In the beginning of my pregnancy, I hadn’t thought about the possibility of induction, despite being thirty-five years of age.  The controversy surrounding inducing labor has been broiling for years. Proponents extoll the virtues of getting a baby  out before it is too large to pass through the birth canal and preventing  harm to the fetus due to inadequate placenta. Those who oppose inducing labor of course speak of the harm that forcing a possibly underdeveloped fetus to come out would do.

 In my case, the due date passed, and of course the doctors had told my fiancé and I to be patient, yet warned of the health problems that an over developed fetus might face.  A week passed after my due date and there was no progress, and no downward movement whatsoever. I started to get nervous. Relatives were expecting the baby, and I was more than ready to welcome my first child after months of painful anticipation. April tenth came and went with no changes and I was becoming increasingly nervous.  The risks and benefits of inducing labor had been explained to me previously, and I felt the risk of complications was too great to wait around. My doctor agreed. We of course mulled over the emotions of the situation

My fiancé and I reported to the labor and delivery unit at the hospital about six pm on Monday evening ready to walk out with the baby a few hours later.  Much to our consternation, we were informed that my cervix was not dilating despite the chemical agent that had been placed internally to cause this necessary reaction. Tuesday morning came, with no dilation.  I was skeptical after a day and a half of lying in the unforgiving labor and delivery bed, but then came the waves of extraordinary pain. We had finally won the war against nature.  It began earnestly enough with a bang, and then subsided into waves of extraordinary pain. A beleaguered nurse walked in with a huge blue balance ball and suggested that I lay upon it, as an alternative to conventional pain medication. Looking at her with my mouth agape, I realized I had passed the point of no return. It had been almost two days now and all my faculties had been put to the test. The petocin was pulsing through my veins and all I could tell anyone was that I needed an epidural. The attending physician came in and pronounced me unfit to receive one which was not good news. In a general malaise, I puttered around in my gown awaiting the nudge of not only the baby, but the medical staffers whom had been telling me that waiting was the best policy.

The hours that followed were not the most painful due to the high level of pain killers in my system, but rather the thing that defines pain. The mind defines pain both emotional and physical and the amount you suffer is up to you. But how on earth do you survive induced labor when you do know what to expect. If you go in thinking that you won’t be able to stand the pain, you probably won’t be able to- it plays tricks on the over thinking individual- at least it did in my case. Had I developed a plan for dealing with the pain ahead of time, I might have been more comfortable. Even a plan won’t stop the mind from feeling the extreme pain and for the most part the pain is very necessary for the natural birth process to play itself out. In general, had I had that plan in place, it might have saved me hours of not knowing how to deal with things, but inevitably, I did get through despite a ridiculous amount of fussing.

 Tips for surviving induced labor:

1. Know the risks and talk to your doctor about the necessity of the procedure.
2. Know your body- inform staff politely yet firmly of any changes that occur for best results
3. Stay hydrated before you report to labor and delivery- Although my fluids were replaced via IV, I regretted not drinking more water before I went into the hospital.
4. Know your rights - A caesarian section is not always necessary. Again, informing staff of changes in your body and speaking up if you disagree with any decision is paramount.
5. When being questioned by medical staff about any medical history, know that you have the right to refuse to answer questions. Remember though, medical professionals cannot do right by you without all the facts.
6. Do not feel bad about accepting pain medication- The human body wasn’t built to withstand the pain of induced labor. There are both systemic and spinal options which an anesthesiologist will explore with you. 
7. Don’t demand an epidural too soon- The problem with epidurals is the fact that they slow labor and could wear off during the transition phase of labor if administered too soon.
   

Author: Nora Bunk

The world had turned upside down when I became a parent.

When the rest of my batch were in night clubs and dancing the night away with wine and good food, I was at home breastfeeding my beautiful new-born who looked more like my sister than myself. Don’t get me wrong- I loved to be where I was, but I also think of where I could have been had I waited a few more years to get myself a child. But then, there is nothing to regret. All my life’s dreams may have been put on hold because I had to invest for this child rather than myself I have realized just how much a parent’s love can do for her child.

