Baby 103 : The numbing effect will go away when the drilling starts

Whoever said that you will glow and enjoy your pregnancy must be really selfless. I am no angel. I felt so miserable having to give up so many things so early in my pregnancy. For goodness sake, I have a lifetime of giving up to do. I wish people around me would give me a break now before I lose the opportunity to choose what’s left of my choice lifestyle.

Top 5 things I hate:

1. Forbidding me from certain type of food – Doctors have already assured that any type of food in moderation is ok, but not according to all the sudden new dietitians/experts around you.


2. Forbidding me from handiwork – Being independent soul that I lived for, it is very frustrating to be ordered to stay put and not allowed to get my hands on to any handiwork.


3. Forbidding me from moving freely – I am free spirited. I walk fast with a hint of skip when I am focused. I jump when I am in joy. I love stretching lazily when I’m on bed. And now I have to walk, sit and lay down like a snail.


4. Forbidding me from my emotional release – I am a direct person. I am passionate and my feelings shows for everyone to see. But now, I am told to stay calm so that my mood will not aggravate the baby.


5. Bodily changes that deny me my true self – I became so tired all the time. I used to be energetic even if I have not had a wink for the past 24 hours. Now I could simply doze off while reading a book, even though I have just woken up less than 2 hours ago. My mind is in constant fogginess that I need time to respond to queries. I became dumb!
   

No wonder everyone says mothers are selfless. They are because they were forced to. Trainings start from day 1 the announcement on pregnancy was made. And so the drill begins.

My guppies update

Remember my guppies? Now it is a family of 14. It was amazing to find new baby guppies. And very relaxing to watch them play/swim. Now one of our daily routine when reach home is to watch the little guppies and make a head count, just to make sure none of them gone missing (bird and lizard had been attacking our fishes). We are hoping to train them to learn to hide underneath the water plants by feeding them around that area.

Can you see them? One baby is at the top left of the bowl, and the other at the top right of the bowl. It's really difficult to catch them in film. After 30 over photos taken, this is the clearest. The rest are a blur of shadows.

Baby 102 : Swallowing the numbing shock

If you think that decision to have a baby is just a one-off decision of your own, then you are very wrong. Yes, you might be the carrier, but if you have conscience, you know that decision is never in your hands.
The moment Ben saw the moving hands, the big head and the pulsating heartbeats on the ultrasound screen, he never stop grinning. The irritating-cum-lovely grin kept widening and pulling strings in my heart. Ben loves baby, but he never pushes me to have one. Guess nature has been giving him a helping hand.
Then, there were all the family members from both sides. Everyone laughed and rejoiced at the news, except for my sister. Maybe because we are very close with each other, she is the only person that felt the same numbing emptiness like I do. We were the only 2 persons firmly nailed on the ground, whilst the surrounding rest were on cloud nine.
So decision was not difficult, as I love to see everyone so happy. But being such a serious person that I am, I did a lot of calculations and considerations on a totally new set of game in our future (it is no more my future). I have to admit that the future looks unnerving to me. But as much as I dreaded the 180° change in my life, the beating heart within me has already hold me on my new bearings. Guess there is no turning back now.

May you be well and happy!

I kept hearing it calling out. It’s already the second day and no help seem to come about.
I have just finish spring cleaning my little guppies house. They’ve been really busy these past months. Baby guppies kept coming and I have to source for a bigger house for them. From the original 5, they dwindled to 2 due to bird and lizard attacks. Then, 6 little guppies came into our view. As the weeks passed, we saw additional 6 smaller guppies joining the family. Initially, I dare not wash the bowl, afraid that I might pour out the little guppies while doing my cleaning and thus causing them early demise. We finally move them over to 2 different bowls yesterday.
When all was finally cleaned and cleared, I heard it calling again. I can stand it no longer. I ask Ben to allow me to go to the poor fellow. He agreed. I quickly grabbed my beautiful transparent umbrella while Ben went for the keys. We went searching and found it blind and oh so small. Ben picked it up and remarked that it may be blind. I looked around and couldn’t find any relatives of this little fellow. We brought it home and decided to warm some fresh milk for it. Its blindness confirmed, as we saw how the little fellow kept missing the bowl of milk and depended solely on smell and hearing. Worse still, the little fellow is too young that it can’t even lick the milk. Luckily I have some cat food stocked up for situation like this. I squeeze out the soft tuna and salmon meat and the fellow seemed to love it. We tried various ways to feed it some milk. We tried pouring some milk into the rubber hand glove and poke a tiny hole at the tip of the finger to induce the little fellow to suck. But the fellow doesn’t seem to like it. We can’t keep her as she still needs her mother. After much deliberation, we decided to put her in a small little box cushioned with rags and then placed them in a bigger box, so that it won’t wander off and got knocked off by cars. The fellow must have felt safe and warm because it went to sleep and didn’t wake up the entire evening (when we went to check on it in the evening and night).
Today morning, I have poured out a small amount of milk and some more tuna, just in case its mom has not come to claim it. But glad to say that all’s well ends well. The little fellow has been fetched by its mom. Anyway, we just leave the milk and tuna there, in case mommy needs to eat.
Dear little kitty, may you be well and happy. May you be free from enmity and danger. May you be free from suffering.

