Phantom nursing

I breastfed a few nights ago.

This happened in my dream. I dreamt that I had to breastfeed the offspring and I was somewhat struggling with it. All the thoughts that have gone through my mind about breastfeeding were manifested in my dreams. About it hurting, about not having enough and whatever else. By the end of my dream, I think I'd gotten the knack of what I had to do but I realised I had painful breasts because I had too much milk and it had to be expressed.

And that pain escalated, exponentially actually and I was getting desperate to get the milk out so that the boobs would stop throbbing. But the pain just kept getting worse, to the point that I woke up, almost howling in pain, almost ready to jump out of bed and find a breast pump to express. At that point, I realised the breast feeding bit was a dream but not the pain bit because my boobs really really really hurt!

They hurt quite a bit at the beginning but it seems to have quietened down a little bit. In general, they've been sore but not excruciatingly so. Then, this midnight madness happened and it took me a good hour to get back to sleep and for the pain to subside.

The next morning, Packrat takes one look at the perpetrators and remarks that they look like they've grown overnight. Perhaps, that's what it was all about. It was an extremely painful growth spurt. Time to go out there and buy bras. For once in my life, I have cleavage. But I've paid the very very painful price.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, breastfeeding

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Big fish, little fish...

I'm generally not a big fan of fish. I used to eat a lot of fish soup but that was purely because I knew it was good for me, it was healthy and it didn't taste all that bad. Then, when I got pregnant, I totally went off fish soup and haven't eaten it for the last 15 weeks.

But recently, I've taken to eating soft white bread in school with tuna and this morning, I dreamt of eating tuna. So I had a tuna ciabatta from Coffee Bean but that didn't seem enough. I spent the rest of the day thinking about salmon onigiri, which I'm not having for dinner so I'm preparing myself for dreams where salmon chase me and pelt me with rice balls!

Anyway, the rule of thumb, whether right or wrong is that what you crave for is generally what the baby needs. So I guess, it's safe to say that the offspring is in demand either calcium, Japanese food or basically is trying to drive mummy insane with weird dreams. Personally, I think it's the last one but I'm going to be rational and feed the offspring what the offspring wants, although I draw the line at eating coal or dirt.



Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, calcium, cravings

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Bone tired

For the past weeks, everyone at work has told me to take things easy. I knew that meant I shouldn't yell at my classes and get worked up. I was also told that I shouldn't walk too fast but that story, I've told already. So, I wondered, what else did I need to take easy? For the past 4 years, I've woken up every morning before 6 and taught all the way till 4 in the evening. I figured by now, I could do it in my sleep, which on occasion, I have come close to doing.

I thought wrong though.

Being pregnant has made it different. By the end of each teaching day over the past week, I've felt as if a cement mixer came round and poured cement all over me and then a bull dozer consequently came by and ran over me. So I would struggle through the half an hour drive home and collapse into a pile and whine till Packrat came and sayanged me. I didn't think much about it though. I just thought it was something I had to get used to and it was part and parcel of working and being pregnant. I even went shopping Friday evening to celebrate completing the first teaching week at school.

Unfortunately, by the time I came home on Friday night, I realised my body and perhaps the offspring I've been carrying were not at all pleased with me. Everytime I've gone to the doctor, one of the questions he would ask would be if I've had any bleeding and would subsequently warn me that if I have any bleeding, to climb into bed and call him straight away. And that was what happened Friday night. It wasn't so much bleeding as it was a slight bit of blood but I figured, blood of any kind, wasn't a good thing. Plus, my belly button and various parts of my tummy had been taking turns poke me with strange pains the entire day.

