Contractions became regular at ten minute intervals on Wednesday 24 January 2018. I was at work and went to an important client meeting to handover the work to colleagues. When I got home the mucus plug was seen to be shedding, and I thought birth would likely happen early morning the next day.
Come Thursday, contractions were still very tolerable at the same ten minute intervals. I didn't think it was a good idea to go to the office so I stayed home waiting, until nearly noon. As the contractions were not getting any more intense or closer, I decided to go for my eyelash extension appointment at Devonshire Eye Design, the branch at Tras Street. After that, the contractions were still the same, so I went for a pedicure at the usual Tanjong Pagar Nail Palace.
Things finally started to heat up at around 3am on Friday morning. The intervals became six minutes apart as the day wore on, and by noontime the contractions were intense enough that I had to stop to get through them. Sean had gone over to my parents' place to help them with the final packing for the movers coming that afternoon, and I had him come back after lunch to take me to hospital.
We got there a little after 2pm and I was found to be already 5cm dilated. They called Dr Yvonne Lim to put in the epidural, which she did very quickly. Dr Paul Tseng came at about 3pm to check on me and asked if I wanted to burst the water bag to speed things up. After Matthew's experience, which ended in a c-section for "failure to progress" despite breaking the water bag, I declined.
Sean and I were napping when Dr Paul came by again after 5pm, presumably when his clinic had ended. He asked again if we wanted to break the water bag. Then he checked and realised that the baby had already descended and was just waiting to be pushed out! I didn't feel any urge to push, and wasn't in any pain although I could still move my legs. These were put up in stirrups while Dr Paul and two nurses, one on each side, guided me to push when the monitor showed a contraction. I was asked to hold my breath and then push. The first push would do something but the second failed to deliver. We tried this a few times until the nurse on my right noticed that I was releasing my breath as I pushed. They told me to hold my breath in so that the air in my lungs would push down on the diaphragm to help push baby out. So I did that instead and this time the second push continued to have enough force and the head was delivered. After that Dr Paul said to just relax and with the next contractions the body was gently eased out and I had no tears at all.
Born on Friday 26 January 2018 at 5.27pm, 2.93kg, 48cm long, head circumference 33 (or something like that).
