i learn something new almost every day.

today, while chatting with my ex-colleague (who’s having her second child – she’s having a girl!) she gave me some vair useful tips and plans of action.

#1. don’t make it a habit to allow baby to sleep in your bed from the beginning. (she did with her son, and suffering for it now. ironically, their sex life was apparently still active, having managed to make baby number two, heh.) so my plan of action will be: place peanut in cot next to our bed for three months, then push cot to our adjoining room in the fourth month. he won’t remember much up to three months. i think.

#2: the child-in-your-bed thing is a habit that developed from the mother nodding off to sleep whilst breastfeeding, which causes sore, cracked nipples with pus! so plan of action: i shall try my darndest to keep awake for half an hour during feeding or put an alarm, then nudge izad – REALLY HARD – to wake up and put baby back in cot. well. it’s a plan. :S

#3: she uses a support pillow and “its works!”. well, a support pillow for breastfeeding, that is, coz she had terrible backaches otherwise. it’s horse-shoe shaped which you ‘wear’ around your waist and won’t slip out, unlike our normal pillows. around 50bux at kiddy palace. ack! at this rate we spend, peanut will turn out to be a million-dollar baby, literally.

#4: she says graco strollers are light, portable and sturdy (and, i found out, american-made, heee). and half the price of maclaren. we haven’t seen any gracos, so, it’s back to the drawing board.

#5: since she found out she’s preggers again, her gynae advised her to stop breastfeeding her 19-mth-old child, coz everytime you breastfeed, your uterus contracts, and that’s not good for the new baby inside. and the thing is, her nausea almost completely disappeared as soon as she weaned him off. magic!

see, always good to take down notes from experienced mothers.

***

by the way, i still burp like a fucken cow every fucken day. no useful tips for that.

***

OUH! and speaking of tips, i figured out how to wear my old clothes, ie. my much-missed tops and bottoms pre-pregnancy.

the keyword is: layer, layer, layer.

#1: stretchy tops! i’ve got quite a collection, thankfully, and since shoulders don’t, er, grow, i can still fit into them. they may be shorter now and can’t cover the tummy completely, so what i do is wear a stretchy tube top over my tummy. yes, just the tummy, doesn’t even have to cover your boobies. tube tops are cheap, and black or white goes with anything! stretchy spaghetti tops are also vair useful, so find longer ones that can cover your tummy, which you can use underneath your normal tops.

#2: tube tops are also vair useful to cover that unsightly pants or skirt zipper that you can no longer zip up! whatever i can squeeze at least my butt into, i will zip halfway – in some cases, thirdway – below my tummy, and i will cover the unzipped part with the stretchy tube top. it also prevents pants/skirt from slipping since it grips the hips.

#3: accessorise like mad! people will notice your tummy less with all that distraction. hee. plus, it’s fun to mix and match now that your clothes selection is more limited.

#4: if you already have old skirts or pants with waistbands, use them! below your tum-tum.

unfortunately, i’m unable to fit into any of my denim jeans. ahh, i miss them.

***

ok, peanut is kicking like crazy now. better feed him something.

peanut is EXTREMELY active these days. but it is most awake and tumbling about inside me at night like the laundry in my dryer, from 11pm till i sleep. which can go up to 1am or more.

i think it’s as nocturnal as me.

my tummy’s like a mini earthquake. i’d say, a richter scale of 4 so far. it quivers and shakes quite independently. my new hobby is to watch my tummy move. it’s as entertaining as watching the latest series of america’s top model.

i have no idea what it’s doing, but it makes my stomach churn (literally). what are you high on in there, lil one??

another trip to dr a/z/i/z on friday, and once again we got to see peanut. he’s 550 grams now, which was about a hundred more than the last time we saw him a week ago during the detailed scan.

as for his mummy, she tips the scale at 47.8kg now. that’s, erm, almost a 5kg gain. which is about right, huh, one kg per month? :S

anyway, the doc explained to us further what all the fuzzy things you see in the xray film of the detailed scan meant, and i got lost, again, at the lip measurement part. he tried to demonstrate to us using his own tilted face and even drew it out for us. erm, okaaaaay… nevermind! as long as there’s no black gap there, i’m fine. (a black gap would indicate a cleft palate, and that would require surgery. brrrr…)

from the latest profile scan we got, i reckon peanut’s got a mancung nose! but, by the time he squeezes out of my vagina, it’ll probably go all pesek. hee.

can you see him?? clutching his hands together, macam nak diving.

ikut muka siapaaaa, agaknya.

*****

it’s the first wedding since the bump started to show, and in a sudden flash of inspiration, i dug out a REAAALLLY old kebaya from hari raya back in my JC days which i thought i could somehow squeeze in…

not bad! baju sepuluh tahun pun masih boleh muat jugak. :D

ok, so we’re not exactly the same. but she’s my role model you know. lol!

her boobs seem bigger than her tummy and she was six months preggy here. she’s having a girl boy.

my boobs, err, are still mosquito bites compared to hers and i’m five months plus preggy here.

and by the way, no, i did NOT put an arrow on my actual shirt (this here’s just photoshopped). that would be a copyright infringement, no? lol!

he calls me michelin man now. sniff.

now let’s see what’s going on in that tum-tum, shall we?

