As a continuation to yesterday's entry, yeah we made our first attempt to bottlefeed Fatimah with my EBM. The result?

She nailed it!

Alhamdulillah. Praises be to Allah.

We just recycled Maryam's bottle as she is no longer using it. Fatimah seemed happy and comfortable with the MAM's teat that I placed on the preexisting Avent bottle (since Maryam's time). We have plenty of Avent bottles so I don't want to bring them to waste.

One task, checked! :)

Today is already Fatimah's 10th day of life. She does cry out aloud when she's upset but otherwise when she's happy with nothing bugging her she is a well behaved baby. Quite a few have mentioned that she takes after me, as opposed to her Abi hehe. No offense hubby! 

I am going to try to feed her my EBM using a bottle today. We've decided to use Maryam's MAM bottle in our 1st try. Hope it'll work well and she'll be able to drink milk interchangeably from both direct and bottle feeding. Ameen.

Will update on this soon insyaAllah.

Today is my baby's 7th day of life. 

Umbilical Cord Stump

At the wee hour lil baby pooped and I got up to get her cleaned. I don't know if it was me who made it happen or it was going to happen anyway that I noticed her umbilical cord stump had fallen off that night. She was crying out loud, probably from the diaper-change or from the pain at her belly button, if I had accidentally pulled that off, oops. The belly button didn't look completely dry yet so I doubted if the stump had 'withered' on its own. Anyhoo what's out is out. Let's take a good care of the wound. Of note Maryam also had her stump detached on day 7 :).

Baby's name

After deep contemplation, quite extensive look-ups and inquiring the 'expert' we, my hubsy and I have decided on our 2nd princess' name. It's Wan Fatimah Amanda. Fatimah as we know is the name of the Prophet's (pbuh) daughter and Amanda is a latin word that means lovable. May she grow up with the akhlaaq of Fatimah and become a loving, lovely and lovable person. Ameen.

Tahnik

Hubsy decided to find a scholar to perform tahnik on Fatimah. We went to see a scholar in Tendong together with my MIL and granny in law. This was my first ride in a car since my discharge from hospital after giving birth, I didn't feel too confident in myself physically so I decided to just stay in the car outside when they went to bring Fatimah into the scholar's house. Hubsy however helped to capture those precious moments into a video which I have yet to watch. May Allah grant barakah in Fatimah's life and make her among the pious. 

As I'm typing this my beautiful baby (every baby is beautiful) is soundly sleeping next to me allowing me to have some me-time jotting this down after having planned of doing so since she was born.

Today's already her 4th day of life. She was born post due date by 4 days, and I was scheduled for admission for the induction of labour on date plus 9, which I luckily escaped.

It was an ordinary 3rd July 2014 morning. I went to bed quite late the night prior as a handful of thoughts kept running in my head holding me off from falling asleep. My deepest concern was the pregnancy and the fact that I very much wanted the delivery to be as close to natural as possible, no induction as such. I was already 4 days overdue at the time. Each day that passed by freaked me out more and more.

My 1st daughter was born post date too, date plus 6 to be exact. So it was the same scenario where I got the appointment for induction but I managed to deliver before that date, alhamdulillah. I was wondering if this time around Allah wants me to experience induction, which I very much dread of.

After our suhoor and prayers that morning I decided to recite Surah Maryam of the Holy Quran, which is known to be the surah associated with the hope to ease labour. I was praying that I would go into labour that day and the process is smooth and speedy. I subsequently went back to bed after having slept for just about 2 hours the night before. 

At about 7.50am I felt like I just passed a gush of fluid while lying down sleeping which made me jump out of my bed out of shock. I hopped into the toilet and waited if any more fluid was coming down down my legs. Nil. I remembered during Maryam's time the labour began with leaking where I passed about probably half a bucket of liquor, on the bed! No show no contractions before that so I thought this was probably the same thing that was taking place.

When I had a proper look it wasn't really that thin liquor that I just passed but rather half a pad of thick mucus which left me worried. Having the experience working as an MO in O&G I postulated that in this setting if I went to the hospital they will say that the history is not suggestive of leaking. And if they did the speculum exam, if leaking is not demonstrable I will be admitted and speculum exam be repeated the following morning. On the other hand if the leaking is demonstrable I will be scheduled for induction the next day and started on prophylactic antibiotics at the 18th hour post leaking. (Not to forget they will also do a scan to check the amount of amniotic fluid surrounding the baby). This means that the ending will still be induction of labour!

I was so terrified fearing if the labour would not progress. Only in Allah I put my hopes. Subhanallah with Allah's permission I developed painful contractions only like 10 minutes after I started to have those worrying thoughts (8.30am). They got steadily more intense with time that I eventually decided to tell my husband as he got up from bed not long after. He was burning the midnight oil finishing his work the night before so he also dozed off after Fajr. I advised him to go to work first and I would update him later. He however reassured me that he would return from work as soon as possible.

My MIL came to see how I was after being informed by hubby that the labour had started. She was convinced that I would deliver at around the time of breaking fast in which I then responded 'I hope not that late! :)'. I was planning to go to the hospital at around after Zuhr thinking that the contractions would've gotten quite strong at that time. It was definitely a game of wait and see.  

In my first pregnancy the water broke at noon and I only started to develop contractions at 10pm. I had the baby delivered at 7.37am the following morning. Therefore from this experience I didn't very much expect that my subsequent labour would be too different from that time-wise or neither would it progress too rapidly comparatively.

After hubsie love left for work I decided to sit on the exercise ball and do some exercise while reciting Surah Maryam again. He returned home very quickly after about only 15 minutes of leaving. He suggested for us to take a walk in the house so that the baby will 'come down' a bit, like what we did with Maryam (myth?). We had plenty of time in between then, so we managed to stroll around and in the hospital, a few times. 

The contractions got so much stronger though that I would never be able to walk. I decided to make final preparation for hospital although I actually had got my and the baby's bags ready by the door for the past 4 weeks or so. I rested on a stool when this one massive contraction came then suddenly the water broke. This time it was watery enough I felt like I just passed again, half a bucket of liquor. It happened thrice along with three strong contractions in a row I would've run to the toilet to avoid wetting the permanent-fitted carpet in the room but was incapable of doing so. 

Following the leaking I managed to quickly stride to the toilet during the pain-free gap to get myself cleaned. Hubby lined up mahjong papers that we used as a backdrop for Maryam's birthday party from where I was seated down to the toilet to protect the carpet from the dripping liquor as I paced off.

To be con'td.