Cant relate to birth? Good or bad?

My friend Sinclair just gave birth the other day. I visited her the very same day that she gave birth and she shared with me all the horrors of child birth. Eg, how painful it was and how she was screaming.

Reason? She only used laughing gas and had that injection in the thigh.

The other day, another fren, Christine, was telling me about the horrors of childbirth. About what gross things the gynae did and how she will NEVER EVER forget the feeling.

Reason? She opted for 100% natural birth. No epidural, no injections, no nothing. Just massage from her doula. (This mama performed no mean feat, I salute her man!)

As I listen to them talk about how they battle labour pain and braved it all to deliver their little bundle of joy, I cannot help but feel a little envious.

I do not know whether I should be feeling glad that Ace was an emergency caeser or not.

You see, I had wanted natural birth. But being the chicken I was, I opted for epidural.

At 5am in the morning, my water bag burst. Reached hospital at 6am after a bath and then the doctors came and gave me a jab to hasten contractions at 7am.

Because I was a scaredy cat with low threshold for pain and because hubby cannot bear to see me go through pain (or maybe he cannot bear to go through what I will do to him when I am in pain.. my fren scratched her husband from shoulder down the arm during delivery), I was easily persuaded by hubby and anesthetist to have epidural early in labour.

I was in labour for 12 hours. The last 4 hours were a little painful. Like the dam menstrual cramp. But my cervix only dilated 3cm (you need to dilate to 10cm to deliver) and so my gynae concluded that the head of my baby must be too big for my pelvic bones.

So strange right? I always thought I had big pelvic bones cos I had a big bone structure. But my baby beat me to it with a strange head shape and a 39cm circumference.

So I had to go for Caesar. Because of the complications, my gynae preferred me to be unconscious.

So at 7pm, I was wheeled into the op room, given laughing gas and then I was out like lightning. When I awoke at 9.30pm, after seeing a flurry of lights (which meant that I was being wheeled out of the op theatre), I heard hubby’s voice telling me, “The baby is very handsome. He has double eye lids!”

See.. the baby was out just like that. No struggle, no nothing. Just a slight pain at where the cut was. Of cos I had to bear with the fact that it took me more than a month to recover (still in recovery.. but at least no longer red and angry looking).

I always thought there is no point doing it the painful way if I can do it the painless way.

But hearing people talk proudly about how they battle childbirth, I can't help but feel a sense of envy and a sense of loss that I did not have the chance to go through that.

I felt that because I did not go through that, it took me a longer time to connect to my son.

For the first three days, I just simply could not believe that this handsome little baby was mine. I didn’t even feel like he was mine until I had to leave hospital and leave him there because he needed treatment for jaundice. (This useless mummy cried and almost made daddy cry too.)

Thank goodness I opted to breast feed ;) It certainly helped us to bond. I mean.. how not to when I spend like 20min to an hour at each feeding and I feed at least 8 times a day.

Well, I can only pray that my next baby (yes people, I am ready to think about a NEXT baby as my hubby will be VERY PLEASED to know) will have a smaller head and then maybe I will have a chance to brave the storms and blog about it ;)

PS: On second thoughts, I may want to leave it till the third child. I dun want to survive the ordeal only to declare that I NEVER want to have children again! Hiaks… :P :P