XRAY VISION ON!

we had that detailed foetal scan at eastshore on thursday, to make sure that all of peanut’s body parts, you know, limbs and organs are, er, there, and normal, and also to measure them. it’s pretty much like the usual ultrasound scan dr aziz does every month, but much longer this time, around half an hour or so. and this time, the scanning is done without the husband’s presence for some reason, but he gets to come in and see after everything’s done.

the radiologist who did the scanning wasn’t too chatty, but i was amazed at what she was doing nonetheless, chasing the lil one around my womb with her magic scanner and lotsa gel. i could even tell most of what she was measuring (except the lips, i have no idea how she could tell). if you look at the partial shot of the xray film above, you can see:

the spine; the trunk; the nasal bone;
the cranium; some bone (thigh?)
the umbilical cord from two angles; the cerebellum and orbits;
the arm; the hand (tiny bony fingers!); the foot; and the leg.

ouh, the face. hey, i promise peanut won’t come out looking like this, ok! peanut’s got a few more months to grow, you know. :D

now let me tell you about those hands hovering there – those are the hands that keep poking me on my right abdomen with greater frequency each day. during the scan, it kept moving about, especially those hands, poke poke poke. i don’t think babies like ultrasounds very much, coz well, the sounds coming from the scanner must be ultra irritating to them. its probably sending out a morse code: “hey, you out there, stop it already!”

now, from the side, peanut looks kinda like this…

i hope peanut’s a chubby wubby wittle thing when it comes out.

the radiologist took a 3D scan as well, but for some reason or other i didn’t get a print of it. it took her THREE times, and i had to hold my breath each time. but peanut couldn’t keep still, so first we got a hazy screenshot of its hands covering the face, then a blurry one we couldn’t make much of, and lastly, a partial face, its eyes closed, looking all squashed up. heh. don’t ask me who it looks like, i have NO idea, except it looks all wrinkly and old!

and now, the thing that’s driving ALL of us crazy: XX or XY chromosomes?

all i can say is, great balls of fire! LOL!

i usually get my hair trimmed every 3 months, but it seems to have grown much faster than usual this time, so it took barely 2 months before i needed another trim.

my aunt did tell me her hair grew thicker during pregnancy, but started to shed after birth. don’t think my hair is any thicker though. and it’s not just hair on the head that’s sprouting, i’ve also developed fine fuzz on the belly area, especially around the navel. this from a woman who’s never had leg hair. i tried tweezing them off, but it left red marks so i stopped hehe.

and don’t ask me about the hair on the nether region, coz i’ve about given up on my monthly brazilian fix. i’m not even sure what state it looks like right now, coz, well, my tummy’s blocking my view and all… :S

but what i can see is the linea nigra, darkening and creeping its way up from my abdomen, through my belly button and almost completing its journey upwards. weird!

another physical change manifests in my nails. they’re softer and split more easily. i’ve got nails of differing lengths now.

i would so love a mani-pedi right now.

(advert alert: Celebrity Nails – where i did my lovely french mani-pedi for Is’s wedding – is having a national day promotion. mani-pedi for $40 till end aug. call 68830727 to book for appointment. and, um, bring me along?)

=)

so i think my appetite (for food, that is, tsk tsk) has increased somewhat. izad finds it amusing that i walk, or rather waddle, like a typical pregnant woman with one hand holding a snack to munch on, eg. fifty-cents ice cream from the minimart, keropok lekor from the pasar malam, etc, and the other hand holding my back. tsk.

what is it about our bodies that makes us WALK this way, anyway? i never thought twice about changing the way i walk as my tummy grows, it just… happened naturally. probably a change in our centre of gravity or some scientific thing. the tummy will stick itself out, walking ahead first, and the legs can’t seem to cross gracefully like those damn catwalk models.

more like penguinwalk models.

as i waddled around queensway with the ever-attentive husband yesterday, not one but TWO saleswomen predicted it’s a boy, from its shape. that about seals the deal then.

and congrats to ‘babyloving’ who’s having a GIRL!! we were right with OUR prediction, weren’t we? we didn’t have a doubt it’ll be a girl, right from the start. *told-ya-sooo* lucky lucky lucky. :)

i was wondering if she’s having a girl coz she keeps looking at her niece, while i keep looking at my nephew. apa tu, “terkenan”?

i just hope Kid A (as i shall be calling peanut from now on, er, a nod to our favourite band radiohead, plus we’ve sorta picked out a boy’s name starting with A, heh) will be as adorable as that other Kid A (adam), my nephew, if fate has it to be a boy.

amin.

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!