Waiting....

"A woman's body is a temple."

A quote that I came across long long ago when reading novels was a given, not a luxury. And this quote is still floating about online today when I did some research on materials for this blog entry.

If all women's bodies were structural buildings, mine will probably be a luxury condo. For the simple reason that it's been 37 weeks of 'fun filled' pregnancy symptoms but Baby Girl shows no sign of wanting to leave the comfort of my womb and making an appearance on Mother Earth. No engagement/lightening, no nothing.

After countless nights of fake peeing, gallons of half-digested food down the toilet bowl, edema-ridden extremities (read: feet) and waddling around like a penguin-elephant hybrid, I am more than ready to say hi to Kylie in the flesh. She's not cooperating much though. Bummer...

Work In Progress

12-day old kang kong

 

Core Strength

35 weeks and counting down.

I am taking today's entry as a chance to whine. Specifically, to whine about how I feel like a big, fat elephant.

Sometime back around 32-34 weeks, the tummy that I had so many grievances about took on a life of its own and pong into one which looked relatively more like a pregnant tummy. Now I should be happy that I finally look pregnant instead of bloated right? Wrong! What I did not realise or know is that the pong-ing of the tummy is accompanied by a loss of core body strength and an ability to lumber heavily. Cases in point below:

1. Everyday Walking

Where I used to take 5 minutes to walk from destination A to destination B, it now takes 10-15 min to get to the same destination. I can't walk any faster; it's almost as if I am a moving car with the handbrake on. Heaven forbid I should try to walk any faster than 5cm/per hour cos that will just result in 2 hours of panting while I try to give my lungs a run for their money.

2. Flipper

By nature, I am a restless sleeper - flip left, flip right, repeat motions about 30 times each night before the un-pregnant me drifts off to sleep each night. Now, I can't flip more than 2 times to save my life every night cos it just takes that more straining of core body strength just to flip onto my back and then again to the other side. Again, heaven forbid I should try to flip the second time to the other side at one go. With my new bed partner, I take comfort in the fact that I at least have a bolster at my disposal whichever way I turn. Before u ask: Yes, it does take that much effort to flip without adding in the complication of giving my bolster the Scissor-Leg treatment.

3. Walks in the Park

In the earlier stages of pregnancy, I used to enjoy walking home with T from the nanny's house. Along the way, we made it a game to Spot the Creature as there will be mice, snails and cats coming out to play after dark. Unfortunately, swollen feet and breathlessness has made it difficult for me to waddle home with a overly talkative boy. Right now, we have resorted to taking the bus which T is enjoying very much as well as he gets to press the bell for alighting and I can teach him some basic road recognition as well.

4. All Rise

An action which most people take for granted has became somewhat of a task for the past few weeks - getting up from my seat. Where I used to be able to just jump up, it has became a 5 minute task: 1 minute to grab the nearest handle and cling on to it for dear life, 2 minutes to slowly lift my butt out of the chair and another 2 to get onto my feet. Kinda like a slow-motion movie really, just with a lot more groaning and bones creaking.

End of whine cos it's time to get out of my Reserved Seat and waddle the 500 metres home. Ciao!

KKK

T went on a class excursion some weeks back and came back excitedly touting a Grow-Your-Own-Kang-Kong kit.

For a resolute non-veggie lover, my first thought was: " What am I supposed to do with the *insert grimace* kang kong after they sprout up? Assuming that my decidedly non green fingers or overly curious dog doesn't kill them first?"

Anyway, T has been hustling me to let him hv a go at the kit so we had some kang kong-ish 'fun' this morning at the void deck of our block. A safer choice of venue really, considering that we are dealing with peat moss, toddler hands and a woman who hates cleaning up.

Exciting gloop of nothingness for the next 20-25 days

New Bed Partner

http://dayre.me/furgiemama/v3MkoS0ksl

Fertility Tool?

Unrelated note: again happily sitting in a Reserved Seat now with no one to ka chiau me while typing this entry.

I had an interesting encounter with a colleague at work today.

We were having a chat about mummy stuff (she being a mother of one while me being a mother of 1.75) where she suddenly requested for a sanitary napkin  from me. Yep, sanitary napkin. My eyebrows shot up through the roof as my mind unbiddingly conjured up images of a blood soaked Whisper pad being passed from my hand to hers. Where the hell was I supposed to find such a thing when my last period was 8 months ago anyway??

Anyway, the eyebrow came down after she clarified on her request: apparently there's some wierd superstition floating out there about if you get a sanitary pad from a lady who is fertile/pregnant (I can't quite comment on this cos again, this conjures up strange images of an Indian fertility goddess with boobs hanging down to her navel and tonnes of little babies hanging around her fertile feet. Dun ask me why...) and use it (hopefully in the way that a pad is meant to be used), it will boost the user's chances of getting kids too. Beats me if a guy is the one planning to use it though.

In normal circumstances, I will be running miles away if such a request had came from someone I don't know every well. But some background info about this colleague: she had conceived her son through IVF and was pretty 'envious' when she heard that I was expecting a girl.

Not seeing any harm in passing her a clean, unused sanitary pad (I keep a pack in office just in case), she got what she wanted and I remain a little bemused when I think about this curious incident.

Fish Out Of Water

Unrelated note: I am happily sitting in a Reserved Seat with no old men (or any other ppl, for that matter) to bug me while typing this entry. La la la la la...

Lately, I have been feeling very much out of my league at work and it has been causing me many moments of vexation. Not healthy given my current stage of pregnancy but I can't help it!! Since joining my current organisation, I have been thrown into many work situations for which I have no clue how to go about starting.

Case in point: my department called for the creation of a spanking new database for work which I am the primary officer in charge. Apparently this involved the review of functional specifications for the new database and guess who got to do it? I am of accounting pedigree; WTH will I know about looking at computer work flows, business rules and such?? This calls for logic and systematic thinking, both of which no one will EVER associate me with. (stop sniggering YSY, I can see u..) It did not help that something has cropped up with the UAT (user acceptance testing) recently and I got chewed up by my big big boss over it. I don't mean to shirk responsibility but it really doesnt feel good when u get blamed for something u know squat about.

It is not helping too that my fellow departmental colleagues are really, really strange, anti-social people I completely cannot relate to even though there's just 4 of us. The only person who bears some semblance to a normal human being has resigned and will be leaving soon. Sigh....

Greatest joke of the day: a tech idiot is actually in the IT divison of the organisation (nope, this definitely was not in the job ad when I wrote in - I checked). Gulp. Pant. Flounder.