As the days and weeks went by, I slowly became a paranoid woman. Every inch of noise is considered as non-permissible in the room because my baby is a light-sleeper and no one has the privilege to wake her up. Each and every tiny aspect of our room must be clean and anything that is out of place should be straightened out, I didn’t want any chances of unwelcome guests that crawl at night. All food intake and formulas should be bought in stores that have popular and credible names, we can never be too sure if they are expired or have been kept in non-hygienic stores.

Each and every accomplishment and new things made by the little girl was a revelation – I was there when she first smiled, had her first tears and closed and opened her hands. Admittedly, my work didn’t allow me to see much more than that because I worked in a different city where she had to be away from me. Those were the hardest of times because I missed her so much, and envied her father every time he shared another milestone, another new learning made by the tot.

 As the months continue to go by, she became an outstanding child. She sat on her own, walked on her own and loved everything we put on her mouth. She ate a lot like a big person. She sleeps in unexpected moments. She walks, and then runs, without us ever teaching her. She absolutely loves animals. She is obsessed with her nursery rhymes videos. She does not ever want her curly hair pulled into a bun. As a parent, I glow with happiness and pride at the kind of child I have helped put in the world. I believe most parents would say the same about their children – they are always beautiful, always brilliant, and always exceptional. Each child, to their parent, is exceptionally special.

Pretty soon I will be a parent twice over. I will give birth to a baby boy by the end of January – and will undergo the same cycle of sleepless nights, sore breasts from too much suckling, hurt legs from lying in bed too much and the consistent lack of sleep each and every day of the first six months of his new and beautiful life. Aside from that, my partner and I will now have two children in our hands – beautiful angels who will make our room look and smell like hell, but will forever change our lives.


Author: Maria Jevska Nicolau is a 23-year old trainer on sales excellence who has a long love history with writing and won many journalism awards at college and region. She has a one year old daughter and a baby boy on the way. She likes Harry Potter and it is her ambition to write a book.


Read more from author When young women become young mom and more.

When I gave birth to my first child, a daughter, I thought I was not going to be able to hold her correctly, or have her suckle in my warm bosom. I grew up hating children, infants, babies – these little things who shout and shout and get everything they want by wailing. I never took care of my siblings so I didn’t know how to give them a bath, make them formulas, and put them to sleep or put them in diapers.

Things changed. I had to know everything I have to know to overcome my baby allergy.

She was real handful because she is so strong that giving her a bath was five minutes of pure sweat and exercise. She was consistently shouting and talking and babbling that I couldn’t help but imagine how talkative she will be once she grows up – and it is a constant struggle to go to church because she sings loudly with the choir. The hardest part was probably waking up in different parts of the night or early morning because she was hungry, and she was shouting, and everybody else in the house was asleep. I looked like a walking eye bag – but I had to work even harder in the office just to make sure I can buy her the next can of milk.

As the months went on, the worst I can recall about my few months of being a parent is when she was rushed to the hospital because of gastroenteritis. It hurt when the injection was making its way to her young flesh, and when she couldn’t eat or drink. I appreciated the fact that my company paid for the room and medications because had it been me, I wouldn’t be able to afford it. Then, a week after her release, we were back in the same room of the same hospital because she now has pneumonia. I learned not to sleep because the nurses came every now and then to give her medication and she cried at the sight of nurses in white. Those were the times that I understood exactly what a parent was.

It is when you are willing to sacrifice a lot of things – your luxury, your sleep, your free time, your hobbies – so one person can feel you love them unconditionally. I learned how to make funny faces to make her laugh and control the tears when each injection procedure sent her to cry big tears. It’s funny because when you are single and no one is dependent on you, you don’t have much to do except work, eat and sleep but when you become a parent, suddenly there’s just so much work to do. You have to clean the dishes, wash the clothes, fold the clothes, cook dinner, wash the plates, change diapers – the work is countless.

