PEPEK SAKIT, SIOL.

pls pardon my french.

C is also for Cramps, which i’ve been getting, not just in my legs but also in my abdomen sometimes. i suppose the abdomen one is just the womb, or baby condo, expanding. the legs, well, if i’m up and about (especially at shopping malls) and it’s cold, the simpul biawak creeps up and takes hold, and i have to stay still and massage my stiff foot (so i can continue shopping haha).

another kind of leg cramp is when i wake up in the morning. i think i probably cut off circulation from my left hip to my left leg when i’m lying on my left side. (they said sleeping on the left is good, so i follows mah.)

C is also for that C cup i’m STILL waiting for to happen hehe.

which brings me to a very scary topic.

breastfeeding.

C is also for Cracked nipples, which i hear happens to many women breastfeeding for the first time. not just cracking, but bleeding. and lumping in the veins too if the milk isn’t sucked properly. gah!!!

my colleague and seasoned breasfeeder, told me to start applying nipple cream before giving birth so that the nipples will be softer and less crack-prone. heck, it freaked me out so much i’ve even started slathering cocoa butter all over them already (in my 20th week!).

whatever it is, i really believe in the benefits of breastfeeding, even though i know it’ll be frustrating the first week. from a magazine i’m reading (ahem, parenting ones circulated free in the office, of course) it said that the first time a baby suckles on the mother’s breast is very important, as it’s a kind of imprinting on the brain. latching them onto your nip-nip isn’t as easy as it looks (they really should learn from daddies, who are experts at handling mammary glands). rin, on the other hand, is worried that her boobies are too small for baby to suck on. now, listen to this, the magazine said that smaller ones are EASIER for babies to feed from, hokay. their mouths aren’t exactly of julia roberts proportion you know.

anyway, back to the boy vs girl issue. it seems that the malays and the chinese have opposite predictions on pregnant women. my grandma (ok, she’s born chinese but brought up malay, so that makes her, er, malay ok) is very very sure that it’s a boy coz my “perut tajam ke depan”. my mum (ok, she’s technically half chinese but very malay and cikgu melayu ok) said that the mother will cease to look good during pregnancy if it’s a girl but glow if it’s a boy. then my aunt (ok, she’s also born cheena, baba some more, but married my malay uncle, so that makes her malay lor) asked if my navel has turned outy or inny, and i said outy. she declared confidently, “boy.” wahlao. macam mak nujum.

the chinese on the other hand (the cheena chinese) look at me and say “i think hor, this one girl.” according to them, if the woman’s features don’t change and they look “sweet”, it’ll be a girl. if the woman “spreads”, like their nose and the hips, it’ll be a boy. one of them even thinks it’s a girl coz i look “neat”. (?)

now, my conclusion is: the malay and chinese have different kinds of bodies lah.

i was telling rin the other day how i observe that baby boys tend to look like their mums, and baby girls tend to look like their dads. (this screams oedipus and electra complex.)

now, how would a girl version of izad look like, in that case?

gahh!!

1) Cocoa butter, which someone bought for me (thank you kak m!) from body shop, and which i will slather on every night in the hopes of a stretchmark-free belly after birth. previously, i’ve been using my crabtree&evelyn body lotion (mm, freesia, my favourite) but people have sworn by cocoa butter so cocoa butter it is. it smells, er, very buttery with a hint of cocoa (duh!), and is super duper rich and oily. it stays on very long too, even after a night of tossing and turning in bed.

2) Constipation, which i experienced for the first time since being preggers. i was giggling to myself in amusement while pushing the crap out of me at the same time. i thought, well isn’t THIS a mini-labour! ho boy. and i’m not even eating iron pills. (wait, what’s Obimin pill again?)

3) Circumference, which is ever-growing but i forgot how much it measures at when rini took it on saturday. (i am so very bad at figures.) she also measured my boobs. err, is it 32 inches/cm now? we were at the tailor’s for our hari raya outfits. it’s gonna be a heavy raya this year at 8 months, but, ahem, glamer TETAP glamer hokay! =)

4) Clueless, which most men are when it comes to detecting a pregnant woman. I was chatting with a colleague about his two kids while waiting for the lift, and after telling me about how his first one will be turning 3 and the second one will be a year old, he asked, “so, you bila lagi?” to which i gave an incredulous smirk and rubbed my tummy, “ni apa??” after which he gaped in embarrassment. another fella, again in the lift, was hesitant at first to acknowledge the physical change in me, so tentatively (and cleverly) said, “sihat nampak?” to which i, again, rubbed my tummy and went “ah ah, sihaat” and now confident, he asked how many months i was. and the best was when i bumped into my very first boyfriend (!!) in town while i was with the girls on saturday, and after exchanging pleasantries (yes, we’re still pleasant with each other) i asked, “oi, you tak notice ke apa apa?” to which he looked me up and down and jumped, “kao, eh sia-..” yes, shocked he was. hehe. i love doing that.

5) Clothes, for myself that is, which i still buy despite telling myself NO MORE! horrible addiction.

6) Cooked food, which i still am not fond of. especially food court ones. argh.

