千九百八十八：3 Weeks Young

thinking what to have for lunch today - wait it's milk!

 My bb is 3 weeks old (young?) today!

Confinement still sucks, but at least there's only 1 week more to go. Caterers confirmed for the 1st month party, staycation planned, made plans to see the Harry Potter/Andy Warhol exhibitions, go to Gardens by the bay with my family, am just looking forward to be able to drink coke & shower 10 times a day again!!

A little late to do this, but guess I should write about how the delivery went. I can't believe it was only 3 weeks ago; the past weeks feel like months have passed. Maybe because I slept so little every day and the monotony of being at home.

I had tummy cramps & felt very grouchy on the day before the delivery, which I had attributed to work and also the sitting on my bed the whole day to do work. I had no appetite, (very irritated that dinner was none of my favourite foods) and gave Ryo a call before bed to tell him to please please please get his bags packed. Slept like a pig after that, which luckily I did, because I woke up at around 4am with a sharp pain in my tummy which only lasted less than a minute. Thought it was nothing, tried to go back to sleep, but felt the pain again 10 minutes later? I tried to go to the loo, nothing came out, & I thought, crap could this be it.... & decided to try to take a shower. I didn't expect the pain to worsen, sharp pains in the lower back came on like every 3 minutes which felt like someone had stabbed a knife through my spine & then twisting it around for a full minute. All I could do was double over & try to not die with the pain. Tried to get changed as fast as I could before the next wave of pain (basically contractions went from every 10minutes to every minute within an hour) and tried to pack some toiletries and necessary documents. My parents woke up, I tried to eat some bread (again trying to gobble everything within the no-pain minute) and gave up when I couldn't chew fast enough (-.-!).

Excruciating pain in my back was the worst part of the contractions; no one had prepared me for that. Water didn't break, and I tried using the laughing gas in the hospital (which was useless and made me slightly woozy after the pain had passed instead). I had thought I wouldn't want to use any epidural but after the doctor declared I was 3cm dilated & could have the epidural if I wanted, I was half woozy from the gas and the pain was really killing me (it was exhausting to cope with the pain to say the least; I wanted to just drift off with the gas from the last wave of pain) so of course I said yes please. The epidural was a tube stuck in into my lower back (which actually didn't hurt at all given that the back pains from the contractions were 10 times more painful) and since i had had a taste of what contractions felt like, it was enough for me. When the epidural took effect it was such a relief to be able to not spasm with pain every alternate minute. I would say the epidural actually made the birth process quite uneventful, because after that, I was just relaxing in the bed with my phone and updating facebook & chatting with my mum. I think i dilated 2 cm every hour, so after around 4 more hours, the doctor said I was ready to start pushing and the midwife kept asking me to push if I felt like I had a stomachache. I couldn't feel anything, and I was lying on the bed so it felt very weird to push like I was going to the loo (who lies down for a poop anyway!?). In the end it was just a 5 minutes of the nurses, doctor & midwife chanting *1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 Push!* and the baby was out. I didn't even realise it was over until I heard the baby cry and I was waiting for those overwhelming emotions to overcome me but nothing happened; I felt no different from myself before having the baby and my first thought was "oh so that's what you look like" before trying to look at what everyone was doing. (maybe the epidural was too strong and numbed even my emotions?? haha)

& then the epidural started wearing off, the nurse brought me some food for lunch but I basically just ate a few bites and puked everything out, which was a side effect of the epidural wearing off. Suddenly felt exhausted and had a headache, and after the baby was taken to be cleaned up, I was wheeled to my room and the hell of no sleep began...

I think most of my wound has healed; not much pain below anymore (i almost died of pain after I ran to answer the phone from the bedroom to the living room during the first week) & weight is back to normal, just that I'm still slightly flabby  & all the stretchmarks are still there. Hopefully I can get rid of those & start running in a few weeks!