37 Weeks-Nervous Sickness

This was my experience during my 37 weeks…

As THE day is approaching, I was really overwhelmed with the whole childbirth thing. Can I cope with the pain? Would it be a long process? How about complications?

The fact that I’ve been feed with various nerve wracking childbirth stories doesn’t really help either. I believe that one have to be mentally prepared to deal with the whole process. Therefore, I had always wanted to attend antenatal class since my early pregnancy. But the timing was always wrong-it was either MH or I were not available during the time (which is almost every weekend in MH’s case!) or there was no class being conducted at all on our preferred date. Before we knew it, I was already in my 37-weeks and I had given up hope.

Therefore, the only childbirth story that I kept rewinding in my mind right now is my Mom’s-especially her experience when she delivered me. You see, I was a breech baby. I was so huge at birth (weighed at 3.8 kg to be exact) as compared to my Mom’s petite frame. Therefore, there was not enough room for me to turn at all, and I was born legs first. My Mom used to tell me how the nurses shrieked as they caught a glimpse of a baby’s leg hanging out from her. At that time, almost everybody thought that my Mom would undergo an operation to go on with the process. Against all odds, my Mom managed to give a normal and quite speedy delivery- with God’s willing and blessing through the expertise of Dato’ Dr Menon of Assunta Hospital.

Since I was young, I always fascinated with the way she told me the story. She made it sounded so easy and never ever did she mention about the labour pain. Hahaha… But I had learned a valuable lesson this week. Worrying too much on labour would not do anything good to you. In fact, in my case it caused me to be cranky and more susceptible to stress related sickness-fatigue, gastritis, nausea and even diarrhea. I had to drag myself to work, was unable to concentrate on anything and was feeling down the whole week.

I didn’t realize that I was so tensed about the whole labour thing, until one night, MH asked me to solat Isya’ berjemaah. Kemudian dia ajak keluar. It was already midnight. I felt bad for ignoring him for the week, so I tagged along. We just cruising around KL while blasting retro songs on the stereo and ended up having supper at Bangsar. We had quite a similar routine the next night. We went to Mc D around 3 a.m. for supper and strolling at the Setiawangsa down town market. Agak romantik jugalah berjalan-jalan ambil angin malam dengan MH sambil berborak-borak. So kalau ada sesiapa yang ternampak mak buyong yang sangat sarat berjalan malam-malam di sekitar KL dalam minggu tu, it was probably me!

I had to admit that I feel much better after that. It kept my mind off the whole labour thing; in fact we did not talk about the baby at all. We talked about us. Little did I know that what MH did was sort of therapy. He told me that he got to know somewhere that the symptoms that I experienced earlier might be what they called as nervous sickness, due to overwhelming thought/feeling about childbirth. Or something like that. Whatever it is, I am glad he did what he did and I feel much better now!