While other women runners were struggling to finish or achieve their PBs during The Women's Marathon, I was on a struggle of my own, in full blown agony and pain, in labour with our 3rd child.
It wasn't easy (as if the first two was....pfftrtt).
With this one, at the 38 th week, I was admitted for 5 days due to maternal pyrexia ( demam daa..) and had to endure intravenous antibiotics 3 times daily ( sakit daa...). Seriously, nobody warned me beforehand it would hurt that much. Everytime they injected the antibiotics in me, I would wince and they'd be like, " It stings a little kan?". And I fight the urge to say, kepala hotak hang. Ha.
But I guess that's basically what's on my patients' mind when I give them a jab
An eye for an eye kot. Padan muka aku.
Then after that, was a long wait of when the contractions would come.
WIth my previous two children, both were born by the 38th week. This one decided to take her time and wait it out until full term.
After the 5 day stint at the hospital, I was too tired to continue working, my appetite was out and it seemed like everybody I knew who had the same due date had already given birth and there I was, still a blimp not even close to labour. And it didn't help that I got daily messages from family and friends asking " Tak beranak lagi ke?"
Tensi tau.
So then, after setting a record of being pregnant for 10 months and 2 days, FINALLY the contractions came. I was so relieved to finally carry my baby outside of me that I hardly blinked when my ob-gyn specialist told me I had to be induced because the labour was taking
too long.
too long.
Okay girls, if anyone tells you there's not much difference between natural labour pains and induced labour pains, that would be a big fat LIE.
I felt non stop strong contractions for 2 straight hours even after I was drugged with Pethidine and Nitrous Oxide. And you may be wondering, after all that pain, why not go for an epidural?
Okay
1. I was too stingy to fork out another 800 bucks for someone to stick a large needle up my spine
2. For goodness sake, I'm NOT letting anybody stick a needle up my spine
I won't go into the gory details about the birth giving process but what I would like to share here is the benefits of keeping physically fit prior the whole procedure.
Aku tak kata la aku ni Kathy Smith ke Jillian Michaels ke hape, but I guess working out during pregnancy and strengthening the ab muscles really helps.
When my 3.35 kilo baby came out without the need of episiotomy, it surprised everybody except WW, whose theory attributed it to the result of my excercises.
And sure I was battered with my whole body sore after the whole ordeal but the soreness and fatigue was almost completly gone by the 3rd day.
My husband again theorized that the reason behind this was because I am a runner who's used to fatigue and have a fast muscle recovery rate due to this.
I don't know whether anyone has written a paper between the correlation of excercise and post labour recovery ( malas nak cari kat internet) but I think it's a valid theory.
So anyone yang sceptical or just wondering, feel free to test it out.
Ha.
So now, post pregnancy.
Now what?
After reading all those race report of the recent marathons, it sparked up a bit of interest to try marathoning again. What's with my last full 42. Ks being almost 3 years ago.
Tapi bila pikir balik all the time and sacrifices needed for training, tambah ada baby kecik lagi, tambah demands of work lagi, tambah no domestic help lagi, tambah bila teringat balik we had to start LSD for 30K pukul 4 pagi to make up time for the kids lagi ( wah, I still wonder how we pulled it off running loops around our housing estate), tetiba rasa cam berat je nak try balik.
So we unanimously decided to put that dream off for a couple of years and maybe just continue to focus on shorter distances for the time being. Shorter distance means shorter training time comparatively because that's all we could afford right now.
As for now, I'll give myself another 1-2 weeks rest before I get back on my feet again because hiding all these extra skin is too much to handle.
When I say skin, I actually mean flab.
As if you didn't know.
Pffttrtt......
