關於 nothing but great things to say meaning ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

How to Have God’s Faith

“Jesus replied, “Let the faith of God be in you! Listen to the truth I speak to you: If someone says to this mountain with great faith and having no doubt, ‘Mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the midst of the sea,’ and believes that what he says will happen, it will be done.” (Mark‬ ‭11:22-23‬ ‭TPT‬‬)

In the passage above, Jesus said the “faith of God” and not “faith in God”. If we want to perform mighty miracles like casting a mountain into the sea, we will need to receive God’s own faith.

“For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think reasonably, as God has apportioned to each person a measure of faith.” (Romans‬ ‭12:3‬ ‭WEB‬‬)

You see, there is the measure of faith that God already gave to us in the past, and also God’s own faith that He gives to believers at appointed timings.

The former is the one that we keep free from unbelief through daily renewing of the mind, while the latter is more powerful because it is pure and guaranteed to mightily prosper in its intended purpose.

“But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all. For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; to another faith, by the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healings, by the same Spirit; and to another workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; to another different kinds of languages; and to another the interpretation of languages. But the one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing to each one separately as he desires.” (1 Corinthians‬ ‭12:7-11‬ ‭WEB‬‬)

Faith is one of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. He distributes this “faith of God” at times. Every believer can receive this.

To understand when this God-faith comes, we have to know the delivery system:

“Faith, then, is birthed in a heart that responds to God’s anointed utterance of the Anointed One.” (Romans‬ ‭10:17‬ ‭TPT‬‬)

Many English Bible translations do a poor job of translating the verse above. They stray from the original Greek meaning. However, I like the translation I quoted above.

The words translated as “anointed utterance” in Greek is “rhematos” which means “a spoken word”. “The Anointed One” is Christou, which is Christ.

“Rhematos Christou” is not referring to God’s written Scriptures in general. That one would be the logos word, or “what God has said before”. The rhema word is talking about what Christ is currently actively saying to you through His Spirit inside you.

When Jesus speaks a rhema word to you, it carries God’s authority. When you hear and act upon that word, the “faith of God” is imparted to you for mighty power to be released. This is when miracles and breakthroughs flow.

Let us see this in action:

“Peter answered him and said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the waters.” He said, “Come!” Peter stepped down from the boat, and walked on the waters to come to Jesus.” (Matthew‬ ‭14:28-29‬ ‭WEB‬‬)

Jesus said “Come,” and this rhema word carried the authority for Peter to transcend the natural laws of nature. When Peter heard the command and acted upon it, the “faith of God” was imparted to him, empowering him to walk on the waters.

You may be surprised by this, but even Jesus depended on the rhema word from His Father during His earthly ministry.

“Jesus therefore answered them, “Most certainly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing. For whatever things he does, these the Son also does likewise. For the Father has affection for the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does. He will show him greater works than these, that you may marvel.” (John‬ ‭5:19-20‬ ‭WEB‬‬)

Before doing any miracle, Jesus first received the rhema word from the Father, and He simply obeyed, acting upon what the Father showed Him.

When Jesus acted upon the rhema word, God’s power flows because the authority, faith, and will of God are working in perfect synergy.

It is therefore most crucial that we ask the Lord to give us the rhema word for our situation. To receive it, you can calm your emotions and pray about your situation, listening in silence to see what the Holy Spirit brings to your attention.

Other than that, sometimes He uses your pastor or Christian friend to speak divinely inspired words to you. The Holy Spirit is the source of the rhema word. The way He delivers it isn’t the most important thing, so be open to however He chooses to convey the rhema word to you.

When it comes, grab hold of it in your heart, and act upon it, for it is the key to unlock God’s supernatural provision in your situation!