So then, the question was what to do? It didn't seem serious enough to warrant a midnight trip down to A&E but it did warrant concern on my part. So, heeding common sense, I climbed into bed and went to sleep and figured I'd call the doctor in the morning. When I did, he was pretty stern about it, telling me in no uncertain terms that while it wasn't anything to worry about per se, it was my body's way of saying very loudly "Slow down!!". He also insisted I should spend the weekend doing as little as possible and as much time as possible in bed. He also offered to put me on medical leave for the rest of the week. Even though medical leave sounded divine, especially since it meant not having to get up at 5.50 in the morning, I rejected the offer and explained my predicament. I would take a rain check on the medical leave and see how this week pans out. If it's even more ridulous than last week then the higher ups and the powers that be must be told.

I felt suitably chastised after speaking to him, especially when he put it into context and emphasised that I had waited so long for this and had come this far to jeopardise it by not prioritising the pregnancy. Even though I wasn't not prioritising the pregnancy, I figured it's time to down shift the gears. I spent the whole of yesterday alternating between watching the West Wing and Friends and I think I'll spend this afternoon doing pretty much the same.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, bedrest

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Buy 'em, rent 'em, wear 'em

I've finally given in. I'm wearing a real maternity top for the first time. It's from Belly Button (how cute is that!). On Monday, after an extremely long, exhausting and back breaking (literally) day, I decided to explore seriously the option of maternity clothes. My skirts and pants are at the point of bursting, becoming extremely uncomfortable the minute I try to eat something.

The problem was that most maternity wear was still from the season of yore's line of shapeless, tent like, peter-pan collared gingham collection and being caught dead in them wasn't an option. A colleague of mine told me in no uncertain terms that it was better to be pregnant, beautiful but poor rather than pregnant, ugly and rich. So, there, my marching orders.

Anyway, I found the perfect solution because pretty maternity wear is extremely difficult to find and expensive in our sunny island with a dearth of babies (ah, mayhaps, I have chanced upon the reason...- I did blog once, a long time ago about not wanting to fall pregnant till I figured out what I was going to wear). And the solution is, don't buy the clothes that can cost up to $150 per piece, rent them.

A friend of mine from college days owns this ingenuous concept of renting out maternity clothes in Singapore. Her store is filled with un-pregnant looking clothes. She personally flies to NY and Japan to actually stock her store so one would be hard pressed to find something tent like in her store. I had a marvellous time, spending two hours in the changing room feeling like a celebrity while they brought me piece after piece. Most of what I discarded for the time being was discared because there was still too much room in the top for it to fall nicely. She also did a marvellous job in categorising the clothes that fit into i) fits now and the next month or two pile ii) should fit till the last month pile iii) should fit till I pop and thereafter to be used to concealed flabby tummy pile. And I was to rent the stuff from Pile (i) and decide if I wanted to purchase stuff from Piles (ii) and (iii).

At the end of it, I had about 7 new pieces of clothes, 3 of which were rented and I should wear to death for the next month before I outgrow them and also have to return them to get dry cleaned. The rest are staples that should last me for a long while. Now I don't have to worry so much about the buttoning of my pants because I have pants that have stretchy pants. And for those that cannot be buttoned, I wait with great anticipation for the arrival of the Belly band that I've ordered that's supposed to extend the lifespan of my favourite but cannot button pants!
And it constantly amazes me that the bump grows larger each day and is becoming quite hard to ignore. You look down and it's there. Weird sensation for someone who's never really had much of a tummy.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, Maternity Exchange Singapore, Maternity clothes

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Morning Sickness= puke, upchuck, hurl, throw up

Some very kind people who have read the blog and others who have known about my extremely intimate encounter with nausea have come up with suggestions as to how to alleviate the nausea. An extremely sweet and sympathetic friend bought me Preggie Pops and Oh Mama cereal bars. My sister in law went to a naturopath and got me raspberry tea that apparently helped her. Others suggested eating in bed and eating small meals. My doctor suggested ginger tea, eating in the middle of the night when I get up to pee. My mother feigned ingnorance and my mother-in-law suggested drinking milk.

Now that I think the worse is over (and I'm hoping that I don't curse it into rearing its ugly head once again by blogging about this), I figured it's time to take stock on what did and didn't work.

