Truth be told, I would much rather be lying down to the sound of the falling rain next to my sleeping baby, but I have wanted to write about some things for some time now, so here I am, caffeine-free (for now) and dishevelled (not that you can see me), hoping that said baby will not wake up because I have just turned off Ravel so that I can hear myself think.
***
Andrew's birth was, for the most part, uneventful. Jon and I dropped Daniel off at childcare (yes, how cruel) in the morning, and I vaguely recall one of the teachers telling my tearful firstborn that mummy would be back to get him in the evening (we weren't, obviously. We were going to have another baby and cause unasked for trauma to our firstborn). I felt bad, but only momentarily - after I got the Progestin pill inserted at the clinic at 10.40am or so, Jon and I hopped on the TMC shuttle bus and made our way to Novena. Given our experience with Daniel, I was a bit worried that I would start dilating too quickly, i.e. experience a sudden onset of strong and Very Painful contractions, but I needn't have worried - Jon and I were able to go on a nice long date, our first in many months, at the Novena malls. The shops were mostly closed, we ate brunch at Cedele, I was tempted to have some sashimi but didn't, and we bickered amiably about who would have reading rights to my Kindle in the hours to come. The contractions did get more painful after about 3 hours, so we took the shuttle bus back to TMC, I was admitted, and I had an enema for the first time in my life.
After we were settled in the delivery suite, Jon and I bickered some more about Kindle reading rights (I won!), I got an epidural, and then we decided to watch TV around - 4pm? 5pm? 6pm? The time eludes me, but I know we eventually caught Wheel of Fortune which is on Channel 5 at 7pm on weekdays. I read Prep by Curtis Sittenfield, which I had saved to read on this very occasion (although I later realised, as I made my way painfully through the book, that I had once borrowed it from the library and flipped to the end after the first few chapters because it was a rather crappy piece of literature). Jon also bought hor fun from the coffeeshop opposite TMC for dinner, leaving me marvelling at the normalcy of things this time round. In fact, if you are my friend on Facebook, you will see that just before I started pushing, Jon and I were bored and channel surfing. The only option which was semi-acceptable to the both of us was Tanglin, and although I don't know what's going on on the show now, the night Andrew was born was right smack in the middle of the Ben-Vanessa-Grace (Grace, I am NOT your father) story arc. The delivery suite nurses, unable to go anywhere, were forced to listen to me go into the salacious background details.
There were some hairy moments when Andrew's heart rate fell once or twice during some strong contractions, but my gynae, whom I have said before has a cheerful if slightly FOS outlook on things, went home for dinner - so it couldn't have been that bad, though I was praying like anything that I wouldn't need an emergency c-section (because vain re: regaining flat tummy as soon as possible after birth, not because I have anything against c-sections or the resulting scar). All too soon, he was back from dinner, pleased that I was 9cm dilated and it was almost time to start pushing.
Before I started pushing, one of the nurses kept reiterating that it was just like "passing motion", and thereafter proceeded to yell "PASS MOTION PASS MOTION PASS MOTION" every time I was pushing, to encourage me to "keep that feeling". All she succeeded in making me do was want to laugh, thereby losing focus on pushing. I tried very hard to be polite, but in the end I was laughing so hard and no one knew why (except maybe Jon), so I had to tell her that her entreaties, while appreciated, were rather unhelpful.
Andrew was born almost exactly 12 hours after labour was induced. I took a good look at the placenta this time, because I really don't know if we will have another child, and made small talk with my gynae about the minutiae of life as he stitched me up. I consumed and threw up part of the horrible sandwich and hospital grade Milo awaiting me at the ward, read some more of Prep because I was buzzing, and finally fell asleep.
Very uneventful, right. The only other exciting thing which happened was that the next day, I managed to @foodpanda in some decent sashimi.
***
What I have really wanted to write about is my post-natal experience with Daniel, because it was so different from my experience with Andrew. This time round we had a confinement nanny, and of course, they always say the second time's easier (and third time's a charm?). Although I had some pretty down days, they were never as bad as they got with Daniel. I don't think I had post-natal depression after I had him, at least not clinically diagnosed, and even if I did I don't think it was particularly serious; but I remember waking up in the middle of the night and lying in the dark with my heart racing, feeling a baby-shaped weight pressing down on my chest, straining my ears for and dreading the next cry. Too soon, always too soon. I still remember the feelings of utter worthlessness and insecurity - it was evident that breastfeeding wasn't working out, and on top of that I didn't feel any love for Daniel, and didn't feel that I was particularly maternal. Jon and I fought a lot, I was afraid Daniel would know I didn't love him and would become attached to other caregivers and not me because they were so excited over his arrival - I felt life would be better for everyone if I was removed from it. After all, if he was formula fed and was able to be in the care of people who were enthusiastic about caring for him, what was the point in having a mother who didn't love him around?
