關於 it's been a long time since we last saw each other ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

Hello Singapore Zoo, we are back!

Yup, it's been too long since we last saw our animal friends and the kids were definitely ecstatic to be able to set foot here again.

Talking about feet, we were all wearing our new kicks from @skecherssg because we were resolute to walk at least 5km that day. Yup, no pram, no tram, no carrying, just lots and lots of walking. I half expected at least one or two of them to kick up a fuss but surprisingly, all three kids displayed their determination and resilence and made it till the park closed with no complaints. Amazing!

I think the good weather, comfy shoes, lovely animals and having Papa with us made all the difference. We finished 5.1km and even made it for a nice Teochew porridge dinner and then home without anyone falling asleep on the long car ride. Woohoo!

This is how school holidays should be like and I think we kind of missed this feeling. Still, I am thankful to know that the parks have capped their capacity for now - remember to book your timeslot before you visit - and everyone was wearing masks and keeping a safe distance from each other.

We have planned a couple more family trips for this week and I am pretty sure we are all gonna have a blast. Yup, it's okay that we can't go overseas for now as long as we make time to be together as a family and do things that make us happy. Don't you agree?

P.S. Don't forget to sign up for the Skechers Friendship Walk if you have not! Swipe to the last pic to see what made the boy cry and why he came dashing up saying he was angry. Lol. #妈妈是属于我的 #爸爸让开 #myjealousboy

#ahappymum #familytime #SkechersFriendshipWalk2020 #skecherssg #schoolholidays #makingmemories #happinessis #aslongaswearetogether

