She's here!!

I gave birth to a healthy bouncing 7lbs 10oz baby at 4:59p.m. in SJMC's operating theater on the 4th of September 2006.

That was a mouthful. My surgeon was my gynea, Dr. Delaila Ahmad.

I was never suppose to have a c-section. Well, maybe I was, I just didn't know it.

On Monday morning, (4 a.m to be exact) I noticed that my panties felt slightly damp so I got up and went to the bathroom to check it out. It appeared to be nothing other than some discharge so I just washed myself clean and went back to bed. Then at 6a.m, again I felt damp so I got out of bed to get some tissue to wipe myself. Only this time, there was a whole lot more to wipe off. I immediately thought my water had broke. The husband jumped out of bed to get ready.

I wasn't quite sure whether it had indeed broken or not but decided to go to the hospital anyway, just in case. We arrived at the hospital at around 7:30 a.m. and went straight to the labor room. I was told to undress and I was examined by a nurse. Half an hour later, I was sent home because my contractions were irregular and I wasn't gushing.

So we went home. The moment I stepped into the house, I started having painful contractions and they were happening every 5 minutes. I was still leaky at that time. So just to be on the safe side, I decided to wait a bit and see if my contractions persist. We waited at home till about 10:30 a.m. The contractions didn't stop so we decided to go to the hospital.

Instead of going to the labor room, we decided to see my doctor instead to be examined. Upon examination, we found out that the baby's head was no longer where it was suppose to be. She had moved her head to the right. The doctor said that it could mean that my pelvic area wasn't big enough for her to pass through which was why she moved and which was why my cervics wasn't open yet.

The doctor gave us 2 options. 1 was to push the baby's head back in and try for a normal delivery. The danger with that was that my pelvic area could indeed be too small and we would be forcing the baby through, thus causing brain damage. The other option was to get an x-ray to assess the area. We opted for the latter.

2 hours later, after doing the x-ray, we were back in the doctor's office. The x-ray showed that my pelvic area was indeed too small and I had to go for a c-section to prevent harming the baby.

The next decision to be made was what that of anesthesia I wanted. GA or Epidural.

Initially, I had opted for GA because I didn't want to be awake while the surgery was going on because I was quite squirmish and scared. I ended up with an epidural instead because the anesthesiologist said he would prefer I have the epidural because it has less side effects compared to GA. So I took his advice even though I was scared and decided to have the epidural instead.

I was in the OT by 4p.m. but the doctor was no where in sight. So I just lay there waiting for her to arrive. I was feeling quite miserable. My contractions hurt and it happened every 5 minutes. I felt weak and sick. It didn't help that there was a girl next to me that was crying because she was going to have surgery too. I didn't cry of course. I just lay there feeling bad.

Off and on, a nurse would come and check my chart, check me, or just hover a while before leaving. The anesthesiologist had put a drip on me and that hurt quite bad too. About 10 minutes after the drip was on, blood was starting to flow out into the tube. I started to worry and called the nurse to check. She checked and gave me a new drip bag.

The doctor finally arrived around 20 minutes later and I was wheeled into the room to be cut open. I was sort of relieved that she was finally here. Even though that meant being poked into the spine with needles and being cut open at the bikini line with a scalpel.

The administering of the epidural wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was rather painless if you ask me. I even said to myself, hey, I wouldn't mind if I had to do this again.

Within seconds I started feeling the effects of the epidural and I started getting pins and needles all over my bottom half of my body. I felt weak and couldn't move my legs. This was followed by a feeling of light headedness. I coulnd't focus on what was going on around me and everything was happening all at once. When the doctor asked me how I was I said I feel light headed but it was as if I had trouble speaking out loud. I have a feeling the doctor and nurses had trouble understanding me. I had to repeat myself.

After a while, I was back to normal and everything came into focus again. I could no longer feel the bottom half of my body.
The doctor said, I would feel pressure, pushing and pulling but no pain. She said, can you feel me touching you? I said no. She said, even better. Heh.

I didn't know when she actually started cutting me because I could feel nothing and there was a sheet raised infront of me to prevent me from seeing anything. The anesthesiologist said to me, a little bit more. He also told me the doctor would be taking the baby out soon and suddenly I heard a cry. It was the most beautiful sound I have every heard. All I could do was gives thanks to god and cry.

The baby was brought to the cleaning bay to be cleaned and checked by the pediatrician. That was to the left of me so I kept looking left to see what was going on. I didn't care much for what was happening to me down there anymore. I was focused on my baby.

I cried a bit more and developed a blocked nose. I had trouble breathing through my nose after that. The oxygen that they put at my nostrils did nothing other than annoy me.

It was then that I started feeling cold. The nurses placed warm blankets on me but that didn't help much. The doctor sewed me up and I was shipped out of the OR and into the main area to be monitored for about an hour.

I had the strongest urge to puke once I was out of OR. I told the nurse I wanted to puke and they held a small container under my chin. Nothing came out though.

I was given a jab to stopped the vomiting and a warm blanket was placed over me to keep me warm because I was shivering due to the side effects of the epidural. I drifted between wake and sleep in that hour and was happy when they finally wheeled me back to my room.

I was still shivering when I was in the room. I cried a lot when I saw the husband. I wasn't in any pain but I was just overwhelmed by all that I had been through. The husband was quite worried for a moment thinking I was in pain. I'm pretty sure I looked quite bad.

I collected myself after a while and was ready to see the rest of the family. Everyone hovered over me and covered me with bits of clothings they could find. Nothing helped though because I was cold on the inside due to the drugs.

We weren't allowed to see the baby till much later because the baby was placed under a heater and needed to be there for a while. The effects of the epidural started to wear off and I started feeling the pain around 8:30p.m. I couldn't stand it anymore and asked for a jab to relieve the pain.

I felt better after the jab. I was also given some pain killers to consume. Finally got to see the baby around 10:45p.m.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She's cute as a button. She has soft fine hair and lips that would give Angelina Jolie a run for her money.

My parents arrived a short while after and they fussed over the baby.

I wasn't allowed to eat anything since the operation because they were afraid I'd throw up. Then the doctor came to visit at around 12a.m and gave them all a good telling off for not feeding me. Heh. Padan muka. It seems, they were given instructions to feed me 2 hours after surgery.

I had some chicken porridge and milo after that.

I was in the hospital for another 2 days and was discharged yesterday morning. But the processing took about half a day to complete.

Here I am now. Blogging about it in my room with my baby on the bed sleeping peacefully.

I'm still in much pain and moving around is almost impossible. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.