The 37 recorded miracles of Jesus Christ in the four gospels show us God’s heart of love and Grace towards us. As you explore them in “Messiah’s Miracles”, faith will arise in your heart to receive miraculous breakthroughs in your own life: https://bit.ly/messiahs-miracles

Malignant unrestrained power | Lee Yee

The Hong Kong police issued a statement the night before yesterday quoting the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department’s response to the arrest of the 12 Hongkongers. The short communication was full of loopholes. If these 12 people are still under investigation, how can the authorities be sure that they will be approved by the procuratorate for arrest later? One of the 12 people was the skipper, is he a member of the smuggling organization? If he is indeed part of a smuggling group, why was he escaping to Taiwan? Why was there no mention of the arrest of the skipper? What happened to the speedboat? Did the 12 people buy the boat hence it was confiscated?

It has been more than a month and they still could not spin a better story. The power has become so domineering to the point where they say what they want without regard for whether it is believable or not anymore.

Chinese state media reported that, at the recent Third Central Symposium on Xinjiang Work held in Beijing, Xi Jinping emphasized the need to “uphold efforts to sinicize religion, sinicize Islam and forge the collective consciousness of a common Chinese identity.” Following Xi’s “sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism,” this is another one of his latest sinicization campaigns with requirements explicitly put forward.

Both Tibetan Buddhism and Xinjiang Islam are religions based on beliefs in God or divine inspirations, while in other parts of China, most religious believers just pray to gods and buddhas for blessings. Very few people truly believe in gods, reincarnation, or life after death. If “One China” means China under the dictatorship of the atheist Communist Party, then the “sinicization of religion” denotes a false and bogus religion. A leader who can come up with the idea of sinicization of religion under atheism is enough to show that there is nothing believable about this regime, including the woven tale for the 12 arrested Hongkongers.

In the era of ancient China’s absolute monarchy, although there was no real religious belief, ancient Chinese emperors at least paid respect to ancestors and held ceremonies to worship heaven. Dictatorship began from as early as the Qin dynasty to the Han Dynasty during which Dong Zhongshu proposed the rule to respect the emperor. However, he also proposed to restrict the emperor and respect heaven; the emperor would be called the son of heaven, meaning the heavenly father was watching over. The occurrence of a catastrophic natural disaster would be the wrath of heaven; the emperor would often issue a rescript for penitence, and reflect and review to improve governance.

The atheistic CCP not only does not believe in gods but also disbelieves in heaven. Mao Zedong claimed to be a “monk holding an umbrella,” meaning that he was above the law and above heaven. He also said, “Battling with heaven is endless joy.” Therefore, under the guidance of the idea of “Humans will triumph over the sky,” the Great Leap Forward brought about a situation of “endless suffering” for the Chinese people.

However, the CCP regime before Mao the second at least would not, on the one hand, claim to believe in Marxism-Leninism, and on the other hand, bludgeon itself with such absurd theories as the “sinicization of religion.” Perhaps Mao 2.0 now possesses absolute power such that no one dares to tell the truth, resulting in comments of all illogical nonsense.

Recently, the Chinese education department was so preposterous that it blatantly falsified the Bible. The story of Jesus and the Adulteress from the New Testament was cited in textbooks but the ending of the story was distorted. In the original passage of the Bible, Jesus said to the adulteress, “I, too, do not condemn you; Go and sin no more!” The Chinese textbook, however, presents the story as: “When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, ‘I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.’” Forcing words to justify the Chinese leaders into the mouth of Jesus.

Of course, anyone who enforces the law in any society will not be a flawless person, but in a normal society, at least the law enforcers know that they are either guilty, or that regardless of religion or even non-religion, they believe that “there is a deity watching over them.” In addition to believing that “a deity is watching,” law enforcers are also restrictive in their power by the separation of powers with mutual checks and balances, as well as the supervision of the Fourth Estate. Nearly 300 years ago, the French Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu said, “Every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. Power is naturally expansive and has a tendency to turn malignant. As long as there are insufficient restraint and supervision, any power will give rise to corruption. To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.”