เราเคยมองหาความรักแท้จากทั่วทุกที่ที่ไป เฝ้ามองหาตลอดเวลา แต่หลาย ๆ ความรักที่ได้มามักมีข้อแม้มากมาย จนวันหนึ่งเราเจอกับผู้หญิงที่ไม่มีคำพูดสวยงามใด ๆ มีแต่การกระทำที่บอกเราว่า เราทุกคนโชคดีเหลือเกินที่เกิดมามีรักแท้ตั้งแต่วินาทีแรกที่มีชีวิต ✨ รักที่ไม่มีข้อแม้และไม่สนว่าเราจะเป็นอะไร เพราะทันทีที่เราได้ขึ้นชื่อว่าลูก มนุษย์ที่ชื่อว่า “แม่” คือสุดยอดซูเปอร์ฮีโร่ที่จะปกป้อง และดูแลเราในทุกความโหดร้ายบนโลกใบนี้ ในวันแม่นี้ เราอยากพาทุกคนไปสัมผัสกับชีวิตผู้หญิงตัวเล็ก ๆ ที่หัวใ...
Continue ReadingWe used to look for true love everywhere we looked for all the time. But many love that we have always had so many conditions. One day we met a woman with no words. Beautiful deeds that told us that we are all so lucky to be born with true love since. First second alive ✨ Unconditional love and don't care what we are. As soon as we are called ′′ Mother ′′ is the superhero who will protect and care for us in every cruelty on earth. On this Mother's Day, we want to take everyone to experience a life of a strong little woman with a strong head. ′′ Mr. Saranya Chamni ′′ or ′′ Golf ′′ shop owner of ′′ Steak Mother Cartoon ′′ who passed sudden losses but still. Keep your teeth fighting to continue your baby's life with all your ability. ❤
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Read the full article at 👉🏼 https://bit.ly/30LSPSH
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Life can change in a blink of an eye. And the change often doesn't have any signal for us to prepare ourselves. It's like every day. A family who works honestly is exhausted from work and packing in front of the shop. Karma drives to crash. Two father and son. The mother in the kitchen ran to see it and the picture in front of me is the father and son hugging each other. And that's the last hug of the family. Little cartoon.
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′′ 6 years ago, we were selling steaks around Barbon. We were closing the shop. Father and sister gathered the table in front of the shop. But suddenly the car was in front of the shop. The car was in front of the shop. But the car was nowhere to hit the father Come to crash at the younger brother. But the car crashed so hard that the brain came out. The picture that we saw was still stuck in our eyes. We don't even have a chance to say goodbye to him well. But we believe that he did the best duty of the father. The cartoon I didn't respond to anything else. All of our collective money was spent on the treatment. We couldn't stay still. So we opened the shop again. But this time we opened it alone. But the income wasn't enough. So we made more chili paste for people Online ′′
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That event is a news that makes a lot of depression for anyone. We think that Golf is no different. In your eyes, Golf is strong. Golf is hard to support Cartoon because of the word ′′ mom ′′ that pushes you to golf. Powerful.
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′′ As soon as we know we will have a baby, we know that our lives will change. We are prepared for everything and always think that no matter what happens, we will love our children and take care of them the best. But this incident exceeds our expectations. It happened too soon. We used to have a cute baby. We thought we loved our baby so much. But when this happens, we love our baby more because we have to be the whole world for him to take care of him more. We don't have time. What do you blame or think why this has to happen to us because our child needs a strong person to take care of him
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If you go back ten years ago, Golf would be another happy family. Have a lovely daughter and have a well-taken care of husband. But today only myself and the kids that brother Golf are waiting for the miracle for you to be back normal again.
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′′ In the beginning, there are many times that we can't get over it and hope that there is a miracle for us and our children. But when we start to be conscious and live with what happened, we think that above all miracles is love from our family. We are lucky to have mental support from parents. We keep supporting us when we are discouraged. We see the development of our children. We see them grow everyday. Even if they can't satisfy us much. But in motherhood, we can hug each other. We know everything. What we do for someone, we stop hoping for a miracle because for us, a miracle happens once when we give birth to one person. The rest is our duty to take care of him the best
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In a world where relationships are full of caves and conditions. One unconditional relationship and no matter what, there is no less or depleted.
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′′ We thought that we would have different requirements with our child because we want him to grow up the best. But when we are really mother, we can't do that in this world. There are many requirements to limit our children's lives. We have a duty. Just stay beside him and let him live the way he should be. This is a mother's perspective. No matter how normal we are, we want him to be happy. That's all we can do. We can do anything we can do. All gone ′′
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A small shop in front of a small place with more than 60 menus to choose from. Try ′′ soft pork steak ′′ (79 baht) that uses soft neck ridge. Grilled until it's ripe. Crunchy on the outside. Soft at the price worth the price. Or it's a ′′ drunk fried spaghetti ′′ (59 baht) that tastes hot and sea feathers without a gag 👍🏼
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If you are not convenient to come to support us, you can help buy the chili paste that Khun Golf made by yourself. There are many options for ′′ pork chili paste ′′ (180 baht). Big pork with spicy side dishes. A jar of ′′ Catfish chili paste / Slim fried ginger chili paste ′′ (80 baht per bag) which is both spicy and not spicy. Fried until crispy. Seasoned to the heart. Hot rice is better and ′′ Chili paste ′′ Clams ′′ (150 baht). Full of shellfish. Mixed with crispy fish meat. It fits together. 😋
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With this full meal, we can feel satisfied with eating because it's indirectly helping Cartoon because Golf says that there are many people who want to help. But Golf doesn't want to ask for money for free. At least we use our efforts to help. If you are better than anyone, you can support us. The steak restaurant, mother cartoon, opposite Kasikorn, headquarters or call 088-018-5575 or order LINE MAN to make a fund to help cartoon, both steak and chili paste. Ready to deliver. Fresh chili paste to your hand. 🥰
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It's been a long time since half of the year. It's a difficult and tiring year. Don't forget to take a big encouragement from mother on this holiday. There may be true love and good things waiting for us.
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🍴: steak mom cartoon
📍: 94/3, Rat Burana Road, Rat Burana, Bangkok. (Opposite to Kasikorn Headquarters)
📞: call 088-018-5575
⏰: Open Monday - Friday 11.00-14.00 hrs. And 16.00 am-22.00 pm
Saturday - Sunday 12.00-22.00 hrs.
🛵: Order LINE MAN here! 👉🏻 https://bit.ly/2DXXbwX
⭐️: See more location and reviews 👉🏻 https://www.wongnai.com/restaurants/178152yS
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#Wongnai #WongnaiBacktoLife
Start your new normal life together with Wongnai. Find restaurant information from all over the country and share your review at Wongnai app ▶️ Free download here>> http://bit.ly/2U0bdn See LessTranslated

