor to arrive. Doctor finally arrived at 9pm, and did another internal exam. This time he felt a slight dilation, and he stretched the cervix to encourage the labour process to begin.

Pei Chyi was formally admitted and we had to wait for the labour to progress. By about 12am Sunday, she started feeling contractions. They grew progressively more painful and she decided to take an (anesthetic) epidural by 3am. We figured that it would help her sleep and shore up her energy reserves for when she needed to push.

At 5am, the nurses started to administer pitocin, a drug that induces labour. Doctor came in at 8am to check on Pei Chyi’s progress. To his surprise, she was now 9cm dilated! Immediately, doctor said to prep for delivery. The nurses went to work and laid out all the forceps, equipment and the doctor’s yellow galoshes and the big plastic apron.

Pei Chyi started pushing at about 9.30am. There were 4 nurses in the room, all acting as cheerleaders and encouraging Pei Chyi to push during contractions. She says I was the head cheerleader – I was just doing my best to encourage and support her.

By about 10am, baby still wasn’t descending through the birth canal, prompting doctor to worry that baby may be in distress. He ordered the Operating Theatre to prepare for an emergency Caesarean section. We really wanted to avoid that, so Pei Chyi rallied and pushed even harder. That did the trick a little, because doctor was able to use the vacuum to pull baby out with the additional effort from Pei Chyi.

And so, at 10.21am, Sunday 28 March 2010, our son Zachary Wang was born into the world. The poor fella had the suction cup mark on his head, but was otherwise in healthy condition. He is 3.5kg and 49cm long – yep, he’s a big boy.

Pei Chyi had to be stitched up so I got to know my son. Even though he was all wrinkly and still had after-birth on him, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was so, so excited to see him finally.

Once doctor had finished with Pei Chyi, we tried breast feeding him a little, and boy he was hungry. After that Zachary had to be sent to the Nursery to get cleaned up and for observation. Pei Chyi was transferred to the postnatal ward at about 12pm.

Both Pei Chyi and Zachary are doing well. We’re all a little worn out from the excitement and all the visiting relatives. However we managed to spend some quality time with our son and we’re just so in love with him.

We thank God for His protection and for a safe delivery. Thank you also to everyone who’s supported us and wished us well. We’re so excited to begin this new chapter in our lives.

P.S. Follow Zachary’s updates at www.zackwang.com

Update: Pei Chyi has posted her own account – My son, Zachary.

This is the first in a series of posts about The Marriage Course–a course that is aimed at helping married couples strengthen their relationship.

Pei Chyi and I recently started attending The Marriage Course on the recommendation of my parents. Despite feeling a little weird about it in the beginning, I decided that I would do it with Pei Chyi to invest in our marriage.

Best friends investing in our marriage

The 1st session in this course is Building Strong Foundations. The most important thing that I learnt out of this session is that Marriage is a skill. It’s not something that comes naturally to all of us and if couples want to be good at your marriage, it’s something they have to learn and keep working at. Also, couples tend to take each other for granted after getting married. The dull routine of work, weekends with in-laws sprinkled in between compared to the excitement and giddy breathlessness of courtship is evidence enough.

Session 1 of The Marriage Course teaches couples to take stock of their current marriage and then do 2 very important things:

1. Schedule Marriage Time into the calendar, just like how you might schedule meetings with your clients. After all, your spouse is more important than your client no? If yes, you must Plan, Prioritise and Protect this very important time together.
2. Make conscious effort to Nurture Each Another. If you’ve ever given or received a performance review at work, I’m sure you felt great when Boss said, “Good work!”. We need to do the same for our spouses.

For the next 7 weeks, our Marriage Time will be the sessions we attend at The Marriage Course. After the course is over, we’re going to keep that timeslot to nurture our relationship (in addition to every opportunity in between). I’m planning to start making a list of things we can do during this Marriage Time and am already looking forward to it.

The Bible says that a man shall leave his father and mother to be united with his wife (Gen 2:24). Husband and wife must realise that they are not individuals anymore, but one flesh. Therefore, couples have to stop being inward-looking and work to maintain their marriage.

See Pei Chyi’s account of Session 1: Investing in your marriage

Pei Chyi’s little space on the Innernet is now online. Sorry babes for taking so long to do it.