Pregosaurus in Zurich: Story of Deliverance

I have always wanted to read detailed recounts of the process of labour and birth. However, I suppose most mothers are too tired by the end of the experience and overwhelmed by the milk and poo monsters that few get around to actually doing it. While recovering the last 10 days or so from the trauma of labour, sleepless nights, body aches, greatly increased bowel movements and engorged breasts, I have been in these moments thinking about what I shall journal and share about this whole "beautiful" experience.

This experience is so commonplace, but something that, in my mind, always happened to others, but not to me -- until the eve of 31 October 2010...

If you share my morbid fascination with birth and all the gross details, join me as I recount the some 20 hours we had in the hospital for the delivery of Gaby, and my deliverance from 40 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy...

Last photo with Gaby inside

Never seen stretch marks before? Battle scars of pregnancy.

It was hard moving about in the final couple of weeks. Supermarket shopping became such a breathless chore. Luckily we discovered the library nearby and "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini kept me entertained during the wait. (By the way, I think the movie's succinct yet all-capturing style was way better than the book.)

Preliminary examination room

When we checked into the hospital on Saturday at 8.30pm, they plonked us in this examination room first. After 10 hours of contractions spent at home, the midwife told me I was only 1cm dilated. Anyway, Lionel and I spent almost a good hour in this room, with me prancing about in this green blouse and the netted white panty and pad they handed me, while waiting for the different check-ups by the midwife and doctor.

The doctor, omigosh... the doctor on the night shift was this young and handsome lad who looked about Lionel's age. It felt so weird having a contemporary I could have easily met in my circle of peers examining me. And he had the most candid sense of humour. Before the ultrasound, he very un-doctorly stuffed his gloved finger up the electrolyte liquid bottle to drain it well and smudged whatever he could extract onto my belly with that finger. He explained, "Don't mind me. I just don't like seeing these things getting wasted. It's so stupid how they put this into such small bottles and so much of it gets wasted. And they aren't cheap too."

Delivery bed where I would spend the next >10 hours on

I was walked across the corridor in the same mentioned indecent outfit to the delivery room.

Red waterbirth tub on the right

The delivery room was HUUGE. Because I requested to have a water birth (we found out that my basic insurance here covers water birth too and thought, why not keep that option available), we were given one of the two huge water-birth-equipped rooms in the hospital. You may now ooh and ahh with envy, all you mothers stuck in Singapore.*sadistic snigger*

Lionel Facebooking next to the blue birthing stool

Birthing tub & birthing ball

Like most delivery facilities in Zurich, the room was also equipped with a birthing stool, and a birthing ball (it looks like one of those exercise gym balls actually).

Needles, drips and monitoring devices

One of the first things most hospitals do with a pregger is to needle her up so that an entry point to the blood stream is available at all times for any situation that may arise. For instance, Gaby's fetal heart rate was on the high side so I was given water intravanously for extra hydration. This was also the same entry point for the oxytoxin hormone drips to add speed to my long labour.

High on laughing gas (nitrous oxide)

Now that the logistical aspects of the birth experience have been divulged, next come the chronicles of pain.

(Very unflattering angle of an inflated arm.)

I wanted to try all pain killing options before resorting to the epidural. Besides a warm shower, laughing gas was the mildest of them all. This I took while I was dilating to 3cm. I have never gotten drunk before, and I guess this must be what it would have felt like. By the third deep breath of the gas (oxygen + nitrous oxide), I really felt light. What I heard has been exactly replicated by movie scenes where someone is in a semi-state of consciousness. Voices and the white noise around me fade suddenly, and certain distinct sounds, like my own breathing, and the ticking of the clock, become so distinctly clear.

By 3cm, the laughing gas wasn't working anymore and I asked for the next step. I was given Tramal and Buscopan, if I recall correctly. The pill was delivered via the anus, but I have little memory of it since I was still on my laughing gas, and somehow, with end pregnancy and labour, my body becomes an object and no longer has any shame. But I must also give credit to the midwives (not the doctors -- they are the roughest when it comes to handling my bits) who made me feel so at ease with them.

I was told it would take about half an hour for these meds to take effect. Writhing in pain on the bed still with the gas mask in my hand, I watched the clock in between trying to get some sleep. It remained 3am for a long long long long time. And I found no relief from the new drugs.

Finally, it dawned on me that it was the turn of the clock to daylight savings. The analogue clock in the delivery ward was so advanced and acclimatised to life in Zurich that it stopped moving for a whole hour at 3am to get in tune with the new daylight savings time.

At one toilet visit, the midwife came and took a look at my pad, which had a few red stains on it. To Lionel's and my horror, she matter-of-factly brought it up to her nose and sniffed it. Her conclusion was that my waterbag had broken. We were educated at birthing class that amniotic fluid has a close resemblance in smell to semen -- because of the prostaglandins found in both. But we didn't expect this knowledge to be put into practice this way!

Well, my dilations weren't progressing much with the hours and I knew I was in for a really long night, so I eventually decided on the epidural. My strategy was simple -- get my pain relief now and sleep so I can conserve energy for the actual pushing.

A post-epidural me

All happy once again and I managed to get some sleep. The only signs of my contractions were on the contraction monitoring screen. I opted for the walking epidural -- a lower dose which meant that my legs could still function, and I could still feel some pain. Another handsome young doctor delivered the epidural. I wonder what happens to all the old doctors around here. I was in labour long enough to see three different shifts of doctors and midwives and they all looked like they came off the set of ER.