My sister, Michelle-Ann Iking's 3% chance of conceiving naturally was a success! Here's her story:

(My apologies as I've been overwhelmed with personal matters. I've only managed to get to my desk. So finally got around posting this).

This is the story behind my sister's pregnancy struggle and how she shared her journey over her Facebook page.

Because some may have not caught her LIVE session chat with me (https://www.facebook.com/daphneiking/videos/687743128744960/) , or read her lengthy post (as it's a private page);
she's allowed me to copy and paste it over my wall, in case you need to know more about her thought process on how AND why she focused on the 3% success probability. Read on.

-------------------------------------------

Posted 10th May 2020.
FB Credit: Michelle-Ann Iking

A week ago today I celebrated becoming a mother to our second, long awaited child.

Please forgive this mother's LONG (self-indulgent) post, journalling what this significant milestone has meant for her personally, for her own fallible memory's sake as well as maybe to share one day with her son.

If all you were wondering was whether I had delivered and if mum and bub are OK, please be assured the whole KkLM family are thriving tremendously, and continue scrolling right along your Newsfeed 😁.

OUR 3% MIRACLE

All babies are miracles... and none more so than our precious Kiaen Aaryan (pronounced KEY-n AR-yen), whose name derives from Sanskrit origins meaning:

Grace of God
Spiritual
Kind
Benevolent

...words espousing the gratitude Kishore and I feel for Kiaen's arrival as our "3% miracle".

He was conceived, naturally, after 3 years of Kishore and I hoping, praying and 'endeavoring'... and only couples for whom the objective switches from pure recreation to (elusive) procreation will understand how this is less fun than it sounds ...

3 years during which time we had consensus from 3 different doctors that we, particularly I (with my advancing age etc etc) had only a 3% chance of natural conception and that our best hope for a sibling for our firstborn, Lara Anoushka, was via IVF.

Lara herself was an 'intervention baby', being one of the 20% of babies successfully conceived through the less intrusive IUI process, after a year and a half of trying naturally and already being told then my age was a debilitating factor.

We had tried another round of IUI for her sibling in 2017 when Lara was a year old. And that time we fell into the ranks of the 80% of would-be parents for whom it would be an exercise in futility... who would go home, comfort each other as best they could, while individually masking their own personal disappointment... hoping for the best, 'the next time around'...

So the improbability ratio of 97% against natural conception of our second baby, as concurred by the combined opinion of 3 medical professionals, was a very real, very daunting figure for us to have to mentally deal with.

Deep, DEEP, down in my heart however, though I had many a day of doubt... I kept a core kernel of faith that somehow, I would again experience the privilege of pregnancy, and again, have a chance at childbirth.

And so, the optimist in me would tell myself, "Well, there have to be people who fall in the 3% bucket... why shouldn't WE be part of the 3%?"

Those who know me well, understand my belief in the Law of Attraction, the philosophy of focusing your mind only on what you want to attract, not on what you don't want, and so even as Kishore and I prepared to go into significant personal debt to attempt IVF in the 2nd half of 2019, I marshalled a last ditch effort to hone in on that 3% chance of natural conception... through research coming across fertility supplements that I ordered from the US and sent to a friend in Singapore to redirect to me because the supplier would not deliver to Malaysia.

I made us as a couple take the supplements in the 3 month 'priming period' in the lead up to the IVF procedure - preconditioning our bodies for optimum results, if you will.

