It's a Boy!

Yes, the universe didn’t take too kindly to my demands. Moks and I have already made up these pictures in our heads of how life is going to be when our little daughter arrives, but I guess God said we’re getting ahead of ourselves – and of Him! – and so decided to give my beanie that pesky Y chromosome instead. :p

So instead of Ayla, we’re having Ira. (Ayla is the name we picked out if it’s a girl; I have loved that name for so many years now, and even loved it more after reading The Clan of the Cave Bear. Ira [pronounced Ay-ra], on the other hand, is short for Israel.)

I was supposed to go for the Congenital Anomaly Scan last week (June 26) to check on the baby and to find out the sex too, but I had to go to Hong Kong so it was pushed back. Much as I enjoyed HK, I looked forward to coming home and getting that long-awaited ultrasound already. So I was very happy that June 30 was declared a non-working holiday, and that St. Luke’s Women’s Health Care Unit was open at the time. I got an appointment for 1:00 p.m., and was at the hospital promptly. I was anxious, and excited. I was praying in my head, please let my baby be perfectly healthy. And please let it be a girl.


But no. The second the ultrasound probe touched my belly, guess what the first clear image was. Ira’s balls. Hehe. Which drew an “oooh” from the doctor, followed by, “Do you want to know the sex?” I wanted to say, well, based on what we’re seeing, I suppose it’s pretty obvious. But I chose not to be a smartass, and said yes instead. So she confirmed, it’s a boy. She froze the screen, drew an arrow to point to my beanie’s pututuy, and wrote “BOY”. As if she needed to drill that fact some more.

We spent the next hour and a half looking at every little detail of my beanie. His head, brains, heart, kidneys, liver, stomach, umbilical cord, arms, legs, bones, spines. Every one was painstakingly examined, and measured. And I kept breathing sighs of relief every time she says whatever she’s examining is normal. And then she asked,

Matangkad ba ang asawa mo?

Um, hindi po masyado. Hehe.

Hehe, mukhang magmamana ang baby niyo. Medyo maikli din ang hita o.

We giggled.

Then she proceeded to show me Ira’s face. She said it was still very bony as he doesn’t have much fats yet, but it will fill up in a few more weeks. She showed me the outline of his eyes, and even the lenses! She measured his nasal bone, and pointed out that his lips are intact. Ira was very cooperative at the time – he actually turned his head sideways to give us a better view. I am taking that as a very good sign that he won’t be camera shy once he’s born. :p



And then we proceeded to count his fingers and his toes. And again, we got a surprising and pleasing help from Ira. As if on cue, he raised his hands in front of his chest just when the doctor said “now we’ll look at his hands.” I was very proud of my baby at that time.

Like a model coached well on his next move, he raised his feet up to his chest too after we counted his fingers, and gave us a good view to be able to count his toes. By this time, I was already ecstatic and thinking, “Masunurin ang anak ko! Artistahin!”

The doctor then said, since my boy seems to be in the mood to give a show, we can videotape him and put it on CD. I would just have to pay about P250 for the CD copy. So of course, I said go. And yes, my son didn’t disappoint. When the doctor pressed record, he started moving around so much – turning his head sideways, raising his arms and legs, and just basically doing calisthenics in my uterus. He even did the “L” sign! Hahaha! I guess even he knew that it was Noynoy’s inauguration that day, and he was joining the nation’s pledge. :-)

Now that I think about it, I suppose my boy will take after my personality. Stariray na aware sa current events. Perfect!

I got into a roller coaster of emotions after the session. On the way home, it hit me that we’re not getting Ayla. That I won’t be able to buy those uber cute girl’s dresses and ribbons and shoes. That I won’t be able to tag her, “daddy’s little girl”. I admit I became sad for a while after that. It really felt like I was saying goodbye to my dream of having that pretty little girl with perfect curls na ipaparebond ko pag medyo malaki na siya at hindi na bagay sa kanya ang kulot.

But sense came back to me after a while, and I knew (I suppose I always knew, but I was being stupid about it) that it’s still going to be amazing even if we’re not getting a girl. When we passed by the toy store, I got this new picture in my head of Moks and Ira playing Lego together, and me dressing Ira up as a knight, or a soldier, or Superman. And then me calling him, “mommy’s little boy”.

And life is good again.

Congrats, Mariz!

Since I don't have any access to Facebook, Twitter, Multiply or any other social networking site, I will do my shoutout here in my blog.

Here's to my dear sister-in-law, Mariz, who just passed the May 2010 CPA Board Exams! It's her first take too! We're all so proud of you, Mariz!

