Doing the Fetal Macarena

Trien is now about halfway through the pregnancy- 18 weeks since conception. We went to the Ob/Gyn last night for a much anticipated checkup.

This was the first time she had gotten really moody and ugly with me ever since I've known her. Yeah, there's been some minor moodiness during our time together, but that's to be expected, after all. Especially during those times of the month. Last night, though, was pretty bad. As soon as we left the house, she wouldn't walk with me, talk to me, and had a mean boo-boo face the whole time. It seemed as if I had done or said something particularly vicious to her. I tried to see what was wrong, but her only reaction was to say "Don't talk to me right now." That really irked me, and made me angry, but I took it for what it was- her hormones running wild. Her attitude remained ugly even while we were in the waiting room at the doctors office. OK, so instead of sitting next to her, I sat in the seats at the other side of the room. Even then, she kept her head turned away from me. Once we were in the doctors office, and talking to Dr. Jeya, Trien's mood did lighten up, and she did start to treat me somewhat like a normal person again.

After the interview, she had the ultrasound. We were hoping that we would be able to find out if we are having a boy or a girl. Dr. Jeya tried her best to determine the sex of the baby, but the baby was moving so much that it was impossible to see what the baby is. It looked like our baby was doing the fetal macarena- hands behind the head, hands by the waist, hands in front of the face, and kicking all the time. The baby was in almost constant motion. Trien swears that at one point, the baby made a waving motion, as if saying hello.

All that dancing, and Doctor Jeya doing her best to see the sex of the baby, meant that we got a prety thorough scan. The head is no longer the biggest part of the body, and it is no longer resting against the chest. The hands look huge compared to the arms. The body is lengthening, as are the legs. Boy, were those tiny little legs kicking like crazy!

We also got to see all the bones, tiny little white lines in the scan forming the framework of the body. Everything is looking good. For just a second, we got a profile of the baby, who seems to have my nose, as Trien wants. I love Trien's cute little Filipino nose, but she thinks I have the perfect nose.

Doctor Jeya's conclusion? "Everything is perfect. Enjoy your pregnancy."

YEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAHHH!!!
Afterwards, we walked to The Store, and she was a lot more civil to me, but still not back to normal. We went to the hawker stalls next to The Store, and picked up some popiah and chicken soup for dinner.

I asked her what was wrong when we got back, because her mood seemed close to normal again.

Her reply?

"I was busy getting ready. You said, 'Lets go, Baby', to me."

"Yeah, but I only said it once, and I said it over two hours ago!"

"Yeah, but you said it to me."

Is it me, or was she over-reacting just a bit?

Well, only five more months to go!

Morning Sickness

Everything seems to be going well with the pregnancy so far. My wife is going into the eleventh week, and she hadn't really experienced any problems. That was, until yesterday. After school, Mr. Wong dropped me off in town. I got something to eat, went to the Internet cafe to work on my Blog, and wrote some e-mail. Yes, I admit, I spent way too long there- seven hours as a matter of fact. I thought everything was OK at home, because I told my wife to call me or text me if anything was wrong or she needed me.

When I got home, she was asleep on the futon. I felt her head to see if she was sick. She seemed to be OK. I saw her stir a couple times while I was taking a shower and shaving, and figured she was probably mad at me. OK, fair enough.

She woke up after I turned the TV on. Yes, she was a little angry, but even worse, she was having "morning sickness". She went into the bathroom, and proceeded to vomit very loudly. In the meantime, I went in the other bathroom and had a sneezing fit.

The bathrooms in our house seem designed to maximize every embarrassing little sound made in them. They echo like crazy. Urinating in them makes a sound equivalent to Niagara falls, and a soft fart sounds like an elephants trumpeting.

Because of this, my wife's retching became so loud, that people all the way across town could hear it. My sneezing fit sounded like an atomic bomb test.

The neighbors must have had a hell of a time trying to figure out what we were doing in there.

I Don't Know How to Think or Feel About This . . . Part 3

It was a rough beginning to 2006, with a miscarriage and a terminated pregnancy in the first three months. My wife and I each went about dealing with things in our own way. I went on with my teaching, which at least gave me something to do and a reason for living, even though I only had eight hours of class time a week. The rest of the time I filled with doing research on the Internet for future lessons, just surfing around, or doing Sudoku puzzles.

In the afternoon, I played basketball, to prepare myself for my duties as the basketball coach. A couple weeks later, I spent from 5 to 6:30 or 7 running practice. At night, I was in charge of the drama production being put together for the school competition. That helped, but there still was a nagging hurt and emptiness inside, that kept coming up like a bad meal repeating on you.

My wife had a more difficult time. For the first couple of months we were here, we stayed in the workers quarters. They looked as if they hadn't been maintained since they were built over 25 years ago, and they probably weren't in such great shape when they were first built, either. Even though there was plastic screening over the windows, all sorts of strange flying insects made it into our place, attracted by the lights. It was an entomologists dream, and a normal persons nightmare. Sometimes she would suddenly scream for me to kill a nasty looking something that was flying or crawling around. I ended up getting stung a couple times by wasps, one time on my lip when I rolled over onto one when asleep. My wife ended up with these strange looking marks from some unknown creature on her neck. Whenever we left our quarters, we had to close the windows, so the monkeys wouldn't come in and tear the place apart.

