CHANGE

The Chinese have a saying: when a woman gives birth, she has one foot in a coffin (death) and another on land (life). This roughly translates to a life-or-death experience or a near-death one. Needless to say, a childbirth experience is traumatic to both the mother and the child.

Some women endure up to 2 days (48 hours) of labour pain before giving birth. Imagine pushing 3 kg of flesh and bone out of your body through a hole that previously couldn’t fit three fingers (that’s how they check if you are dilated and ready for labour).

I cannot place myself in the same group of these brave mothers who had opted for a natural delivery. As I was diabetic, I had to deliver earlier than the due date. The doctor told me that I can choose between an induced natural labour or a C-section. Two months before I had to make that decision, my sister had opted for an induced natural delivery. Her doctors could not pinpoint her due date and so to prevent anything untoward from happening, the doctor suggested an induced natural delivery.

My sister had to suffer through 8 hours of pain, only to have the baby delivered in the end through C-section.

Naturally, I went for the C-section. Don’t judge. If you do, try watching a real-life natural childbirth process on Youtube before you do.

But the point of the story in this post is that after childbirth, after 9 months of pregnancy, the pain, the suffering, the anguish of it all not to mention 4 months of intense vomiting day in and day out, I felt as if I was given a second outlook of life.

I had a short fuse when I was growing up. I was also plenty impatient and domineering. Everything had to be perfect, planned and proper. I do not take lightly to people who did things that are not considered morally correct like getting pregnant before marriage, giving bribes to get out of situations and parking at the disable’s parking spot.

After becoming a mother however, I took a step back and re-evaluated my life. I felt that there were so many things to do, share and experience with the people you love. No, I’m not becoming all gushy or turning into a pansy. I just grew up, just upper than before, in a sense.

Now, things that make other people lose their temper don’t faze me much. I’ve accepted that there are certain rules that makes life life. For example, I view discrimination a lot more lightly than I used to because no matter how good you are, there will always be someone better, and another person worse than you. So, discrimination serves no purpose but to remind people that life is not fair. Apart from that, if you do not comply to the effects of discrimination, it can do you no harm.

As for being domineering and controlling, life’s too short to have everything so perfect. To have everything fall perfectly into place, that’s the magical part of it. I look forward to that every single day now.

Lastly, sometimes people do immoral things just to get through in life. They may have it harder than you and so it should be okay once in a while to cut them some slack.

Getting pregnant before marriage is so common now, that the worry is now on whether or not the father and mother of the unborn child will take responsibility of it rather than short-change it out of an opportunity in life, for their own selfish reasons.

Giving bribes is still a big no no but sometimes it is between parting with a few hundred dollars or going to jail because of tampered evidence. Which would you choose if you were in that situation?

Parking in a disable’s parking spot tells you a lot about the driver of the car. For some people, knowing the true character about the people around them is very important. If a person has no qualms about taking the disable’s parking spot, it shows a lack of compassion and understanding in that person. Knowing that bit about that person can actually help you make interesting and important decisions regarding that person.

Every single thing that happens around you, as the cliché goes, happens for a reason (Hey, a cliché won’t be around for so long if it ain’t true). It is up to you to decipher what message every situation has for you.

For me, the messages I am receiving now is that I need change in my life. I’ve taken the first step and am now waiting for opportunities to prove myself. I’m trying very hard to chase my dream in hopes that one day I will be able to encourage my daughter to do the same.

Now all I got to do is wait.