The power we face and its extension in Hong Kong may be the most extreme power in human history. It has no restraints nor any checks and balances, and without the constraints of “heaven” from the dark ages of ancient China and the Western Middle Ages. Its “expansion and malignancy” can exceed all human imagination. Therefore, normal people can only completely and absolutely distrust this absolute power.

My sister, Michelle-Ann Iking's 3% chance of conceiving naturally was a success! Here's her story:

(My apologies as I've been overwhelmed with personal matters. I've only managed to get to my desk. So finally got around posting this).

This is the story behind my sister's pregnancy struggle and how she shared her journey over her Facebook page.

Because some may have not caught her LIVE session chat with me (https://www.facebook.com/daphneiking/videos/687743128744960/) , or read her lengthy post (as it's a private page);
she's allowed me to copy and paste it over my wall, in case you need to know more about her thought process on how AND why she focused on the 3% success probability. Read on.

-------------------------------------------

Posted 10th May 2020.
FB Credit: Michelle-Ann Iking

A week ago today I celebrated becoming a mother to our second, long awaited child.

Please forgive this mother's LONG (self-indulgent) post, journalling what this significant milestone has meant for her personally, for her own fallible memory's sake as well as maybe to share one day with her son.

If all you were wondering was whether I had delivered and if mum and bub are OK, please be assured the whole KkLM family are thriving tremendously, and continue scrolling right along your Newsfeed 😁.

OUR 3% MIRACLE

All babies are miracles... and none more so than our precious Kiaen Aaryan (pronounced KEY-n AR-yen), whose name derives from Sanskrit origins meaning:

Grace of God
Spiritual
Kind
Benevolent

...words espousing the gratitude Kishore and I feel for Kiaen's arrival as our "3% miracle".

He was conceived, naturally, after 3 years of Kishore and I hoping, praying and 'endeavoring'... and only couples for whom the objective switches from pure recreation to (elusive) procreation will understand how this is less fun than it sounds ...

3 years during which time we had consensus from 3 different doctors that we, particularly I (with my advancing age etc etc) had only a 3% chance of natural conception and that our best hope for a sibling for our firstborn, Lara Anoushka, was via IVF.

Lara herself was an 'intervention baby', being one of the 20% of babies successfully conceived through the less intrusive IUI process, after a year and a half of trying naturally and already being told then my age was a debilitating factor.

We had tried another round of IUI for her sibling in 2017 when Lara was a year old. And that time we fell into the ranks of the 80% of would-be parents for whom it would be an exercise in futility... who would go home, comfort each other as best they could, while individually masking their own personal disappointment... hoping for the best, 'the next time around'...

So the improbability ratio of 97% against natural conception of our second baby, as concurred by the combined opinion of 3 medical professionals, was a very real, very daunting figure for us to have to mentally deal with.

Deep, DEEP, down in my heart however, though I had many a day of doubt... I kept a core kernel of faith that somehow, I would again experience the privilege of pregnancy, and again, have a chance at childbirth.

And so, the optimist in me would tell myself, "Well, there have to be people who fall in the 3% bucket... why shouldn't WE be part of the 3%?"

Those who know me well, understand my belief in the Law of Attraction, the philosophy of focusing your mind only on what you want to attract, not on what you don't want, and so even as Kishore and I prepared to go into significant personal debt to attempt IVF in the 2nd half of 2019, I marshalled a last ditch effort to hone in on that 3% chance of natural conception... through research coming across fertility supplements that I ordered from the US and sent to a friend in Singapore to redirect to me because the supplier would not deliver to Malaysia.

I made us as a couple take the supplements in the 3 month 'priming period' in the lead up to the IVF procedure - preconditioning our bodies for optimum results, if you will.

At the same time, I had invested in a sophisticated fertility monitor, with probes and digital sensors for daily tracking of saliva and other unmentionable fluid samples, designed to pinpoint with chemical accuracy my state of fertility on any given day.

