A Long Overdue Post

Please feel free to skip or skim through this post if you have already been updated about the birth of XP. I am writing this post mostly as a record for myself (and maybe our dear son?) to remind me of my experience. Some of the feelings I describe are long past so please do not be unduly worried. Baby, daddy and I are coping fine now and we are settling down much better.

It all started on that Tuesday morning. I woke up feeling fine but I had been spotting a show since the night before. K rang me to ask after me after hearing from PJ that I had a show and told me to go the hospital as it was my first pregnancy and I might not experience the contractions till late into labour. Though I did feel some cramps in my stomach at 0830hr, it was hardly unbearable and my initial decision was to wait till the contractions were 10min apart before I go check into the hospital. Fortunately I took K's advice and went to check in. On the way to the hospital, my 'cramps' were occurring at half-an-hour interval but they were nothing that a little SOS (sigh-out-slowly) couldn't help.

Upon check-in, I was told to strip and put on the hospital gown. They took a sample of my urine for the routine tests (I presumed) and then I waited for my ob to check me out. As I had seen her twice in the last 3 days or so (Saturday for my routine checkup and Monday to confirm my plan to induce), she was surprised to see me when I was only supposed to check in at midnight to induce the birth.

Her first words to us when she drew the curtain was "Why? In labour already ah?" She did not seem really concerned especially when we informed her that the contractions were hardly regular and I was not even sure if they were even contractions or not. Doppy and I were fully prepared to be sent home and told to wait it out. However the machine apparently registered that I was indeed experiencing contractions. She checked my cervix (yes! that painful exercise again!) and I was merely 2cm dilated. She then asked if I wanted to try to induce the birth there and then and since we were there, we figured we might as well give it a shot.

And so she broke my water-bag but her expression changed and she started muttering to the nurse. Doppy walked away for a while to settle the admission matters and she then said in a serious voice to me, "I'll go and wash my hands then I will come back to talk to you and your husband."

A sense of foreboding washed over me. Anything that requires discussion is bad. Given my ob's nature, if things were going well, she would have just left me as I was and came back to check on me when necessary. And so I waited for doppy to be back and she spoke with us.

"Well, the good news is that you are indeed in labour and you have contractions. The not so good news is that your baby's head is still quite high. The bad news is that your baby has actually passed motion inside you. If you want to try natural birth, you can but I can't let you try for too long. The thing is the head problem we have always been aware. All this while, he's had a big head. But the problem is that he has passed motion inside you and this could signal the beginning of distress for him. So if you want to try, you can, but it's still a 50-50% chance. Then we will have to proceed to emergency C-section."

Needless to say, doppy and I decided that if C-section seemed to be inevitable, then we might as well be in control than to let it evolved into a situation when it had to be an emergency one. Hence I opted for a C-section to be done with GA as I did not see the point of remaining awake for an operation of which I would play absolutely no part in.

What I did not anticipate was that my contractions came fast and furious the moment the waterbag was broken. My ob had another patient lying in the bed across me who had opted to do an elective C-section. She was scheduled to deliver at 11am and my baby was to be delivered after hers at 12pm. However the contractions hit me so hard that I could not stop crying. PJ was right when she told me that the pain was unmistakable and I can't even begin to describe it. All I knew was that I could not stop my tears from flowing down my cheek and all that I wanted to do was to curl up into a ball and die (which I couldn't because I still had a huge bump!). Doppy was really sweet as a birth partner (short-lived as it was), reminding me of all the breathing techniques that we learnt in antenatal classes (which did not help to relieve the pain at all!) and distracting me by asking me silly questions such as my name and NRIC number. Despite his best attempts, I could not withstand the pain and was gripping his hand so tightly that his blood supply was nearly cut off. The nurse, seeing me in such duress, promptly offered to speak with my ob to ask her to deliver my baby first.

And so it was, our son was born at 1140hr on 15 April 2008. Like Malcolm in Macbeth, he was not of a woman born but was from his mother's womb timely ripped. He weighed a hefty 3.325kg and lay at a length of 51cm which apparently places him as a tall baby. He definitely has a pair of fully developed and powerful lungs as he soon became well-known in the nursery as the baby boy who needed lots of cuddling and feeding.

Doppy got to see him almost immediately whereas I was kept under observation to wait for the GA to wear off. At that instance when I woke up, there was a sense of de javu as the previous time when I was in a similar situation, I had a small plastic bottle thrust in my face to ascertain that I was aware they had sucked my water bag with my fetus out of me. This time round, there was no such bottle and the first question that popped out of my mouth was "How's my baby?". Reassuringly, they told me that my baby was fine and it must be the thought of wanting to see him that kept me alert and had me fighting the effects of the drug. In fact, I was so awake and lucid that some of the nursing staff had to confirm with me that I indeed had a GA C-section and slept through the entire operation.

I finally got to see our little warrior at 1600hr. Truth be told, he was so much better looking than I had anticipated. After reading so many articles that tried to temper parents' expectations about their new-born, my imagination had painted him to be a scrunched-up hairless, balding monkey. His 3-D image in the earlier stage of my pregnancy did not help as I thought he resembled some ancient caveman. Surprisingly, our baby had a head full of black glossy hair (yes, yes, I know that it will drop!) and though his eyes were merely slits, he's got the most beautiful pair of ears and his mouth was so delicately drawn. When we were anticipating his birth, both doppy and I were concerned if he would be perfectly formed with ten fingers and toes intact. We were so happy that our little tyke was indeed perfectly made and I gave thanks in my heart to our Lord who has seen us thus far.

The days in the hospital passed us by in a flash. Doppy was not able to stay with me for the first two nights as we did not manage to secure a single room. He was quite mad with the hospital as he felt that the elective caesarian patients were given priority in room allocation (as their room arrangement could be arranged beforehand) and the patients who chose to give birth naturally ended up being penalised. He was of course also anxious about me and had wanted to stay with me. We had plenty of good friends who swung by to congratulate us and of course to keep us company.

I spent the last two days in the hospital learning how to get my baby to latch on to my breast and how to express my milk every 3 hourly to get my milk flow going. The nursing staff in Mt. Alvernia Hospital are beyond reproach and they are the personification of the virtues, patience and empathy. No matter how big or small our requests are, they always saw to our needs and made sure that all of us (including the father who was staying over) were well-taken care of. Each time when different nurses came to collect my EMPTY bottles of vain expressing, they never failed to encourage me and told me that my milk would come eventually. Even when it was merely a few pathetic drops of breast-milk, the nurses would say, "It's ok. We can still give this to him." Needless to say, all the nurses in the nursery showered XP with lots of love and cuddles. On the last day when we were due to discharge, the nurse chose to soothe our son who was crying for cuddles over feeding another little baby girl who needed her milk. Both of us are filled with nothing but gratitude and admiration for the nursing staff in Mt. Alvernia.

I wanted to take XP to the chapel before we leave to give thanks to the Lord. However, we were in such a rush (he making a fuss did not help) that I did not have the chance to do so. I resolve to take him to the chapel this Wednesday when I go back for our respective follow-up checkups to show him to the Lord and give thanks to him for giving us such a wonderful son.

My next post will detail our traumatic first three hours at home and how our lives have been for the last few days.

I need to sign off now to go and prepare my breast for expressing (yet again). So it's good night to all till tomorrow I greet you with another new (overdue) post.