Our baby is born and everything afterwards

It’s been 1.5 weeks since my last post, which is usually normal for me since I have been posting less since the start of this year. However, a lot has happened since then. The most important thing is that our baby is born!

In summary, we were told last weekend that the water level in the water bag was too low and the baby was in a breech position. So a C-section was scheduled a few days later to take the baby out to be safe even though he was slightly preterm at 36 weeks. The recovery period for a C-section is longer and tougher so I accompanied my wife for the 4 day 3 night stay at Mount Elizabeth Orchard Hospital.

The entire experience was surreal and life-changing. Now I know why people who have kids keep saying that. Having to adjust to our baby’s feeding schedule, supporting my wife through the fear and pain of a major surgery & recovery process, etc. We often look at the baby to motivate ourselves to keep going.

Anyway, we have finally been discharged from the hospital and are back at home with the baby now. It’s only been 1 week since we got the news last Sat 2 Nov that the baby has to come out earlier than expected. Here’s some baby delivery learning points for us to remember and they might be useful to you too. Note that it’s dependent on your personal, family, work and financial situations.

1. If you can, be with your wife for the entire childbirth and recovery process. It’s just a few days but you being there to support her in every way makes a big difference to her experience of having the baby. Everything counts from helping her with drinking fluids, eating food, positioning the baby and pillows for the feed and burping afterwards, etc. It’s going to be bad for your wife but you can make it better for her.
2. Put your own life on hold and take time off to be with your wife and baby. I’m taking 2 weeks of annual leave this time round and will take another 2 weeks of paternity leave next year. Even if your wife is strong and can handle doing things herself, don’t make her ask for help. Tough women can have breakdowns too.
3. Be prepared financially. Set aside enough money so you don’t have to worry about expected and unexpected costs of having a baby. Our maternity costs for pre-delivery and delivery (after the Medisave Maternity Package claim of $5,750) is $15,000 for a C-section delivery at Mount Elizabeth Orchard Hospital. Which means the total bill is $20,750 if you add up both the Medisave claim and cash components. The cost of setting up our apartment to be baby-friendly and buying all the baby stuff is $5,000.
4. Prepare even more financially because there are lots of ancillary costs. We are banking the cord blood and cord lining with Cordlife. We are going with the all-inclusive upfront payment of $11,000 and are using a combination of CDA and cash funds to cover this. We are getting 2 different confinement nannies for 3 months so it’s $3,000 each month i.e. $9,000 in total. The helper is coming in after that and it’s $680 every month after the $2,000 initial set-up costs. Look at how fast the costs are piling up.
5. Be thankful and grateful for any ang baos and financial assistance with baby expenses you are going to get. Learn about and claim the maternity benefits at the company you are working in. The bank that I work at allows me to claim $5,000 of pre-delivery and delivery expenses as maternity insurance. The bank that my wife works at gives her a maternity cash gift of $3,000. My parents gave me a big ang bao of $5,000 while her parents help paid about $8,000 of the baby expenses. And we got about $1,000 worth of ang baos from relatives and friends so far. Which means we are covering about 50% of all the costs incurred so far ourselves (50% of $44,000 = $22,000).

That’s about it for now. We are still trying to settle into a routine at home with the baby & confinement nanny and it’s going to take a lot of time, effort and work. We lost count of the number of times my wife’s parents had to run errands and make trips for us between their house, our apartment and the hospital. On a side note, my wife got her 2019 performance review remuneration outcome during the hospital stay.

My wife’s bonus is 2.1 months and the annual base salary increase is about 5%. A decent result and welcome news considering everything that’s happened. It’s my turn in Q1 of next year 2020 to get the remuneration outcome of my ongoing 2019 performance review.