(UPDATE: For those interested - I obtained the supplements and Ovacue Fertility Monitor from https://www.fairhavenhealth.com/. Though I had my supplies delivered to a friend in Singapore, and redirected to me here since the US site does not deliver to Malaysia, there are local distributors for these products, you will just have to research the trustworthiness of the vendors yourself...)

I had set an intention - in the 3 months of pre-IVF priming, I would consume what seemed like a pharmacy's worth of supplements, and track fertility religiously... in hopes that somehow, within the 3 month priming period, we would conceive naturally and potentially save ourselves a down payment on a new property... and this was just a projection on financial costs of IVF, not even considering the physical, emotional and mental toll it involves, with no guarantee of a baby at the end of it all...

It was a continuation of an intention embedded even with my first pregnancy, where all the big ticket baby items were consciously purchased for use by a future sibling, in gender neutral colours, in hopes that sibling would be a brother "for a balanced pair", though of course any healthy child would be a welcome blessing.

It was a very conscious determination to always skew my thoughts in service of what the end objective was. For example, when 3+year old Lara would innocently express impatience at not yet having a sibling, at one point suggesting that since we were "taking too long to give her a baby brother/sister", perhaps we should just "go buy a baby from a shop", instead of getting defensive or berating the baby that she herself was, we enlisted Lara's help to pray for her sibling... so in any place of worship, or sacred ground of any kind that we passed thereon, Lara would stop, close her eyes, bow her small head and place her tiny hands together in prayer, reciting earnestly, "Please God, please give me a baby brother or baby sister."

After months and months of watching Lara do this, in the constancy of her childlike chant, Kishore started feeling the pressure of possibly disappointing Lara if her prayer was not answered. Whereas for me, Lara's recitation of her simple wish became like a strengthening mantra, our collective intention imbued with greater power with each repetition, and the goal of a sibling kept very much in the forefront of our minds (hence our calling Lara our 'project manager' in this endeavour).

And somehow in the 2nd month of that 3 month period, a positive + sign appeared on one of the home pregnancy tests I had grown accustomed to taking - my version of the lottery tickets others keep buying in hopes of hitting the jackpot, with all the cyclical anticipation and more often than not, disappointment, that entails...

This time however I was not disappointed.

With God's Grace, (hence 'Kiaen', a variation of 'Kiaan' which means 'Grace of God'), my focus on our joining the ranks of the 3% had materialised.

It seems poetic then, that Kiaen chose to make his appearance on the 3rd May, ironically the same date that his paternal great-grandfather departed this world for the next... such that in the combined words of Kishore and his father Kai Vello Suppiah,

"The 1st generation Suppiah left on 3rd May and the 4th generation Suppiah arrived on 3rd May after 41yrs...
One leaves, another comes, the legacy lives on..."

***

KIAEN AARYAN SUPPIAH'S BIRTH STORY

On Sunday 3rd May, I was 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant.

The baby was, in my mind, very UN-fashionably late past his due date of 29th April, so as much as I had willed and 'manifested' the privilege of pregnancy, to say I was keen to be done with it all was an understatement.

In the weeks leading to up to my full term, I had experienced increasingly intense Braxton-Hicks 'practice contractions' - annoying for me for the discomfort involved, stressful for Kishore who was on tenterhooks with the false alarms, on constant alert for when we would actually need to leave home for the hospital.

Having become a Hypnobirthing student and advocate from my first pregnancy with Lara, and thus being equipped with
(1) a lack of fear about childbirth in general and
(2) a basic understanding of how all the sensations I would experience fit into the big picture of my body bringing our baby closer to us,
I was less stressed - content to wait for the baby to be "fully cooked" and come out whenever he was ready... though I wouldn't have minded at all if the cooking time ended sooner, rather than later.

With Lara, I had been somewhat 'forced' into an induced labour, even though she was not yet due, and that had resulted in a 5 DAY LABOUR, a Birth Story for another post, so I was not inclined to chemically induce labour, even though I was assured that for second time mothers, it would be 'much faster and easier'...

