itsthemummylife-blog

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The Advices

I have been told many times by older adults don’t keep on carrying your baby or bounce them to sleep or don’t immediately pick up a crying baby. All of which I have played deaf too. Why?

A newborn does not know how to talk. Their way of communicating is through crying. So if they’re crying there must be a reason, no? It’s either they’re hungry, in pain, uncomfortable, scared, sleepy or bored of lying down. As a mother you would somehow know their crying tone and you will know what are they crying for. So it’s only natural for a mother to comfort their crying baby. Yes and a newborn baby does not know how to put himself/herself to sleep because they have been rocked to sleep for a whole 9 months in their mother’s womb so tell me how would they know how to sleep outside of their mother’s womb? So that’s why you simulate a gentle rocking motion to put the babe to sleep and not those “sarung”. Those “sarung” are what teaches the baby that they must always be rocked to sleep. Rocking to sleep on another person means it will be stop sooner than expected. Why? We are humans how long can you bounce yourself with a baby?

This is all logic. Yes I am a stay at home mother and I am able to do all this for my child because I don’t want somebody else bringing up my children. I want to be there to watch them learn new things, I want to be there when they have achieved something, I want to be there when they need my help, I want to be there when they need my attention. All of these I won’t be able to achieve if I am a working mother. I know this because my work is not a job but it’s a lifestyle. I will pay a lot of attention to work that I will forget I have a child. That is why I choose to stay home and because my husband can afford it.

We are bless with a beautiful, easy and relax baby. Mainly because my mental state during confinement was one of a relax person and I paid a lot of attention to my baby who was then new to the world. Imagine you being in a new place and you don’t know a thing or anyone, what would you feel? You would make a friend and that friend would guide you and you would depend on that friend, isn’t it? That’s the same for a newborn baby their mothers are their guide and friend and once they know the world and get comfortable they would slowly build character.

When I was pregnant I did a lot of research on breastfeeding and taking of a newborn. I mostly research on breastfeeding mainly because I am a new mother and my mother has no knowledge on breastfeeding and she only formula fed us kids. So being told that the possibility of no milk being produced after the birth of my baby got me anxious and made me did more and more research. However thanks to my wonderful friends who are breastfeeding mummies they have shared the most important tip for a first time mother. That is to massage your breast everyday when you’re 6 months pregnant onwards to open up the pores. Thanks to that simple advice I have manage to breastfeed my baby from the first hour of life. Not bragging but that’s a fact. I am proud of it because my mother had a mantra on how I won’t have milk when the baby is born and prepare formula milk when I was pregnant. I proof her wrong didn’t I. My mother isn’t breastfeeding friendly even till today but she has accepted the fact.

Many older adults still need education on breastfeeding and sadly many still believe that formula milk is better than breastmilk and that you must give water to babies after milk because milk is “heaty”. Here i am trying to educate but some are stil stuck in their ways.

Well there’s so much I can say but it doesn’t hurt to proof them wrong just by doing it and keeping quiet to their constant nagging and babbling. I tend to tell them off by just focusing on what they are doing instead of on me and the baby but I get my dearest husband telling me just to ignore and nod like an obedient child.

[itsthemummylife-blog]

The Labour

It was nearing 9pm on overdue Day 1 and the baby had less than 10 kicks. Told the husband we needed to get to the hospital if that 1 kick is not in by 9pm and true enough at 9.30pm we were making our way to the hospital. By 9.55pm the baby decided to kick as we entered the hospital. Huh! Very funny!

We decided to get checked to see if everything is fine as we were overdue and true enough everything was fine but the doctor advised to induced labour as the baby has been getting later in kicks. So we decided to wait till morning to see if I would go into labour instead of inducing. At 7 plus am the doctor decided to induce labour with an inflatable balloon. We had to wait for 24 hours for the result. The following day we got checked and I was already dilated 4cm. Yayy! Progress as they said sometimes it takes a few times to get dilated. So they burst the water beg and sent me to the labour room at 8 something am.

My husband was tired and excited to welcome his first child. He didn’t sleep for 24 hours waiting for us as the hospital did not have a proper waiting room and he was fasting and worried so he rather sleep in the car. We were rolled into the labour room they decided to help dilate me further by giving me pitoxycin and a pain killer (refused epidural) that sent me in and out of sleep. I was high as a kite and my contractions were strong as gale but I could only feel it like pinches. My husband was an anxious we couldn’t go anywhere we had to stay in the labour room.

At 2pm the pain killer started to waive off. The pain became stronger but bearable. Housemanship doctors and ob/gyn doctors was putting in their hands to see if I was dilated any further but to our disappointment it was only 1cm more. So for the past 5 hours I was 5cm and for the next 3 hours I was still 5cm. As the pain became unbearable and I accidentally punched my husband and nearly broke his once broken arm they decided to wheel me into the operating theatre as I could feel my baby knocking at the door but I wasn’t dilated enough to get her through. Her heart beat was also dropping. The doctors was panicking as my pain was unbearable out of 10 it was 10. They couldn’t get me into the OT as it was full but another doctor made it happen. My husband became pale as they told him they needed to operate me.

I was wheeled into the OT with my husband holding back tears. All I could think of is to get my baby out. She wanted to come out but couldn’t and my poor husband was all alone in this and panicking. As they inserted the epidural to numb me I could feel all this pressure and smell of burnt skin and this pushing and pulling. It wasn’t a very nice feeling despite it being cold. Then at 5.41pm my princess was born. The surgeon said that her placenta was very thin I didn’t understand what it was until I asked my SIL who is a nurse. We were lucky to get her in time as her amniotic fluid was very little, a little bit more and she would have drown. My beautiful girl came out as white as snow and fluffy too. I couldn’t believe she was mine until I saw her face and I saw her father’s face and I knew she was mine. All I could say in my heart was “she is mine, she is mine, my beautiful girl”.

That pain that I went through wasn’t for nothing. Some would say that having a Caesarean is not the same as giving birth naturally and you wouldn’t appreciate your child. Whoever says this has never felt the pain of an induced labour, the pain of nearly losing your child in matter of minutes, the risk of a Caesarean and the recovery after Caesarean. You do not know how we felt. You do not know the risk we took so don’t you dare say things that you do not know.

My baby girl is now our life.