Call me mom ;)

It's hard to believe that I am now a mother, even as I hold my baby in my arms.

The delivery itself went quite well, alhamdulillah. Much to my own surprise, I actually managed to go through normal delivery without an epidural. My husband had encouraged me to take the epidural knowing that I had quite low threshold for pain. But after going through several hours of the contractions already, it was the thought of that big needle poking my back that scared me more, hehehe. As I was weighing the idea of going through the pain of epidural and the pain of the actual birth and stitches, the nurse then informed me that it was actually too late already. The baby has decided to come out. :P
Sure enough, in less than an hour, I was holding my son on my tummy, while waiting for my husband to cut the cord :)

Some say that the pain disappears when you first hold your baby in your arms. A close friend of mine who went through induced labor and an emergency c-section said she is willing to go though all that again for her boy.

I wouldn't go that far. :P

The pain is real. And I have more and more respect to those mothers who can give birth to 10, 12 children. I also cannot imagine how teenage mothers who gave birth all by themselves in order to hide their pregnancy and baby from their families and societies. Even at a high-tech hospital with a gynae and several nurses helping me, it was not an easy process. Furthermore, I had the added strength from my husband who held my hand throughout and became my hands and legs during the recovery period. I hope and pray that I'll never have to go through labor on my own ever.

One thing that I learnt from this experience: don't go through the pregnancy and labor blind. Read a lot, ask a lot and most of all PRAY a lot. And trust your body to know what is best for itself and the baby that is nurturing inside it.