That morning, I had a hunch *maybe* that day was the day, because in contrast to previous weeks' sensations of tightening, pressure and even spasms that were concentrated in the front of my abdomen and occasionally shot through my sides and legs, I felt period - like cramping in my lower back which I had not felt before throughout the pregnancy.

It was about 8am in the morning then, and my 'surges' were still relatively mild ('surges' being Hypnobirthing - speak for 'contractions', designed to frame them with the more positive connotations needed to counteract common language in which childbirth is presented as something that is unequivocally painful and traumatic, instead of the miraculous, powerful and natural phenomenon it actually is).

I recall (masochistically?) entertaining the thought of opting NOT to have an epidural JUST TO SEE WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE...

I figured this would be the last time I would be pregnant and so it would be my 'last chance' to experience 'drug free labour' which, apart from the health benefits for baby and mother, might be *interesting* in a way that people who are curious about what getting a tattoo and skydiving and bungee jumping are like, might find these *interesting*...even knowing there will be pain and risk involved...

Since I have tried tattoos and skydiving (unfortunately not being able to squeeze in bungee-jumping while my life was purely my own to risk at no dependents' possible detriment) a similar curiousity about a no-epidural labour was on my mind...

In the absence of other signs of the onset of labour (like 'bloody show' or my waters breaking), I wanted to wait until the surges were coming every few minutes before we actually left the house for the hospital, not wanting to be one of those couples who rushed in too early and had interminable waits for the next stage in unfamiliar, clinical surroundings and/or were made to go home in an anti-climatic manner.

I was even calm enough through my surges to have the presence of mind to wash and blowdry my hair, knowing if I did deliver soon I would not be allowed this luxury for a while.

Around 9am I asked Kishore to prep for Lara and himself to be dressed and breakfasted so we could head to hospital soon, while I sent messages to family members on both sides informing them 'today might be the day.'

My mother, who had briefly served as a midwife before going back into general nursing and then becoming a nursing tutor, prophetically stated that if what I was experiencing was true labour, "the baby would be out by noon".

The pace in which my surges grew closer together was surprisingly quicker than I expected; and while I asked Lara to "Hurry up with breakfast" with only a tad more urgency than we normally tell her to do, little Missy being prone to dilly-dallying at meals, I probably freaked Kishore out when about 930am onwards, I had to instinctively get on my hands and knees a couple of times, eyes closed, trying to practice the Hypnobirthing breathing techniques I had revised to help along the process of my body birthing our child into the world.

I recall him saying a bit frantically as I knelt at our front door, doubled over as he waited for Lara to complete something or other, "Lara hurry up! Can't you see Mama is in so much pain and you are taking your own sweet time??!!"

SIDETRACK: Just the night before, Lara and I had watched a TV show in which a woman gave birth with the usual histrionics accompanying pop culture depictions of labour.

Lara watched the scene, transfixed.

I told her, simply and matter-of-factly, "That's what Mama has to do to get baby brother out Lara, and that's what I had to do for you also."

In most of interactions with my daughter, I have sought to equip her to face life's situations with calmness, truthful common sense, and ideally a minimum of drama.

Those who know the dramatic diva that Lara can be will know that this is a work-in-progress, but her response to me that night showed me some of my 'teachings' were sinking in:

She looked at me unfazed, "But Mama," she said. "You won't cry and scream like that lady, right? You will be BRAVE and stay calm, right?"
#nopressure.

So as we prepped to leave for the hospital I did indeed attempt to be that role model of calm for her, asking her only for her help in keeping very quiet,
"Because Mama needs to focus on bringing baby brother out and she needs quiet to concentrate...".

As we left the house at 10.11am, I texted Kishore's sister Geetha to please prep to pick up Lara from the hospital, and was grateful Kishore had the foresight to ask our gynae to prepare a letter for Geetha to show any police roadblocks between my in-laws' home in Subang Jaya and the hospital in Bangsar, this all happening under the Movement Control Order (MCO).