1. Preggie Pops- Not bad. It's also always fun to having a lollipop in one's mouth. You feel all of 5. Plus it's made from a natural products so it's not sugar, it's juice. Only thing, my mouth got very sticky from it. Marks and Spencers' sour sherbets did the trick equally well. I just couldn't eat that many.

2. Oh Mama Cereal bars- Extremely nutritious, fortified with prenatal vitamins and stuff. My only concern is that it was also fortified with Omega 3 which meant there was a slight taste of fish oil. Usually, a slight taste wouldn't be a problem but when the taste buds are hypersensitive, a slight taste is enough to work one's gag reflex.

3. Raspberry tea- it worked but I think it worked because it was mild and it was hot. But I found out from my doctor that it induces labour so really not a good idea. I've kept it for late June when I might be more inclined to want to use it.

4. Eating in bed- It didn't really work neither did it not work. The thing is that with me, I don't wake up with the nausea. It would set in about an hour or so after I'm up. Plus I was always concerned I would leave crumbies on the bed.

5. Eating small meals- That sort of helped, primarily because I found my stomach capacity had shrunk and eating more than the stomach could take meant the rest had to come out one way or other, so the extra usually flowed right out again. In my darkest days of nausea, a meal would constitute a boiled egg and dark sauce. I decided at that point, "screw the cholestrol, I'll worry about that later".

6. Ginger tea- It worked the same way as the raspberry tea except I got a sorethroat from drinking it at the beginning. Apparently, ginger is "heaty" and when one is pregnant, more "heat" is generated and that contributes to the succeptibility of a sore throat. When all this is explained to you in a British accent, it's even more entertaining.

7. Antacids- I never tried this. I was just very programmed to get out of bed, go pee and do the necessary and the climb back into bed, all half awake so I never explored the option of looking for antacids in the middle of the night. But one VERY good antacid to use, whether pregnant or not is Quikeze. It's an Australian brand of antacids that are chewy and taste like Mentos. I think the only place you can find it in Singapore is Candy Empire. If you are suceptible to heart burn, indigestion, gastric problems and know anyone going downunder, ask them to buy! It's a life saver! Plus the added bonus of being yummy.

8. Drinking milk- It sounds good in theory. Calcium, filling, high protein but seriously, when your stomach feels like you're on the Titanic in the middle of the Perfect Storm, not a good idea to down ANYTHING dairy. That's just asking for extremely stinky upchuck.

On my own, I discovered...

9. Gummi bears- small, tasty and sweet. It reignited my love for gummi bears and you could find them at 7 Eleven. But I did get called "aunty" because I carried a ziploc bag of sweets in my bag. I think I stopped the gummi bears even though it worked because of the sugar content and its addictive nature.

My conclusion at the end of the day was there wasn't really a fixed pattern of what worked and what didn't. And there were days where I was so depressed about the nausea it was not funny. I also discovered, something that worked today may not necessarily work the next day so there really isn't a set recipe. The only thing that helped for me right at the beginning was to take an anti nausea jab. Even anti-nausea medication after that had only a 50-50 chance of working. And I realised that exhaustion, a long day, bad weather and a whole lot of different smells just made the situation ten times worse.

So, bottom line? Even after going through the whole experience, I really don't know what works. I think it actually has a mind of its own. If the baby/ hormones feel particularly mean on one day, nothing short of killing yourself would work. And on other days, you're a happy camper because breakfast, lunch and dinner managed to stay down with just the occasional feeling green.

All I can say is I'm glad (I hope) it's more or less over and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, really.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, morning sickness

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Doctor doctor!

