21-week old

Little Huda in the womb is almost 21-week old. The sonographer and another doctor say that she's a tad bit too small but my own gynae says it's okay because I am small. Still, I will try my mighty best to eat and eat and eat to make sure that she's all okay. Especially because my mother has been telling me how it's not easy taking care of an infant that's too small. My colleague told me to drink Anmum. She drank that when she had to have her baby induced earlier than the EDD and her baby's weight shot up significantly.

Talking about small infants - I don't quite have the confidence to carry little things that have just seen the world. I feel that they are just way too fragile and butter-fingers me may just drop them. Silly thoughts, I know. After all, have you ever heard of anybody dropping babies accidentally?

The pregnancy journey has been most interesting. The first trimester was challenging, with the stomach's inability to keep food in and the subsequent projectile vomiting. So bad that I had to be hospitalised for dehydration. Well, you would be dehydrated too if you couldn't even keep a gulp of water in. Besides the vomiting, there were other unsavoury feelings too such as bloatedness, stomach discomfort and the terrible taste of saliva. It was still the same saliva that I had been producing all my life, but, all these pregnancy hormones just left my tastebuds out of whack. And there was also the frequent fatigue. Oh, it was torture going anywhere! I just went to work and came back - in a taxi all the time.

The vomiting subsided somewhat in the 15th week, just in time for Hari Raya. But it didn't go away completely, of course. It lurked beneath the surface and projected itself at the most inappropriate of times.

Now, the symptoms are slowly going away. The bump is beginning to show (finally!) - no one believes that I'm 5-month pregnant when I have nothing to show for it. The husband noticed that I'm rubbing my tummy a lot these days. Sometimes, it's because I feel a slight discomfort and rubbing it helps. But most of the times, I really don't know why I'm rubbing my tummy especially in public places. It can look really weird, I'm sure, especially because you have to peer real hard to spot the bump and I think I look like I've just enjoyed a hearty meal and rubbing my tummy to prove the point.

I'm also talking a lot to little Huda nowadays. It's really not that difficult talking to the baby in the womb when you've been talking to yourself all your life. I'm not kidding. I talk to myself. When I was younger, I would talk to myself in the lift (provided I was all alone lah). Then my family moved and it was not convenient taking the lift. So, I would talk to myself on the way to the MRT station. Of course, I made sure that there was no one around. Once, I was talking to myself and there was a cyclist approaching me from behind. He was a stealth biker, I tell you. And as soon as he overtook me, he almost fell off his bike when he realised that normal-looking me was talking to myself!

Anyway, it's much easier talking to Huda now that I know her gender. That's because we've already shortlisted a few names for girls and I, without consulting the husband, settled on Huda. Heh. I like the name leh. If Huda had been a boy, it would be slightly trickier cos we don't exactly have names for boys. Having a name gives her an identity. She's not just some random baby girl. She's Huda, our baby girl. So, when you talk to her and you go, "Huda..." instead of 'Baby girl...", she knows (I hope) that we're talking to her and not some other babies passing by.

I try to speak to her in Malay because I intend to be the Malay-speaking parent and my husband, the English-speaking parent. I don't know how long this resolve will last but if all else fails, I'll just have to beg my parents to speak to Huda in Malay and not be influenced by their angmoh-wannabe children who speak either English or Singlish all the time. Or, I will play P Ramlee movies all the time at home. And only switch on the TV to RTM channels, not Suria cos Suria's Malay sounds too anglicised. And IKIM radio station. Okay, you get the drift.

You see, the husband and I feel that as long as we live in Singapore, our child/ren will not have any trouble picking up English. The problem is their Mother Tongue language. I get pretty icky when I see parents proudly proclaiming that their children cannot speak Malay. So, as much as possible, we want the child/ren to have an early exposure to their own Mother Tongue. And this is also why we won't be Mummy and Daddy or Mama and Papa. But we are gonna be good 'ol Mak and Abah/Ayah. (The husband has not decided what he wants to be called. If he's still indecisive by April, he'll be called Abaya.)

And now, the washing machine is done and I'm gonna hang the laundry out to dry. I just hope it won't rain. Do you think it will rain today, Huda?