The epidural is truly one of Man's greatest inventions.

The unfortunate thing about having the epidural was that I was all wired up and I couldn't leave the bed anymore. Going down the epidural path also meant that water birth was no longer an option, but it didn't matter to me anymore. Waterbirth was grass I had, coming from the Singapore side, thought was always greener, until I came to Zurich itself -- and when it's so easily available, the novelty wears off.

Being "bedridden" also meant I couldn't pee on my own anymore. Three different midwives cleared my pee using a catheter and a large kidney dish. I have never been admitted to hospital or subjected my bits to such public view and probing, but the midwives (well, all of them until the final one) were fantastically gentle and nonchalant about it such that I felt all so at ease and could even hold a conversation with them while the trickling sound of my urine going into the cold metal kidney dish played in the background.

The epidural wasn't always even. I could feel one side more than the other, and towards the end of the ordeal, my left leg had gone totally numb, while I could feel the ache of contractions running down my right. I did not want to increase the dosage any further as I felt the end was near. I wanted to be able to feel the pushing when the time came, and not be subjected to having Gaby vacuum-suctioned out.

Waiting

When Lionel and I left for the hospital on Saturday evening, my Mum told us to call her no matter what time Gaby came out. She must have been waiting the whole night for the call. What optimism. Ha! When Saturday night came and went, and Sunday came, Lionel still had time to leave the hospital in the morning to pick up a package from an SIA pilot family friend of the Hengs (more Prima mixes and Myojo instant noodles!), go grab us McDonalds and return.

It was nice that the UniversitatsSpital allowed up to two companions during the birth. My Mum joined us in the afternoon, all fresh from her good night's rest.

Our last couple photo before Gaby popped

The dilation from 9 to 10cm took a long long time, but when it was finally there, the team got into action. We were wondering if I had been forgotten because the doctor said we could start pushing and let her get ready, but it took what felt like about half an hour before they returned.

Finally, they returned, and the two leg holder stands were pulled up from the bed sides. My legs were hoisted up. In the flurry of events, suddenly there were at least 5 others in the room. No wonder they needed to get the entire team prepared. There was more than one doctor and several midwives.

In spite of the chaos within me and around me, I, the avid fan for certain details, looked at the clock to note the time when we started the whole drama. It was 4.20pm on a Sunday afternoon.

I was asked to push when I felt a contraction come. I couldn't quite feel the contractions in terms of the pain because of the epidural, so I put my hand on my tummy to feel its hardening.

Lionel, who had all this while been on my left, gave me a running commentary on what he could see from the other end. I can see her head! Good, dar dar, you're doing very well, her forehead is showing! Hahahaha... your face is all red.

A pretty doctor, who entered midway and shook my hand in the middle of the pushing, introduced herself as the paediatrician. She stood on my left and pressed an arm across my belly with each push. This, she explained, was to prevent the baby from retreating upwards after the contraction.

Unavoidably, the doctor did the episiotomy. And Lionel had to tell me she was taking up the scissors. I really didn't want to know.

I did not scream through the whole thing, until Gaby's head was emerging. The epidural was no match for that sharp pain and more so, my fear of ripping. You're almost there, I tell myself, recklessly forgetting the pain and giving one final push.

Omigosh omigosh, her head is out! She's looking around! I hear Lionel excitedly. That was so encouraging. We had been watching very graphic Youtube videos of births (God bless the women who post those videos for our public education) and we knew once the head was out, the end was really near.

A couple more pushes and her whole body came slithering out. My Mum had been seated far on my left to avoid obstruction and had appeared so calm all this while. But at that moment, I saw her face light up, a smile grow across her face, and was that a tear of joy?

I leaned forward and saw my baby lying in the mess of blood beneath me. My baby who's been wriggling and hiccupping and growing and stepping on my bladder and being a part of me all these nine months -- I could finally see her! She was solid! She was real! I laughed. We laughed.

The team congratulated me, and the side members scurried away as the key personnel clipped her umbilical cord and let Lionel cut the blue ribbon, and they handed her over to me. Her body was soft and wet and warm. They had given her a wipe, but she was still bloody, but I didn't care. This time, my obsession with hygiene and aversion to bodily fluids could take a backseat.

A well-captured shot of the moment by Lionel dearest

While I was enjoying holding my baby in my chest, the team was busy trying to collect her cord blood for Cryo-Save as we had requested them do. They were also busy examining the placenta to ensure that all of it had come out and for some other medical reasons I am not entirely sure of.

This is how it looks. I hope none of you reading this has food with you now. The round flat blob, the vehicle for Gaby's nutrition, oxygen and waste, weighed 480g (according to the report I took home for my post-natal midwife home visits).

Placenta whole

Placenta opened up

Gaby was left with me for a while, while the team did all the post-birth procedures of recording the time of birth, collecting cord blood, checking the placenta etc. I brought Gaby to my breast, and she latched on instinctively. Nature's miracle.

When they took her away for the proper clean up and baby logistics, Gaby left her first poop on my belly.

Gaby's first poop -- dark greenish-black meconium on my belly

While she disappeared with the midwife into an adjacent room, the doctor started stitching me up. I'm so glad the epidural needle was still left in me and running. The whole embroidery seemed to take at least a good ten minutes and I was trying to keep fear and pain out of my head.