Labour Fiasco...

My baby girl was born on 31st January 2011, weighing 2.95kg... at 11.24am, Prince Court Medical Centre.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a full day going out with little Yelli on sat, 29th Jan. The night ended with me resting and blogging and of course.... doing my forever there laundry. Wouldn't want to get behind on that now would I... :P But this time, in my sleepiness I almost slipped on the floor! Thank God nothing happened as I was able to grab the cupboard just in time to stop myself from falling. Phew!

But sleeping was an ordeal. I had a slight backache on my right side. It hurt so much when I lie down that I almost cried and had to get down on all fours to stretch my back properly to take out the sting of the ache. Eventually I managed to settle myself to a dreamless sleep and woke up late. Surprise, surprise I found that my 'braxton hicks' was more frequent than usual today. I was a bit worried about the baby since she was passive the whole day. It didn't help that the morning had greeted me with a slight bloody discharge.

So the day was spent reading and wondering... me, trying not to worry and contemplating seeing a doctor. But it really made no sense as I was set to see my doctor the next day at 11am. In the end I just stayed home and rested. The evening was much better when I felt her moving and rolling happily around my tummy.

Hubby came home at dinner time... did I mention he went to Singapore on Sat for a concert? Hehehe... Which luckily meant he was home on Sun... because 31st Jan at 4.30am started an amazing journey...  :)

I woke up from sleep feeling different. I wasn't too worried since waking up to go to the bathroom has been the normal occurrence for months now. But somehow, something was keeping me from falling back to sleep. I decided to do some further research on labour. I was having some 'feelings' that it was not far away. Then I started feeling the mild contractions. Of course at this time I just thought I could be a false alarm and I was just feeling a more frequent and harder braxton hicks. By 5.30 I was shocked to feel a discharge... but clearly not water breaking... and the books said that it is known as a bloody show. This means that labour is coming soon... but my mind was thinking how soon? Now? Tomorrow? Do I need to go see the doctor now? I was in a dilemma on whether to go straight to the ER or just wait for my 11am appointment. Two things changed my mind... remembering the traffic situation (it takes about 40 minutes to go to KL on a normal day) and also..... my water broke around 6.30am.

I immediately woke up hubby and asked him to get ready. Luckily my hospital bag is all ready in the car. We didn't rush in the drizzly morning and took our time to get there. I guess I was still in denial and was thinking that I might have been wrong and it was all a false alarm.

We checked into the ER and they monitored the baby's heart beat and my contractions which was coming at 4 minutes apart and lasted for around 50 seconds each. According to the nurse, it was just mild... and the physical exam showed that I had only dilated to 3 cm. The 'water' that broke this morning was also just a little leak and more mucous-y. This all happened at around 8 am. Dr Seri, my doc came to see me then at 9am+ to see my progress and I was still at 3 cm but with an important progress, my water finally broke properly. I guess that's why the pain started to feel more intense and the backache almost... well, let's just say it hurt really bad.

I rode out the pain, staying out of bed and trying to grab some food as I needed it to conserve my energy. The doc had said it'll be around 4 to 6 hours till full dilation. By 10am I was looking at the clock almost crazily since the pain was getting to me and speech was almost impossible. I still insisted to stay on my feet though because lying down made the backache unbearable. The thought to take epidural came then... when after a few more hits of pain, I saw the the clock was only 10.10am! Another 5 hours of this??! That's when I looked at hubby in between pain, I told him "call the nurse, I want epidural".

So then the pain went away.... I wish! hehehehe..... before taking an epidural, there's the prepping to be done. Meaning it took a good 20 minutes just waiting for the anesthetist to start on the first injection to numb the spine area. Then there is the waiting for the epi to actually take effect which could be about 10 to 15 minutes.

The funny part was when the nurse asked me if I felt like i needed to 'push' a feeling akin to going to the bathroom. I told her that I've been having the feeling... and she was surprised and wanted to check on my progress... guess what? I was fully ready to push! At the rate the epi was taking effect, which was slow indeed, there was no time for full pain relief as they had to close it wanting me not to lose full feeling for the pushing. I was just thankful that at least I had a little dose as it managed to take the edge off the pain to get me to concentrate on the pushing part.

Pushing was... hehehe... it was definitely something. :P   I don't quite remember how many times I had to push, but it must be around 5-6 hard pushes. I remember the nurses' instruction... take a deep breath, hold it in... and push! Don't exhale mid-way... (which I did the first time), and don't make a sound which makes the pushing weak (which I did the second time). Not quite believing that it's over, I heard the doctor say... she's out... the baby's out... and there staring in front of me... my darling baby girl.