Sunday (16 May 2004)

Woke up in the morning as per normal but remembered having more contractions the night before while sleeping.  Nothing very disturbing so I basically slept through them.

Another hot day so we decided to go to for breakfast, then proceed to Toa Payoh.  Maybe proceed to the library to enjoy the aircon.

After breakfast, when I stood up, I felt two gushes of water.  Not a lot, but it didn't seem like it's my 'weak' bladder.  So I told Richard that we should really head home, so that in case any more things happened, we would not be in the middle of nowhere.  Went home and nothing else happened.  There was a small blood stain but I was not sure if I should make anything of it.  After all, I had never gone into labour on my own and was not sure what to expect.  The only rule of thumb I worked on was whether the 'symptom' was serious enough or not.  A small blot of blood certainly didn't seem serious enough, especially when there was no contraction to go with it.

Actually, I felt rather frustrated.  If it was a sure sign, at least we could start making arrangements like sending Dominic to my parents', etc.  When it was neither here nor there like that, things were really in a limbo and I didn't know whether I should be living life normally or put my life on hold for something which might not happen for the next few days!

Decided that I should do some standing up activity (even though quite tiring) to help things a bit.  So I told Richard that I would do some ironing until about 1pm.  If nothing else happened, we would proceed with our original plan of having lunch out and basically 'live life normally'.

Just before we started preparing to get out of the house again at noon, I decided to check and found more bloody show.  Ok, that was it, I thought.  Called my parents to arrange for them to take care of Dominic for a couple of days.  Contraction had not started yet, so we went ahead with our original plan of lunching out.

Contraction started while we were in Toa Payoh, at about 40 minutes apart.  They were very bearable and I could still have a nice, Sizzler buffet lunch and walk around with no problem.  After doing all these, we went straight to my parents' place and left Dominic to their care.  Then we went home to wait out.

Actually, we wanted to catch the movie, 'Law of Attraction',  in the afternoon but we didn't want to venture to town.  Tried to take a short nap in the afternoon.  Couldn't really sleep because the contractions were getting stronger and longer and we were trying to time them also.

By around 6pm, the contractions were closer and more regular and stronger.  We started getting things ready, sending emails (e.g. to Dominic's preschool to inform them that he would be sent there and picked up by his grandparents for a few days), called the school bus lady, did last minute packing, etc.  At first, I thought we could still venture out nearby for a quick dinner but before long, we realised that things were speeding up and we really couldn't do that.  Contractions were about 10 minutes apart, lasting about 1 minute.  I was really concentrating on coping with it already.  Richard managed to get himself some dinner but I couldn't eat anything.