It’s been a week and a day since I gave birth to our beautiful baby girl Hatasia Nadine. Words are not enough to describe how happy I am for having this beautiful angel in our life. There are times when I just stare at her, loving the serenity in her face.
The onset of my labor wasn’t as dramatic as the ones we
usually see on tv or movies. Mine started mild and days before the real ones. I
was admitted at the hospital and stayed in the Labor Room for 2 days. Wanting
to have a normal delivery me and my ob-gynecologist agree that we should wait
until I am fully dilated and ready for NSD, however, baby wasn’t to arrive that
way. In my previous blog I mentioned how I spoke too soon about certain things.
One of the things I thought I could handle really well was labor pains. It was
easy in my first few hours in the labor room, but as time passed by the
intensity of the pain gets higher and all I could do is cry, grab the bed rails
and stare at the monitor beside me and wait for the signal that it is about to
subside. I was given epidural on the 2nd day and it worked for few hours but
the pain returned about an hour before they transferred me to the OR.
After the seemingly endless wait, I gave birth to a
beautiful baby girl via Cesarean Section on June 28th at 12:55am. Her Dad was
there to witness her arrival and it was him who cut the umbilical cord. All
these happened in a hazy memory to me but hubby said I managed to smile when he
entered the OR and when he showed me the picture of our baby (she’s just few
minutes old and she was already taken out of the OR for picture taking with
grandmas and daddy!)
Today baby Hatasia is 8 days old but all those who have seen
her said she looks like a month old already. Her hair is naturally thick, her
skin not wrinkled but smooth, and her cheeks so plump I can no longer remember
how many times I kissed them when she’s sleeping.
The first few days of adjustment aren’t a breeze. The real
meaning of motherhood is slowly sinking in. The joys, the feeling of elation
every time a mother looks at her child is already a given. But with the reality
also comes the sleepless nights, the seemingly endless crying of a newborn
especially when you are not able to attend to her needs immediately, and the
aches of a recovering body that has recently given birth to an 8.3 lbs baby.
My perception about a lot of things also changed. Now, for me,
My perception about a lot of things also changed. Now, for me,
- A pump is no longer a word associated to water alone.
(Breast pump is one of the best inventions I think).
- Sleep is necessity. Well that was before. Now sleep is a
privilege.
- Diapers, cotton balls, baby wipes – you can never have
enough. Or at least until your baby starts potty training.
I know there’s still a lot to learn. A long, long way to go.
There will be countless sleepless nights, hundreds more of soiled diapers,
painful bumpers when milk isn’t expressed at once (moms fully understand
this)…but a simple smile from my child will compensate for everything.
Just for laughs:
Let me share something that I find amusing. Well, I find it
amusing now but at the time it happened it wasn’t funny at all:
On my 2nd day in active labor a nurse came and checked my
progress and the recordings in the monitor (which also registers the frequency
and intensity of my labor pains; at that time it registers 100% at 3-5
minutes interval. This means that baby is about to pop out soon). The nurse said, after seeing that the contractions are
already 3-5 minutes apart, “o, ang ganda na ng contractions mo!” Gusto kong
sabihin sa kanya, “a, maganda ba? Sige palit tayo dito ka at ng maramdaman mo
kung gano kasakit”
