No More Ms Nice Preggie

I DID IT! I asked someone to give up a Reserved Seat in the MRT for me today!

"Big fat hairy deal..." some might say.

Let's start from the beginning: my organisation had a work retreat today, which basically entails a day of presentations and team bonding activities. I also had a dinner gathering with some ex-colleagues after the retreat.

Very much tired out from the retreat activities, I had to take the train during peak hour in order to get to the dinner venue. As you may expect, peak hour commute definitely ain't a bed of roses and somehow, something snapped in my cranium and I marched right up (marched being a relative description, considering that I was squashed almost right up the side partition) to the young lady sitting in the RS.

I am glad I did so cos the train was acting cranky and stopping for prolonged periods at each and every station before my destination (it was 7 stops from my boarding station to the destination).

Final Lap

Amidst all the mad-hattering of family life,  motherhood, pregnancy hood (nope, I don't consider motherhood and pregnancy to be the same, unless some trick of science allows you to kiss a cuddly 'foetus' goodnight) and work demands (for the record, folks who tell you that Civil Service is easy work ought to be strung up, quartered and shot through their fingers and toes), I find myself entering the last trimester of pregnancy.

I wish I could say that it has been a blissfully happy one but unfortunately, it is not. Heartburn, non-existent tummies and worries about logistics after Gillian/Amber/??? is born continues to plague me to this day, though things have improved on the tummy front (yeah, yeah, it is an obsession. Other folks get strange food cravings; I measure the diameter of my tummy circumference. What about it?? ;p)

Seriously though, there are certain things that I will like to remember when I look back at this pregnancy 5 years down the road and before Mummy Brain sets in, I better get the memories down in this post.

1. No Mummy Tummy

Yes, I am starting to sound like a broken record but I will still say it. Due to curvy hip bones, *cue roll of eyes* I have a non-existent pregnant tummy which has caused much distress during the infant stages (pardon the pun) of my pregnancy. Hushed/embarrassed questions from colleagues asking me if I am pregnant (during month 5-6 of my pregnancy), sneak looks from folks sitting down in the train and wondering "Is she? Is she not?", and the clincher? Smiling old men who ask me to give up my Reserved Seat early in the morning. Yup, I am nursing a grudge for that one and happily sitting in yet another Reserved Seat typing this entry out. Bleagh!

2. Breaking the XX / YY Tradition

Among my closer group of friends, they all have multiple offsprings who are of the same gender i.e. both siblings are either boy-boy or girl-girl pairings. The one other lady who managed to break this strange tradition cheated by increasing the number of offspring that she had, thereby increasing her odds of having a different-gender offspring, sneaky chick that she is (love you Ms T!!). Just recently,  I received happy news of another Stallion/Mare in the making. Well, maybe not so much making, more like nurturing.  Anyway, we shall soon see if the XX / YY tradition can be broken yet again in a couple of months.

3. Biological Workings

Throughout the whole pregnancy, I was a bundle of paranoia and hormones (talk about a lethal combination...). The result of this was a short tempered shrew who blew up over small things and then breaking down after that. Dark shadows of unfounded fears plague me and caused many sleepless nights, which in turn fuel the short tempers. Chicken and egg, anyone? Anyway, the surges of hormones seem to have abated and I feel more like a sane person now.

The one constant in this pregnancy however, was an unbelievable constant craving for all things sweet. Chocolates, cakes, soft drinks...you name it, I want it. While I have a sweet tooth all along, this constant need for sugars is scary. So much so that I am actually concerned that Baby Girl may turn out bigger than she should have been if I were on a sugar-little diet.

Funny Tummy & Skinny Jeans

My biggest bugbear throughout the course of this pregnancy would be the circumference of my tummy. Yeah, for folks who have been following the blog posts since I officially went public with the pregnancy, they probably may have noticed that not one post goes by without some form of mention of my itty bitty tummy. Though my memory isn't so good anymore, I seem to remember a bigger tummy from when I was carrying the Rascal. Though it wasn't very big at that time, it was round enough to make me look obviously pregnant and not 'is she or is she not'.

Despite this very huge bugbear, it is not without a good dose of amusement to see fellow co-workers do a double-take when I told them that I am 5.5 months along my pregnancy. In the words of a colleague: 'I can't believe I have been working with you for the past few months and not realise that you are pregnant!' Quite unlike my previous workplace where news and gossip will spread like wild-fire 3 seconds after it has left the mouth of a perpetrator, folks in my current organisation kept pretty much to themselves. Even within my department, personal information is pretty well contained unless asked for.