Then there was the incident involving one of the very few full feeds of breast milk I was able to pump - I'd left a bottle with 3oz of breast milk in the fridge (it'd taken 2 pumping sessions), instructing the caregiver for the one short hour and a half I would be having the jamu massage that it was unlikely Daniel would need the milk given his pattern of the previous days, so please make sure that he was truly hungry before feeding it to him (if not Jon could do the feed when he got home). The said caregiver fed it to Daniel barely half and hour after his last feed, which had taken place just before I went into the room for the massage, because he "looked" hungry. And sure enough, he skipped his next feed. I was told later that he had drunk that bottle very slowly, looking surprised.
I've forgiven, but it's difficult to forget - even now, the memory stings. It took so much to get that 3oz, in those early days when I thought breastfeeding might work out. I also haven't forgotten the panic attack when we brought Daniel to Jon's grandmother's for the first time, and he was taken out of my arms and carried off by cooing, doting elders. I truly believed, for those fifteen minutes or so, that my role as his mother was totally unnecessary and everything swam before my eyes and I couldn't breathe and had to sit down on the pavement by the side of the road.
It all seems so silly and self-indulgent now, what I felt, but hormones are funny things, aren't they? Well, it appears that we got through that dark period, and I remember the first meal I cooked at around 3 months post-partum, when the fog finally lifted somewhat. It was just two chicken legs baked with some carrot and onion, and an old potato and even older Cripps apple which became wonderfully soft and sweet after some time in the oven. But the feelings of self-worth which flooded my being as I realised that I could cook again! (putting food in the oven counts, right?) were wonderful.
***
The day after I got home from the hospital with Andrew, I told the confinement nanny that I would do some breastfeeding if I was awake, but if I was passed out she could go ahead and give Andrew formula.
I slept the entire day (morning to night), waking only for meals, and I think I only breastfed for a total of two hours or so, throughout the day. Despite feeling a tad insecure about my choice to mixed feed, then switch to formula totally between Andrew's fifth to sixth week of life, I'm glad I made that choice. And say what you will about the bother of washing bottles - I'd rather be washing those darned bottles any day.
I also read copiously whilst the nanny was here - I finished the three books in Ovidia Yu's Aunty Lee series, along with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan's Tiger in the Kitchen and Sarong Party Girls (well-written, both books, but smacking just a bit of pretension), Snobs by Julian Fellowes (Past Imperfect wasn't as enjoyable), How to Party With An Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings, Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, and some other forgettable potboilers. (Okay, that's a lot of books.) In addition to that, I watched TV, spent time with Daniel, changed some of Andrew's diapers, was raring to get back into the kitchen by my third or so week post-partum, and at times mooched about feeling guilty that I wasn't as involved in the care of Andrew as I was with Daniel (got nanny, right? Some more what if she really knows better than me because she is so much older? But as it turned out, she was wrong about the yu yee yu yee yu yee you.)
So what is the point of my sharing all this? I don't really know, actually, except that I would like to remember how dreadful it all was with Daniel so I will be able to empathise and sympathise with other first-time mothers, including, God-willing, my future daughters-in-law (getting too far ahead of myself here, perhaps, but I've always been one for forward-thinking, otherwise known as Worrying About The Future and Things I Cannot Control). And to tell you that no matter how much you feel like strangling the next person who tells you to hang in there because things will get better, they really will.
Just a while back, almost 2 months after Andrew was born, we took him to Jon's grandmother's for the first time. We left Daniel playing with toy cars in the living room, and I went for a walk with Jon to get Andrew to sleep in the Manduca, along the very same roads where I'd had that panic attack a little more than two years before. I enjoyed being out in the cool(ish) evening air, finally free of the four walls of my home and the confinement nanny, and when we saw Thomson Three rising in the distance, where some of our friends will be setting up home in the very near future, I stood in the middle of the road and smiled for a picture.
