Nine months might be enough time to form a life but it is nowhere near enough time for a mom to be completely ready for her baby - especially in the emotional aspect of things. Two weeks ago I gave birth to my angel, Alexis Noelle, and it's been the most challenging, tiring but fulfilling fortnight I've ever had.

I decided to share her birth story and my experience of the past two weeks on the internet because I'm me and I just have to write and get it out of my system, so here's a disclaimer: this post will be quite detail heavy with lots of pregnancy and medical jargon, and not quite for the squeamish and faint-hearted hahaha!

Lexi's due date was supposed to be the 31st of January and I always had the feeling that I was going to have her earlier even though everyone thought she was definitely going to be a February baby. She was born on the 30th at 6:53am - hence concluding my 48-hour labour. YES 48 HOURS! I think that that was totally my fault as I have been trying so hard to induce labour myself that week because I was desperate to not be pregnant anymore. I'm talking about walking, bumpy car rides, raspberry leaf tea, bouncing whenever I was sitting down, spicy food, etc. On the 27th, I decided to have dinner at a Thai restaurant with Kendall and his mom where I ordered Malaysian curry (and actually complained that it wasn't spicy enough) and that night I was up all night binge watching on Netflix. I started getting contractions the morning of the 28th at about 7am and they were about 20 minutes apart. I suffered through 24 hours and finally on the morning of the 29th they got to about 4 minutes apart. I decided to call my midwife and she came over to check my progress but said I was only at 1 FREAKING CM!!! FYI, they don't admit you to the hospital until you're having contractions 4-5 minutes apart and at least 3cm dilated. She left and came back around 4pm to check me again and said, "sorry sweetie, you're only at 2cm." At this point I was about ready to DIE because it really did hurt and I'm running on less than 5 hours of sleep for the past 3 days. My midwife told me we could go ahead to the hospital right then where they would induce me but the medication (which I don't know the name of bc I was too delirious to pay actual attention) could go through to my baby and would affect her negatively. Oh fun fact about me is that I strongly reject unnecessary pharmaceuticals, so after hearing that I decided to endure more contractions instead. At about 10pm, my exhaustion got the best of me and I begged to be brought to the hospital and at 11pm, and I was admitted at 3cm!

Straight away I got my IV in and my epidural - no it didn't hurt and I totally got over whatever fear of needles I had during this pregnancy as I was literally a pin cushion from having blood drawn from me weekly. Anyway, at about 1am I sent my family back home because we predicted the birth to happen late the next day since I was only at 3cm and it took me 2 whole days to get there. They tested the effectiveness of my epidural by using ice and found that it was stronger on the left side of my body so I had to sleep on my right side as gravity would help the painkillers move. Honestly it's pretty cool feeling numb! I went in and out of sleep for the next few hours and some time later the midwives had to clip the heart monitor to the top of Lexi's head because the belly monitor couldn't catch her heartbeat which broke my heart because I thought it would hurt her, but I later found out that it was barely a scratch. Also had to get Syntocinon, which is a "fake" hormone to help me dilate because I was progressing too slow I guess. That caused really strong contractions, and when I say strong I mean so STRONG that I could feel pain through the epidural. Therefore I was fully dilated at 5am and they let an hour pass with me sitting upright so that Lexi would drop lower on her own before starting to push at 6:20am. Thank God it only took a few minutes to get her out and I really don't even think it hurt at all, it was just kinda difficult to figure out which muscles to clench. Hahahaha I love how nonchalant I sound - God bless painkillers.

Me: Wow those double eyelids! Midwife: Double eyelids? That's the first time I heard of that! Me: Oh, must be an asian thing.

My baby had a full head of hair and when I saw her I fell in love instantly because duh she's my baby! Most people say she looks like her dad and I think so too. They put her right on my chest straight away and we had skin-to-skin while they worked on delivering the placenta, which I hardly even felt I literally just coughed it out of me. Here's the worst part of it all - the stitches! I had to get 8 stitches because I needed an episiotomy (which simply put, is a slice they make when you need a bigger hole hahaha). Weeks prior to the birth I had to fill up my birth plan in which I agreed to having a student midwife come assist with the birth, and I don't regret it one bit, I loved the student midwife that was assigned to us! She did amazing but I think she just wasn't very experienced with stitching and my main midwife had to redo them or something so it ended up taking longer than it was supposed to... and uh oh my epidural was wearing off! For me that was the most painful part but it really was like a 5/10 on the pain scale, I reckon getting a tattoo hurt more.

My advice to those who are expecting or wanting a kid in the future, is to not be afraid of the delivery process. Honestly once you get to your last trimester, all you will want is to get your baby out to finally meet them and it'll all be worth it. It's true what they say about labor pains - it is the easiest pain to forget!

Since this post is already a million words long, I'll just talk about Lexi's first two weeks on the planet in the next one! I doubt anyone made it this far but if you're still reading... thanks for tuning in hahaha!

Ask me something!