Baby 101

How do you know you are pregnant? Nope. Do not believe all you see in the tv. There were no faintings, vomittings, or nauseating moments. Everything felt alright. Maybe a little sleepy. Okay! A lot more sleepier, but given my sleepy-head nature, I never gave much thought about it.

But I kept missing my menstruation. The first month, it was year end, and I was busy wrapping up my work. Maybe it was just stress. The second month, it was a company trip and another team building program. Maybe it was the travelling and stress. The third month, nothing. Something is not right here. Come to think of it, I have been having some rather funny cravings. For once, I never like pineapples. But these days, I'd been having them almost daily. A change in tastebuds? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Ben? He thought nothing of it, which I did, initially. But 3 months? I decided to buy one of those off-the-shelf one-step testing kit. But I kept forgetting to do the test, until one early morning. Ben had told me to wake him up when I am doing the test, so I did (why let him enjoy the sleep, while I waited anxiously alone, right?). The result? Positive.

Oh.......my! Now I have nothing against children. In fact, I adopted one myself (www.worldvision.com.my). But having one of my own? That's a real big step. For one, I am allergic to most medicine. I am not sure if I am able to give birth safely. Two, I am a perfectionist. I am too serious about life that I may bog down my child's mind with all the life issues. Three, I had been a real headache to my dad when I was growing up. I knew the kind of headache he had and I did not intend to inherit them. So I told myself, this is a cheap testing kit that is prone to errors. Better check it out with a real specialist.

We are real procastinators. It took us another week to finally meet up with a gynae. We met Dr Lim and told him about our situation. He asked me to lie down on the bed and he started squeezing some cold gel on my tummy. Then he put this cold plastic scanner or something on my tummy and started free-wheeling around my lower abdomen, while his eyes focussing on a black & white tv screen. Then he put his index fingers on the screen and showed us a round object.

"You see this?" he asked. We nodded. "That's your baby there. And this blinking white dot?", we nodded again. "That's your baby's heart beat."

And the waves of shock and numbness begins...

The Roti Man

We used to wait for the roti man to come to our house during the evenings. Mom would want to buy bread for tomorrow's breakfast, while we, the kids, would like to buy junk food like Mimi, Chickedees, Kum Kum and so much more. Sometimes, mom would buy rectangle buns with coffee cream to keep as snacks in case we are hungry.
You still see this bread peddler with great balancing skills riding around housing estates, be it in big city or small town.
This is part of Malaysia.

Uncle Choong

If you have seen my previous post on Uncle Mun, you would know that Uncle Choong is another friend of Ben's dad.

My first impression of this man is that he looks like Choy Sun Ye (Prosperity God) for Chinese or Santa Claus for Christian. He is generally round with full long beard. He has got bright eyes and bushy eyebrows. For a person like me, who is really bad at studying a person's features (because I am shy by nature, ek eheh..), I thought I did quite well by capturing their faces. I had to. I spent the whole hour++ sitting there studying them.
Anyway, Uncle Choong is an entrepreneur and similar to Uncle Mun, he too has limited education. He knows no English or Malay. His bills were written by qualified engineers under his instruction. Projects that are deemed not do-able by many has been proven successful under his hands. His name is so famous within the industry that graduates/scholars wanted to be his apprentice. Need I say more?
But from what I could discern, I don't think you can learn how he does things. It is more like applying his spirit. The never say can't and never give up spirit. He would stay up all night thinking of a solution to his problem. He would knock on your doors at 4am to tell you he found the solution and hope to get it done. That's what differentiate him from the scholars. You can't acquire this from books. You have to apply it.
Uncle Choong's favourite quote since the 70s : "People has already managed to travel to the moon, what else can't be done?". Can you?