Though my tummy is not sufficiently huge enough to look outright pregnant, my waistline has still expanded somewhat that I can't fit comfortably into my usual wardrobe now. At the recommendation of a friend, I bought some maternity wear online and one of these included a pair of skinny jeans. Now, I had previously shunned skinny jeans like the plague when they first became all the rage across the fashion world. Kate Moss I am not, and shunting myself into those skin-tight denims will be akin to an elephant trying to fit into leotards. Anyway, ASOS (the online store I was ordering from) carried only skinny jeans and I needed casual clothes, so skinny jeans it was.

When my order arrived and I tried the jeans on, ooooh! I was immediately struck by how elongated and 'shapely' my legs appeared. Skin-tight does indeed work its magic...in a time where I feel perpetually bloated and shapeless in loose fitting clothes, you will not believe how amazing I felt when I saw my jeans-clad reflection in the mirror :) The jeans are now a favourite piece in my current wardrobe (not that I have much to choose from) and who knows? I can continue to wear them post-pregnancy..

2013

Heralded in January

Gone in February

Was to be a Virgo

Replaced by a Taurus

Penning this down

As the only remembrance

Of a fleeting moment in time



A Good Ol' Whine

I am well into my 22nd week of pregnancy this week without realising how quickly time flies. With this pregnancy, three things stand out in very stark contrast to when I was carrying the Rascal.

Symptoms
I had a whale of a time during my last pregnancy, with morning sickness being limited to saliva spitting and the odd piece of undigested food. Had all the usual swollen feet, mild heartburn and sudden leg cramps but all these happened during the last few months. This time round? OMG....I graduated directly into full blown throwing up, abrupt flaring of temper and absolutely disgusting loud belching that came out of nowhere. In fact, if you like half digested red cherries coming out of your throat and burping fish oil capsules,  pregnancy is the way to go.

Common symptoms aside, I also get strange happenings that I did not even know was part and parcel of lugging a (non existent) tummy around. Cue Exhibit A: Did anyone know that pregnant women are more prone to nosebleeds? I sure as hell didn't. But it happened one evening and scared the heck out of me and YSY to see blood soaked tissues after I blew my nose. It apparently had something to do with increased blood supply and overworked blood capillaries.

Exhibit B: Spotting. The birds and the bees happened and the spotting came one day during my second trimester. For folks who are not aware, spotting/bleeding are never a good sign during the second and third trimester as this may indicate all sorts of pregnancy complications or even miscarriage. Again scared the heck out of me and the Husband, more so the Husband cos his precious daughter may be in danger. Humph! Anyway, the spotting stopped and our pounding hearts stilled.

With the first pregnancy, I breezed through it with shiny hair, glowing skin and a general feeling of sunshine. Alas! This was not replicated for the current one. Even in my second tri, the general feeling was one of crappiness though I am having an easier time now without any morning sickness. However, the heartburn is still bad enough that mass hoards of undigested food are migrating my poor gullet. Let's not even go into the distressed complexion and fizzy hair...

Le Showing
The Tummy - how do I describe thee? Non existent, that's how. Whenever I see pregnant ladies with ginormous tummies on the streets, the one thought I have everytime is: how is it humanly possible for a tummy to stick out so much? Will it burst with the next inch that it grows? Sadly or happily (depending on how u want to look at it), I will never know.  At 22 weeks, my tummy is woefully small, more like a love handle rather than the protective container of a living thing. According to the good doctor/nurse/lab technician at TMC, the size of a pregnant tummy is determined by the curvature of the mother's hip bone - the curvier the bone, the more contained the tummy. At least I know I have curvy hip bones now...

Attention Seekers
When I broke the news to T, he apparently was not too affected about the arrival of a baby sister (yup, it's a girl!!). So it came as a surprise to me when during a conversation with his Chinese teacher, I was told that his attention span has greatly shortened in school when he previously loved learning in class. Also, he became fidgety and kept telling everyone that his mummy has a baby. This out-of-the-blue behaviour coincides with the time I was trying to prep him for his new sibling. At home, he starts crying over the slightest thing and gets very emotional.

Being cared for at the nanny's where babies are a dime a dozen, I am actually very surprised that T is reacting so strangely to my pregnancy. Anyway, it is still an uphill trek to deal with his behaviour right now: too strict and it will merely reinforces the idea that a new sister is associated with negativity but relax the discipline and we risk undoing all the good of past enforcement. What's a mother to do in times like this?

Dammed Reserved Seatings

Disclaimer: this is a rant entry. Navigate away from this page NOW if you are not comfortable with reading about how the world is an unfair place to be right now.

Blame it on insurgent hormones but an incident happened this morning that left me seething with anger and completely ruined a perfectly good working day.

I was on the way to work in the MRT this morning and happened to snag a Reserved seat (yes, I checked that there were no elderly, preggies, physically disabled or people with munchkins around before sitting down). Less than 2 stations after I sat down, along came an elderly gentleman (probably in his late fifties or early sixties) who said ‘Excuse Me?’ and looked at me expectantly, indicating that I should give up my seat to him.

