Jonathan Yijie Soon birth story

Like everyone says, every baby is different, and this is particular true for my second pregnancy. Maybe it's because we have a budding 2 year old on hand to deal with, the initial stages of the pregnancy just flew by. Later at the 28th week of the pregnancy, i found out that i had gestational diabetes, and this meant diet control and insulin use along with regular blood checks at every meal. Boy, it became a much tougher pregnancy to deal with.

Everyone says second birth will come earlier. That ended up being not true. Emily was born early at 37.5 weeks. Time ticked by and still no sight of Jonathan making his grand entrance to the world. And since i have gestational diabetes, the docs weren't going to let me carry him to 40th week, if he doesn't arrive on his own by 39th week, i was to be induced. And till the last min, we were still hanging onto the hope that he will arrive on his own without intervention. We had our friends on standby call in case baby arrives, and my father-in-law was to fly in from Singapore on the last possible date - ie. the date before 39th week. And it all worked out that baby decides to stay in my tummy until the intervention.

I was scheduled to book into the hospital at 4am to be induced, but when we called the hospital, they are packed and since i'm a non-emergency case, i was postponed until a bed opens up. So back to sleep we went and i was still hanging to the hope he choose to arrive on his own.  At 9am, they called to tell us to check ourselves into the hospital at 10am. From 10am onwards, i was on a drip to induce labor. Surfed black friday ads and watched korean drama to kill time in the meanwhile. And at 4pm, since there wasn't much progression, the nurse assured us that Derrick can go pick Emily up from daycare and that we should be good for the next 3 hr.

Guess what? Baby decided that he wanted all the action to happen while daddy is gone. My water bag broke, and the contraction pain hit me hard after that. I decide to cave in and ask for epidural. But i went into active labor and there was no time for epidural. The nurses called Derrick to check how far he is from hospital, and he said 30mins. They didn't tell him that he's not going to make it, and that it's likely that the baby will arrive in 15mins.

When Derrick returned, he was shocked to see i'm already pushing and baby was born less than 30mins later. The entire labor process took around 1hr this time compared to 3 hrs for the first pregnancy. Jonathan Yijie Soon is a healthy 8 pounds baby, yep he's big... The gestation diabetes condition i had, resulted in him being a big baby. I'm glad i stuck to the strict diet and the insulin use, and that he's all healthy.