I'm not sure what it is. Telling different age groups of people the big news has met with very different types of questions and comments. Telling people our age often elicits congratulatory messages (thanks to all those who did leave messages!) and pleased looks. Telling people of the older generation often elicits an ill hidden "it's about time" look that is quickly overtaken by the politically correct congratulatory message. The strange thing is, it is also often followed up with a question that seems to be very puzzling, to me. They ask after the effusive handshaking and hugging is over who my obstetrician is. I would understand if these people who asked were in the medical community, there, they might have a chance of having heard about the Ob-gyn in question. But the regular lay person on the street who has probably only come into contact with one, perhaps two Ob-gyns in their lives, really, how would they know who my doctor is, even after I've given them his full name, his practice, his age, the number of children he has, the number of partners he shares the practice with as well as his preferred method of delivery. (Ok, excuse the extremely long ranty sentence)

I wonder why they do that.

Anyway, through the course of these couple of years, I've become a somewhat expert on obstertricians, having gone through 4 before settling on my current one. There was always something wrong with the others. One made every procedure too painful to bear, another was all about false diagnoses and forcing unnecessary steps of intervention upon her patients- she tried to convince me that whooping cough was a great danger to people in Singapore and I had to be vaccinated then and there. Unfortunately for her, I had never heard of young people in Singapore having whopping cough and had read enough Enid Blyton books to know that the way you cure whooping cough was to spend 3 months by the sea :) -, the third, I stayed with for quite a while with because he was quite a sweet man. But I did have issues with him. One was that I had to wait an average of 3 to 5 hours to see him. I had visions of having burst water bags, delivering babies on his waiting room floor and conceiving all over again before I actually got to see him. The other issue I had with him was that through our many futile attempts at trying to conceive, he never could admit that perhaps it wasn't working and would always send us away with the same advice- " have a romantic dinner, open a bottle of wine and have lots of sex"- not really realising that having spent a good part of the day in his waiting room sapped any sort of desire either of us had for one another. I decided that since I was getting any older by the minute in the waiting room, had read every magazine there was available there and had given nicknames to every baby in the photo collage he had on one of his walls and would be able to pick out the babies in any sort of line up, it was time to move on, to find someone who could perhaps tell us, seriously, whether anything was wrong with us and how to fix it and possibly do all that in the same century.

The fourth one did tell us that something was wrong and how we could fix it. But she was all doom and gloom and told me that unless I was willing to shell out a whole lot of money, I wasn't ever going to have a kid. I think I ran away from that one bawling my eyes out. I swore at that point, I wasn't going back to a public hospital again, no matter how much less they cost and how senior this consultant lady was.

That's when I chanced upon our present Ob. I'd read about him on the forums before. I was particularly amused by some women who would blush and turn all stuttery school girl in his presence because he was apparently so damn debonair. Of course, being debonair is not enough. Debonair was not going to get us pregnant despite what one of the mothers thought about Korean dramas. So, I ran it by my doctor brother. Surprisingly, the brother that I thought slept through medical school had actually heard of this guy. In my head I was thinking, this guy must be quite prominent if my brother, whose favourite drug to prescribe for anything is Panadol, has heard of him.

Packrat and I met with this guy and we decided that being the snobs that we are, we liked him because he spoke with a British accent and we didn't have to wait to see him. Perhaps that's why women found him debonair. Ok, that's the superficial reason. The guy was actually very thorough, asking us enough questions to qualify us possibly for an American green card and wasn't pushy. He explained all our options to us, assured us that age was on our side and didn't try to be only doom and gloom with us and taking things slowly. The added bonus, this guy had a sense of humour. He convinced me that I didn't want to look like a crack user when I tried to wrangle my way out of having injections by suggesting that I could use the nasal spray equivalent to whatever drug he wanted to have injected into my folds of fat. He's also given me fashion advice, warning me rather ominously that he would refuse to treat me if I ever turned up for a check up in one of those Peter Pan coloured, polka dotted tank maternity dresses with a big bow on the front or the back.