Now, I don’t think I belong to that 90% of MRT commuters who pretend to sleep or fiddle with their electronic gadgets in order to avoid giving up their seats to folks who need them more. But given my condition right now, I do feel I am as entitled to have a Reserved seat as other ‘needy’ people. At 17 weeks, my tummy merely looks like I have over-indulged at a buffet spread, instead of outright pregnant. Comments have been made that I don’t look pregnant at all; others have been made that I should be grateful I do not have to lug around a heavy stomach all the time. In fact, I will be wondering about the new life waiting to come out in mid-May 2014 if she (nothing between the legs! So the good doctor says…) hadn’t shown up in ultra-sound scans.

Anyway, back to my rant. So this uncle was looking at me and expecting to sit down. I didn’t want to cause a scene as he was nice enough to ask politely and I was trying to avoid being the next Stomp/Facebook/Youtube star for ‘Woman Creates A Scene & Refused To Give Up Reserved Seat To Ah Pek’. Heaving an inward sigh of resignation, I stood up and the elderly gentleman happily settled down in his seat, unaware of the breathless, light-headed/giddy effects that he has caused for the lady who had given up her seat.

What made me so mad was because today’s incident was the second time this has happened. Last month, I had the ‘misfortune’ of snagging a reserved seat and having this same uncle come into the same MRT carriage as me. Same shit happened and I gave up my seat for him as well then. The first time it happened, I wrote it off as an amusing incident to be shared with people in the know but not this time. The uncle is absolutely within his rights to ask to sit in the reserved seat under normal circumstances and nice enough to ask politely for it; but I am P-R-E-G-N-A-N-T! Does having a tummy that doesn’t show disqualify you from sitting down when you need to? Is it my fault that my tummy doesn’t show?? Who can I blame if I faint on the train from the lack of air and giddiness??

To top off a crappy train-ride, I was standing in front of another reserved seat beside another man in his early/mid-fifties after giving up my seat. When the train entered Dhobby Ghaut which was an interchange station, the reserved seat in front of me was vacated and the gentleman beside me gave me an enquiring look to see if I was going to sit down. For the second time in 30 minutes, I felt like I was being set up for a booby trap. The man in question is definitely of a certain ‘vintage’; can I in all good conscience sit down when there is another person out there who, on the surface, appears to need the seat more than I do? Dammed if I do and dammed if I don’t - the man got his seat. =(   

Le Grandpa

The maternal Grandpa. For folks who have had the fortune to meet my pa before, the comments usually run along the lines of: "He looks very stern." or "He seems like a very fierce man." On the surface, this may be true. Perhaps it could be being the firstborn son in a time when responsibilities were foisted on you before you werely barely out of your teens. Or a simple matter of being born the way you were. Or a lethal combination of the two. 

It is a completely different story for Grandpa however, when it comes to his only grandson. As much as he maintains a stoic facade when the Rascal is present, the pussycat in him lurks beneath the surface, waiting to emerge. I have on several occasions observed very uncharacteristic behavior in him, things that made me cock my eyebrows in secret amazement. 

1. Tare Panda

Being the undisputed patriarch of the family, one will rarely see my pa in positions other than the sitting and standing ones. This probably sound strange to folks who are not in the know but c'mon, have you ever seen men of power depicted in less-than-dignified poses (misbehaving civil servants none withstanding? 

So imagine my surprise one Chinese New Year , where we were gathered at my aunts' house and the Rascal was on a mattress with his cousin (mattress cos both they both just learnt to sit upright and the aunts were concerned they may start doing the breakdance on e floor). The grandpa got up from his usual seat, away from the sofa and down flat on the floor to play with the Rascal. That was really a kicker, cos I honestly have never seen him in such an unfamiliar position, not in my 30 odd years of existence...For friends who are viewing this post, evidence of Gramps' unprecedented pose can be found in my FB album (T's album in year 2012 I think)

2. Washer Man

My pa grew up in an era where womenfolk are the ones who did all the housework and take care of kids while men's sole duty was to bring home the dough. Once they reach home, their whole existence revolves around 'lepak one corner' and to ask them to lift a finger in helping to take care of the kids is almost a profanity. 

We were at T's grand uncle's house one afternoon for a visit and the rascal got himself thoroughly smelly and sweaty from playing ball catching with the Grand uncle. I hied him off for an impromptu shower when my pa (who was around as well) popped his head into e bathroom to do an 'inspection'. That in itself is already a surprising move. The move became more astonishing when he started taking over e showerhead and bathing the rascal. Suffice to say that I was goggle-eyed throughout the whole episode...