Backstory

During the last month of my pregnancy, my nausea and fainting spells came back with a vengeance. It was totally unexpected since it had always been that the closer my due date, the better I felt for the past 3 pregnancies. I was actually looking forward to meeting up with friends, having some time to myself and generally enjoying my ‘break’ before I deliver. To my dismay, I returned to my bedridden state.

At first, when I realized I had to put Jaide in full day infant care for the months of April and May because I could give birth in either month, I was quite uncomfortable leaving her to the care of others for such a long time. But God, in His infinite wisdom, allowed that to happen, as I could not have been able to care for her during the month of April given my condition. I even had to activate my cell group friends to come over and help out with the chores and get me lunch on weekdays, something I thought I needn’t do this time round.

Term had started for my husband and it was his peak period with lots of work to catch up on and events to be in-charged of. With me completely out of action, he had to function like a single father of 3 young children with barely enough sleep as he had to work through most nights to reduce his backlog.

Strangely, we eventually discovered that I had developed anemia, which could not be fixed through iron supplements or infusion, accounting for my deterioration in health.

My gynea recommended inducing labor during our visit on Wednesday.

Reasons being:

1) My anemia can only be cured by the delivery of the baby. If left unchecked, it might lead to complications during childbirth such as blood loss issues.

2) I have the GBS infection again. The previous time, I could only get to the hospital in time for 1 hr of the antibiotic drip before childbirth (actually I needed 4 hours) and poor Jaide had to go through 4 painful injections and was placed under observation. Thank God that she was fine but I keep having the nagging feeling that it might have contributed to her ill health and weak respiratory tract. With inducing, it will greatly increase the chances of getting the full course of antibiotics.

3) I gained 18kg for this pregnancy! I usually gain about 10 kg so I'm really huge this time round. The gynea said that Joram was very well grown when she checked my stomach. I was past my 38 weeks and my cervix was soft so there is a high chance of a successful inducing.

Frankly, we were hoping for Joram to be born in the week of Labor Day, as it will be the best week for Joshua in terms of taking paternity leave from work. At first, the inducing was to be on Tues but the delivery suite was fully booked so it had been changed to Monday 9.30am instead. Perhaps, it was God's way of answering our prayers for Joram to be born on the 29^th of April?

My only real concern was that it increased the chance of a c-section. However, with each day of waiting being pure torture for both my husband and I, we decided to go ahead with the inducing and submitted that decision to the Lord. It is indeed true what God warned me at the beginning; that this pregnancy will be different from the previous ones.