The Story

Jen asked me to post Annabelle's birth details. So, if you interested in birth stories, read on. If not, feel free to skip it. There will be no hard feelings =)

Annabelle was due on August 28th. At my regular check-up three weeks prior to her due date, I was already dilated to 3 cm. The doctor felt sure she'd see me within the week. But, the next week rolled around and to her amazement, I showed up for my next scheduled appointment. . . still pregnant. At that time, I was at 4 cm. Again, she said she expected to see me in L&D within a day or two, but we scheduled another appointment for the following week, "just in case." It's a good thing we did, because Wednesday, August 27th dawned and there was still no signs of labor. I had been out walking miles every day, doing squats, eating pineapple (they say that induces contractions) and still hadn't had even one significant contraction. I went to my appointment and found out I was at 5 cm! Since I was having some weird headaches which were affecting my vision (sometimes a sign of impending blood pressure issues late in pregnancy), the doctor felt that it was best to break my water for me. I checked in to L&D (just 4 floors below in the same building) and called Josh. He arrived around 1:00 and the doctor came in to break my water at 2:00. Within minutes, I was in transitional labor . . . no warm-up contractions (I guess that's the downside of starting out at 5 cm). After about 45 minutes of labor, I finally asked for some kind of pain killer, but it was too late for anything significant since I was nearly ready to push. The nurses kindly gave me nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) each time I had a contraction. It didn't really do much for the pain factor, but it made me care about the pain a little less, so it was definitely better than nothing. At 3:20, the doctor showed up and got set up for delivery. At 3:25 she gave me the all clear to push and two pushes later (one for her head and the second for her body), Annabelle was born. The doctor was really cool about letting Josh tell me we had a girl. She put the baby up on my tummy and said, "You have a beautiful and healthy baby, Rebecca. Josh, do you want to tell her what sex the baby is?!"

So, there you have it. Annabelle's labor was exactly 1/2 of Caleb's. I'm so thankful my doctor was proactive in breaking my water. If I had been at home, it would have been a very close call. We don't have a car here, so I would have had to call and wait for a taxi (usually a 10-15 minute process) and then drive 30 minutes to the hospital. I can just imagine trying to pay the taxi driver in the middle of serious contractions!

Let's see, other details. . . I did use Gentle Birth again. I don't know if it is a placebo or if it actually works, but for $30, I figured it was worth it either way. Thankfully, there wasn't any tearing, which made recovery a million-times easier. Anything else I didn't mention that you're curious about? Just leave it in the comments.

I plan to post more about the medical system here in Singapore on our other blog soon. " Soon" being a relative term dependent upon the sleep cycles of my two darlings =)