Until now, I keep learning. Until now, I keep waiting for more experiences that can solidify my parenthood.

For those who are going to have their first child, expect the unexpected. Yes, you will see in a lot of books ways to take care of your baby the first days, first weeks, first months – but you will never be able to read just how each and every minute spent with the baby who sheltered in your womb for nine months is going to be. I tell you, it’s going to be a journey you will never forget.


Author: Maria Jevska Nicolau is a 23-year old trainer on sales excellence who has a long love history with writing and won many journalism awards at college and region. She has a one year old daughter and a baby boy on the way. She likes Harry Potter and it is her ambition to write a book.

Read more from author I am my daughter’s daughter and more.

I am going to be a mom soon – for the second time around the end of January 2014.

Today as I write this, my first born daughter Aravis Gwen is 1 year and 9 days old. She is not with me now because she and her dad went home to our place in another city. I am totally alone, only sharing loud thoughts with the computer and the electric fan.

It makes me stop and think and rewriting me back to my 21 year old self. I was hesitant to be a mother because of all my back history of dislike for children as I was growing up. Now, I will be a mother of two.

Of the first year as a mom, I have to say it was an up and down struggle, even with myself. I struggled to contain my own uniqueness as a person, but that uniqueness clashed with being a mother to my child. I am lazy, bossy and hard to admit my mistakes. A mother should not be any of the three behaviors I just mentioned.

I am disorganized when a mother should be hygienic and know where everything is. I am forgetful when a mother has to remember to give her child vitamins at 8’ o clock in the morning. It was a struggle between the old me and the evolving me.

I wondered how I would progress as a mother in the next few years as my children would grow up to scratch their knees, get their assignment returned, fail some of their exams and get their heart broken. It seems that with every milestone of a child, a mother evolves into a different person, a different soul.

I wish I knew what I would do if my daughter cries her heart out just because she thinks her hair is ugly, or if my son would not be accepted in the basketball team. I hope I know what to say when she asks me what is love and how I felt it or when they ask why their daddy and I never got married.

A woman’s life does turn around when she becomes a person another person calls “Mama”. She learns the skills of cooking, washing the dishes, washing clothes, ironing, sweeping the floor and setting the table. She arranges food to put in her family’s mouth every breakfast, lunch and dinner. She provides treatment to treat common colds and fever.

It is true, a woman’s perspective changes when she becomes a mom. She becomes wiser, more careful, more loving, more understanding – she becomes the person she wants her daughter and son to love for the rest of their lives.

Those are the things that I want to become so my children can call me the mother that they have always wanted and loved – for they are the children, even as early as now, that I know I will be proud.


Author: Maria Jevska Nicolau is a 23-year old trainer on sales excellence who has a long love history with writing and won many journalism awards at college and region. She has a one year old daughter and a baby boy on the way. She likes Harry Potter and it is her ambition to write a book.

Check previous blogs from this author I am my daughter’s daughter.

Have you ever felt truly happy just because? Well, this blog is about being able to find the happiness you never thought you can have just because someone comes into your life and made it right. This is not a love letter from some love struck little girl, it details the adventures of a young career woman as she experiences the pains of labor and childbirth and becomes a mother for the first time.

February 16, 2012. I will never forget the day I found out I was pregnant. First, I knocked on my friends’ door to ask if the result meant I was pregnant. Then, I sat in the comfort room filled with bubbles that will soon go to heaven for they are almost gone. After that, I thought to myself: Am I ready for this?

                I was not. I don’t think women at the age of twenty one will be ready for it. I was twenty one. I was sending two kids to high school, and paying off a humungous debt that wasn’t mine. I was, in a sense, too young to have the baby because I was old enough to carry my family’s burden.