At the same time, I had invested in a sophisticated fertility monitor, with probes and digital sensors for daily tracking of saliva and other unmentionable fluid samples, designed to pinpoint with chemical accuracy my state of fertility on any given day.

(UPDATE: For those interested - I obtained the supplements and Ovacue Fertility Monitor from https://www.fairhavenhealth.com/. Though I had my supplies delivered to a friend in Singapore, and redirected to me here since the US site does not deliver to Malaysia, there are local distributors for these products, you will just have to research the trustworthiness of the vendors yourself...)

I had set an intention - in the 3 months of pre-IVF priming, I would consume what seemed like a pharmacy's worth of supplements, and track fertility religiously... in hopes that somehow, within the 3 month priming period, we would conceive naturally and potentially save ourselves a down payment on a new property... and this was just a projection on financial costs of IVF, not even considering the physical, emotional and mental toll it involves, with no guarantee of a baby at the end of it all...

It was a continuation of an intention embedded even with my first pregnancy, where all the big ticket baby items were consciously purchased for use by a future sibling, in gender neutral colours, in hopes that sibling would be a brother "for a balanced pair", though of course any healthy child would be a welcome blessing.

It was a very conscious determination to always skew my thoughts in service of what the end objective was. For example, when 3+year old Lara would innocently express impatience at not yet having a sibling, at one point suggesting that since we were "taking too long to give her a baby brother/sister", perhaps we should just "go buy a baby from a shop", instead of getting defensive or berating the baby that she herself was, we enlisted Lara's help to pray for her sibling... so in any place of worship, or sacred ground of any kind that we passed thereon, Lara would stop, close her eyes, bow her small head and place her tiny hands together in prayer, reciting earnestly, "Please God, please give me a baby brother or baby sister."

After months and months of watching Lara do this, in the constancy of her childlike chant, Kishore started feeling the pressure of possibly disappointing Lara if her prayer was not answered. Whereas for me, Lara's recitation of her simple wish became like a strengthening mantra, our collective intention imbued with greater power with each repetition, and the goal of a sibling kept very much in the forefront of our minds (hence our calling Lara our 'project manager' in this endeavour).

And somehow in the 2nd month of that 3 month period, a positive + sign appeared on one of the home pregnancy tests I had grown accustomed to taking - my version of the lottery tickets others keep buying in hopes of hitting the jackpot, with all the cyclical anticipation and more often than not, disappointment, that entails...

This time however I was not disappointed.

With God's Grace, (hence 'Kiaen', a variation of 'Kiaan' which means 'Grace of God'), my focus on our joining the ranks of the 3% had materialised.

It seems poetic then, that Kiaen chose to make his appearance on the 3rd May, ironically the same date that his paternal great-grandfather departed this world for the next... such that in the combined words of Kishore and his father Kai Vello Suppiah,

"The 1st generation Suppiah left on 3rd May and the 4th generation Suppiah arrived on 3rd May after 41yrs...
One leaves, another comes, the legacy lives on..."

***

KIAEN AARYAN SUPPIAH'S BIRTH STORY

On Sunday 3rd May, I was 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant.

The baby was, in my mind, very UN-fashionably late past his due date of 29th April, so as much as I had willed and 'manifested' the privilege of pregnancy, to say I was keen to be done with it all was an understatement.

In the weeks leading to up to my full term, I had experienced increasingly intense Braxton-Hicks 'practice contractions' - annoying for me for the discomfort involved, stressful for Kishore who was on tenterhooks with the false alarms, on constant alert for when we would actually need to leave home for the hospital.

Having become a Hypnobirthing student and advocate from my first pregnancy with Lara, and thus being equipped with
(1) a lack of fear about childbirth in general and
(2) a basic understanding of how all the sensations I would experience fit into the big picture of my body bringing our baby closer to us,
I was less stressed - content to wait for the baby to be "fully cooked" and come out whenever he was ready... though I wouldn't have minded at all if the cooking time ended sooner, rather than later.

