Antenatal Class

Went for antenatal class tonight. Today's class is on labour & delivery and Pain relief. The session is very informative, the speaker is SSN Yeoh Soo Kiam, a midwife trained in UK with 12 years of experience in delivery wards. She explained about pain relief. The mildest form is enthonox or laughing gas, next level is pethidine, an injection through the thigh cannot be administered within 3 hours of labour and of course epidural which blocks 80% of pain. She said it's best to decide early if you want epidural cos no point enduring the pain going from enthonox to pethidine then finally to epidural. But she did say that it is really up to us, a few mummies want a natural delivery without any pain relief and they did it just by breathing, relaxing and massages. Thought this url on pain relief is quite useful, http://www.tinytums.co.uk/content/pregnant/you_and_your_body/pain_relief.aspx

She also answered my questions on cutting the cord (Daddy can cut the cord even if doing cord blood banking because the gyane will clean it), bowel movement (no more practice to put enema for mummies to pass motion before delivery), good to ambulate during delivery (but once at hospital, they will ask you to lie on the bed because of the monitoring machine so walk around at home if you want), when to go to the hospital (go when you need pain relief, if wait until contractions is every 5 mins, the pain may be unbearable for most mummies). Hee. She even passed around the needle and tubing used for epidural, a bit scary but better to know early than to be shocked in hospital I think. Too bad, I can't choose her as my midwife for delivery. I asked if I can do that. She said cannot but she will pop by if she's on duty when I'm delivering. ;)

On a lighter note, my cousin from NZ bought some clothes and a pair of BB shoes for RaeAnne even thought she's only coming back in Nov. RaeAnne has her first pair of shoes, can strike it off my wishlist. :) But oops, RaeAnne also has quite a lot of clothes now. Hope she gets a chance to wear everything before she outgrows them. :P