Dear Peanut,

Today, you are officially 1 week and 1 day old.

A few hours ago, I was checking some of the files we took to the hospital and I chanced upon the 1-page Birth Certificate cheat sheet we prepared for you. It’s basically a document that contains the necessary information we need for your birth certificate. I saw your name and I told your father, "Wow, imagine, just last week, this whole new person didn’t exist yet. And we made this person!"

So while you’re sleeping behind me in your porta-bed, let me go back in time and tell you about how you came out into the world. This is my birthing story from my point of view. I want to write it now while everything—the excitement, they mayhem, the relief—is still fresh in my mind. SC will write a separate one.

November 2, 2017

I woke up around 5am with strong, persistent contractions. Actually, I’ve been feeling those contractions for several days but usually only in the wee hours of the morning.

They feel like dysmenorrhea from hell, which isn’t new to me. I have very high tolerance for pain, so I usually just let them pass. But since we were already past your due date (October 31, 2017), SC and I started to time these contractions using an app.

Your father was supposed to go to work that morning since your LolaMommy will be staying with me at home. During our last prenatal checkup, Dr.JMF said my cervix was still closed. The results of your Fetal Non-Stress Test (NST) and Biophysical Profile Score (BPS) came out great. So, the only thing we really had to do was wait for labor contractions to start. That was why in the last few days of October 2017, we’ve been to several SM malls and walked around BGC to help induce labor.

But I felt something different that day. I felt like this might be The Day.

The strong contractions were 5 minutes apart, usually lasting 30 to 40 seconds. When your #LolaMommy arrived, I insisted that we go to TMC's pre-labor room (pre-LR) and have me checked. Chalk it up to the training and the mindset that we both developed from this multinational company we used to work for, your father and I already have plans A, B, and C laid out -- what to do, where to go, who to contact, etc... when labor finally starts. We kicked off with Plan A.

I had no idea how labor pain should feel. I mean, the “waves” I was having felt like heavy dysmenorrhea bouts that I asked Dr.JMF if I can take Advil (that’s for another entry, I swear, #pregnancybrain is real). We didn’t want to go to TMC and be told to go home first because we’re not in labor yet. But I figured, only a medical team can tell me if I was already halfway through it. And oh boy, were we surprised!

The internal exam showed that I was already at 5cm and nearly everyone told me (residents, nurses) that I must have a high tolerance for pain because some women, at this point, would be on epidural already. You need to be at 10cm to start “pushing” so that meant we were halfway through labor already. After getting prepped at the pre-LR, they wheeled me to the labor room where they hooked me up on the machines and then the waiting started.

But nearly everything we have prepared in our “birth plan” went the opposite way.

PEANUT WON’T COME OUT OF MY PEANUT!

To be continued…

XOXO,


Update (as of March 29, 2018): Changed my codename from Queen Bitch (QB) to Tiger Mom (TM).