With Lara, I had been somewhat 'forced' into an induced labour, even though she was not yet due, and that had resulted in a 5 DAY LABOUR, a Birth Story for another post, so I was not inclined to chemically induce labour, even though I was assured that for second time mothers, it would be 'much faster and easier'...

That morning, I had a hunch *maybe* that day was the day, because in contrast to previous weeks' sensations of tightening, pressure and even spasms that were concentrated in the front of my abdomen and occasionally shot through my sides and legs, I felt period - like cramping in my lower back which I had not felt before throughout the pregnancy.

It was about 8am in the morning then, and my 'surges' were still relatively mild ('surges' being Hypnobirthing - speak for 'contractions', designed to frame them with the more positive connotations needed to counteract common language in which childbirth is presented as something that is unequivocally painful and traumatic, instead of the miraculous, powerful and natural phenomenon it actually is).

I recall (masochistically?) entertaining the thought of opting NOT to have an epidural JUST TO SEE WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE...

I figured this would be the last time I would be pregnant and so it would be my 'last chance' to experience 'drug free labour' which, apart from the health benefits for baby and mother, might be *interesting* in a way that people who are curious about what getting a tattoo and skydiving and bungee jumping are like, might find these *interesting*...even knowing there will be pain and risk involved...

Since I have tried tattoos and skydiving (unfortunately not being able to squeeze in bungee-jumping while my life was purely my own to risk at no dependents' possible detriment) a similar curiousity about a no-epidural labour was on my mind...

In the absence of other signs of the onset of labour (like 'bloody show' or my waters breaking), I wanted to wait until the surges were coming every few minutes before we actually left the house for the hospital, not wanting to be one of those couples who rushed in too early and had interminable waits for the next stage in unfamiliar, clinical surroundings and/or were made to go home in an anti-climatic manner.

I was even calm enough through my surges to have the presence of mind to wash and blowdry my hair, knowing if I did deliver soon I would not be allowed this luxury for a while.

Around 9am I asked Kishore to prep for Lara and himself to be dressed and breakfasted so we could head to hospital soon, while I sent messages to family members on both sides informing them 'today might be the day.'

My mother, who had briefly served as a midwife before going back into general nursing and then becoming a nursing tutor, prophetically stated that if what I was experiencing was true labour, "the baby would be out by noon".

The pace in which my surges grew closer together was surprisingly quicker than I expected; and while I asked Lara to "Hurry up with breakfast" with only a tad more urgency than we normally tell her to do, little Missy being prone to dilly-dallying at meals, I probably freaked Kishore out when about 930am onwards, I had to instinctively get on my hands and knees a couple of times, eyes closed, trying to practice the Hypnobirthing breathing techniques I had revised to help along the process of my body birthing our child into the world.

I recall him saying a bit frantically as I knelt at our front door, doubled over as he waited for Lara to complete something or other, "Lara hurry up! Can't you see Mama is in so much pain and you are taking your own sweet time??!!"

SIDETRACK: Just the night before, Lara and I had watched a TV show in which a woman gave birth with the usual histrionics accompanying pop culture depictions of labour.

Lara watched the scene, transfixed.

I told her, simply and matter-of-factly, "That's what Mama has to do to get baby brother out Lara, and that's what I had to do for you also."

In most of interactions with my daughter, I have sought to equip her to face life's situations with calmness, truthful common sense, and ideally a minimum of drama.

Those who know the dramatic diva that Lara can be will know that this is a work-in-progress, but her response to me that night showed me some of my 'teachings' were sinking in:

She looked at me unfazed, "But Mama," she said. "You won't cry and scream like that lady, right? You will be BRAVE and stay calm, right?"
#nopressure.

So as we prepped to leave for the hospital I did indeed attempt to be that role model of calm for her, asking her only for her help in keeping very quiet,
"Because Mama needs to focus on bringing baby brother out and she needs quiet to concentrate...".

