Time somehow flies faster for this confinement and today is already Day 21 since the arrival of my little one on 22 March 2013. Things seems to be much more manageable this time round, and like many people tell me, i highly attribute it to the experience that we already have from the first one and this time round, we kind of know better what to expect in handling an infant. So, there is not that much things that I really get into frantic frenzy about. Baby cries already part and parcel of my life now and when he cries, i kind of already know what to look out for and what to check first in a step-by-step procedure to eliminate the various possibilities and getting to the root cause in the shortest possible time. :-)
Anyway, before I start to get busy again, I think its only fair for me to document down the labour process, so that years later, in case my memory fails, i can always pull this entry out and read about it again. =,=
This time round, I decided to stop work earlier as suggested by many of my colleagues and bosses overseas. My gynae also suggested that I do that, given that i have track record of earlier delivery for Justin, and during the 34th week check up, she already could see that the baby has already engaged and in a kind of ready to see the world position. Got me scared and i quickly continue and make sure that my handover will be more or less completed. Honestly, I don’t know what constitute a complete handover, given that tax and inventory are always full of ad-hoc matters and many new things are happening at work during this period of time. Even during last week when i was doing my handover, new GST issues were still popping up. Anyway, I just did what i could and just pray that everything else will fall in place nicely, plus the fact that my finance director already forewarned me that in the next 4 months, she plans to deep dive into my functions and make lots of changes. So I think I will just let her do the necessary changes bah….. just pray that when I go back to work 4 months later, I be able to catch up on the changes bah. :-(
And so, i started my leave on Monday, 15 March, and I think I am really a workaholic. I could not stop checking my emails, though I tried not to reply any of the emails since my out of office message was already set up. And so, i waited and waited for the arrival of Baby Joash. He probably wanted to make sure that I have a good rest first before he arrives.. and so, I have a good 4 days of rest and relax at home, until the point where i find it a bit bored. . And then on Thursday evening, after dinner, I started to feel the tightness in my stomach. As I never experienced contractions pain during the first labour, I am seriously not sure if this is just another false alarm of Braxton hicks or i was really experiencing labour contractions. Decided to wait and see.
The whole evening, the tightness came and go and i was closely monitoring the interval. Texted a good friend and she suggested that I get myself admitted to the hospital once the pain interval is about 20 mins. At 11pm, the pain kind of subsided and it only came back after every 30mins. In my heart, i somehow know that labour will be in the next 24 hours.. but i was not ready to get admitted so early to the the hospital this time round. Moreover, since next day was my routine checkup, i am hoping that still can wait till the next morning to see my gynae instead of having to call her to the hospital in the middle of the night.
Thankfully, the pain finally gone by 3am and Gerald and myself finally fell asleep. And so, the next morning, we went to the clinic and after informing the nurse of my condition last night, they also half suspected that I was showing signs of labour. After checking me, my gynae confirmed that I was already about 2-3cm dilated and immediately she gave the instructions for me to march over to the labour ward in the next building.
And that started my labour process…… without lunch!! After the epidural was being administered, i waited for another 5 hours and sadly, i was still only 5cm dilated!!!! Oh Gosh!!! In my heart, my heart sunk and I thought, can’t be got to wait till midnight bah!!!
But out of a sudden, in the next 1 hour, i suddenly experience such strong labour contractions that even with the epidural, the labour pain was so great that I started to cry!! I told Gerald to tell the nurse to increase the dosage of epidual, because the pain was literally too unbearable!
After another hour, the nurse came and check me again and this tme, she confirmed that i was already close to 10cm dilated and they are now ready to deliver the baby……. very very excited … and by now, I did not feel my lower body at all, thanks to the effective epidural. :-) And in the next 20 mins or so, we were just waiting for my gynae to arrive and very efficiently, upon her arrival, she put on her gear and ask me to push… in a matter of less than 10 pushes, Joash was out to greet the world with his loud cry!!! At that moment, I was so moved that tears came to my eyes again.
And this is us, when we were rolled back to the normal ward.
A total of 8 hours 19 mins of labour, almost half the time taken the last round.
Welcome to this beautiful world, Baby Joash! :)