To Tatay and Mama, the overwhelmingly happy and proud parents, congratulations po! Kelan na ang lechon? :-)

Maternity Wear

I just received an email from Babycenter.com about the top 10 basic items of clothing a preggy woman must have, and considering I have been struggling with this problem for over a month now, I instantly checked it.

You see, right now, I’m "in-between". I’m not big enough yet for maternity clothes, but my regular clothes don’t fit anymore! I don’t want to waste a lot of money on bigger size clothes or maternity clothes I won’t be able to wear again after I give birth, so I’m trying to limit my buying to the most essential pieces only. And in the meantime, I’m trying to make do with my regular clothes, albeit with some alterations.

Like yesterday, I insisted on wearing my soft, cream slacks and I paired it with a pretty long-cut blouse. I chose it because I thought it won’t hurt my tummy too much because it’s soft, and then I used a safety pin so I don’t have to button it up, and wore it with the zip half-open. Then I safety pinned the bottom of my blouse too, to make sure it doesn’t open to reveal my open fly. The result: a very uncomfortable day. Every time I stand up from my seat, I have to hike up my pants and pull down my blouse to make sure I don’t "show". And when I sit down, I have to open my zip a bit more to make more room for my lower abdomen. Worse thing was, I had to sit at a meeting yesterday, so of course I couldn’t open my zipper, so I had to endure an hour and a half of discomfort because of the tightness in my belly. After that meeting, I rushed to the bathroom to "free" my tummy and I swear, I could have heard my skin groan in relief.

So now, I’m about 90% convinced that there’s just no way around it – I really have to buy more maternity clothes. So far, I have bought 3 maternity pants for the office, a pair of maternity jeans, 3 dresses (2 of which I am imagining I can still wear even after I give birth), and 3 blouses. Listing it down now, it makes me think that that’s quite a lot already. But since I go to work 5 days a week and we only do laundry and ironing every 2 weeks, that number won’t be enough. Sigh.

For the weekends, I’m using some pants I got from my sister Lala when I visited her in Singapore a few weeks ago. The first time I looked at them I thought they were so big that I probably won’t be able to use them until after a few more months. But just this week, when I absolutely ran out of something decent to wear outside, I tried them on and was shocked that they actually fit me already! I guess I have been underestimating the additional inches I have gained thus far. :p

Now, back to babycenter’s list. I think I can survive without some of them, but then again I’m thinking maybe I should just take the advice of these experts instead of acting based on what I think because frankly, my ideas about this pregnancy have not been very accurate. And I really don’t want to face another I-have-absolutely-nothing-to-wear situation. It just isn’t fun, and it’s adding to the pressure this pregnancy and my new work has put on me. What do you think?


1. Flat, slip-in shoes. I have about 3 pairs of this already, to my Nanay's constant annoyance (she insists I have way too many shoes and too few clothes), so, done.



2. Expanding tank tops. I'm not sure I need these. Will I really wear them out? Babycenter is suggesting I wear them in layers for a more stylish look, but in this heat, who would want to wear layers?




3. Wrap dress. I have 2 wrap dresses but both not maternity, meaning they wrap around right smack in the middle of the belly. I keep telling myself they would be fine, but looking at this picture now, I realize yeah, a dress that wraps right under the bust and on top of the tummy would probably fit and feel better.



4. Tunic top. So cute, so yes, this definitely goes in my to-buy list.


5. Leggings. Hmm, i'm not yet convinced. I've never enjoyed wearing anything that clings too tightly to my legs (thus, the wasted pairs of skinny jeans), so I really don't know about this.




6. Drapey cardi. I like. I will buy. :-)

7. Dark boot-cut pants. Yep, bought one already.

8. Jersey knit skirt. This is cute too, but I haven't found any yet! Where can I buy this?

9. Yoga pants. Again, I'm not convinced. How different are these from regular jogging pants anyway?

10. Maternity jeans. I have one of those already, but maybe I can buy another pair? :p

To Go or Not To Go

I only have 4 more days to spend in my current job, and then I will have a 9-day break before I start working for my new employer. After that short break, I will have no sick leaves or vacation leaves again for the next 6 months.

Which is why I want to make that 9-day off count.

My options are: first, stay at home and finish my wedding scrapbook. This would of course mean that our electricity bill will soar again due to prolonged aircon use. This also means that I would be able to exhaust food delivery choices, as I still can’t cook for myself and Moks because my food aversions change almost from meal to meal.

My second option is to take a short trip with Moks someplace local. But this is not very feasible right now, as Moks is uber busy with his job, and might not be able to take even a weekend off to go away. Darn el nino.

My last, and my favorite, option is to go visit my nephews in Singapore. I so want to hug and kiss Luis and Enzo again in person, and I want to play and talk with Enzo about volcanoes and water falls and the outer space until I’m about to go crazy. But of course, given my current condition, there are some things holding me back from just packing up and going:

1. The cost. Yes, it will only cost me the price of a round-trip plane ticket since I will be staying at my sister’s anyway, but considering that I have no salary for the month of April, and we have to save up for the delivery in 7 months, an unplanned trip might not be a very wise idea at this time.

2. I’m still in my first trimester in this pregnancy. And so far, my googling efforts on the safety and advisability of air travel at this stage have showed rather conflicting results. Pregnancy.about.com says air travel is generally safe, unless you’re having a high risk pregnancy, or already on your last trimester. Babycenter.com has a forum on this topic, and while majority of the members said it’s ok, there are some who said they were advised not to fly during the first trimester as there are risks of miscarriage.

Add to this conflict my concern about my still ongoing battle with morning sickness. Will it intensify while I’m flying? If it strikes while I’m in the plane, can I barf in the toilet? And then when I get to Singapore, what will I do there? I barely have the energy to walk around Megamall here, will I be able to keep up with my hyper-active nephews there?

Sigh. There are so many things to consider, but all the cons seem to fade in the background when I look at Luis and Enzo's pictures. I miss my nephews! How I wish I can go there when Miguel is there too, and how I wish Pei can join us as well, but Miguel will be visiting by end-May, and by that time, I will not have any more offs.

So, I have checked the Tiger Airways website to wait for promos, and lucky me, seems like I can get a promo fare for the flight home. But Tiger's policy requires pregnant women to submit a medical certificate before a booking can be made, so that's another hurdle. I have texted my OB already, and am now awaiting her sweet affirmative reply. After which, I will make the final decision on whether to go or not.

Update:

My OB said it's ok to travel, so I went ahead to Singapore. I was able to walk around malls and Universal Studios with no untoward incident - I just made sure to rest whenever I felt tired or weird. I'm now back, and hopefully my beanie's still ok. I haven't gone back to the OB yet, as my schedule was moved to May 22, so I'm not 100% sure my trip did not have any ill effects on my pregnancy (I hope not!).

In the meantime, I'm worrying about a tightness I feel in my tummy area - kind of like the pain you get on your side when you run immediately after a heavy meal. But mine is moving around - yesterday it was on the right side of my lower abdomen, just above my appendectomy scar. Today, it's at the top of my stomach, about an inch below my ribs. Sigh, I really really wish these are innocuous pains, and that these are just muscle aches brought on by the "expansion" of my tummy. In any case, I don't want to bother the OB about these pains yet, but when I get sufficiently praning about them, I will.

It's less than magical

Please allow me to just post this short rant about the discomforts this pregnancy is giving me. Yes, I am only 8 weeks along, but I have already declared (although maybe I don’t really really mean it) that I don’t want to do this again. Well, some say the first trimester is the hardest – excluding the labor and delivery, of course. So here’s a list of the things I hate about this period:

1. Morning sickness. Which is so incorrectly named because it doesn’t only happen in the mornings, it strikes at any time of the day or night! Argh! Believe me, there is absolutely nothing fun about a constantly queasy stomach, or that heavy feeling that something’s lodged in your chest, waiting to explode out of your throat. I have knelt in front of the toilet at home, in the office, and even in Moks’s office, with all my facial muscles shaking, my eyes crying, and my whole upper body convulsing as I hurl my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I really really wish that the morning sickness would stop when I reach the second trimester.

2. Nasal stuffiness. I’ve lost count of the many afternoons when I’m comfortably seated in my office, with the temperature neither too hot nor too cold, I’m rested and relaxed, and then suddenly it would be difficult to breathe. It feels like the insides of my nose is completely covered in snot, and I would go to the bathroom to check and find that there is nothing there. It’s clean. But somehow it’s hard to breathe, as if the lining of my nasal cavity thickened motu proprio. Pregnancy books and websites say this is normal, but that does not make it less uncomfortable. Annoying.

3. I’m getting uglier by the day! Waaaah! I noticed I’m starting to have that line in the center of my abdomen, and I’m worried that it’s only a matter of time before my neck, armpits – even my singit! – gets darker.

4. I’m being paranoid about everything! I’m really wondering if ignorance is bliss in pregnancy. Because so far, all my research about everything that can go wrong in this pregnancy is just making me worry. From the most mundane concerns like, my hair will become very dry, I might have chloasma, my feet will swell and I won’t be able to fit in my shoes, to the serious possibilities like Down’s syndrome, cleft lip and palate, gestational diabetes, sickle cell disease, etc. – the more I learn about these things the more I get freaked out. But I can’t stop researching and reading up! I need to always remind myself of my friend Charis’s advice – to just raise everything up in prayer, because there’s not much else I can do anyway.

So there, these are the main reasons why this period is not all magical for me. I’m sure Moks can add a couple more to this list (e.g. how he has to do all the housework now, or how he has to get me whatever I want from downstairs when I’m already in bed, or how I have soooooo little patience now for Delamar’s whining) but I think I’ll just wait for him to post about that.

Quite a ride

Due to circumstance (all her pamangkins of recent years are boys) and the fact that she's excited to dress up the child in all sorts of ribbons and laces, Leah is dead-set on praying for a little baby girl. She addresses the baby as a girl, talks about it as if she were sure, and has even successfully campaigned for the name if it turns out to be a girl (we haven't picked a name yet if it turns out to be a boy).

Except for some faint, archaic notion that the eldest should be a son, I have no preference on the matter. I know the little bugger will grab my heart at the earliest opportunity and run away laughing with it while I look on -- bewildered that such a small creature with the smallest hands can sway my heart this way and that.

If it turns out to be a girl, I imagine sweet kisses and bedtime tickles. We will sing with her teddies and pick out names for her pets. I imagine my walls, notebooks, tables, and every other surface with her squiggly, girly penmanship, and nighttime jaunts to look at the stars. I can see her spilling her milk on the table, because she would insist she can do it, and answering endless questions of which i like better (puppies or kittens? blue or green? her lola's cooking or her mommy's) just so she'll know which she should like more. We'll have our special time on Saturday mornings because her mom refuses to wake early, so we'll go out and buy pandesal and eat them on the street, waiting for more hawkers who offer their wares. I hope she tells me everything, most especially the annoying little boys in her school because her tatay is her best friend in the whole wide world.

if it's a boy, then I'm on more familiar ground. It's all about adventure, and what's the next new thing he can do. We'll find spiders for fighting and dig for little crabs on the beach. Scraped knees due to bike accidents and torn t-shirts from climbing trees. We'll build paper boats and fly kites, watch community basketball tournaments and eat isaw on the streets. I will show him when to be patient (while waiting for the fish to bite the lure) and when to be decisive (whenever someone needs help). And I will tell him to never ever bet money against his lolo on card games because his lolo always cheats.

Whether boy or a girl, I would watch old Bruce Lee movies with them and practice screaming "ha-ya!" while we do karate outside the house. I would read them stories and ask them to tell their own versions to their friends. We will eat aratiles, never watch news, and read lots and lots of comic books. I will make sure they are always courteous to waiters, to the elderly, and to never be afraid of questioning their teachers. I will try to teach them that there are truths that are only true sometimes, and that some truths remain even if no one else believes them.

When they are a bit older, perhaps I can tell them my own stories. And when they are old enough to have children of their own, stories no one has ever heard. We will name stars, make up our own songs, disbelieve what we read. My children will know me -- not just as their father, but as me.

And if the heavens favor me, they will learn with me that God is far more terrible, and far gentler than what they may have heard.

The first picture

This is my beanie’s first picture. It was taken on March 19, 2010. Do you see that small white shape in the middle of the black oval? That's her. The doctor said that based on my beanie’s crown-to-rump size, she’s 5 weeks and 5 days old already. (Oh, and yes, I don’t know the sex yet, but I want a girl, so I’m using female pronouns here. Universe, take a hint!)

According to babycenter.com, at 5 weeks, my beanie’s growing at a furious pace. She looks more like a tiny tadpole than a human, and is now made up of three layers — the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm — which will later form all of her organs and tissues.

Well, I certainly didn’t see any of those layers when I did the TVS. What I saw was this peanut-looking thing that’s pulsating, much like a small, very lightly flickering christmas light. She measured at 2.2 mm. only (which is normal, for her age). Can you imagine how small 2.2 mm is? Without magnification, it’s about the length of a Times New Roman, font 12 long dash. Like this: –. And it still amazes me that something that small is actually human.

I’m due for another sonogram on Saturday, March 27, and by that time, my beanie should be 7 weeks and 6 days old already – almost 8 weeks. At that point, so much of her body parts should have already started to develop: at 6 weeks, her nose, mouth, and ear have already began to take shape, as well as her intestines, lungs, pituitary gland, brain, muscles, and bones. At 7, hands and feet should have also emerged, although they would look more like paddles, and she will still have a small tail. By the 8th week, webbed fingers and toes will start to poke out.

It’s exciting and amazing and nerve-wracking. And very definitely faith-building. In such short time so much happens. My body has been turned into a factory that manufactures a person. And I’m the factory owner that has absolutely no control over the manufacturing process. All I can do is pray and ask God to take hold of the procedure.