Well, Oliver is 6 months old already! I'd love to say that time really flies, but I honestly felt the full brunt of the 6 months, day after day, hour after hour. However, now that he is half a year old, I'm afraid that the time from now on will go *swoosh-ing* away and soon he won't be adorable anymore.
I recall the many worries during my time of pregnancy, as well as the many worries that plagued me constantly after he was born, and then I ask myself "Was it all worth it? Would I do it again?" Hell yeah!
Worry Wart --
The two lines appeared on the pregnancy test kit almost instantly. I was expecting a 4-5 minute wait before any results would turn up but it was like Pee-Flush-*Bam!*-You're pregnant. So Ezzat was waiting for me to return to the room with the results but when I took to long he came to the loo and I just told him to go see for himself. Ohhhh, this little recollection of that particular moment gives me goosebumps. Even as I lay in bed that night, the reality of it all had yet to really sink in, there was a 50-50 feeling that it could be a false positive. Nevertheless, I cried. I cried because I was frightened and did not know what to do next, and I knew that my life would forever be altered.
The first worry that surfaced in my long road to motherhood came the following week when we were vacationing in Malaysia. From the day I knew I was pregnant I stopped drinking my favorites - alcohol and coffee (and tea), during the first four months. So during this whole time I was in a sleepy daze through most of it and lost quite a bit of weight. When we were in Malaysia, I started spotting *ahem* down there. My worry was that something was wrong, perhaps a miscarriage? This worry followed me all thru to mid-second-trimester. I would feel like the baby wasn't moving that much and think "Oh no, something's wrong", or if I bled just a teeny-weeny bit I'd think "Oh no, what's that? Something's wrong" or if I felt unusually tired and lethargic I'd think, yep, you guessed it "Something's wrong!" For 6 months I was afraid that I was going to lose the baby. I memorized all the signs of a possible miscarriage and monitored myself. It was worry worry worry anxiety anxiety anxiety all through the 6 months.
Then when I entered the final trimester, from 7 months onwards, I had pushed the "miscarriage" worry away and along came a new one - Would I go into premature labor?
I read about all the signs of a possible premature labor: Why it happens, what to do when it does, how to prevent it. I'd tell Ezzat almost everyday of this concern of mine and he would always patiently calm me down and tell me it won't happen. I suspect even my mother thought I was going crazy. Eventually, when I carried the baby into the official "Full Term", I totally breathed a sigh of relief. BUT, now I had another two questions on my mind: When will I FINALLY give birth? And, at the same time, (contradicting myself) What if I miss being pregnant after the baby is out?
It was on to researching how to prevent a delay in the ETA of baby. Foods to eat to induce labor, things to do to induce labor etc. Oliver was due to be born on the 13th of December and my biggest nightmare was that I would go into labor during the Christmas week 10 days from then! *faints* I tried half of the methods mothers typically use to induce labor and lo-and-behold! Oliver came 10 days earlier.
These were the concerns I had to endure while pregnant that affected the baby directly, but of course there were also other worries that I had.
Weight Issues:
I lost a lot of weight in the first 4-5 months of my pregnancy. It wasn't that I had morning sickness and couldn't keep the food in, but more like I just did not have much of an appetite. But even so, I knew that I could NOT let my guard down. There was still many months to go and many things can happen. True enough, of the total 15kg that I gained in my entire pregnancy, much of it came in the final 3 months. That was the time that I ate the most. I had to have at least 2 sticks of ice-cream every day and cake. I ate so much cake it was frightening. I remember that during the early days of my pregnancy I had warned Ezzat that I might get all fat and ugly, and he might find me revolting blahblah. As usual, he would assure me that firstly I WILL NOT get fat and disgusting and that even if I did it was because I was pregnant. All throughout the pregnancy I would moan to him saying that "I'm fat!" and he'd reply "No, you're pregnant". Then when I did gain that 15 kilos, I worried that I would have a tough time losing it all after the baby came.
In the first week after Oliver was born, I'd lost 10kg. Didn't need to do anything, no exercise, no purposeful restraint of food intake, nothing. Zilch. I just automatically lost it all. On Valentine's Day, 2 and a half months after Oliver's birth, I'd lost all the 15kg and was back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Right now, 6 months after Oliver's birth, I am 2 kg lighter than before I was pregnant. I like to attribute this to breastfeeding, but to tell the truth, I eat like a bird. Perhaps the breastfeeding theory is one that I can only confirm when I stop breastfeeding entirely. We'll see.
I also worried about stretch marks. My mum has horrible stretch marks on her tummy due to giving birth to my brother and me and my gynaecologist told me that it is hereditary. Thus, from month 2 of my pregnancy, I started splattering Cocoa Butter Body Butter from The Body Shop on my tummy religiously every night. Did it work? I don't seem to have any stretch mark-looking scar on my tummy so maybe it did.
I had an uneventful pregnancy, in general - No morning sickness, no large increase in weight, no waddling around like a penguin, no ugly "pregnant nose", no acne, no swollen ankles. I didn't even have to buy maternity wear! The months seemed to whizz past and looking back on that now, I feel like I didn't quite enjoy being pregnant enough. Oliver came so suddenly that I hardly had time to mourn the demise of my pregnancy period. One thing I did NOT see coming was the terrible terrible first night home after being discharged from the hospital. I did not read about this, and therefore it did not cross my mind enough for me to much less worry about it. I had to walk extremely gingerly and carefully when I came home because it was hurting down there where an incision was made for baby's big head to come through. That pain was all the pain I was thinking about. That night, after I had my dinner in bed, I was suddenly struck by waves and waves of excruciating pain in my abdomen. It was as if there were people in there sticking knives in my abdomen walls and twisting it. At the same time, the same abdomen walls felt like they were squeezing themselves real tight and releasing them again, it was a repeated motion. I felt I was going to die, this pain was much worse than labor pains! I kept telling Ezzat "I'm dying, I'm dying", and he was stricken with the painful decision to laugh at me or to be concerned and sympathetic. Laugh, because I kept covering my face with my hands (it's my usual practice when I'm in pain, don't ask me why) and he thought that action was hilarious. It lasted 5 to 6 hours and I was so sleepy and tired from the excitement of the previous two days that I fell asleep through the pain.
Those were my worries during the pregnancy. Now that baby is out, whoa! more worries! I'll continue on that another day. I'm worried that Oliver is going to have his leg stuck in between the 'grills' of his baby cot.
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