The New Hormone Excuse

Hormones have always been the most convenient excuse for me for almost everything during my pregnancy. To cite but a few:

- A rabid attack of acne in unusual places? (If there was an acne painter he sure is having fun with my face and back as his canvas!)

- Roller coaster emotions? 

- Feeling (and looking) like a bloated blubber whale? 

- Wanting to sleep 20/7 (an hour each for 3 meals, and an hour to shower)? 

Basically, anything mysterious, or unexplainable, blame it on the hormones. However, recently, as our baby Oliver's growth becomes more obvious, and his movements more discernable, he has become the new "hormone" excuse for a host of things. These outbursts have prompted my husband to label me as becoming more and more "spoiled". I say, it's not me who's spoiled, it's Oli.

- Hungry just after 2 hours of a full meal (after which you swore you couldn't possibly eat another bite), and yet starving and (gently) demanding nourishment after we've unwound and gotten ready for bed? And no ordinary midnight snack will do--(some reheating, slicing, dicing, stacking, mixing required)?  

- Brain farts. Blame it on Oli... he's munching on my brain's battery cells again. 

- Farts. The kind that makes a sound and sometimes brings about olfactory side effects. Whoa! That wasn't me either! That was Oli releasing his tension through my body. Seriously, Oli, what DID you have for breakfast?!?

- Acting like a spoiled brat. Acting like a spoiled brat who's always about to run out of food to eat. Acting like a spoiled brat who's about to run out of food to eat, hence, wanting to demolish anything in the pathway that resembles food, and yet being selective of the best parts (true for fish fillets, lamb chops, chicken and pork cutlets, anything and everything MEAT). An insatiable desire for meat and yoghurt drinks and forbidden sweet drinks. It's not for me, it's for Oli! Save that piece for me, I want that piece, and that too! I don't always finish what my "eyes" order. Ever heard of the phrase, "Eyes bigger than the stomach"? Very true for me pre-pregnancy. Still true now, except not entirely, My stomach is WAY bigger than my eyes. Or any part of my body for that matter. 

You must think I'm a terribly chomp monster. Call me chomp chomp, go ahead, I blame it on Oli. :) 

Backne and the sweetest (not) husband ever

Sometimes, my husband can be quite...blunt.

For example, one of the nasty side effects of my pregnancy is that I have a terrible case of "backne*". I have never had any backne pre-pregnancy, but now they have happily formed little communities and constellations spanning my entire upper back (you'd think that they would at least be considerate enough to grow around my lower back area so as to be more discreet on the occasion that I wear low -back outfits, right???)

I suppose I have to be thankful overall, though, as I never experienced the even nastier side effect of vomiting, nausea or other similar symptoms of pregnancy.

*Backne- My coined word, short for "back acne"

I expressed my gratitude over the fact that my backne was not growing on my face. I then asked,

I: "Hun, if my backne were growing on my face, would you still love me?"

He: "Well, I would perhaps take more time getting to know you better..."

I: "...And if this occurred before we got married, would you still marry me?"

He: "I would find it more difficult to look at your face, and instead focus on your other body parts (looks at my chest)"

He then helpfully added, " if your backne would converge in a much smaller area such as your face, your face would then be a big boil..." (winces)

In times like these, I really feel 100% sure that I married the right man...

Getting creative when in pain and prior to sleeping

There are days when you are bursting with stories and feel especially eloquent. Then, there are those days when you just can't be bothered by something as irrelevant as proper words/ English.

After just the first year together as a married couple, we found a way to make our lives easier (and make speaking more efficient) through coining a few useful daily conversation terminology:

I. On the topic of pinpointing where to massage me, highlighting painful areas (an official medical chart of the back shoulder muscles has been provided below for reference):

Brad Pits: massage of the underarm (arm pit) muscles (or close to it anyway, with shirt on, of course or that would be gross)

Chicken wings: massage of Teres minor (see diagram below)

Ground zero*: pain central

       * Oftentimes, there is not just one ground zero, so this is further subdivided into several         subcategories, conveniently named in bullet points, such as ground 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and so on and so forth...

Then there are a few more, honestly, I can get quite creative when in pain and duress, but as I usually don't have a notebook beside me at the same time, some crucial keywords have slipped out of my memory bank. I'm sure it will come back to me, it's just like riding a bike, as they all say.

