37 weeks

In two weeks, I will not be pregnant anymore. (I hope.)

How strange it will be, to not feel you wriggling your fingers and toes into my various organs. To not see your little bum protruding above my rib cage. To not be tickled by your hiccups after my meals.

My flesh and blood. Already I'm feeling possessive, thinking about how you will be carried away from my body and passed from one set of eager arms to another.

But you are your own person. I haven't fully become a mother yet, but already I have to get this into my head.

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Exercise routine: Walking back and forth from City Square mall. Some Pilates moves are too hard on my pelvic bones. Swimming is delightful though. If I had a pool downstairs, I would be in it everyday, letting my bones rest.

Eating: Normal quantities, no special cravings

Listening to: J-boy by Phoenix, Break the Chain by the Pretenders

Discomforts: Really hot at night. Can't sleep without the air-con at 26 degrees. Fingers hurt when I wake up/ leave them in one position for too long. Not much swelling elsewhere. Baby has turned, thankfully, so she is weighing on my bladder when I get up. But I still don't have to pee in the middle of the night, so I have nothing to complain about.

Nesting: I've given up on preparing a pinterest-worthy nursery. For now, my bedroom is ready to receive the co-sleeper, and that's it.

Baby gear: Stroller is in, diapers are in, everything I think she will need for the first week of life is in. We'll have to wait and see what she needs after that.

Feeling: Anxious about wrapping up work by Wednesday. But happy to be taking a break really soon, and can't wait to see the little one.
Last night was an anomaly though. Work anxiety and overall tiredness made my thoughts spiral violently downwards, and it turned into bitterness against k, who was snoring deeply. "You have no interest in the baby's arrival!"was just one of the many irrational things I wanted to say to him when he woke up. That turned into tearful worry that my parents would pass away before seeing the baby, and then what kind of emotions would I have every time I put on the onesies they bought for her? It was only the Holy Spirit that gave me peace and showed all these lies for what they are: lies.

The mind of a tired, hormonal pregnant woman is ripe for panic. I can only imagine what it must be like to be post-natal, stumbling in sleeplessness from feed to feed, with these thoughts wreaking havoc in an idle mind.

It is only God who can give me peace--not anything I read, or anything I prepare, or anything I buy. Nothing and nobody else can help me be a mother. That is the truth I must hold on to in this final stretch and beyond.

7 months

Dear little one,
you're the reason I have started blogging again. I picture the day you're old enough for me to share this blog with, and hopefully you'll be interested enough in your mother's heyday to read all of this.

You move a lot now, reassuring me that you're fine. You moved particularly a lot after Loki used my belly as a launching pad in his streak across the living room. I was really worried and started googling "mild trauma to pregnant belly"("leads to maternal deaths"--what?) and gave Loki the cold shoulder the rest of the night. But you kept rolling, kicking, and fluttering your feet in every area of my belly. So I knew you were safe.

I wonder if you'll be this active when you're out of me. Will I be one of those hapless mothers running after a gleeful toddler who grabs at everything? Will you be frustrated in the swaddle I plan to get for you, a straitjacket for your flaying limbs? Will you become like one of our tan grow@nooners, spending three days a week at training and throwing around balls for fun?

It's hard to imagine someone who's a part of me, someday being apart from me. A totally different person, with different interests and thoughts. Will I know how to relate to you? Will you forget how to depend on me?

I unintentionally did a mean thing to your father the other day at Simply Bread. I told him how our friends went through a tough delivery, and the father had to choose between saving the mother or the child. They'd discussed it prior to this, so he chose the mother. In the end both were fine. But I know k will not be able to make that kind of decision on his own. So I wanted to talk about it.

"I think you should save the baby,"I said, "because I've already lived 30 years. I've had a very good life. The baby hasn't had a chance to live yet. So save the baby."

He looked at me for a few seconds, and then tears started spilling out of his little plum eyes down out of his round purple spectacles. I patted his hand and ended this horrible discussion.

But I want you to know that even before meeting you, I already love you this much. You don't ever have to be clever enough, or pretty enough, or anything enough to be loved by your mummy and daddy. Right now, while you can't see us or love us back, we love you entirely. We just want you to be healthy and to have your chance at life.

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Pregnancy update:

Workouts: once or twice a week. Still Bodyfit by Amy's prenatal workouts- strength, pilates, and bodyweight.

Belly size: enough to get me seats on the train, smiles from strangers, and kindness from shopkeepers (to leave me alone)

Appetite: I can squeeze more food in my belly now, but hardly crave snacks. Don't think I'm getting my extra 500 calories in. Tried eating yogurt but it always gives me the runs.

I miss: Cracking my back on the bed, blue cheese and brie, alcoholic ice cream

Baby gear: Hand-me-downs from Joel and Cherlyn, and Sharon's brother. Almost everything's in except the baby carrier and stroller, and small things like baby wipes. We bought a dresser from Ikea that will double up as the changing station. It was too heavy for k to carry by himself to the car, so he unpacked the box and loaded it plank by plank into the car, and then up to our living room. The planks and pieces are all lying in a heap there now, making our home smell woody.