As we left the house at 10.11am, I texted Kishore's sister Geetha to please prep to pick up Lara from the hospital, and was grateful Kishore had the foresight to ask our gynae to prepare a letter for Geetha to show any police roadblocks between my in-laws' home in Subang Jaya and the hospital in Bangsar, this all happening under the Movement Control Order (MCO).

To Lara's credit, in the journey over to the hospital, she - probably sensing the gravity of the situation, sat very quietly in her seat at the back, and the silence was punctuated only by my occasional deep intakes of breath and some variation of my Ohmmm-like moans when the sensations were at their height.

By the time we got to Pantai Hospital at around 10.30am, my surges were strong enough I requested a wheelchair to assist me in getting to the labour ward, as I did not trust my own legs to support me... and Kishore would have to wait until Geetha had arrived to take Lara back to my in-laws' house before he himself could go up.

I slumped in the wheelchair and was wheeled up to the labour room with my eyes closed the whole time, trying to handle my surges.

I didn't even look up to see the attendant who pushed me... but did make the effort to thank him sincerely when he handed me over, with what seemed like a palpable sense of relief on his part, to the labour ward nurses.

The nurse attending me at Pantai was calm, steady and efficient. I answered some questions and changed into my labour gown while waiting for Kishore to come up, all the while managing the increasingly intense surges with my rusty Hypnobirthing breathing techniques.

By the time Kishore joined me at around 11am (I know these timings based on the timestamps of the 'WhatsApp live feed' of messages Kishore sent to his family), I was asking the nurse on duty, "How soon can I get an epidural??" thinking what crazy woman thought she could do this without drugs???!!!

The nurse checked my cervix dilation, I saw her bloodied glove indicating my mucous plug had dislodged, and she told me, "Well you are already at 7cm (which, for the uninitiated, is 70% of the way to the 10cm dilation needed for birthing), you are really doing well, if you made it this far without any drugs, if can you try and manage without it... I suspect within 2 hours or less you will deliver your baby and since it will take about that time for the anaesthesiologist to be called, epidural to be administered and kick in... it might all be for nothing... but of course the decision is completely up to you... "

So there I was, super torn, should I risk the sensations becoming worse... or risk the epidural becoming a waste?? And of course I was trying to decide this as my labour surges were coming at me stronger and stronger...

I was in such a dilemma...because as a 'recovering approval junkie' there was also a silly element of approval-seeking involved, ("The nurse thinks I can do this without drugs... maybe I CAN do this without drugs... Yay me!") mixed with that element of curiosity I mentioned earlier ("What if I actually CAN do this without drugs... plenty of other women have done it all over the world since time immemorial.. no big deal, how bad can it be...??") so then I thought I would use the financial aspect to be the 'tiebreaker' in my decision making...

I asked the nurse how much an epidural would cost and when she replied "Around MYR1.5k", I still remember Kishore's incredulous face as I asked the question, i.e."Seriously babe, you are gonna think about money right now? If you need the epidural TAKE IT, don't worry about the money!!!"... and while we are not rich by any stretch of the imagination, thankfully RM1.5k is not a quantum that made me swing towards a decision to "better save the money"...

So in the end, I guess my curiosity won out, and I turned down the epidural "just to see what it would be like and if I had it in me" (in addition of course to avoiding the side effects of any drugs introduced into my and the baby's body).

My labour occuring in the time of coronavirus, it was protocol for me to have a COVID19 test done, so the medical staff could apply the necessary precautions. I had heard from a friend Sharon Ruba that the test procedure was uncomfortable, so when the nurse came with the test kit as I was starting another surge, I asked, "Please can I just finish this surge before I do the test?" as I really didn't think I could multitask tackling multiple uncomfortable sensations in one go.

The COVID19 test involved what felt like a looong, skinny cotton bud being inserted into one nostril... I definitely felt more than a tickle as it went in and up, being told to take deep breaths by the nurse. Then she asked me to "Try to swallow" and I felt it go into my nasal cavities where I didn't think anything could go any further, but was proven wrong when she asked me to swallow again and the swab was probed even deeper. Then she warned me there would be some slight discomfort as she prepared to collect a sample... but at that point all I could think about was:

(i) I really don't have much of a choice
(ii) please let this be over before my next surge kicks in
(iii) if all the people breaking the MCO rules knew what it feels like to do this test maybe they won't put themselves at risk of the need to perform one...

