Arrival of Our Little Prince!

This post is 1 week late and finally it's out! Last Sunday, 6 Dec 2009 at 1323hrs marks the arrival of our youngest prince in the family. He was supposed to be due on 26 Nov and after much anticipation, he decided to make his appearance 10 days later!

The contraction started sometime in the middle of the night. I woke up 3 times due to the contraction pain, however, with the experience of false labour pain a few days ago, I didn't think that this would be it, so I continued sleeping. At 6 something in the morning, the pain was so great that I woke up and was basically just sitting in the sofa making record of the intervals between the contractions.

At around 9 something, I woke up hubby and told him that I think the baby will be here today. He got up, went happily to brush his teeth, took a look at the record I made and called the hospital to ask for advice. The midwife at the hospital said that we can go now if we want and she thought that it should be ok if we want to wait a little longer. So we decided to call our first line of support, hubby's friend, Mårten, to alert him and get him to come over to babysit. All 3 kids clicked very well with Mårten. Next we called our second line of support, my mother-in-law, who had to drive for about 2 hours to reach Linköping. Then we had breakfast (I just had coffee coz the pain was getting stronger, no appetite to eat...) took our bag and off we went to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital at around 1030hrs. By then my contractions were coming very often and the pain was impossible. We were led to the delivery room and the midwife strapped me onto the machine which monitored the heartbeat of the baby and also the contraction.

Hubby was a little too into the machine, commenting that it must be really old, since nobody in their right mind will make a machine in mustard yellow (I'm actually surprised that he knew such a color exist, he's more a basic color kind of guy.) Then he found out that the machine does measure the contraction and everytime when the percentage started rising, he went,"ok, it's coming now." which makes me extremely nervous while anticipating the pain. So I had to ask him to stop commenting. About 1 hour later, the midwife came in to check how much I have dilated and we found out that I have already reached 9cm! So I changed into the hospital gown (which hubby commented that whoever designed the gown has got no fashion sense) and waited to reached the full 10cm before I could start to push.

Finally it's time! Man was I pushing hard! I was totally focused on pushing the baby out, breathe, push, breathe, push. (I was so engrossed that I totally forgot that I do have the option to ask for pain killer like injection or gas! I realised it after when both midwife and hubby were saying how good I was... but the pain was worth it though!) Suddenly I heard the midwife said,"Now we can see his hair. Ok, Sylvia, stop pushing and rest a little for the next contraction to come." However, my body just want to push and the midwife had to push the baby in a little so that I wouldn't tear so bad. The next contraction came and with one final push, baby was free! And boy, he was screaming! Welcome to the world little prince!

The midwife immediately put the baby onto my chest and tried to get him to start sucking, while they work on getting the placenta out. She asked both of us when it was out if we wanted to look and both hubby and I politely declined her kind offer, we felt that we had had enough adventure for the day. Next they spent what felt like hours stitching me up, hubby asked if they were doing a makeover for me...

After resting for about 3 hours in the delivery room, I took a quick shower and we moved to the maternity ward. We had to stay in the hospital for at least 6 hours and the baby had to be checked by the baby doctor before we could go home. However, since it was a weekend and there was just 1 baby doctor in the whole hospital (which is just ridiculous! Imagine the poor guy running between the emergency department, the children ward and maternity ward no wonder he was just a bag of bones... poor thing!), he couldn't make it to check on our baby, he could only do it next morning. So we had to stay in the hospital for the night.

The next morning, the doctor came and gave little prince a clean bill of health and the green light to go home. Finally we're going home!

When we got home, Jovan and Angel had already gone to school, so it was just mother-in-law and Ivan who were home. Ivan looked like he had just woke up which was strange since he usually wakes up real early and it was already 10 something. Later mom told us that when they went to bed last night, Ivan was pointing at hubby's pillow and said,"Pappa 没有..." which means no daddy... And when she woke up suddenly at 4 something in the morning and found that Ivan was missing! She went to check in kiddos' room and found Ivan sleeping with Angel... Our heart ached for the little guy, he had a tough night...

However, everybody was really happy and excited to meet our new member. Ivan came up to the baby, pointed at him and said,"Beebee!" Jovan and Angel ran home after school eager to meet little prince. Angel even told her teacher that the baby is coming home today! ^_^ Family and friends sent their love and warm wishes and asking what his name is. Hubby and I want our kids to have a name that will work both in Swedish and English - an international name that will work anywhere. So after much deliberation (and hubby's sudden weird obsession with Christopher Columbus), we finally decided on the name Christopher Nicholas Strömbäck.


Welcome to the family little Chris! We aren't the best parents in the world but we will love and protect you like a precious gem. We will do our best to lead and guide you and will always be there for you every step of the way. Thank you for choosing us to share your life with.