Well, here we are, with one we actually like and can work with. We do pay a lot more for his time, his humour and the lack of waiting time but I'm keeping all the bills and when the tyke demands a car later on, we'll produce all these bills and demand arrears plus compound interest. So, it's all good and we're happy.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, Obstetricians

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Manolo Blahniks

Most of the important people in school now know that I'm carrying an extra load. I've told some people, out of obligation, out of the need to get classrooms that are airconditioned and not in another time zone and well, because it was plain courteous to do so. But that also means, that I've been inundated with advice. The funniest one yet was to not walk too fast. Not because I might slip and fall or something but because it'd put me into preterm labour. This came from one of the higher ups who spent her pregnancy zooming all over the school as if she were in contention for a record for power walking. It apparently also sent her into preterm labour at 29 weeks so this was her piece of advice to me.

I've tried to walk at a reasonable pace in the last couple of days in school. I think I'm also helped by the fact that since I flatly refused to buy an "aunty-esque" pair of Scholls sandals and my shoes have heels, I can't walk as quickly. That point however has also caused many comments and gentle chidings. Apparently, my heels look scary, dangerous and one colleague pleased me no end when she commented I had killer heels. So, they disapprove and tell me that it's bad for circulation, I might slip down the stairs and all sorts of other horror tales. And I stubbornly claimed that I couldn't wear flat shoes and low heels made me walk like a duck plus I wasn't ready to waddle yet

But they had the last word. I woke in the middle of the night with the strangest and most acute of leg cramps, where I had been complaining my leg felt sore. I didn't attribute it to the heels but they did. My compromise was to wear boots in the next day but apparently, that wasn't good enough because the boots were about 3 inches high. My rationale was, it provided a whole lot more support. But I have a feeling, I'm fighting a losing battle here and it's a matter of time before I've got to retire all my killer heels.

Sigh, the fantasy of wearing Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo type shoes is rapidly going to remain a fantasy. Perhaps, Cole Haan with the comfy air pad thingys.


Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, shoes

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First past the hurdle

I've been wondering for a very long time what would be a good time to actually reveal this blog and let the world know that I'm knocked up. There have been many times where I've been tempted to put an official link on my other blog and see how many people accidentally chance upon it. But I've always managed to dissuade myself from doing it. Part of the reason is because, like the good doctor kept warning us, the first trimester is the most dangerous time where the embryo (it's still considered an embryo at that point) can abruptly stop developing. It is why miscarriages are most prevalent in the first 12 odd weeks. So, because of that, we decided to wait. To wait till it gets relatively safer.

I still hesitate because it's never going to be fully safe till I hold the babe in my arms but then again and even then, things can (I hope to God they don't) still go wrong. But then again, because of the same uncertainty, I know that if I keep putting it off till it's fully confirmed that we're going to become parents, this blog will never go public. The kids could grow up, go to school, get married, have their own children and I could still possibly hesitate.

I eventually rationalized, rather than let the neurotic in me rule the day, I've decided enough is enough and we've told enough people already that it makes no sense to keep it a cyber secret. So here it is, the big life altering secret, 13 weeks and 2 days later...

:)

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, First trimester

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Getting dressed

It gets tricky to get dressed especially when the bump is beginning to show slightly but it's not significant enough to be a bump. So rather than have people wonder if I'm fat or I'm pregnant, I've been trying to hide it. To hide the bump requires strategic planning of the wardrobe. But when one does not own a maternity wardrobe yet, it becomes tricky.

So, yesterday, I got dressed in a strange manner. Before putting on any other pieces of clothes, underwear included, I put the skirt on. If the skirt fit, then everything else could follow since skirts would be the trickiest since it does sit on the waist/ hip. The danger with dressing skirt first is the possibility that one walked out of the house, fully dressed sans underwear! Going commando. Well, it would be good ventilation and definitely no VPL but i rather not risk it.

One problem solved but the possibility of another showing up, although not very much bump related. It would make a great story to tell the kids one day though. Mummy walked out of the house one day without underwear! Way to earn respect!

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, Maternity clothes

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