Ingrid Ma Lehne arrived at 4:30pm on 17th June. This pregnancy is a journey quite different from the 1st one.
The first three months I experienced morning sickness, its misleading to call it “morning” sickness, as it lasted all day long. I had a stronger sense of smell and found most scents made me nauseous. I felt tired all the time, in the morning when I opened my eyes I was tired already. Luckily things settled a bit after 3 months, and we made a trip to South Island which I enjoyed as the morning sickness was almost gone.
The 2nd trimester was all about monitoring the pregnancy, as Bella was born at 34 weeks. I was told that there was an increased chance of my 2nd baby arrive even earlier than the first born. So there were bi-weekly check ups at the Women’s Clinic at Auckland Hospital to track my pregnancy ensure there was no sign of baby arriving before 26 weeks. I graduated from the clinic by 24 weeks and there was no sign of baby would arrive early.
Moving into the 3rd trimester, on April Fool’s day I noticed bleeding. I spent a night at the hospital and the bleeding stopped so I was sent home. It was false alarm and things went normal after that. It definitely made me take things easy, I worked from home most of time. My main goal was to carry this baby to full term. We passed 34 weeks which means this little one stayed in my belly longer than her sister did. My hands and feet were swollen, I thought it was mainly due to water retention.
From 34 – 38 weeks, every time I visited my midwife I was sent to hospital for different reasons. Normally I spent a day at the hospital being monitored, then get discharged. So when the same thing happened at 38 weeks, I was at hospital again for high blood pressure, both M and I thought we would go home once doctor has done some tests. We stayed in the hospital from 4pm till 11pm, I told M to go home as most likely I would spend the night there. After midnight, a doctor came to my room told me that the tests showed I have preeclampsia, there were signs that my liver was not function normally. I asked if that means I would spend a few more weeks at hospital. The doctor said “no, we will induce baby now.” So it turned out the baby will come out in the next day or two.
Things moved actually quite slow after that, the first step was using gel to soften the cervix and this process took 24 hours. After two nights at the hospital, I finally moved to the birthing unit. Only when I was IV dripped with the synthetic hormone oxytocin things really started kicking in. The contraction pain in the first few hours was manageable, we played music and chat with the hospital midwives. When my cervix opened to 5cm, I was offered pain relief. By that point I was certain without epidural I would not cope with the delivery. I always thought I had a high level of pain tolerance, but not at that moment. The epidural didn’t bring much relief to me, I was waiting for the “epidural smile” which the aesthetician told me I would get after 30 mins. It never arrived, the pain just kept getting stronger. During labour I told my midwife I am done and they can do whatever just to get this baby out. One of the midwives told me ” you are going to push this baby out today and there is no other option.” So I pushed one more time and baby emerged. It was such a relief, the best feeling ever.
We got home after one night at the hospital. I lost quite a bit of blood, so received some iron top up. Reading the hospital discharge note, the birth was pretty good. So happy to be home and lying on my belly to type these down while baby is sound asleep next to my bed.
LIYANG'S THOUGHTS 