I have a low threshold for pain as well. I’ve never experienced extreme pain in my life before. I’ve never been admitted in a hospital before either. But throughout my whole pregnancy I told myself I want to try going through what other mothers go through for natural birth. I want to brave through all the painful stories with an open heart and mind. I want to be able to remember the pain of giving birth to my first born. I am a subsidised patient at KKH. My baby was breech at Week 28 and doc scheduled me for elective c-sect. I was super worried because I was scared I would die having my stomach cut open. Yup I had those kind of nonsense thoughts. At Week 35, my baby turned so the doc asked if I want to cancel my c-sect or go natural. And of course I chose natural. At 40 weeks just right on her EDD, I gave birth to my baby via EMERGENCY C-SECT after more than 24hrs in labour since contractions started. It was 10hrs after my water bag broke, only then they wheeled me in for emergency c-sect. Nurses and doc told my husband to prepare for the worst. Because my labour was too long already. They even told him maybe 1 of us wouldn’t survive. Can you imagine? I also went through the experience of “pushing” for a few times, but I couldn’t feel anything cause baby was still high up although I was already 10cm dilated. Road to recovery was tough and painful. Can’t move much. I peed on the hospital bed and onto the floor twice because I couldn’t move fast enough to get up from bed to go to the toilet. I will always remember that experience. To add on, post-delivery I developed pre-eclampsia and was warded for 6 days in the hospital. My baby had jaundice too and needed phototherapy. My bill size for a subsidised patient? $11+k alone for myself. $7+k govt grant. $4+k need to top up cash. My baby’s bill was $2+k, grant was $900+, balance $1+k topup cash. And I was in B2 ward, mind you. Can’t imagine my bill size for private route. 💆🏻♀️ Lucky for me, I had insurance so my insurance covered all those excess needed to topup cash. They also gave me $900 cheque for my hospital stay, $1000+ cheque for my pre-natal visits which $900 was supposed to be reimbursed back to Medisave however my insurance got it covered. All in all, I had an emergency c-sect, developed post-pregnancy complications, warded for almost a week and baby had to go for phototherapy. But! I didn’t fork out a single cent. Haha. I understand your pain threshold, maybe you can speak to the admins from diff hospitals for advise first. Get all your information, facts and write it down. Evaluate and see if it’s necessary to change hospital or go for private. Discuss it over with your partner/family and make a decision soon because if private, you can choose gynae and some gynaes are so popular they can be fully booked. And transferring of hospitals may require a little bit of hassle so start now since you’re already in Week 23. Do bear in mind, going under private route will be much more expensive however if you can afford (this is also inclusive of complications that you must keep in mind), by all means, go for private. Good luck!
NUH is a pro natural hospital. And honestly every mums are afraid of the pain even if they are an experienced mum because everyone's pain threshold is different. But again if you're going for elective c-sect you'll still be under ga so you'll feel numb unlike natural birth w/o any painkiller. I was a subsidise patient from NUH & have given birth on Feb via natural delivery. But I was hospitalised for 9 days so my bill came out to 2k+ after subsidy and my baby was in NICU & Special Care Nursery for 5 days and his bill totaled to the amt of 3k+. You can see the ward prices in NUH website. If you plan to switch to pte it depends on the cost of the pte gynae and of course diff price also for pte wards and need deposit.
I don't have experience as a subsidised patient but I did hear from a few colleagues abt not given an option for an elective csect at NUH. You're only allowed tt if there is a good medical reason for it e.g gynae assessed baby to be too big (typically more than 3.5kg) for a petite mom, in this case elective csect wld be granted. You can try to ask the admin office for the price of the NUH pte. It's common for moms to switch to pte in the 3rd tri.
NUH is well known to be pro natural (also one of the very few sg hospitals with water birth) so the gynaes wld be inclined to discourage csect even if u go under private but u can still try.
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