To Lara's credit, in the journey over to the hospital, she - probably sensing the gravity of the situation, sat very quietly in her seat at the back, and the silence was punctuated only by my occasional deep intakes of breath and some variation of my Ohmmm-like moans when the sensations were at their height.

By the time we got to Pantai Hospital at around 10.30am, my surges were strong enough I requested a wheelchair to assist me in getting to the labour ward, as I did not trust my own legs to support me... and Kishore would have to wait until Geetha had arrived to take Lara back to my in-laws' house before he himself could go up.

I slumped in the wheelchair and was wheeled up to the labour room with my eyes closed the whole time, trying to handle my surges.

I didn't even look up to see the attendant who pushed me... but did make the effort to thank him sincerely when he handed me over, with what seemed like a palpable sense of relief on his part, to the labour ward nurses.

The nurse attending me at Pantai was calm, steady and efficient. I answered some questions and changed into my labour gown while waiting for Kishore to come up, all the while managing the increasingly intense surges with my rusty Hypnobirthing breathing techniques.

By the time Kishore joined me at around 11am (I know these timings based on the timestamps of the 'WhatsApp live feed' of messages Kishore sent to his family), I was asking the nurse on duty, "How soon can I get an epidural??" thinking what crazy woman thought she could do this without drugs???!!!

The nurse checked my cervix dilation, I saw her bloodied glove indicating my mucous plug had dislodged, and she told me, "Well you are already at 7cm (which, for the uninitiated, is 70% of the way to the 10cm dilation needed for birthing), you are really doing well, if you made it this far without any drugs, if can you try and manage without it... I suspect within 2 hours or less you will deliver your baby and since it will take about that time for the anaesthesiologist to be called, epidural to be administered and kick in... it might all be for nothing... but of course the decision is completely up to you... "

So there I was, super torn, should I risk the sensations becoming worse... or risk the epidural becoming a waste?? And of course I was trying to decide this as my labour surges were coming at me stronger and stronger...

I was in such a dilemma...because as a 'recovering approval junkie' there was also a silly element of approval-seeking involved, ("The nurse thinks I can do this without drugs... maybe I CAN do this without drugs... Yay me!") mixed with that element of curiosity I mentioned earlier ("What if I actually CAN do this without drugs... plenty of other women have done it all over the world since time immemorial.. no big deal, how bad can it be...??") so then I thought I would use the financial aspect to be the 'tiebreaker' in my decision making...

I asked the nurse how much an epidural would cost and when she replied "Around MYR1.5k", I still remember Kishore's incredulous face as I asked the question, i.e."Seriously babe, you are gonna think about money right now? If you need the epidural TAKE IT, don't worry about the money!!!"... and while we are not rich by any stretch of the imagination, thankfully RM1.5k is not a quantum that made me swing towards a decision to "better save the money"...

So in the end, I guess my curiosity won out, and I turned down the epidural "just to see what it would be like and if I had it in me" (in addition of course to avoiding the side effects of any drugs introduced into my and the baby's body).

My labour occuring in the time of coronavirus, it was protocol for me to have a COVID19 test done, so the medical staff could apply the necessary precautions. I had heard from a friend Sharon Ruba that the test procedure was uncomfortable, so when the nurse came with the test kit as I was starting another surge, I asked, "Please can I just finish this surge before I do the test?" as I really didn't think I could multitask tackling multiple uncomfortable sensations in one go.

The COVID19 test involved what felt like a looong, skinny cotton bud being inserted into one nostril... I definitely felt more than a tickle as it went in and up, being told to take deep breaths by the nurse. Then she asked me to "Try to swallow" and I felt it go into my nasal cavities where I didn't think anything could go any further, but was proven wrong when she asked me to swallow again and the swab was probed even deeper. Then she warned me there would be some slight discomfort as she prepared to collect a sample... but at that point all I could think about was:

(i) I really don't have much of a choice
(ii) please let this be over before my next surge kicks in
(iii) if all the people breaking the MCO rules knew what it feels like to do this test maybe they won't put themselves at risk of the need to perform one...

