My Pregnancy Journey

My pregnancy wasn't too bad. It was the post partum that was very eventful.For completeness sake though, i thought i'd document this part here too.

Like most newlyweds, my husband and i decided we didn't want children so fast.So one year passed with us happily leading a family life as a couple (2 people can be a family also wat). Then i decided i wanted to pursue a master's degree to specialize in pathology, hence the start of a long distance relationship for a good one year. I was in KL and he was in Slim River. We would take turns travelling to meet each other on weekends. Sometimes he came weekdays too It was about then that i decided it was time to have a child. It was logistically difficult. Ovulation kits did not work for me (never got a positive test before!) due to my irregular periods. Hence i never quite knew when i'd be ovulating. I did an ultrasonographic evaluation just in case. I was worried i had cysts in my ovaries. Thankfully structurally i was normal. Pressure off me somewhat. Anyway at the time i was blaming my lack of weight (i weight 40kg) , hyperthyroidism (technically should not be a problem).. etc.. but thinking back perhaps we never really tried. To cut short an already long story (grandma syndrome kicking in sorry for the longwindedness) we conceived after 2 and a half years of marriage at a rather unfortunate time.

My early pregnancy symptoms were the usual. But of course i only felt all the symptoms after i knew i was pregnant. Dunno psychological effect or what.

When i found out i was pregnant, i was in Jb staying with my parents and brothers, with my husband working in Slim River. Had morning sickness except it was more like all day sickness. I would retch and feel nauseous the whole day buy it was worse at night. I would vomit once a day after dinner. Especially if dinner was late. Late meaning later than 6pm. You could see what a nuisance i was to my parents who usually ate at 7pm- 7.30pm. It was a particularly trying time.

As i was in a post graduate programme, there were times where i had to travel to KL from JB for presentations. Not only was i already having 'all day sickness', now i have to add on the risk of possible motion sickness? I was terrified of the prospect of puking on the bus during the 4 hour journey as not only is it embarrassing, i don't want to be stinking up the whole bus with the other poor passengers having nowhere to run.

Also because of my postgraduate programme, i moved to KL for continuation of my course. By that time my husband had tansferrred to Selangor. So now i get to live with mu husband (yeah!) but i missed my family in JB terribly. Throughout my pregnancy, i walked 15-20 minutes daily to work while i was working in HUKM.

We ate out daily and i would just pray i don't puke in public. One particularly gross moment was while we were having dinner at Ying Ker Lou in Pavillion. I had just finished a huge bowl of 'Lei Cha'. I was stuffing my face with the stuff since i had not eaten 'lei cha' for a long time. (I ate it rather regularly in Slim River). Only When i had completed eating did i realise i had overfilled my stomach with food. I started retching, and my husband rather alarmingly (he was by now used to my vomiting episodes in public or otherwise) asked me if i needed to go to the toilet. He also helpfully pointed out that the toilet was located conveniently nearby. I was burping a lot at the time, and said rather unconvincingly that i was okay.

One minute later i started retching again rather violently and i was scurrying out of the restaurant cupping my hand to my mouth. I think during that 1 minute dash t the toilet some vomit had escaped my mouth onto my cupped hand. I dashed into a booth and vomited ALL MY FOOD (what a waste of money). Luckily this was pavillion and they had ample toilet cubicles so i didn't have to  run into a claustrophobic toilet with a toilet line. Still, i think i did scare a little boy who was in the toilet at the time as i dashed while retching into a booth (he probably wished he could have gone to the men's room instead).

Oh, ya.. that probably was not the most embarrassing moment. I now recall a day during the fourth month of my pregnancy where an unsuccessful dash to the toilet at a certain Tesco in Cheras left a pool trail of vomit from the food court to the toilet. Yeah.. that was probably the most embarassing.The cleaner who thankfully very efficiently mopped up the mess even before i was done with my vomiting in the toilet, was rather forgivingly blase about it. No bitching (not that i heard anyway, unlike during this incident), nor evil eyes my way. In fact they were rather expressionless while i ran sauntered from the crime scene.

 It did not help that i had postings in various places and that i don't drive.For 1 month i was doing attachments in HUKM, 3 months in the National Blood Centre and 3 months back in KL for clinical haematology posting.Thank God Jin Hui got me some really good quality compression stockings that made standing for extended periods in the ward more bearable.Appreciation from a specialist was also a welcome motivation for slogging in a department which i was supposed to be on 'attachment' in. Two pathology MO's manning a medical ward by themselves due to medical MO shortage for a rather substantial amount of time? Go figure.It was a great learning experience though, much better than just passively following ward rounds.

Somehow we managed to pull through.My husband was my pillar of strenght for much of my pregnancy period. Though he's not the type of husband who would go the extra length to satisfy a pregnant woman's food cravings, he was very practical and anticipated my needs before i knew it myself.

Nothing though (even if i had helped deliver a few babies as a medical student and house officer) could have prepared me for the adventure that was delivery.