Friday, December 24, 2010

Here Comes Baby Khayla... (Part 1)

If there is one thing to be marvelled about my pregnancy this time is that how good we were at keeping it a secret. We spent the first trimester acting like two guilty teens trying to hide our pregnancy from everyone including family members. The second trimester, trying to ward off 'Are you pregnant??' questions in Facebook ('Pregnant? Who? Me?'). The third trimester, well. No point in hiding it anyway.

Some friends were offended that such news were not shared in our blogs - other people joyously announced about their pregnancy the moment the second line on the pregnancy test appeared either through tweet or Facebook update or a one-liner in their blog - Yeaay! I'm pregnant!' Then the weeks after that, they proudly showed the ultrasound scans of their fetus and/or moan about not being able to stomach any food due to morning sickness.

But not us. Not a single test kit, nor a vomit story came forth (and there were plenty of vomits, I tell you). After our first pregnancy, we could not help being superstitious and totally left it out of our blogs until we entered the last few weeks of the pregnancy. By that time of course our blogs were like two abandoned houses and nobody bothered to visit any more.

To make it up to our friends who used to read this blog anyway, let me tell the story of the birth of the most awaited baby of the year - Baby Khayla.

There were a few things that I wanted to do before the baby pops out, unfortunately we were not able to spare the time nor the resource to do it:

1. Climb Mount Kinabalu - for obvious reason kan? How do you expect a huge human incubator to fly to KK, let alone reach the foot of the mountain?

2. Go backpacking to UK - OK, I should've planned this 3 years ago. Scrap it.

3. Spend a night unwinding at a luxurious hotel - remember that house project that ate whatever reserve fund we have for fun?

4. Go on endless dates with the hubby - Knowing that going on a date with hubby only the two of us after this point will be near impossible, I set my heart on trying to make this happen. BUT. This simple and harmless act was usually thwart by the lack of appropriate clothes to go out. By appropriate, I mean, I run out of clothes that still fit me and the rest are just my work clothes. Takkan nak pergi dating pakai baju ofis kan?

Therefore, lessons learnt are never put off any ambitions and never wait until the last trimester to do stuffs that you want to do.

Before Khayla was born, I was convinced that I would have a normal delivery. My mother had normal vaginal births, so I would have one too, no? Being typical me, I spent hours poring over pregnancy books to prepare myself for normal labour. Heck, I even spent hours reading about making babies weeks away from my wedding date to prepare myself for the scary night - but that is totally irrelevant here. According to the pregnancy books I read, some of these tactics help to reduce labour pain / time:

1. Walk up and down the stairs - I only did this maybe 3 times. It took me 10 minutes to reach our house at 3rd floor, and by the time I reached home, I collapsed on the bed, panting with exhaustion.

2. 15-minute brisk walk in the evening - Hah. I am proud to say that I have done this ONCE. That is, together with Idayu. The only thing that made it our hour-long walk bearable (because after 5 minutes, I started to get back ache) was because we also checked out the guys jogging at the park. Idayu went, 'OMG, look at that delicious guy!' and I nodded my head and went, 'Uhuh! Totally!' Khayla, sila jangan ikut perangai mak.

3. Make love to hubby as part of the labour exercise - THIS I follow diligently.

Turns out that whatever preparations I made were pointless because by Week 36, my doctor was positive that I will not be granted my hope of delivering my baby the normal way due to placenta previa. Huh. So much for stair-climbing and waddling across KLCC park and knocking back a glass of cold chocolate drink afterwards.

She was also positive that she may not be around towards my due date and by the way, which date do I prefer? 15th or 17th? It took us a day to deliberate on the perfect date which consists of - 'But 15th is our wedding anniversary! It's only appropriate that she is our wedding anniversary gift this year...'

So 15th December 2010 it is.

The only problem with knowing the delivery date is trying to cramp everything in the in-between period. We were told that the baby will be delivered via C-section in Week 36 and the operation will take place in Week 37, so I had only 2 days to finish work before going on maternity leave. 2 days. 2 FREAKING days.

There I was, racing against time to finish my job in order to deliver on the chosen date (and impatiently telling people over the phone, 'What? Don't bother me now, I have plenty of things to do before I start my maternity leave in about 2 days' time!') Unlike other people who takes birthing process seriously and does the necessary preparation (a.k.a. get early leave to get into birthing mode and de-stress...), I went full-speed ahead with work to finish my job. I did not leave office until it was almost 9pm. I don't know why - for someone who wishes to flunk job and get VSS offer (seriously), I couldn't leave my job unfinished. Full of flaws - yes. Unfinished / half-completed, no-no. You see, that is why I hate my job so much - there's too much work, nak beranak pun tak senang.

(To be continued...)