II. On the topic of the bedding landscape:

"P.M. me":  Contrary to popular culture, this does not mean "Private message" me (oh, please... how lame). Instead, it means, "Pillow Mountain" me. As in, (help me) build a mountain of pillows of varying firmness and terrain according to the shape of my body to prepare me for a better sleep.

Now, obviously, this is way too long to explain to my husband every night. So that is where "P.M. me" comes in quite handy.

"De-slut the rabbit"-

My husband bought me a pregnancy pillow during my second trimester (I didn't start using it until towards the end of this semester, but we thought buying early would somehow make more sense as we'd end up buying it eventually anyway).

I chose a cute light pink rabbit print pillow that has little drawings of a girl rabbit going about her daily routine (such as watering the plants, walking her...dog(?!), pushing her baby in a pram, holding a bunch of balloons, you know... usual things that rabbits enjoy doing.

It honestly did look like this at the start, as it was advertised on the shop's online site:

However, after a few weeks of usage, the two "legs", shall we say, refused to stay together, and the fillers moved about in all the wrong places, and thus had to be shaken upside down to get the fillers back to where they should be, and slapped silly to get the two "legs" to close...

Thus, the term, "de-slutting"...

Oh, the things I learned in a very strict all-girls Catholic school upbringing.

On a side note, this is on my wishlist:

You can probably guess where each part of the pregnant woman goes, the photo is quite self-explanatory... As almost every part of my body aches (even parts I didn't know even existed), I would really really love to get a professional massage. Not that my husband's aren't enough, but well... yeah I suppose they aren't...but he did give me an always replenishing, never dwindling supply of "100" free massage coupons from a "hunky" masseuse (Read: him) as one of his gifts last last Christmas...

I find it impossible for any massage therapist to take me on as a client here in Shanghai, even the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) doctors who specialize in special care (and who could need more special care than a pregnant woman?) gave me a look that was bordering on "Are you retarded?!?" when I asked to book a session with the TCM masseuse doctor.  In fact, the only time I was able to soothe my aching muscles professionally was when I went to the blind massage parlor next door to our village. And that speaks loads that the only reason I was accepted as a client was because my masseuse was .... visually impaired.

With this bed, I can bypass their lame excuses of not being able to lie flat on my stomach, I mean, hello?!? Isn't this China, the world's factory? Aw come, on! They could make this at a snap of my fingers, for sure. Wouldn't it be awesome if it were available here? :)

I get a kick out of you

That moment when...

Your baby starts kicking 10 kicks a minute continuously every minute for the next 5 minutes after you've just painstakingly counted his kicks for 2 hours (that just ended 5 minutes ago and yielded a mere 14 kicks/flutters/ wave/ some sports action)

I have been wanting to dedicate this song to baby O for awhile, you might have heard of it before...

I dedicate the song "I get a kick out of you" by Ol' blue eyes Frank Sinatra to you, baby O! Hope you like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSrHvNr8QQQ

Oh, yes, baby O, I get a kick out of you.

Becoming a Baby

My husband usually comes home after a hard day's work with the greeting, "Hey, hun...how did your day go?"

On a good (read: slightly less lethargic) day, my thoughts would usually simultaneously race to hundreds of possibilities to make my answer sound more interesting and exciting...

The (everyday) superhero/heroine:
 "I saved a cat from bring run over."

The productive intellectual: 
" I finally started on the novel I have been planning to write for years, it is showing great promise."

The multilingual expert:
" I have made great progress on my Spanish lessons, having progressed by 2 lessons today."

The perfect wife:
"I cooked 5 dishes for our dinner tonight, did the laundry and ironed your suits, cleaned our apartment, and repaired the living room's broken windows. I can give you a foot massage later."

However, in reality, my answers would revolve around something like this:

The realistic wife:
"It took me an hour to finish my breakfast cereal...but oh, (feeling slightly prouder) I boiled an egg and finished that much sooner!"

His reply: " Good job, hun! Then, what else did you do?"

I try my best to gather my pride and try to make my day sound as productive as I possibly can, with the clever use of punctuation marks and compound sentences:

I add, " I then felt sleepy and slept for an hour to an hour and a half, then had lunch, then slept again for another 2 hours in the afternoon, then had a snack, then watched a TV series online (Usually either the intellectual rampages of Sherlock Holmes or the satirical humor of Family Guy"), had dinner, then tried to start on my blog/ open a book (I got as far as looking at it and bringing it close by my bedside so as to remind me to actually read it) /

Lately, though because of the slowly rising temperature that has signaled the definite arrival of summer in Shanghai, the excitement would reach about this degree:

"I swatted 5 mosquitoes and sent them to meet their ancestors in mosquito heaven"

This is about as exciting as my day gets these days.

