23rd April 2008, Baby Caitlin's arrival

As usual, the night before we were supposed to go the hospital, I couldn't sleep well. Kept waking up in the middle of the night. In truth, half of me was VERY ready to have the baby come out. The other half was in a daze. After all, as I had known for the last 30 years would end. I had carried her for almost 10 months and she had become part of me. I would miss having her kick and move inside of me. I would miss rubbing my bump and knowing that she was safe inside.

I don't know if I said in an earlier post or not but my gynae was quite eager to see me deliver the baby. I should have listened to him (but more on that later). So whether I was ready or not I was going to the hospital. I showered, blew my hair dry, put on an easy one-piece dress and left the house for breakfast. Sigh, it would be my last opportunity to wash my hair for the next 12 days (or so I had been instructed). Secretly though, I made up my mind to insist that if I couldn't take it, I would wash my hair regardless of what ANYONE said.

Kelvin dropped me off at Mt Alvernia hospital lobby entrance and I walked up to the counter all by myself to register. The minute the male nurse saw that I was coming in, he pushed a wheelchair up to me and insisted that I sit down. He processed my documents and then wheeled me up to the delivery ward where they took my final weight (71.4kg) and then I had to lie down, get strapped into the CTG machine to monitor my contractions and wait for Dr Fong, my gynae to come break my water bag. I have to say that up till the point before he broke my water, I was still having second thoughts and romantic notions of letting everything happen naturally.

I'm glad I listened to Dr. Fong though. Here I am before he broke my water. Still pretty perky and relaxed. After he broke my water with something that looked like a giant knitting needle, it got pretty messy. I could feel all this hot liquid gushing out. I have to say that had it happened in public, it would have been a nightmare getting into the car and leaking all over the brand new leather seats. Oh yeah, we had picked up the new car like the day before.

After they broke my water, they wheeled me into the delivery suite. Having heard from lots of pregnant mothers, I decided not to be ya-ya and ask for the epidural first before they put the drugs in to get my contractions started. So here we are waiting for the epidural. I'm still relatively comfortable and relaxed.

By 10:30am they had put in the epidural and inserted a needle in my hand to adminster the drugs to get the whole thing going. At first nothing much happened, then I started feeling a tightening in my cervix. I had quite a strong reaction to the epidural. I had a high fever and began to tremble so much that my teeth chattered. It's like when you have a high fever and you're hot on the inside but cold on the outside and you're shivering so much that all your muscles actually get tired from being so tense. The nurses didn't want to give me too much drugs because of the shivering so even though I had no sensation in my mid-section. I still felt the contractions in my cervix. What did it feel like? If you've ever owned one of those electrical massage machines that passes a small current through your body in order to make your muscles contract, that's what it felt like. Something like that except probably 10 times as much pain. I took a deep breath with every contraction and sent my mind somewhere else. I would visualize places from our travels and imagine that I was back in Japan, New Zealand, New York...So, people, even with an epidural, yes, you might still have pain.

Here I am trying to be brave and not to complain. By now, it's 7pm, eight hours so far. I've only dilated from about 3cm to 7cm. Furthermore, the baby's head has not come all the way down. Worse, the baby's heart rate is supposed to be 150 bpm but it had climbed to 200 bpm! By the time Dr Fong came at 8 pm, things were not progressing to the point where I would have the baby naturally. This is the moment when I regret not listening to him when he had told me to go into the hospital a week earlier. So I have to have a C-section because at this point, the baby is pretty stressed and won't be able to take the strain of a natural birth.

I'm prepped for surgery at about 8:30pm, my epidural is pumped up so that I'm awake but won't feel anything below the waist. Luckily, I'm so numb that I hardly feel anything at all. What I did feel was the doctor pulling and tugging to get the baby out. According to Kelvin, her arm shot out first so they had to push her back in and then yank her out head. I could hear Dr. Fong telling the nurses to push from the top while he pulled from below. It took at least 3 tugs before he managed to get her head and shoulders out. It was surreal, I could feel all the tugging and pushing but not the pain. When I look at the scar today, I can't believe that she came out of such a small opening; no bigger than the length of my hand really.

After they pulled Caitlin out they had to clean her up before they showed her to me. The doctor and nurses were joking that they would have helped Kelvin to take a picture of him with the baby but the camera looked too advanced to operate. They said that most parents just use a point and shoot or the camera in their handphone. I wonder what they would have thought if I had asked for a second camera to be set up on a tripod in the delivery ward. Actually, I had a whole seperate bag for all my cameras, batteries and tripod.

When they finally brought Caitlin over, she looked at me with big almond eyes as if she was saying, "Who are you? Where am I?" She didn't cry very much. I was still pretty drowsy but I had this moment like I was looking into my own eyes. It was like I already knew her but at the same time, here was this whole other person that I would have to get to know. She kept looking around as if she was trying to figure out what had just happened. One minute she's in a safe semi-dark cacoon and the next, she's surrounded by bright lights and a dozen people looking at her and fussing over her.

Kelvin was kinda in a daze. I suppose he was glad that it was all over. It had been an eventful labour and it was difficult for him to see me in pain. I had to tell her more than once not to look so worried because he was making me worried. We held hands while Dr. Fong stitched. This took considerably longer than the actual delivery because he had to stitch many layers. They pulled and pushed my stomach as flat as they could and all I felt was mild tugging as Dr. Fong did what he had to do. I must say that he did a fantastic job. There was hardly any bleeding on the outside and the wound is healing nicely.

Kelvin managed to catch her with a little smile on her face.

Caitlin, born 9:06 pm on 23rd April 2008, weighs in at a healthy 3.2 kg, her head is 34 cm in circumference and she's about 51cm from head to toe.

This was the day after the delivery. They only had a double room so I had to spend a sleepless night with another lady who snored louder than Kelvin. Rather, she snored at the same volume but this is from several feet away and with a curtain between us. After that first night I was so desperate to have my own room that when the offered us the family suite (the most expensive room in the entire maternity ward), I decided to take the room. It cost about $600 a night but it had a seperate living room area and came with 2 meals provided. Kelvin was more than happy to finish up the extra food and I was really grateful that there was plenty of space for all the visitors over the next 2 days. I could nurse Caitlin in peace while friends and family talked outside. Oh, the 2 wall-mounted flat screen TVs didn't hurt either. It was funny, when Dr. Fong came to check on me in the morning, he was so impressed that he did a self-tour of the room and even asked if he could check out the toilet.

The last day in hospital. Caitlin had lost about 400g and was slightly jaudiced. Sigh. I know that babies normally lose some of their birth weight over the first few days. It's normal. However, I think I developed this fobia of not feeding her properly. More on that in another post.

For the time being, we were all very tired but relieved and happy. What lay ahead was for me was to heal and learn to move around without the huge bump.