Greatest Father's Day Gift: Tatia Is Coming To Town!*

My wife (Aor) and I are very happy to announce the arrival of Tatia ("ธัชธีญา" in Thai), our second child.

She was born at 12:57 pm on December 5, 2005 at Bangpo General Hospital. She weighs 3030 grams (6.66 lbs) and is 53 cm (21") long.

Aor woke up around 3 am this morning with periodic (period = 5-10 minutes) hardening of her belly. This is one of the symptoms that our doctor (Dr. Vichit) told us to look for as a sign of imminent delivery. We decided to come to see Dr. Vichit in the morning. I had a huge breakfast while Aor had a glass of water in preparation of the possible surgery. We threw in the backpacks containing baby delivery survival gears into the back of our car and off we went to the hospital. (We left Titus with his nanny, his paternal grand mom and his paternal great grand mom at home at this time.)

After 30 minutes of examination, Dr. Vichit ordered the delivery room to prepare for the arrival of our daughter. Since Aor already had a cesarean section for our son Titus (due to a birth complication--she waited for 6 hours but her uterus was not opening), she would have to have another for Tatia also.

Aor went in to the delivery room, got her spinal chord blocked in 10 minutes. I cleaned up and went in with my video recorder. The operation to take Tatia out took about 40 minutes; patching up Aor took another 1.5 hour. All in all, it took only 4 hours from the time we arrived at the hospital to the time we got into the convalescent room.

Titus is now with Aor's parents who live only about 1o minutes from the hospital. He would be visiting during the day and stay overnight at their house. Aor's sister Aw is taking 3 days off from work to help us out.

We didn't plan it, but our son Titus was born on August 12 which is the Queen's birthday and Tatia was born on December 5 which is the King's birthday. I totally don't believe in auspicious timing but of all the possible dates that they could have been born, these sound very good indeed! Also, we run out of the comparable dates for our next few children.

All in all, it's a very exciting and joyful day for us :-)

(The chance of having a son born on Aug 12 then a daughter born on Dec 5 purely by chance is about (0.5)(1/365)(0.5)(1/365) = slightly less than 2 in a million.)

*Today is Father's Day in Thailand. It's also our beloved King Bhumibol's birthday.