7) Can’t wait for august!

my blood test is cleared! all negative and a-okay! hurrah!

and alhamdulillah. :)

that was fast. they said they’d take a week.

the lady at the clinic just reminded me to get a hepatitis jab after delivery, together with the little one. *ties string on finger*

by the way, i felt two REAL strong nudges last night while watching CSI on AXN. i think baby likes CSI too!

either that or it was still hungry coz i only had four rolls of delifrance bread with margarine for dinner. (eh, nice ok.)

we’ve reached the halfway mark. 18 weeks and going on strong!

our recent trip to the doctor revealed that the little peanut has grown to a BIG peanut! the screen couldn’t even capture its whole body lengthwise as previously. we could see its round head, its neatly formed spine, its legs tucked away underneath. the doc estimated it to be 20 cm long and 226 grams. masyaAllah!

if my math serves me right, that’s once again more than double what it was four weeks ago. and the weighing scale showed me to be at a pathetic 45.5kg, which means i barely gained 3kg since being pregnant. good? bad?

meanwhile, i marvel everyday at how fast my tummy is growing, and you know what? i don’t feel fat or frumpy at all. the flabs have stretched itself tautly along with my skin, and it’s now a cute (i think) mini-watermelon, round and smooth. i love it! well, at this size anyway. don’t think i’ll be too crazy about it when it’s grown so humongous that it hurts my back and feet. already i see varicose veins creeping up my legs like wiggly green worms.

and speaking of veins, it was also Blood Test day at the clinic. it took a few minutes for the nurse to coax a vein to show itself on my arm, and with a ‘bismillah’, she poked a skillful needle and drew out four tubes of blood right off me. fascinating to watch the pretty red liquid filling up the tubes like smooth syrup, you know.

morbidity aside, the other day at the hospital waiting for dad in surgery, my little twin nephews entertained me with their long-winded stories (saliva splattering all over my face as they did so). i told them i’m having a baby, and asked them whether they thought it was a girl or a boy. in full confidence, faiz piped up, “BABY GIRL!” while faris cried out, “BABY BOY!”. and when i repeated the question to them, they again shouted out their individual convictions of my unborn child’s gender. heh.

so, that proving to be an indeterminate source of prediction, we’d waited for that latest scan at the doc’s. but once again, we were thwarted – the little one’s legs were crossed, effectively hiding its elusive gender from us.

that said, i think we’re just gonna KEEP the baby’s gender from everyone once we find out next month when we go for a full scan! :D so, keep on guessing, peeps…

so the bra issue was resolved somewhat for now. other than buying one cheapo pair of non-underwire one (which is actually a “1st Bra” for teens, but in its biggest size, 80B!… how a teen could start with an 80B for her 1st bra is beyond me though), i have gone for the bra hook extensions, which cost about $3. my cups do not overfloweth (err, yet) so i can still use my usual bras while the bra hook extensions will accommodate my expanding girth for now. i wonder how pregnant women during the era of corsets, ie. scarlett o’hara, manage to breathe at all. gone with the wind alright.

i found out YET another friend, a colleague from my previous dept, is also preggers, due jan 06. but she ALMOST had a miscarriage last sunday when amniotic-like fluid gushed out from her suddenly, and she had to be warded. apparently, sometimes fluid builds up and is not absorbed so it gets discharged. she’s resting for a week, but everything seems ok.

she has all the same symptoms as me too – the lack of appetite (though during her first pregnancy, she ate a lot!), the funny aftertaste of white rice but not nasi lemak or nasi ayam, the sourish coating at the back of the tongue after eating sweet drinks, the fondness for potatoes and ice cream, the loud belches. we’re both hoping we get girls too haha (her first one was a cute lil boy of 18mths).

speaking of gender, i borrowed a book of islamic names from mum and did some trawling on the web for more names (and consulted with godma rini), and tried to conjure up boy names.

it’s so hard!

i guess we’ll sit on it some more. i have a feeling we’ll just KNOW what to name the lil one when we see him/her face to face.

and speaking of the lil one, there seems to be unusual activities around my right pelvic area. i asked the same colleague above whether sudden little pulse-like movements mean that the lil one is moving, and she said it’s exactly that.

now, i always thought the first time i’d feel the baby would be when it gives my tummy a BIG HUGE KICK. well, looks like baby’s limbs are not BIG enough yet to give me that BIG HUGE KICK i was expecting. so a tiny pulse-like pummel it is. kinda like a sudden spurt of blood through the vein.

a lil cramped in there now?

with my tummy growing more and more noticeable and me having to wear maternity clothes, it won’t be long before a whole lotta people who see me on the street will find out “the secret”. we were walking along orchard yesterday and izad went “that girl looks like a blogger” and i instinctively raised my handbag to cover my tummy. heh. i’m still protecting “its identity” from bloggers, you know. i dread the day a stranger will comment on my blog “i saw you! are you pregnant??” coz i’m sure that day will come. lol!

speaking of maternity clothes, i’ve been on a rampage at the malls. i think half my pathetic bonus has gone to buying nice clothes for me me me, and i find myself drawn to pretty things like earrings, bangles, necklaces, when before this, i hardly bother with them. sometimes i wonder if i AM having a girl, with the way i’m obsessed with my appearance. even my colleagues notice. they have differing theories, though. some said that a woman who looks “good and glowing” during pregnancy is having a girl, some say a boy. and some said that a woman who looks “pale and dishevelled” will have a boy, some say girl. confused? i don’t know! what if it’s a sign of what their child will become – neat and vain (mostly girls, sometimes boys), or bochap and untidy (usually boys, but sometimes girls too)?? :D

yup, i have LOTS of theories myself these days too.

anyway, i do enjoy wearing maternity clothes and actually don’t mind growing the tummy. it’s so timely for topshop to start its maternity range and for empire cuts to be ‘in’. my usual pants are all officially out of bounds now, can’t zip or button any of them. even the maternity pants i’d bought, i have to roll the waistband down to below my tummy so i can breathe better. so its back to my love affair with waistband skirts coz they’re so much easier to fit in (and pee from – which i’m doing more and more frequently!).

with my spirits and my appetite finally picking up somewhat, it’s a thrill and, erm, a privilege i suppose, to be part of this universal club of motherhood.

well, i just enjoy wearing new clothes lah hehehe.