Ketulusan Hati

A few years ago, I saw Anuar Zain on TV doing a Hari Raya show on Suria.

Immediately, I joined his legions of fans.

I have never really been a fan of any singers/groups etc so this was new territory for me. Errr... okay. There was Clay Aiken. I called myself a Claymaniac and The Husband just shook his head but still indulged me and bought me his CD. That lasted about a year or so.

Stil, Anuar Zain has got to be my longest-lasting interest.

And when I said I melted watching him on TV, this is why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5TeuJ1ucEY

(Psst.. You can skip the banter between Anuar Zain, Najip & Has and go straight to 3:02.)

*swoons* 

Stories from The First Month

I am, of course, supposed to do something else now. Now that I'm back at work, I hardly have time to blog. (I much rather spend whatever little free time I have perfecting my Desktop Towers points. Yes, I'm still addicted to that game. Gaaaah!!)

Just to summarise the events of my life thus far:

1. Going back to work was daunting. Very daunting. For the first three days, every morning was spent sobbing away. On some days, Huda woke up just when I kissed her goodbye and she would cry and so would I. Those days, I boarded the feeder service to the MRT station with red, puffy eyes. Then, when I talked to my colleagues about parting with the little girl, tears welled up in my eyes. Sigh.

2. By Friday of the first week, the stress of going back to work must have got to me. I went to the toilet and saw blood. Just a week earlier, I saw 2 lines on the pregnancy test kit. I had a miscarriage. :( I was a complete wreck for the first week. I actually saw myself going through the five stages of grief. (I hate it when social scientists manage to point out human behaviour with great accuracy.) I'm normally a positive person so the self-blame, anger and more self-blame were not very me. Eventually, I decided that I've just experienced a loss (even if the baby in the womb is only 6 weeks old) and I should mourn my loss, no matter how small it is. So, I spent a few days not trying to suppress the grieving and was fine about 2 weeks later.

3. And last week, I lost my phone at the pasar malam beside Causeway Point. It either fell to its death (not likely cos I would have noticed it) or was stolen from my bag. I was carrying Huda in front in the baby carrier and on my shoulder was a shopping bag which contained a loaf of bread, butter, some vegetables and snacks. So, you can imagine how big the opening of the bag is. After using the phone, I threw it back inside the bag. Then, The Husband who was waiting for me at the MRT station called me repeatedly. I didn't hear it ring but I attributed it to the loud ambient noise. (I have a tendency to use words whose meanings I'm not 100% sure of. I assume 'ambient' means surrounding. :P) In the bus on the way back, I realised my phone was not with me. The Husband called my number and was diverted to the voicemail. Damn the #%*& who took my phone. I hope they'll develop huge warts on their noses which can never be removed.

4. I failed my practical driving test. But, having had so many losses this month, failing a driving test is nothing.

5. On a positive note, it was a euphoric moment when I saw Anuar Zain on TV singing Ketulusan Hati. I'm playing the CD (which my indulgent Husband bought for me last month) over and over again now. *melts*

Priceless

Aili blogging about the priceless gifts she received from Edna reminded me of something similar.

Some 2 years ago, when I was stuck in the labour ward for a week, my then 4-year-old nephew, Azhad, drew a picture of The Husband, me and the unborn Huda and wrote a message below it: "We pray that Cik Ira (that's me) and Huda will be safe."

When The Husband brought the picture to me (strictly no visitors in the labour ward other than the spouse), I asked the nurses for some tape and stuck the picture on the cupboard beside my bed. I constantly looked at the drawing throughout my stay in the hospital.

Fast forward 2 years later, I was again in hospital and my now 6-year-old nephew brought me another picture.

These drawings are things money can never buy and at this stage in life when we can buy almost anything we want, priceless gifts like these are the best. 

:)

 

An Empty Womb

Monday, 31 December 2007

2 lines! 2 lines! Alhamdulillah! The bloatedness and the constant burping over the past 2 weeks had to mean something.

 

Friday, 4 January 2008

Blood. "This is the end of my pregnancy," I thought.

But, after some 3 hours, I decided to go to KK. Yingchia's call gave me hope. She had the same thing at the beginning of her pregnancy and she's 4 months along now. "We have hope," I told The Husband.