                June 5, 2012. I turned 22. I am four months pregnant with my first child. I loved being pregnant because I can eat anything without people saying I am greedy. I hated being pregnant because I got fat.

                October 10, 2012. I gave birth at exactly 07:45 AM, with one mighty push. She was…. I can’t think of any word that would fit how I thought of her during that moment. She turned my world upside down. I felt pain like I never felt before and yet, now I know, when you see your child come out of you, all the pain goes away. Exactly like how the movies are, and how the books have explained this beautiful moment. I now have a 5 minute experience that I can turn into a thousand pages if I were to speak of how I really felt.

                The months have passed, and my baby is growing. I felt like going to school all over again, for in each and every day, I would sleep with a lesson – a lesson taught by a child who can’t even say her name yet.

                She taught me to smile even though I was riddled with problems.  She brought that little wrinkle in my face because she amuses me with her ear splitting shrieks in the early part of the morning. She makes me smile because I see myself in her – talkative, smiling, and hard to anger. She makes me smile just because. She taught me that I can still write. For in every waking moment, I only desire to write about her and about us and about what she will become. She gave me the push that no one has done for the last three years. She, unknowingly to her, taught me that I am capable of getting angry when someone is noisy while she is asleep. Only my best of friends would know how hard it is to make me angry – but here, I know how to be furious when someone wakes her up.

                I know that is a cliché. Every mom would tell me they feel that way, but wait, she has taught me much more than that.

                I learned to clean. I used to be my Tita Nene’s number one enemy because I don’t like cleaning. But now, it would seem that every move I make, I remember her age old advices about cleaning. Wash the dishes like this, wash the laundry like this, clean the windows like this, and cook your food like this. As a mother, I realized that all the things in the house can be a danger to my kid, and so I have to take all necessary steps to ensure that she is safe, that she is miles away from getting sick.

                I learned how babies develop from pregnancy until they grow up. I have started reading books full of baby development, what to expect on this month, what not to do on this specific time of growth and so on and so forth. I have tried pureeing an apple. She didn’t like it. I have yet to try potatoes and carrots, but anytime soon my fridge will be host to a lot of vegetables and fruits now that we are ready to eat more solids.

                I learned to be more patient. I understood that she will not allow me to put her diaper on without having to sweat for it. I understood that she wants to sit rather than get bathed. I now know that I have to carry her around if she gets in one of her moods. I was tested when she can’t fall asleep even if its midnight and my eyes were droopy. I understood that babies will test my temper because they are naughty – but I am struggling to pass this test every day.

                My daughter taught me to be honest. Every time a lie would come at the tip of my tongue, she will get inside my head and dawdle there until I feel ashamed of myself. I can only imagine her stares in the near future, steeling, hurtful stares that say: Liar, liar, liar. I get goose bumps.

                Aravis has brought out the party girl in me. I realized that life is short and that, with such a beautiful gift rented from God, I have to make the most of my stay here spent with happy celebrations. Every tenth of the month, I celebrate the day she was given to me, just because the thank you Lord and night prayers and constant appreciation of this wonderful girl will not be enough to show her how happy I am that we are blessed with her.

Dear me I have a family now. A daughter, a partner who is willing to carry Aravis’ in his arms while we are out shopping and someone who can stay up all night to watch over her when the dratted house experiences a brown out.

                She completed me – for I knew then that I was incomplete because I did not grow up with a sane mother, a responsible father and a happy family. Her presence knitted this broken family together. She has given us hope that even broken things can be mended, and broken hearts can be healed. She has made me a mother.

                This time of my life I see myself abroad – teaching kids, earning a great deal, buying my own stuff, enjoying a date once in a while, single and definitely unattached. I went a different road, and it might not be colorful, and I might even get red eyes from lack of sleep, but it’s worth the ride. For I expect cards and words of love from her during Mays when we celebrate Mother’s day, drawings of stick figures on my birthdays, dirty clothes on the hamper because she decided to play in the mud, and expect her to one day throw beautiful white roses in the way to the altar while I get hitched to her cool, crazy dad – for as a mother, I have learned to dream big for my kid.

