Book Review: This Is Going to Hurt

Published on January 8, 2020

I finished the book in a day, while waiting for my wife in labour 🤓

A right book at the right time.

It is funny, and also informative.

Learnings from the book

The book is made up of diary entries of a doctor, who specializes in labour.

I even manage to learn a few things, imparting knowledge to my wife in real-time:

Oxytocin is a drug that increases contraction and speeds up a labour. You’re meant to progress by a centimetre of dilation every hour or two, and if that’s not happening, then it’s caesarean time.

My wife had her water bag bursted with a plastic hook.

Then she was dripped with oxytocin. The doctor check 1 hour later, and luckily she dilated by 2cm.

She was worried with the delayed labour (and possibly going into emergency caesarean), and this little fact calm her 😆

Choosing a date

One of the journal entry is about a British Chinese couple, who prefer a particular date – on 1st September.

The reason:

September babies go into different school year and perform better in exams.

In UK and other countries, school starts in September.

In Singapore, school starts in January. In fact, the exact first day is Jan 2 (not Jan 1)!

To explain further, if our baby is born on Jan 1, she will be the youngest in the class.

Our baby is born on Jan 5, and she has an advantage. #kiasuparents

All the kinds of things people put into their private parts

There are many of such entries.

A funny one involves a TV remote controller. The person claims it was an accident, when he sit on the sofa. Probable, until they took it out and there is a condom on the remote.

There was also an A&E where a guy boasted to his girlfriend that the strength of his erections could stop the rotary blades of a desk fan..

The desk fan proved the clear winner.