Hospitalised. Doctor couldn't see the sac. Could it be because I was only 6 weeks pregnant? The baby's in there somewhere, I was so sure. But blood tests showed a declining hormone level.

I've had a miscarriage. It's confirmed.

    ~~~

For the first 2 days of so, I was calm. Strangely so. The Husband was terribly affected the night I was hospitalised. I told him that this is Allah's will. He has a reason for this, I'm sure. And we have to be grateful that the miscarriage happened in the 6th week. Not after we've seen our baby's heart beating.

But, by Sunday evening, as the world around me slept, I started to reflect on the events of the past week and I wondered if I could have avoided the miscarriage.

One gynae told me that the next time I'm pregnant, I should see her immediately and she would start me on a course of medication to thin my blood. My previous pregnancy, I had a problem with resistance in the vein that supplies blood to the placenta, probably because my blood was too thick?

After the miscarriage, I started reading a lot of online articles to understand what happened. A few articles mentioned that if the blood passed out has lots of clots, the patient must take aspirins or similar medications which can thin the blood.

Had I seen a gynae immediately, would I have been able to avoid the miscarriage?

Is It Me?

Why?

 

My first pregnancy was fraught with complications and my baby had to be delivered early because she wasn't growing well in my womb.

 

And now, a miscarriage.

 

---

 

Allah knows best, I keep on telling myself.

December

This is the kind of nonsense she's up to some days.

She'll take the stools, turn them upside down and get in them. Other times, she'll push the stool towards the kitchen cabinet, climb up and up and up. I once found her on the kitchen cabinet, trying to work the toaster.

Tomorrow, I'm going back to work. And it is with this thought that I'm putting up these few pictures of Huda (and everyone else) taken in the past few weks. I will no longer have the time to update as and when I please - not that I do much updating to begin with...

When I came back to work after my maternity leave ended last year, I met a mum who just came back from one year of (no-pay) childcare leave. Unlike me at that time, she felt relieved to go back to work because her son was getting naughtier and naughtier, she said. Work was a welcome break. I had similar thoughts many times throughout the year when I just could not wait to go back to work. These thoughts crept in after full days of handling a sticky toddler who seemed glued to my hips throughout her waking hours.

But now that going back to work is a reality and is happening in approximately *gasp* 14 hours, I find myself unable to part with my bub.

No Top

Today, Huda refused her top. Every time I put it on, she'd pull it off.

I gave up.

Scared

Morning sickness is horrible.

I'm not pregnant. Yet. My sis-in-law is. And she is having quite a bad bout of morning sickness.

Who came up with this term - morning sickness? It doesn't happen in the morning only. It happens ALL the time!! You feel the nausea all day, don't you? And you vomit regardless of the time, don't you? (If you don't, please don't answer this because I'll just die of envy.)

I had terrible nausea and vomiting for some 5 to 6 months of my pregnancy.

Things were not too bad when I first discovered I was pregnant. I felt mostly bloated and slightly giddy when I took buses and taxis. I felt nauseous at times but managed to suppress the vomit. I even had the gall to say that, perhaps, all this vomiting that happens in pregnancy is all in the mind. If you want to suppress it, it can be done. Cocky like anything, I was.

Just mere days later, I started throwing up. It was so bad. I was throwing up everything I ate and more. We vomited in layers, a pregnant friend and I noted. (Both of us were pregnant at the same time and between us, we suffered almost 90% of all pregnancy ailments. She's pregnant again now and she's just waiting for me to join her.) If I eat rice, then some biscuits and then some ice cream and I vomit after that, the first wave of stuff to come out will be the ice cream, then, the biscuits and then the rice. After that, out will come all the greenish bile and yucky schmucky stuff that burns your throat.

(So, if anyone says that all the food you eat will get mixed in the stomach, well, I dont think so. I've got at least 5 months of vomit-analysis under my belt.)

I remembered that I started vomiting on a Thursday. The following Thursday, I was at work, feeling so exhausted because every single thing that I ate had come out. I was also so thirsty and I took a gulp of water. Miraculously, it remained inside. I took a taxi home and once I left the taxi, I had an urgent need to vomit and out came the water, then the bile.

I felt depressed after that, I went home and started crying because I was so thirsty and weak and yet couldn't keep anything down. The next day, something important was happening at work and I had to do something there so no matter what, I had better be there.