Occasionally, my husband and I would visit a flat or two, as we are planning to move and have our own place (or at least not have to share the bathroom), but as luck would have it, rental prices have gone up 35% this year alone... 35%...35! it is, in some places, at par with downtown New York's real estate prices.

After the visit would come the highlight of a hard morning/ afternoon's "work", which is, to replenish our tired bodies (or rather, my husband would correct me if he were beside me reading my entry, MY tired body), with a delightful lunch. It would be either Japanese, Italian, or Chinese. If we had some extra time, we would drop by the import shop to browse, and inevitably, purchase some snacks and milk (imported milk is a staple for expats and a growing number of Chinese people, mainly due to the horrific stories of tainted local milk).

This has led me to realize that, being pregnant allows me to live the same life as a baby, perhaps this is nature's way of preparing the mother-to-be to be in slightly similar shoes as her baby-to be.

Aside from sleeping and eating as often as humanly possible, I am often incapable of doing certain things without the help of my husband, such as, tying my sneakers, scrubbing my toes (basically anything to do with touching my feet), getting up from bed is a struggle--- I basically have to roll over and put a foot down one at a time, thus, at times my husband would help me up by asking me to put my arms around him while he lifts me gently with one hand at my lower back, then steadies himself as I gather my equilibrium back. My husband's coming home with food has never been as joyous an occasion as it is now, especially when I don't have the motivation to walk the 20 minutes it takes me to get to the nearest food place. This is SUCH a huge change from my gung-ho, independent woman attitude with a penchant for multitasking and filling my day's schedule to the brim pre-pregnancy life. These days, I am happy merely to get one thing off my list (if I remember to make one or remember where I have placed it). My memory and motivation to get things done have turned for the worse, it seems.

These two photos sum up how I feel most of these days:

That's right... and if I had a placard on my chest, it would read:

Before a mom gives birth to her baby, she is one herself.

Photo credits: http://www.babble.com/pregnancy/pregnancy-understanding-your-hormones/pinterest.com

Skin darkening, word taboos, and folic acid

In my previous post entitled A Woman's Body,  I mentioned how a woman's body was practically biologically predispositioned for pregnancy, no surprise there. What I forgot to mention, was why.

Apparently, this thin brown line going down right smack in the middle of my tummy, also called linea nigra, serves a purpose...to guide the baby to my breasts so that he can breastfeed. The same goes for the darkening of the areolas... it is said that babies' eyesight is between 20/200- 20/400 at birth, so this serves as a natural way to guide them to where they should feed.

What I don't completely understand, however, is how the darkening of the armpits (our nickname for them is the "brad pit" so as not to sound so gross...well, you know how it is...armpits go right there in the bucket of words you giggle at together with words such as fart, poo, and all the other by-products that come out of the pits both under the arms and down there)

So, what exactly is the purpose for the darkening of the armpits? Is the baby supposed to be led toward them as well (as they are led to the areolas for breastfeeding), but this time, perhaps so that they can get accustomed and therefore, immune to their possibly sweaty mom's pheromones (assuming that the strongest source of this comes from the brad pits)? Such that, should they get lost in the crowd, they need only use their sense of smell to track their mom's scent down?

My husband offers one clear possible explanation (again, in a one-liner answer) for the darkening of the brad pits: " Perhaps you just didn't clean them properly enough".

Thankfully, I can save my reputation by a simple Google search (he didn't think this was necessary as in his mind there was no other plausible explanation for the darkening other than lack of scrubbing, though he did accept the explanations for the darkening of the other parts readily and without question...)

A quick online search has pinpointed the cause to be the all encompassing "hormonal changes" answer to what seemingly is the cause for almost everything pregnancy-related. Some experts (we don't have any idea who these are it wasn't mentioned) believe that discolorations are linked to folic acid deficiency, so make sure you're getting enough through your diet and/or through your prenatal supplements. I am currently taking Elevit, which provides 800 mcg of folic acid:

According to an article online at babycenter.com,  "Folic acid helps prevent neural tube defects (NTDs)—serious birth defects of the spinal cord (such as spina bifida) and the brain (such as anencephaly). . Taking folic acid reduces this risk by 70-90%. Some research suggests that folic acid may help lower your baby's risk of other defects as well, such as cleft lip, cleft palate, and certain types of heart defects.