In full disclosure as I was transferred into the actual delivery room at some point after 11am, another nurse offered me 'laughing gas' to ostensibly take some of the edge off... I took the self-operated breathing nozzle passed to me but don't recall it making any difference to my sensations..so didn't use it much as it seemed pretty pointless.

I recall some measure of relief when I heard my gynae Dr. Paul entering the room, greeting Kishore and me, and telling us it was going well and it wouldn't be long now and he would see us again shortly.

From my previous labour with Lara I knew the midwives pretty much take you 90% of the way through the labour and when the Dr is called in you are really at the home stretch, so was very relieved to hear his voice though knowing he would leave and come back later meant it wasn't quite over yet.

I do remember realising when I had crossed the Thinning and Opening Phase of labour to the Birthing Phase, by the change in sensations... it is still amazing to me that as the Hypnobirthing book mentioned, having this knowledge I was instinctively able to switch breathing techniques for the next stage of labour .

Was my opting against epidural the right choice for me?

Overall? Yes.

Don't get me wrong.

I *almost* regretted the decision several times during active labour... especially when I felt my body being taken over by an overwhelming compulsion to push that did not seem conscious and was accompanied by involuntary gutteral moans where I literally just thought to myself, "I surrender, God do with me what you will..." (super dramatic I know but VERY real at the time...).

I think I experienced 3-4 such natural explusive reflexes (?), rhythmically pushing the baby down the birth path, one of which was accompanied by what felt like a swoosh of water coming out of a hose with a diameter the size of a golf ball... this was when I realised my water had finally broken...

The nurses kept instructing me to do different things, to keep breathing, to move to my side, then to move to the middle, to raise my feet... and when I didn't comply, Kishore (who was with me throughout both my labours) tried to help them by repeating the instructions prefaced with "Sayang..." but I basically ignored all the intructions because I felt I had no capacity to direct any part of my body to do anything and someone else would have to physically manoeuvre that body part themselves.

When I heard Dr. Paul's voice again and the flurry of commotion surrounding his presence, I knew the time was close... and when I heard the nurse say to Kishore, "Sir, these are your gloves, for when you cut the baby's cord", it was music to my ears...

I'm very, VERY grateful Kiaen slid out after maybe the 4th of those involuntary pushes... the wave of RELIEF when he came out so quickly... it still boggles my mind that my mother was essentially right and as his birth time was 12.02pm, it was *only* about 1.5 hours between our arrival at the hospital and his arrival into the world.

Kiaen was placed on my chest for skin to skin bonding and remained there for a considerable time.

For our short stay in the hospital he would be with us in my maternity ward number C327... another trivially serendipitous sign for me because he was born on the 3rd (May) and our wedding anniversary is 27th (July).

I was discharged the following day 4th May at about 5.30pm, after I got an all clear on COVID19 and a paediatric surgeon did a small procedure on Kiaen to address a tongue-tie that would affect his breastfeeding latch... making the entire duration of our stay about 31 hours.

I have taken the time and effort to record all this down so that whenever life's challenges threaten to get me down I can remind myself, "Ignore the 97% failure probability, focus on the 3% success probability".

Also that the human condition is miraculous and it is such a privilege to experience it.

To our son Kiaen Aaryan, thank you for coming into our lives and choosing us as your parents.

Even though Papa and I are both zombies trying to settle into a night time feeding routine with you, I look forward to spending not only all future Mother's Days, but every day, with you and your Akka...

And last but not least, to my husband Kishore...without whom none of this would be possible - we did it sayang, I love you ❤️

Photo credit: Stayhome session with Samantha Yong Photography (http://samanthayong.com/)