In full disclosure as I was transferred into the actual delivery room at some point after 11am, another nurse offered me 'laughing gas' to ostensibly take some of the edge off... I took the self-operated breathing nozzle passed to me but don't recall it making any difference to my sensations..so didn't use it much as it seemed pretty pointless.

I recall some measure of relief when I heard my gynae Dr. Paul entering the room, greeting Kishore and me, and telling us it was going well and it wouldn't be long now and he would see us again shortly.

From my previous labour with Lara I knew the midwives pretty much take you 90% of the way through the labour and when the Dr is called in you are really at the home stretch, so was very relieved to hear his voice though knowing he would leave and come back later meant it wasn't quite over yet.

I do remember realising when I had crossed the Thinning and Opening Phase of labour to the Birthing Phase, by the change in sensations... it is still amazing to me that as the Hypnobirthing book mentioned, having this knowledge I was instinctively able to switch breathing techniques for the next stage of labour .

Was my opting against epidural the right choice for me?

Overall? Yes.

Don't get me wrong.

I *almost* regretted the decision several times during active labour... especially when I felt my body being taken over by an overwhelming compulsion to push that did not seem conscious and was accompanied by involuntary gutteral moans where I literally just thought to myself, "I surrender, God do with me what you will..." (super dramatic I know but VERY real at the time...).

I think I experienced 3-4 such natural explusive reflexes (?), rhythmically pushing the baby down the birth path, one of which was accompanied by what felt like a swoosh of water coming out of a hose with a diameter the size of a golf ball... this was when I realised my water had finally broken...

The nurses kept instructing me to do different things, to keep breathing, to move to my side, then to move to the middle, to raise my feet... and when I didn't comply, Kishore (who was with me throughout both my labours) tried to help them by repeating the instructions prefaced with "Sayang..." but I basically ignored all the intructions because I felt I had no capacity to direct any part of my body to do anything and someone else would have to physically manoeuvre that body part themselves.

When I heard Dr. Paul's voice again and the flurry of commotion surrounding his presence, I knew the time was close... and when I heard the nurse say to Kishore, "Sir, these are your gloves, for when you cut the baby's cord", it was music to my ears...

I'm very, VERY grateful Kiaen slid out after maybe the 4th of those involuntary pushes... the wave of RELIEF when he came out so quickly... it still boggles my mind that my mother was essentially right and as his birth time was 12.02pm, it was *only* about 1.5 hours between our arrival at the hospital and his arrival into the world.

Kiaen was placed on my chest for skin to skin bonding and remained there for a considerable time.

For our short stay in the hospital he would be with us in my maternity ward number C327... another trivially serendipitous sign for me because he was born on the 3rd (May) and our wedding anniversary is 27th (July).

I was discharged the following day 4th May at about 5.30pm, after I got an all clear on COVID19 and a paediatric surgeon did a small procedure on Kiaen to address a tongue-tie that would affect his breastfeeding latch... making the entire duration of our stay about 31 hours.

I have taken the time and effort to record all this down so that whenever life's challenges threaten to get me down I can remind myself, "Ignore the 97% failure probability, focus on the 3% success probability".

Also that the human condition is miraculous and it is such a privilege to experience it.

To our son Kiaen Aaryan, thank you for coming into our lives and choosing us as your parents.

Even though Papa and I are both zombies trying to settle into a night time feeding routine with you, I look forward to spending not only all future Mother's Days, but every day, with you and your Akka...

And last but not least, to my husband Kishore...without whom none of this would be possible - we did it sayang, I love you ❤️

Photo credit: Stayhome session with Samantha Yong Photography (http://samanthayong.com/)