Baby Blog: Week 14

just last night, i received an email from babycenter.com telling me that my baby was now the size of an avocado. blimey!

"If you could see your baby, she would also be playing with her umbilical cord, sucking on her thumb and practising her breathing skills by inhaling and exhaling the amniotic fluid around her. Some of her more advanced body systems are working now too, including the circulatory system and urinary tract. You'll soon be in for one of the most exciting moments of pregnancy — feeling the baby move. Some women notice quickening, as it's called, between 16 and 20 weeks. (Although, if this is your first baby, you may not feel anything for another few weeks or so.) You may feel these first womb wiggles as a rumbling in your stomach. Once you realize it's really the baby doing backflips, note it and tell your healthcare provider at your next visit."

since chinese new year (which was circa week 6), i thought i would never recover from the constant bout of nausea (usually triggered by some offensive food or smell such as spinach or fish ball noodles), extreme fatigue (suddenly 5-hour naps became the norm every afternoon and i could still hardly lift a finger to brush my teeth) and hourly romps to the ladies' room... tortured by the perpetual beckonings of hunger, i had to scour for food every few hours and yet, with my erratic reactions to food, i couldn't eat most of the time and this left me in a very miserable state... :( poor hubby came home almost every night from work only to hear me whining, "honey, i'm soo hungry but i can't eat!!! *stomach growl*..."

the other phenomenon which really overwhelmed me was the incredible fatigue...from the moment i opened my eyes in the morning, i was tired...too tired to even lift my body up from the bed and to the toilet...simple acts like brushing my teeth and taking a shower suddenly seemed too energy-consuming and sometimes i didn't even have the energy to make my own lunch/dinner! dishes suddenly got piled up in the kitchen and the bathtub would remain dry for days...my emails went unchecked for weeks and i was now falling asleep in the middle of my favourite tv shows...for the first time in history, i went to bed regularly before midnight which my hubbie was glad for!

which came as a surprise, then, that friends and relatives started commenting that i was losing weight...were they blind? could they not see the bulging tummy i was trying to hide under my clothes and other parts of my body which were beginning to balloon? but they were right; just after christmas, i was about 47kg (thanks to all the festive binging!) and now, by week 10, i was about 45.5kg, almost lighter than my weight during jc days! this was weird...i was eating almost every other hour, sleeping like a pig and hadn't visited the gym in weeks, yet i was getting smaller! perhaps it was true - that the baby was an alien living inside of you, sucking all the energy and nutrients out of your body so it could grow on its own!! haha.....

 
Baby Blog: Week 5.5

i didn’t realise my friends actually read my blog until the other day when one of my girlfriends, Christina, bumped into me at church and exclaimed, “i read your blog! And i really liked your article about xxx and that joke about zzz…” i stood there and looked at her in a daze. that joke had been written almost half a year ago and I couldn’t remember the contents of it! :b

this meant only one thing: i had to blog more often. and what else to blog about than something which would be on my mind constantly for the next nine months: a baby!

which brings me to that fateful morning when, for the umpteenth time, i had to drag myself out of bed at 6am in the morning to empty my bladder (something which i never had to do before in my entire life)…as i sat over the toilet bowl with my eyes half-closed, i thought, “what the heck, i’ll just do the pregnancy test now!” 2 weeks before, i’d told my mom I was dying to find out if i was going to be a new mom this year and she told me not to take the test so early, or i might be disappointed… one week later, she bought me a clear blue test kit and told me to wait until i was at least 5 weeks past my LMP. and now, at 6am in the morning on the saturday just before chinese new year, i was 5-and-a-half weeks past my LMP and just dying to find out if my daily romps to the toilet in the middle of the night had anything to do with a baby in my tummy…..

i opened the box and the insert read: Collect a sample of your urine in a clean, dry container and hold just the Absorbent Sampler in the urine for 20 seconds only. A blue line in the End Window shows that the test has worked and is ready to read. This should appear in about 1 minute.

with trembling fingers (maybe!), i dipped the sampler in and waited for about 20 seconds before lifting it out again. my eyes widened. there was a big, fat +PLUS+ sign already sitting in the window!!! and it wasn’t just light blue colour, it was a deep, dark shade of blue! i couldn’t believe my eyes. i stood there staring at it for a few more seconds before reality sank in and i jumped to my feet and squealed with glee. i ran back to the bedroom, where my grandma had already been woken up by the noise and asked me what had happened. i told her. then I went outside, grabbed my friend’s lomo camera (my 15-year-old pentax wasn’t working anymore) and started snapping away at this beautiful piece of art in my hand (hey, how many momentos do you get to make and keep for your descendants-to-be?!)…then i tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. i mean, how could anyone sleep when one has been praying for a baby for months (since august to be exact), hubbie is always traveling for work and you know that God has promised you a beautiful, wonderful baby to hold in your arms but you just didn’t know when! i was flabbergasted. when november came round the corner i had asked God to give us a christmas baby…and He really did!

not being able to fall back to sleep, i grabbed my handphone and sent SMSes to all my close friends and relatives…

what a way to start my day. i had to meet joo kim and adeline at california fitness at 1 but was already starving by 11am…so i called joo kim and told her the good news (which made her absolutely ballistic!) and we agreed to have lunch first before working out. then i made a phone call to adeline to tell her there was a change in plans and asked her to meet us at lau pa sat instead. over an extra large bowl of fish soup noodles and yong tau fu, i told her the reason for our sudden change in plans and she was thrilled!

we continued with our plans for the day. working out at the gym was fun but i couldn’t really run/cycle as much as i used to as my body started to ache and fatigue was beginning to set in. the club street fair was fun too but a little too loud for my liking…ad gave me a lift to aunty becky’s house before heading for james’ mother’s birthday dinner and aunty becky gave me a great big hug to congratulate me! dinner was delicious with sautéed broccoli and portobello mushrooms (my favourite!).