Baby Oliver from Father's perspective

I don't usually blog but I guess this is a good way to keep track of the baby progress and the journey with our little miracle. I believe M will be writing her own version of our son's birth story as well.

Let me recount the labour and the birth of our baby, Oliver. We have a birth plan. We wanted everything as natural as possible thus the choice of natural birth without epidural. We attended hypnobirthing classes which suppose to help with the management of pain or they call pressure or tightening.

30 August 2016
Ard 5 + am, Michell highlighted that she is experiencing contractions. So alert mode on, started monitoring the frequency and duration of the contractions. It was long sometimes, very frequent sometimes but not very regular. She also experience some bloody show. Told my mum and she was probably more gan chiong. We were still thinking when we should go to the hospital as we wanted a fast and smooth delivery and not wanting the labour to slow down.

Ard 7+ am, we decided probably is time to go hospital. There were signs like 60 sec long contractions and less than 3 mins apart. So we got our stuff and headed to the hospital together with both my parents. The contractions seems to slow down during the journey to the hospital. M checked with Y, our hypnobirthing teacher and was told to wait before admiting to the hospital. Therefore, we went to have breakfast at Starbucks in Mount Elizabeth Novena (MNH). The contractions seems weaker and we decided to wait a little more after breakfast but my mum was very anxious. She kept rushing to let the doctor check so we know how's the baby doing. We gave in and went to admit around 9+ am.

We waited for the delivery suit to be ready and only went in around 10 am.
The nurse settled M in the delivery suit and did the examination ard 10.30 am. She announced is 5cm dilated, your baby birthday is today. We were all excited. The contractions come and go but no sign of birth yet. M is also coping well with the pressure, breathing through every contractions, still able to move around and change positions. 

The next examination done was ard 2+ pm if I didn't remember wrongly. It was just 6cm dilated. After so long only 1cm more. We were like how much longer. The contractions got more intense since but still no sign on birth. In the end I told my parents to go home at ard 4 pm since they have been waiting for a long time already.

I think it was 5+ or 6+ pm onwards when the contractions were getting unbearable for M. She said the pain is 13 out 10, that bad. She was yelling and her hands were flying grabing anything and everything. Her legs were kicking too. She even bit my fingers. Then, it was too late for any form of pain killers. The only available help was laughing gas. It will help her reduce the pain and she will feel a little dizzy. So with each contractions, I will help her to breathe in the laughing gas. She became dependent on it as the pain is really too much.

With the flying hands and legs and mild yelling, the time came. Ard 7.15 pm or so, she was showing signs of giving birth. Think the water broke. And then the doctor came, Dr EC. As our original Gynae Dr PT was not in town. She was very nice, trying to accommodate to M position (some sort of side lying on the bed). The only thing is need to lift up her leg. With the contractions, she will kick her legs and closing up thus making it difficult for the baby to come out. I ended up carrying her legs to make sure the baby had enough space. With much pushing (though hypnobirthing taught us to breathe the baby down instead), baby was born. I managed to witness the baby's birth and cut the umbilical cord as well. So amazing how the baby can stay in the womb then out.

Baby Oliver was born on 30 August 2016, 1946hrs. Both the mother and baby were in great fine!
M was in daze after breathing in the laughing gas thus not very sure of everything that happen. And ya, the umbilical cord was a little short thus baby Oliver can't reached M chest after birth. Also baby is strong, weighting 3.87kg, 54cm in lenght! M is so brave! Much love for you!

I guessed these sums up the whole labor process. Hope to pen down more about the baby!

With love,
SR

26 weeks 5 days / Recount of Babymoon to Koh Samui

I honestly lost track of how far along I am right now; it is very confusing as to how you actually count the dates, no? According to the babycenter app, I am 26 weeks 5 days now, so I shall just follow what it says.

We returned from Koh Samui, Thailand after a 4D3N babymoon last Wednesday. We chose to stay at Hansar Samui Resort & Spa at the Bophut area.

Room/Facilities
We were satisfied with the room that we got. It had the view of both the pool and the sea, a big balcony and a king-sized bed. If I am not mistaken, all rooms will have these. It was also clean, which is quite important to me. The only gripe I had was that there was not any door/partition to the shower area so it was literally freezing to shower because we could still feel the air-conditioner. I also really liked the smell of the Luxspa toiletries that they provide: it was very soothing!

Food
I really enjoyed the spread at the breakfast area! If I am not pregnant, I would have tried everything on the menu. But they feature egg dishes with either soft cheeses or cured meat so I steered away from them. Even then, the regular scrambled or omelette was very nice, especially with the side of very crispy bacon and pork/chicken sausage. Lots of options for fruits too, and I loved the local Thai options. On the first morning, they offered Fried Glass Noodles which I LOVE; I should have gotten more of those because it was available only on that day.

The resident restaurant, H Bistro, was very good too. We had dinner there on the first evening; it was probably the freshest seafood we had during the entire trip. We even had complimentary bread basket, appetiser and palate cleanser. Of course, this was the most expensive meal we had during the trip.

As Hansar was located very near the Fisherman Village, we went there almost everyday although there was nothing much there. Hahaha We did try the mango sticky rice and nutella banana pancake from the roadside vendors. They were very generous with all the ingredients and the food items did taste good, but they did not come as cheap as expected.

I did research prior to the trip for some eating places, but they were located pretty far from Hansar so we ended up eating nearby. One commendable eating place was probably Cafe 69, which was like 5-minute walk away from Hansar. The menu was quite interesting; I remember the duck dumplings were quite awesome.

Mother-to-be Massage
Hansar also houses the famous Luxspa, which offers treatments for pregnant ladies. I went for the Mother-to-be Massage which costs 2,500 baht. It was definitely pricey, but I left the massage feeling very pampered. It was definitely the best pre-natal massage I have ever had; it was even better than the one I had in Singapore, and I remembered that I slept like a baby that night. That's how good it was. S did go for a regular massage session as well, and he enjoyed it very much too!

Overall, it was a very good and relaxing trip. Both of us took the time to really recharge ourselves before returning to the daily grind (I should not have kept on checking my work emails as that distracted me quite a bit).

Overall
The weather wasn't exactly great when we were there; it rained like almost 75% of the time we were there. Add on the fact that there was nothing much we could do there, we ended up spending lots of time in the resort, which was good too. Unfortunately, the electricity tripped quite a few times during our stay, but we were not sure if it's an entire island thing or just the hotel. This is because when we went out to the shopping area at and around Central Festival, there was a blackout as well; even McDonalds could not operate because there was no electricity! Thank goodness for the generator in the hotel as the power came back up pretty quickly.

It was a good trip for us to just relax and do nothing; we even brought along our marble products that we were going to launch so it definitely was a fruitful trip! :)