Unfortunately, I could barely get out of bed the next day. I practically crawled to the clinic near my block and the doctor sent me off to KK because I was dehydrated.

I was hospitalised and put on a drip. The doctor took 3 tries before he managed to find a vein. He said that when a person is dehydrated, the veins would collapse so it's difficult finding a suitable place to poke the needle. (Thank goodness he was cute. Otherwise, I would have used what's left of my energy to kick him each time he poked the needle.)

Oh. And this is not a randomly-titled blog. Looking at how bad my sis-in-law's morning sickness is, I'm reminded of my horrible time and now I'm feeling a bit jittery about getting pregnant again.

Luh-Ay-Zz-Ee

I've been speaking in phonics with Huda quite a bit.

What's that, Huda? That's a bus. Buh. Ah. Sssss. Bus! And this is an - umbrella! Ah. Mm. Buh. Rrr. Eh. Lll. Ah. Umbrella! And that's why one of her first words is umbrella. Because, every time I use the umbrella, I'll repeat my "Ah. Mm. Buh. Rrr. Eh. Lll. Ah. Umbrella!".

Yes, yes. I've not updated this little space of mine for quite a while. I've been addicted to Desktop Towers and it was only the past 4 days, when I went cold turkey (and I also went across the causeway) that I managed to overcome my addiction. Or so I hope. There may be a relapse, though. That's very likely the case.

One thing I've learnt from our most recent trip is that although Huda is already a big girl - at 20 months - we still must plan all our movements around her naps, lunch and dinner. And we must be back at the hotel room by her bedtime. She is a good traveller and does not get too fussy but the poor girl has rashes all over her face, presumably because of insufficient rest and poor eating habits over the past 4 days. For our next trip, the slow cooker will be carted along and the first stop will be the supermarket to buy all the supplies for her porridge.

Talking about porridge, one of my neighbours is always sharing porridge tips with me. She takes care of her grandchildren and she often gives me suggestions as to what I can put in my porridge. She has given me some cordycep stems and some small little red seeds - the packaging says boxthorn fruit - to add to Huda's porridge to build her immunity. So I've been adding these two items in Huda's porridge for the past few weeks. Recently, she has also started adding one green apple and strawberries into the porridge, along with kurau, chicken, broccoli, carrot and spinach. And, that's what I'm going to do too. Anything, anything to make my baby eat.

And yes yes yes. I'm going back to work in less than a month. Gaaaaahhhh!!! It's THAT soon!!! The Husband suggested that I take another half a year off but at that time I thought, never mind lah. I can go back to work for a year and see how things go. Now, I'm banging my head against the wall and asking why I gave up the opportunity to be a pseudo-taitai. Sigh. But too late for regrets now.

I hear sounds coming from the room. The Little Girl is awake, I'm sure. Til next time!

 

Days in November, an expansion

I love November.

I love how it sounds. The /n/, /v/, /m/ & /b/ sounds just pleasantly rolling off your tongue.

I love the weather in November. The rainy season has begun but it's not all wet all the time. There'll be a spot of sun but it's never too harsh to burn the skin.

Years ago, November meant that it's time to bury the books cos the school year is almost over and it's just play, play and more play time. Not too long ago, November meant that the school year is (still) almost over and it's time to discard the lesson plans and it's just play, play and more play time.

But November also makes me feel melancholic. I'll think of the friends I've lost touch with. Yanni & Xiuling from Crescent. Sharifah Ainal. Shu Jiun & Shamus from JJC. 

In the past, November also meant that I'll have all the time in the world to write letters to friends. I used to do that a lot. I enjoy writing letters and receiving replies. I enjoy sitting down for hours writing to them. I enjoy reading the replies and then writing back. And sometimes, when I'm too free, I'll read the letters I've received.

Then December comes.

December means that I'm finally free ftom the shackles of work but it also means the boring 'ol school life will start all over again soon. And by December, I will try to pack my days with as much activities as possible to ensure that I won't regret the passing of the holidays when January's here. There will be no time for melancholy. It'll be fun, fun and more fun all the way through. Until the middle of December, of course when (after I've started working), I realise that there's a lot of unfinished work and I'll try to squeeze in some work into my days and nights. No more melancholy; just wondering what on earth happened to my holidays?