Hormones: Been getting weepy when I watch birth videos / gender reveal videos/ any well-edited video about a stranger's journey with baby

Energy level: Walking is more difficult. If I hit close to 10,000 steps a day, I feel like dying. My butt and hips will hurt and the belly feels strained. But I have enough energy to cook a few times a week this month.

Pregnancy Update: 5 months

Five months in.

Most frequently-heard comment: "Can't tell that you're pregnant."
Secondly most frequently-heard comment: "Oh you're really showing!"

Workout routine: BodyFit by Amy's Prenatal Bodyweight workout. 25 minutes of enough movement to challenge my muscles without making me feel like giving up. An 8-month-pregnant fitness guru is more motivating than anybody else.

Prenatal checkup: It's a girl! She likes to raise her hands up in the air, and is growing well.

Extra pregnancy calories: Marks & Spencer's smoothies from downstairs. The big bottle is much more worth it than the small one.

Perks of pregnancy: Feeling her kick. Seeing the belly move and ripple as if something were about to spawn from the surface.

Lows of pregnancy: Not much right now. Not as fatigued as in the first trimester, and less peeing in the middle of the night. Isn't that odd?

Names we're considering: Theo and Avery (Avery is purely me, as k says it sounds like "ovary". What?)

Baby equipment: Now proud owners of three pairs of baby socks and one hand-me-down car seat.

Little worries: That our cats will be jealous. Loki has been awfully needy lately because Thor doesn't cuddle with him all the time anymore.

Coupledom bucket list: Went to Manila for our last time as a duo, and had our last Valentine's day as a carefree couple. As I was telling a friend on Sunday, it's the same feeling as when I was about to get married. I couldn't wait to be married and move into our new home, but I was sad to leave my jurong home, my room, and my little routine with my parents. I'm excited about the baby coming, about holding her and placing her in a co-sleeper cot, and pushing her around to have lunches with me at city square mall, and about us moving into a whole new phase with someone we'll love more than we can imagine. At the same time, though, I'm all too conscious of these last days of being just kj, netflixing and making life work together in bits and scraps, minding monthsaries and steak dinners. Someday when I have my hands full with this baby girl, I will look back at all these little things, and maybe I will miss them. Or maybe I will laugh at how silly I was. God's plan is infinitely better.

A present at 30

Around June this year, I started thinking about turning 30 in a positive way. The twenties no longer felt like a golden era I had to cling on to. I started telling people I was 30 when they asked. Tomorrow, that is what I will be.

I did think, though, that I should do something momentous and cliched to mark the turn of the decade. Perhaps get that tattoo. I thought about trees and roots and words, and then I forgot about tattoos.

But God thought it was time for a body modification too.

I started feeling it in my chest, pms symptoms dragging on a week too long.

On 9th November, I groggily took a pregnancy test first thing in the morning. No spectacles on, teeth unbrushed. Two lines appeared. I took the box out to k, who was already up and trying to submit a paper online. I showed him the box and the test stick.

"What does this mean? So what does it mean? You're pregnant? Don't worry, it may not be accurate."

I would have clobbered him, except I was also unsure that something so cheap could be relied on to tell me the biggest news of our lives. So we shrugged it off and went about our day. In the afternoon I took another test. It was positive too.

Again, we pretended it was false. But we brought home a digital ClearBlue pregnancy test kit, because the more expensive, the more accurate?

It blinked and calculated for a minute, way longer than my cheap tests took.
Finally it decided. "Pregnant."

Humans are strange beings. A printed word is like the News, it just Is. With that word, we finally allowed ourselves to believe and rejoice.

I called my parents. My mum picked up, and I told her to go wake Daddy up. "Why, you're pregnant ah?"She just didn't let me have my moment. Lots of fumbling and phone clicking later, they were both on speakerphone, and I said this big sentence for the first time. "Yes, I'm pregnant."

"Congratulations,"my father said very properly. I wouldn't expect anything less from him.
"Aiya, I knew it,"said my mother.

The next few days were happy ones, telling k's family and my friends, absorbing all the joy that was exploding around us. We went to Choon Kit and we got a gynae appointment at Mt E. I was seven weeks in.

At the gynae's clinic, I was still worried that my test result was a false positive. I did a urine test for the nurse to check, and I was waiting for her response to tell me if I was really pregnant or not. But she glanced at it and tossed it into the dustbin. "First pregnancy?"she asked. That was a relief.

Then finally, we saw it for ourselves on tv. A mass of black, my uterus, which I'd always thought was faulty, and at the top, a blueberry-sized cluster and a tiny blinking dot. Our baby's beating heart. Dr Kek turned the sound on. I felt k melt into my side and lean his cheek on my head. All my worries about him not being in the moment had been unfounded.

I carried that beating heart with us to Tokyo, and I fed that beating heart lots of food. I took rest stops in the middle of our long walks, and went to bed thinking about the beating heart.

Today, our little blueberry is the size of a lemon. The last time we saw it on tv, it was waving its hands about and bouncing. I realized that even while I couldn't see it or take care of it, God was making it grow, and it was busy doing its own thing inside there.

Tomorrow I turn 30, and already I care less about my own birthday than the impending birth of this little one.

Thank You God, for your gift in Your good time. We don't know where we're headed or what You want us to do. But for now at least we know we are to take care of this gift You've given us, and that's more than enough.