And so today is a baby day….
Station 1
In the morning, we went to the Thomson Medical Hospital Tour. Although we have already completed our pre-admission to the room, we still wish to ‘tour around’ just to ensure we know where is where. The lobby is quite busy compare to weekdays, but the rest of the area are ‘quiet’ compare to the other hospitals I went to before – Gleneagles Hospital, Changi Hospital and Singapore General Hospital (CGH and SGH I only went to visit the elderly though). Comparable to Mount Alvernia Hospital.
The observation ward, delivery ward, and the suite wards we went to visit are clean and cosy, but probably it will give us a totally different feeling by the time we are admitted and utilising them. It’s ‘cute’ that they also provide a ‘survival kit’ for the daddies while accompanying & waiting for their wife – a small pack of energy food with a packet of Milo.
Our ‘tour guide’ – Mdm Angie Ng, who guided us around shared with us that in case we are hungry, we can ask for ‘room service’, which the biscuits and hot drinks like milo and ginger tea will be ‘free’, but in cases if we need more filling food like sandwich, we will need to pay for a ‘meal pricing’.
Also, we are reminded that once we admitted to the hospital, preparing for delivery, we may inform the nurses and midwife on the following:
- if we want to keep the placenta
- if we are keeping our cord blood
- if the dad want to cut the umbilical cord himself.
After the tour, we stayed back and enquire with the hospital on the charges,,, to our horror,… even if I go by natural with epidural, I can easily expected a scary SGD$10K to be spent, just on laboring! Do you know that the hospital $ only include 7 hours of using the delivery ward, after that, we will be charged the room rate. This means if you are stucked in the delivery ward for 10 hours, for the 3 hours, we will be charge at the room rate (not sure if they got pro-rated rates?).
Station 2
After the hospital tour, we have a quick lunch at Ramen Monster in Velocity and proceed for our Childbirth Education Course. It’s our second lesson. To our surprise, we were greeted with some ‘goodie bag’ at the registration corner – given a towel and two wash cloth (which looks like tissues?), from Thomson Medical and 2 sample pack of maternity milk and some little items from Friso.
I love freebies.
Learnt some exercise to relax our muscles, and also saw the procedures of having epidural after all (did not wish to know because I scare I freak out somehow)… I tell myself, to “mask” the pain of birth, I can consider thinking about the bill, in that way, the ‘heart pain’ might WIN compare to the labor pain. Of course I was crapping, but yah… everyday I am wondering how will that fateful day be carried out, hopefully, is not fateful ‘days’.
Station 3
We decided to take a bus to Expo for our second round of baby spree. I was quite ‘pai sei’ (embarrassed) when an elderly men give up his seat for me when I board the bus, as all the other seats were taken. But the kind gentleman (funnily enough, most of the ‘gentlemen’ whom had show kind gestures towards me are not those who wearing the most ‘gentlemen wear’, guess those who wear too nice just don’t want to risk wrinkle their clothings for being kind?) just insist I should sit and he will be getting off next stop. Luckily he seems fit for his age.
After 2.5 hours in the baby fair, we finally bought:
- Spectra S9+ breast pump @ SGD$299. Was advised that unless I have sensitive nipple, else I should just get the M1 model which is SGD$60 cheaper. But G think that since I am unsure, I shall just get the ‘safer’ choice just in case, so we proceed with the S9+.
- Combi Well Comfort model WT-250D @ SGD$350.10. This is the newer model thus slightly more expensive. Initially I was wanting to get the WT-250B @ SGD$323.10, but the dad think the newer model have a better wheel for mobility, so yah…
- Graco Pack ‘n Play Playard @ SGD$159. Since the dad insist we need to have the baby in the same room as us, and he don’t want to risk having me sleeping on the baby, we settled for a playpen till baby is bigger.
We bought both the Playpen and the stroller from the Baby Kingdom store, as purchase of SGD$300 and above will entitled us for free delivery. I was quite amaze to know that although the store did not bring in the stroller to the baby fair, they allow us to ‘remote order’ the stroller, more amazingly is the auntie from Baby Kingdom store, she is actually able to memorised the prices of the stroller and tell us the discounted price.
After comparison, we realised the price is the same as Combi store, thus we make our purchase from Baby kingdom for the free delivery. Funny thing is, after some checking, we realised that Kiddy Palace also give us the same ‘discounted’ price quite some time back. I guess sometimes, Fair don’t really offer you the best prices, we still need to do more research before we make our purchase from the fairs.
Side story: after kiasu us bought some packs of Pamper disposable diaper Size S at discounted price of SGD$25.90, we found that it’s still can’t compare to the recent Guardian Pharmacy promotion when the items are sold at 3 packs for SGD$73.90.
We finally reached home around 9pm after running around for Kirimi, I envy her for coming to this world in such timing when parents are so kan chiong about kids.
Once after dinner and back home, the dad just lie down on the sofa and dozed off, guess today really tired the parents =)
