The Birth Experience - Part 1

Looking at Irfan all grown up and creating havoc in our daily life, I'm suddenly reminded of the sweet pregnancy and horrible not-so-good birth experience. Or perhaps because many bloggers I know are now pregnant, it somehow brought back memories of my first (hopefully not the last) pregnancy. I've had posted about the birthing experience in my previous blog, so I just copy paste from there. Those who've read it, could just skip it okie. :-D

Oh well, let me start by telling you guys that I gave birth through C-Section. It all started with me taking 2 weeks leave from work to come back to Penang as we planned to give birth at one of the Maternity Hospital here. My EDD was on the 16th of March 2008 (Sunday), so we had 2 weeks of final checkups in Penang with Dr Rozita before I was due to give birth.

Upon waking up Sunday morning, my first thought was "OMG! I haven't felt any pain at all. No contraction. No nothing!". I was quite restless throughout the day as the gynae wanted to have me induced if nothing happened until the next day (Monday). I wanted it to come naturally, not forced to give birth.

So hubby took me for a walk at the Youth Park, and we walked for miles and miles until we reached Waterfall, and then we walked back the way we came. The walking continued at Gurney Plaza where I wanted to have a last minute shopping for the baby.

Monday came and I still didn't feel any contraction, nor was there any show to indicate I was to give birth any time soon. My mother told us to wait and not 'surrender' myself to be induced yet as she remembered very well giving birth to all of us at least a week after her EDD(s). However since my gynae was one heck of a strict doctor, we didn't dare defy her order lest something bad happen to the baby. Hubby did called the clinic and told the staff that we wanted to wait another day, and if there was still no signs of the baby coming out then we'd go on Tuesday. The doctor agreed, but not full-heartedly.

That Monday night we had a really nice dinner at Tari Cafe with my mum, dad and the siblings, to celebrate my hub getting promoted. Rezeki baby. I ate all I felt like eating, but not too much as I didn't really had the appetite. Perhaps I was too worried thinking of tomorrow.

Pic : Celebrating hubby's birthday a couple of days earlier with KFC and Baskin Robbins ice cream cake as I was pretty sure I would be in confinement period came his birthday. I chose the menu of coz according to what I wanted to eat haha..

Tuesday arrived too soon, with no telltale sign of the little angel popping out any time soon. So that morning hubby took leave and we went ahead as planned, to the hospital. I got admitted into the ward and waited for quite a while for them to start the procedure. We checked into a single room so hubby could be there with me throughout the whole ordeal, as I'm a chicken when it comes to pain, and I was pretty sure the birthing process would involve pain such as I'd never known before.

So after about an hour of waiting, the nurse popped in the vagina tablet (induce) and so the wait began. That happened around 10 in the morning. I waited not-so-patiently for the pain to come, but nothing! NIL! My parents came to send lunch and saw me still having fun on the bed watching TV. They went back and the nurse popped in the second tablet at around 5 in the evening.

From then on, the contraction came with the frequency of about 2-3 minutes per contraction. However, the earliest hour's contractions were very mild thus bearable to me (whose got an extremely low pain threshold). When my contractions were monitored, the nurses kept on asking me how could I be smiling despite the contraction reaching it's peak as per the reading on the CTG machine. Well, I told them it was bearable. I thought that if that's how painful it'd get then I might be able to get through it breezily. Hah berlagak sangat kan, siap lah lepas nih.

The night came and my contraction became harder. Somehow that night was the longest night of my life as I was contracting every 2-3 minutes, but when the nurse checked the progress was too slow! Despite the long hours of contraction, I was only about 1+cm dilated.

I was too frustrated with the progress and kept asking the nurse to check my opening, much to their annoyance. ;-p I was bleeding slimey blood (yuckies!) but my water bag was still intact.

That morning, I just couldn't take it anymore - thinking that I still had a loooooong way to go and no energy left as I didn't get any sleep at all the night before (who does?), I requested for pain control. I was only 2+ cm dilated after a whole day of being induced, and I WANTED MY SLEEP dammit!

At around 10ish in the morning, the doctor ordered that I be wheeled into the labor room so they could give me the pain control I requested . After being injected with the happy-dural (oh injection ini tidak sesakit mana pun seperti yang diwar-warkan), I was lying back contentedly as the gynea decided to poke my water bag. After that, I heard the midwife gasp*and the doc and midwife both spoke in their medical terms which I had no idea what it was all about* but still being contend with feeling lesser pain now, I just smiled at everyone in the room.

to be continued...