Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Siew Gin reemerging to the surface...


Last picture before we headed out.. my goodness, check out that belly!!!

Well, after resting for most of the day today, I'm finally reemerging to do my blogging(and also they fixed the computer so i don't have to enter it thru my phone).

I have to say i'm pretty happy with the birthing process. Wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be. This is the good thing about preparing for the worse, i guess.

And here is the rest of the story: (guys might want to skip over. TMI)

On Wednesday, i woke up not feeling too good due to a bad night sleep and also my belly was hurting on a regular basis. I was thinking, is this it? So, i decided to work from home. And by evening, my mother in law and I were convinced that it was contractions occuring every 5 mins or so but Alan thought the intensity wasn't there. He wasn't the only one. My doctor wasn't convinced either when i called her. But just for giggles, she said, go to the hospital to get checked out.

I took a shower, wrote some emails to work, and headed out with all the bags and everything and thought, it'd be sad if i were sent back home coz really, those contractions were rather annoying to be for nothing. My mother in law said she'll put the kettle on for good luck.

We get to the hospital, they put us in the room and did the usual check - 6 cm!! She said I was well on my way and i thought cool! We did a bunch of registration stuff and asked about epidural and started some IV, and then got my epidural and by 10:15 pm, i was hooked up with so many wires that I was practically a robot. But i didn't really mind. I was in no-pain land. :)


Epidural talking here...

At 10:30 pm another check - 7.5 cm! Jess(the nurse) was optimistic that we were going to have our baby by 2 am. I was like, this is going a little too well, isn't it? And it was, at 12 am, my doctor arrived and broke my water and did a check. Only a lousy 8 cm and said she'd check back in 2 hours. 2 hours later, 9 cm! Arrggh.. just can't seem to get to the end. I was getting a little cranky at 2 am and although epidural is good, i was starting still feel some sensation(maybe super strong pain) and it was getting a little uncomfortable. I thought, maybe another hour. Jess finally came back at 3:30 am and i thought, if it's not 10 cm yet. I was going to kill myself. But thank goodness, she spared me and said, time to have a baby.

So, at 4 am, we went into the pushing stage, she recruited Alan as the co-pushing-coach, which amount to grabbing my legs and say encouraging things to me like "it's great, awesome, you're doing a great job, we can see something, push longer, push harder.. " while i huff and puff and turn myself red, trying to figure out what exactly pushing was all about. But Alan and I must have got the technique down to pat because half-way thru, she sorta abandoned us to do our delivery while she ran off to help somebody else(there were 5 births that night within 3 hrs!). When she came back, we made some progress and she coached a little more and at some point, my doctor was called in. And i thought, must be close.

She set up some station thing at the end of the bed and i thought if i don't finish this off soon, I'm going to run out of energy. So, i gave a few good go's and lo and behold, the baby actually popped out at 5:01 am. I couldn't believe it myself.

They threw him on my chest and there he was, my little baby - Tyler Alexander Mills. After all these months, he's finally here. :)

And to Alan - great coaching, couldn't have done it without you!!!

No comments: