My other pregnancy sicknesses

Tiredness - I get tired really easy. On a scale of 1 to 10, my energy literally dropped to minus 5. I need to take nap during the day. The only difference with this pregnancy is that I don't nap such long hours. I only need about 1 or 2 half to 1-hr short naps in a day. I remembered when I was expecting Ryan, I literally slept for nearly a total of 18-hrs a day during the 1st trimester. At that time, my sole purpose of waking up was just to have my 3 small meals.

Come to think of it, I wished I nap as much for this pregnancy so I could just sleep thru' the tough times of my 1st trimester.

Eye/Hearing changes - My eyes become more sensitive to light. And I MUST wear sunglasses all the time whenever I'm outdoor, be it rain or shine.

I'll also experience blurred vision if I read for long period. I have good sight and now I joked and told hubby how I felt old like him now as I have to change the font size of everything on the pc and handheld gadgets to large font size so that it's more comfortable for me to read.

I don't know why my hearings are sensitive too. I read my pregnancy books and it wasn't mentioned. But anyway, I simply hate loud noises at this point. TV volumes are set as low as possible and I get annoyed whenever hubby turn up the volume.

Acne - For my face, I felt like I'm looking in the mirror back in my teenage days. Thankfully, just like old times, I get one or two acne each time and not a full face of acne.

Headaches - I noticed having more headaches this pregnancy. Thankfully panadol is safe to take during pregnancy. I'll pop a pandol, instead of two which I usually do. I'm not those hollistic women who refrain from all medicines and makeup throughout their pregnancy and look like drab.

Ryan - 4y 10m

I can't believe Ryan is going to be 5yo in 2-months!!!

Although he not a baby anymore, I often calls him baby and that really annoys him. Kids at his age probably just want others to look upon them as big boys now. ;D

Anyhow, he's been rather chatty now. Correction...it's VERY chatty! He talks SOoooo much sometimes that he drives me up the wall! And oftenly when Hubby and I were chatting, he'll have something to say as well and he CANNOT wait!

And the things he says are getting funnier. Just this morning during breakfast, he was asking me what are the Mandarin terms for random things like some fruits and vegetables.

Then he asked, 'What about Nutella?'

'Um, actually I'm not sure about this. How about you go and ask your Chinese teacher and let me know later.'

He replied, 'If you don't know, then how come you say you're so clever???'

>.< *facepalm*

Pregnancy Sickness

Morning sickness is a wrong term!!!

I think most women who suffers from morning sickness would agree with me that it's not just in the morning. It's morning, afternoon and night. It's 24/7!!!! That's why I call it pregnancy sickness instead.

For me, I'm a text book case pregger. I experienced pregnancy sickness during the 1st trimester and like what you would read in all pregnancy books and websites, it will eases off upon reaching 2nd trimester. This happens to me for my first and current pregnancy and the experieces are very similar. I have lots of types of pregnancy sicknesses. I'll talk about the ones that bothered me the most first.

Nausea, heighten sense of smell and food aversion - they make my life a living hell for 2 months!!!

I don't feel uncomfortable during the first month. Well, I guess 99.9% of women will not feel a thing nor know about their pregnancy in the early weeks. Erm, except that alien woman in Species who learnt of her pregnancy immediately lah! ^^D

Anyway, I feel queasy around the 4-5th weeks, a lack of appetite and feeling bloated all the time. Then I felt tired perpetually and I had to nap which is unusual as I NEVER like to nap. Am I weird? Most people like to nap but for me, it gives me headaches and I always have trouble sleeping at night if I do nap.

Around the 6-7th weeks is the start of the beginning of hell for me. My sense of smell became so sensitive anything with a scent becomes offending to me. I have to changed to fragrance-free or stopped using stuffs with fragrances like perfumes (obviously), shower gels, skincare products, etc. This also resulted in an aversion of food.

Food that are hot gives off scent. So nearly all food makes me wanna puke. I stopped cooking and got mom to prepare dinner for us and I have to wait for the food to cool down before eating. Even then, I ate very little. By little I meant like a few mouthful. I can't take garlic, onions and avoided meat basically....that means I'm just eating some rice and veg. Anyway, anything savoury does not appeal to me at this point and my tastebud lean toward food that are sweet.

It's a lot of trials and errors. Last pregnancy, I survived on potato chips for a week. Shockingly unhealthy but it's better than nothing at all.

This time, at different phases, I survived on different stuffs like beh teh soh (马蹄酥), madeleines, pork floss with bread, crackers, instant noodles, glucose and H2O drinks etc. Not healthy, I know, but can't help it because once I get too hungry, I throw up. And boy I threw up so much for this pregnancy that I lost count. For all these unhealthy fatty junk food I ate for about 10 weeks, I actually lost 4kgs!!!

I feel sorry for those who threw up throughout their pregnancy. My mom is one. She told me she puked the entire 9 months. ''~

Oh, the only healthy stuffs I craved for and ate a lot are fruits. I ate tonnes of fruits. Apples, cherries, peaches, grapes, papayas, berries, etc, and my fav is Navel oranges.

My food aversion extends visually as well. I cannnot tolerate any TV shows or articles on food and I have to change channels or I'll feel queasy again. How bad is that huh??

Thankfully, as expected, all these nausea and food related problems gradually eased off as I entered 2nd trimester. I have been able to eat better now. Most food are okay with me now and so I tried to eat a healthy and balance diet.

I'll post about my other complaints next time...basically stuffs that I noticed a change but don't really bother me that much.

The Discovery

We have been trying for #2 for a rather long time and invested in many ClearBlue test kits but it's always a negative so I have stopped testing for some time.

During the last two weeks of our stay in Australia, I had been feeling queasy all the time but I thought I was just tired from too much touring. A week more after returning to Singapore, I still felt tired and queasy. So just days before my birthday (mid April), it suddenly occurred to me that I might be pregnant.

I looked at my last box of ClearBlue. The expiry is just a few months later so I thought why not. I'm pretty numb to a negative result so it wouldn't affect my birthday mood but if it's positive I'll have more reasons to celebrate.

Expecting yet another negative result, I paused for some time when I saw a positive sign. I'm a pro at using home pregnancy kit by now but I suddenly felt the need to read the leaflet within the box to make sure that I read the result correctly. Next thing, I took a photo and MMS to hubby and then I started crying.

For my first pregnancy, when I discovered I was expecting Ryan, I didn't feel extremely happy. I was actually a little scared as I don't know what to expect being a 1st time pregger then. Plus I always have a fear of being in hospital. Not like visiting people but like being admitted into hospital. I'm paranoid that freak accidents might fall upon me, like wound infections or excessive bleeding or someone left a pair of scissors inside me ,etc, stuffs like that.

This time round, I was overwhelmed with emotions. After trying for so long, I thought I might never have another baby. At times I felt sorry that Ryan might not have any sibling to play with. And guess what? Some things are really cliche!! Just like in tv or how people advises, when you don't think about it, you just might have that baby.

So anyway, the box of ClearBlue I bought has 2 test kits. I didn't want to get my hopes too high so I decided to use the remaining test kit the next morning to make sure the first result is not incorrect because it was going to expire. After the second positive result I then made an appointment with my obgyn to double-stamped confirm my pregnancy with an ultrasound scan. Hahaha! I feel the need to see the little 'blob' on the monitor and hear my doc says "Congrats" to us. Kiasu lah! So when we stepped out of the clinic with a printed copy of the ultrasound, we phoned both our moms to spread the news. (^^,)