Your body needs folic acid to make normal red blood cells and prevent a type of anemia. Folic acid is also essential for the production, repair, and functioning of DNA, our genetic map and a basic building block of cells. So getting enough folic acid is particularly important for the rapid cell growth of the placenta and your developing baby. "

The recommended dose of folic acid is 600 mcg daily once pregnant. Other natural occurring sources of folic acid is illustrated below:

Just thinking about how the initial discussion of skin darkening has led me to shed some light on folic acid's importance... I suppose when "dark turns to light", it is always a good thing. Have an enlightened week, everyone! :) 

The Food Economics for the pregnant woman, and oh, our 1st anniversary!

A bit delayed by a few days, but here is a simple collage in celebration of our 1st year anniversary. I can't believe how time flies! Seems only yesterday when I poured my heart and soul into organizing and designing the most special day of my life. I will try to post some photos of our Big Day another time.

Notice how round I look and how rectangular and slim my husband looks? I couldn't really tell just by looking at my belly if I was full or not (which can be a dangerous thing for visually-focused people like me), as my belly is just always big nowadays, but my husband's tummy curled up into a small football sized storage bin after the dinner, and that helped him confirm the fact that he was in fact, full. Nothing like seeing something with your own eyes to believe it. Seeing is believing, after all.

I suppose one of the advantages of being pregnant is that I could technically eat more, and count on the fact that baby O will digest and munch up half of it. My Ob says it is quality, though, not quantity that counts. Thus, I have been munching every now and then like a squirrel instead of gorging down like a pig, save for special occasions like buffets when the Food Economics dictate otherwise (in that case more food brings about greater demand).

I realize that pregnancy presents a good system of supply and demand. I supply the food through my intake, and baby helps me consume whatever I supply. It helps maintain an overall equilibrium that can be compared to the aforementioned laws of supply and demand; in this way, baby helps when there is oversupply and I make sure there is no scarcity of resources. The whole process of this inner mother-and baby marketplace is quite an enjoyable experience, too. Much akin to shopping. I can eat and enjoy the taste of food while baby O's tiny body gets the food and nutrients he needs. The excess is stored for later delivery and consumption (warehouse and logistics). Method of "payment": C.O.D - Consumption On Delivery. Which, in my opinion, makes the pregnancy system, possibly the most overlooked secret in diet miracles.

Shopping for this and that, and one-liners

My husband has always been supportive of me... my hobbies, interests, crazy impulses, even, and appreciative of my being a woman. But lately, I'm starting to get the feeling that my husband is not a fan of one of my major womanly skills... shopping.

Recently my mom and I went on a shopping spree (and I mean careless, free-wheeling, driven by cuteness spree) with my cousin and aunt at a nearby shopping mall. Here are but a quarter of our total loot that day:

3 packs of 5 onesies, 5 more jumpsuits, 3 sets of onesies matched with booties and beanie hats, and so on all the way until 8 months old, and a few more baby stuff here and there later, my luggage is bursting out of its seams with more than 20 kilos. I don't doubt for a moment that the frozen fish and meat longganisa contributed to the weight, but we have to know and hold on to the non-negotiable essentials.

In fact, I felt like the whole universe is conspiring to give me what I want (something I learned from reading The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo). My friends, cousins, and relatives were all in the same conspiracy, giving me endless gifts and support of all kinds.

Having shopped for all these cute stuff made me really excited and as bad as this may sound, gave me  some solid validation that we are indeed having a baby! (I know, kind of delayed reaction since I am on my 3rd trimester already) It feels SO REAL now! In fact, the more I bought, the more I got excited. And I could tell my mom was feeling the same way, too. So I told my husband, how shopping for baby O's clothes make me feel, and that logically, the more I shopped, the more real he would be to me. After a lengthy explanation of my thoughts , and emotions focusing on the sheer excitement of it all that lasted about 5 minutes over Skype, his reply was short, simple, and to the point, "That's good, hun, but let's not get carried away." And that was that.

My husband is a champion with one-liners. Here's another one: when I mentioned to him that my feet were really swollen, and reminded me of Big Foot, he replied, "I hope it's not hairy". And, again, that was that.