By about 8pm - 8:30pm, contractions were about 5 minutes apart, lasting about 1.5 minutes and more intense.  I wanted to hold out longer, but decided that I might not be able to make it downstairs to the carpark if I waited any longer.  I quickly took a shower, washed my hair, changed, while Richard got everything ready to go and called a cab.  I had to make a few stops while making my way to the cab because of the contractions.  And of all times, we had to get this lousy cab that had a problem with its suspension!!!  The first thing the cabby told us was this whole story about his cab's suspension having problem and asked us to complain to the cab company, blah blah blah.  I was cursing under my breath - I don't care what is wrong with your cab, just get on with the driving!

Reached the hospital just before 9pm.  Turned out my gynae was already on his way and he had another patient also giving birth at the same time.  The nurses, as per SOP, made me changed into hospital garb, got me to lie down and started strapping the monitor on me, etc.  Frankly, even though through all the researching and all that I have learned about natural and active labour, I know I shouldn't be subjected to all these, I was rather glad to get on the bed and lie down actually.  After all, the most important factor is that I should be comfortable and I think I would be the most comfortable and relaxed lying down even though all the active labour theories advise against this.  So who cares?

In fact, once I am in bed and calmed down, I actually could cope with the contraction better.

Then my gynae arrived and checked me.  I was about 5 cm dilated.  On the one hand, I was disappointed that it was not more.  On the other hand, I was quite glad that I had come this far on my own.

The 'disaster' struck when my gynae did an ARM (ie. burst my waterbag) on me before I realised what happened and after that, things sort of went steadily downhill.  The pain went several points up the 'Richter Scale' right after the ARM and I couldn't  bear with the sudden, intense pain.  Gynae and nurses offered me the gas but I have long decided that if I wanted pain relief, I would go straight to the epidural and not have a cocktail of drugs and then eventually still have epidural.  So I asked for epidural.  The pain was too terrible.

On hindsight, I think if the ARM was not done and the contraction pain was allowed to build up naturally, I probably might have coped.  Then again, even after the epidural, I was still feeling the contractions and the pain (but better than without the epidural).  I wondered if the pain could be more intense than normal and that I would need pain relief anyway?  In fact, a couple of hours later, the pain was actually getting more intense and we asked for a top up on the epidural.  The anaesthetist gave me another sort of drug through my epidural drip which did nothing to relieve the pain but basically knocked me out cold - I suddenly became rather dazed and couldn't really focus on anything.

Monday (17 May 2004)

Later on, near midnight, my gynae came and checked again and I was 8 cm dilated.  He said it should be quite soon and asked the nurse to check me again in an hour and let him know the progress.  And then we waited and waited and nothing happened.  Absolutely nothing.  All these while, I was zonked and I could feel the pain and the contractions but nothing happened. The midwives and nurses basically abandoned us because we refused to let them perform VE frequently.

Finally, at about 2 plus in the morning, Richard got fed up and went out to look for the nurse to ask where the doctor was.  The nurses were basically not doing anything.  Their attitude was that 'since you didn't want us to do VE to check, we couldn't report any progress to your doctor, so there is nothing we can do except to leave you alone'.  They eventually called my gynae again and was told to get me to start pushing and only get him down when the baby was crowning.