                Motherhood has opened a lot of realizations to me, stuff that has filled my diary and my stories, and I knew that daily, it will give me more reasons to celebrate. She may not know how to walk yet, bite me with her new teeth, say Mama – but it would seem that she has taught me more than I needed to know. I have become the daughter of my daughter – for the lessons she did not intend to teach, but lessons that I will learn over and over again until I grow old.

                P.S. Thank you so much for choosing me to be your mom, I will never be the same again.



Author : Maria Jevska Nicolau is a 23-year old trainer on sales excellence who has a long love history with writing and won many journalism awards at college and region. She has a one year old daughter and a baby boy on the way. She likes Harry Potter and it is her ambition to write a book.


Also read more from author, and When young women become young mom more here.

I was nervous when I found out I was pregnant.

First, I thought, what would happen to my family now that I would have a child of my own?

But then, when I go back to that time, I was all alone in the bathroom, washing my clothes, the pregnancy kit in my hand, the result boggling my head – I was frozen.

I was petrified because I did not believe it, but it is in my hands. I did not believe it because I did not fancy children. I did not believe it because I did not know how to take care of babies. I did not believe it because there was another human being inside of me, and I did not know what to eat, how to sleep, when to get a pre-natal, and all other things a pregnant woman should know.

I was just 21 then, just got promoted at work, was about to work on a career that will go up the ladder, sending my sister and brother to school, a writer who had time to write poems and a reader who had time to read her favorite books.

I was this young woman who was ready to fly, and when I knew of my pregnancy, I felt my wings got clipped. I would have to stay at home nursing a newborn human rather than be in the office on a Saturday night doing extra work, which I love. I would have to change diapers on a daily basis and not be out with my friends, drinking and partying. I thought I would be going on dates and trips and make a lot of memories with my boyfriend, just the two of us.

And yet, life has its own ways of giving you blessings.

I was a woman filled with dreams and hopes not only for myself, but also for my family. I thought that with the right time, at the right age, when I am financially and emotionally capable, God will give me this child. But He chooses to hand it over earlier than what was necessary, and I thought I was not going to be able to handle it.

Being a mother has its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows.

However, during the course of my pregnancy, I was amazed at the changes that were happening to me physically, and emotionally. They were not joking when they said that being pregnant was not a stroll in the park. I struggled for each and every day that I get tired walking for a long period of time and that I get hungry after a few hours, that it’s hard for me to sit because I was gaining weight like a dinosaur. My emotions were on a circus too – I am happy, then I am sad.

As a woman who awaited her entrance to motherhood, my boyfriend has become my partner, my best friend, my nurse, my councilor, my chef. I was happy that I was being taken care of; however, I was sad that our times together, just us two, will be over soon.

When I gave birth to my little angel, I swore it was not going to happen again.

It was excruciating pain like I have never felt before, and I know it is cliche but honestly, when you see the human being that stayed in your body for nine long months, you become the happiest person in the world.

I am now a grown woman, who at the age of 23 has matured more than I ever thought I would be. From a career woman to a mother, I see the changes that have happened to my life, and I like what I see.

Now that I have my own family, people would think that I would just as easily give up on my dreams because I have to focus on my child. I think they’re wrong. I know that for my child to have the happy life she deserves, I have to pursue my dreams so I can be able to provide for her and give her the happiness that she is worthy of.

This is for you Aravis, and this is for our future.



Author : Maria Jevska Nicolau is a 23-year old trainer on sales excellence who has a long love history with writing and won many journalism awards at college and region. She has a one year old daughter and a baby boy on the way. She likes Harry Potter and it is her ambition to write a book.


Watch out space for detailed blog on motherhood experience from a young mom that transformed her and her learning's.
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