Chap 02: Entering motherhood

8 July 2018

So by 3 am of the 7 July I started to feel the contractions at 30 minutes interval. It was painful but bearable. I was soooo hoping the baby will be able to wait till morning because I would really hate to wake up the rest of the family to send me to the hospital. Thankfully, it was bearable till about 5 am. At this point, I really am thankful to have high tolerance of pain, having gone through the pain of slip disc before this.

So by 5 am I woke up, showered, did Subuh prayers and got ready. Woke my husband up to get ready too and so by 6.30 am we were out of the house. We were told to report by 7am but I felt that I could still afford the time to go for breakfast so here we are having prata.

Believe it or not, I was able to finish everything on my plate even though I was hissing in pain every few minutes. We were pretty near the hospital and so by 7.15 am we were getting ready to be admitted.

The staff quickly wheeled me into the labour ward. This was my view. I insisted on no epidural no matter how painful it was. They injected me with some pain relief on my thighs but I did not think it helped at all. Lol.

The doctor said I was only 6 cm dilated so she went to poke my water bag so that it will burst. It was only then that the pain of contractions were getting more and more unbearable. Each passing minute was too slow and I really wanted to get it over and done with. So the hubs waited with me from 8 am to about 9 am where it started to get more and more painful. There was nothing he could do really, except to recite some ayat from the Quran. I had told him in advance that if he plays with his mobile phone when I am going through pain, I will not hesitate to throw the phone onto the floor. Lol.

At about 11.10 am, the doctor said I was 9 cm dilated and thus I was ready to push! I was relieved. Pushing was not as easy as it looked in movies, I really had a difficult time pushing and after several failed attempts, the doctor said that the baby’s heartbeat is slowing down and that was when I started to panic. I did my ultimate best to push even though I had no more energy and stamina and thus the doctor made the smart decision to vacuum the baby out and alhamdulilah in a few minutes she was out!

They placed the baby on my chest for a few minutes and I was too overwhelmed I was not even able to cry. The feeling of her being out of me after being inside me for 9 months, it was so surreal.

All cleaned up when I was back at the ward.

Still can’t believe she was right in front of my eyes. I was feeling so drained from the labour that, I could not even do much, just sitting and watching family members coming over to visit us.

Our first photo as a family of three. Alhamdulilah for His blessings.

I really did not expect soooo many people to come over to visit us on the first day. I swear I looked like crap from having no sleep the night before. Thankful for the gifts and the wishes. I was so grateful to Cik Ani for sewing personalised pillows for Aishah! I love it!

Thank you for coming and blessing us even more! My mum is law was definitely the most excited. Her first grandchild! I also just realised that there are no photos of Aishah with my parents lol, they were around but just had no time for a photo.

During the night, the nurses came over to ask me to try to feed Aishah. I wanted to take time to spend it alone with her too, she looked so peaceful sleeping. She seldom cried too, (compared to the baby next to my bed), she is truly such a good girl even from the womb. I had a fuss free and easy pregnancy.

I was up early and got ready to go home. Can’t wait to go home and recuperate, the hospital’s service is good but nothing beats being home with the family.

Aishah is all ready to go home too. Look how tiny she was.

Finally home and here is her first photo with her cousin, Nur Munawwarrah!

We had to quickly learn how to be parents because we knew we would be on our own after today. The hubs seems to be better at it than me, he has had experience with his younger cousins. Things like how to swaddle baby, how to make baby sleep, how to breastfeed baby, how to change diaper….I don’t know why I never thought of learning all these before the baby arrived!

Aishah was too small and all the clothes we had for her were too big. We were thankful when our sis in law Izzah made a trip to the mall to get smaller clothes. Thank you Izzah!

Also thankful to Uncle Azmi for these customised pillows! Loved it!

I really wanted to do everything for the baby but the post partum pain was enough to make me too tired to do anything else. Thankful for my parents and the hubs for helping out. I was in pain for the entire 2 weeks and could hardly sit or walk properly but I guess all moms would know.

I still cannot believe she has single eyelids! Lol. She obviously takes after her father.

Thank you everyone for all the care and the hampers! Our dining table was full of hampers, flowers, baby gifts!

For now, I really would like to enjoy motherhood. However it was not as easy as I thought, and I ended up being depressed. I shall save it for my next entry. Keep a lookout for it.