The Baby Bee has arrived

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in announcing the arrival of Puteri Maisarah on 19 November 2007...
 
Maisarah wanted to make an appearance 6 days earlier than expected. Luckily Mummy and Abah were ready the receive her. It all started at 4 am when I started to feel pain like period-pain cramps. To be on the safe side I just kept quite and started timing the pains. At 5 am when the pains started coming every 15 mins, I woke Shah up and we got ready to go to the hospital. We reached the hospital at 5:30 am and we had to fill in a form before I was brought up to the delivery room. At around 6 am, after I changed into the hospital gown, my water broke. The midwife assessed my labour progress and she estimated that I was 3 cm dilated. So I immediately requested for epidural (yes!..I am not that brave to endure labour pains ladies and gentlemen). The anesthetist came to administer the epidural and I was as happy as can be (minus the 2 times I vomited because of the epidural effects).
 
Anyway, by 9 am I wasn't progressing much, was still 3 cam dilated. So the midwife put me on the drip (injected with some sort of liquid) to speed up the labour. Then I started to feel the contractions becoming stronger. A sign that the baby is on the way. So I was thought by the midwife on how to push whenever the contractions came. A little after 2 pm, the doctor arrived and I started pushing but I wasn't pushing hard enough. The baby was stuck at the same position for quite sometime. Plus she was in the posterior position instead of anterior which made the delivery harder. Added to that the doctor mentioned that the umbilical cord was almost choking the baby. So the midwife had to assist me by pushing my stomach while I continued  pushing the baby out. Finally at 2:29 pm , Maisarah took her first breath of fresh air. However, her head was slightly mishapen due to her being stuck during labour.
 
After Maisarah was cleaned and I was finish being stiched up, Shah was asked to recite the Azan and Qamat to Maisarah. Then I got the chance to breastfeed Maisarah for the first time. Even though I'm not used to holding a tiny baby but at that time miraculously I knew how to handle her. She too took to sucking with ease and was satisfied. I think I nursed her for almost half a hour when I felt like vomiting again, the after effects of epidural. After another time vomiting, I was wheeled to my room but with my head spinning badly (more effects of the epidural on me).
 
Once I reached the room, I badly needed to sleep off the headache. I managed to sleep for half an hour before the Staff Nurse came with a hungry Maisarah. My head was still spinning and I was afraid I'd accidentally let go of Maisarah when she was feeding, so I asked if one of the nurses could wait with me while I nursed Maisarah (Shah had gone home for a while to rest and the family had all left). Unfortunately all the nurses were busy. The Staff Nurse wanted to put me off the idea of fully-breastfeeding Maisarah by saying that I wasn't producing enough milk and that it needed to be massaged before milk would be abundant so I should let Maisarah be formula fed. But I was determined to give Maisarah as much of my milk as possible. I ignored the spinning headache and nursed Maisarah till she was full. Everytime Maisarah was hungry the nurses would bring her to my room. Luckily, Maisarah is such an easy (insyaAllah as her name means Ease or Kesenangan and Richness or Kekayaan) baby to take care off as that night she nursed at 12 am and then again at 5 am. So Shah and I got a good 5 hours of shut eye after the tiring day.
 
Well, that was the day Maisarah came into our lives almost a month ago. More updates on the first month with Maisarah will come soon. I hope! Please pray that Maisarah caries on the be the easy baby to care for and that I can continue breastfeeding her.