My wife would talk with the neighbors, and they were teaching her how to speak Malay. In the afternoon, while I was coaching basketball, she would play badminton with the gardener's family, and the daughter of one of the cafeteria workers. She really enjoyed that. Other than that, she did the household chores, and played "bookworm" on the computer. We had no TV, no radio, no refrigerator, no stove, just our clothes and the few things we were able to stuff into Mr. Wong's car.

I know it was difficult for her, but I tried my best to make it easier for her. We went for walks around the Lake Gardens, or walked through them to get to town to get something to eat from the hawker stalls. I brought her into the staff room after school was over, so she could check her email. I tried to get her involved with the drama, but she wouldn't have anything to do with it until the day of the competition. Then she acted as den mother for the girls, and was a great help. She was fantastic with the girls, they really looked up to her. I was so proud of her. She also didn't get involved with the basketball team until we went for the zone tournament near the Thai border, when she acted as an unofficial manager and assistant coach.

So I tried to be supportive, but also give her some space. Still, sometimes she would start crying for no reason. At least she stopped saying she was sorry.

We made love with out protection or precautions, but nothing happened. Not that we wanted anything to happen. We made love because we loved each other, not to make another life. We didn't want anything to happen other than to show our love for each other.

Despite my efforts, she was still scared. She said words that I thought I would never hear from her:
"Honey, I don't think I ever want to have a baby".

I couldn't blame her. To be honest, I felt the same way, but for more selfish reasons, because I thought that a baby would interfere with our intimacy, and the good thing we have going. Plus there was the insecurity- how am I going to support a wife and child? What kind of father would I be? So I was willing to let things pass. If something was going to happen, it would happen. We would leave it up to God, and see what happened.

Then we both had the same dream. In it, she was carrying a baby, protectively, just like a mommy would. Me, I was holding the baby up and away from me, like a proud father displaying his child to the world.

After that, her attitude changed. Now, it was, "Honey, I want to have a baby", just like it was before. I didn't cooperate at first, and that puzzled her. She wondered why I didn't sow my seed inside her. I explained, and she remained puzzled, but sweet thing that she is, she loved me just the same. After a few days I came around, and figured Que sera, sera.

So we tried for a few months, and hoped. A couple times she thought, or more likely hoped, she was pregnant. The first month after the dream, she was even a couple weeks late. The home pregnancy test turned out negative, and she had her period.

After that, she kept saying and hoping that she was pregnant, but it didn't happen. Doubt set in, and we both started to think that maybe we had lost our chance, that we wouldn't have a child. In the back of my mind I even thought that maybe God was punishing us for terminating the second pregnancy.

School was over, and in the middle of November, we headed to the Philippines to visit her family.

The first night in her parents house, we made love in the bedroom, very quietly, because the her mom, sister, two nieces, and nephew were sleeping in the living room, on the other side of a very thin wall. The delicious naughtiness of it all was very thrilling for her, and amusing for me. Afterwards, she fell asleep in my arms.

The rest, shall we say, is history.

Latest News- But I Still Don't Know What to Think or Feel

Ok- She is pregnant. That much has been confirmed by Dr. Jaya. We saw the fetus, we saw the heartbeat, and there really is a tiny human taking shape in my wifes womb. We have the copy of the first sonogram to prove it, but I am not going to be gaga or corny and put it on here for you all to gaze at it with wild-eyed wonder. I'll spare you that. At least for now. As we get closer to the August 30th due date, I don't know what kind of craziness I will get into.

Right now, I am cautiously optimistic. Maybe optimistic is too strong a word. Hopeful, but prepared for the worst is more like it. My wife says, if she can make it past the first trimester then she'll be ok, and it will be time to get her hopes up. As for me, the giddiness and baby fever probably won't hit until after the second trimester has past. You never know, I am starting to feel little twinges of it right now. It's too early to start acting like a mental case over the pregnancy. I have enough other things to act like a mental case over, and with the pregnancy, daily more things are added that can turn me into a squirrel. I guess the most I can hope for is that I won't be banging my head against a padded wall if and when the big day comes.

Hopefully I won't end up looking like this!

I Don't Know How to Think or Feel About This . . . Part 2

Yeah, it was hard to deal with emotionally after that. It felt like something had been taken out of me. It had been cut out of my world with sharp surgical precision. Something that I wanted, a child to validate my existence in this world. A chance to leave something of myself behind to continue on after I am gone. Instead, all that hope, all that expectation of happiness, the excitement of having a new life, which was a part of you, brought into the world, was gone. The anticipation of having a child of our own to watch grow up, to raise up the right way, and be proud of had exploded.

At work, they told me to take as much time as I need. I didn't need any time off, because that would just make things worse. The last thing I needed was to stay in our little dorm room, having a misery contest with my wife. I needed to be doing something, even if it was just sitting at the computer surfing the net. That didn't help much though. Sometimes I sat at my desk, or at the computer, and started crying for no reason. I wasn't even aware that I was hurting until it just bubbled out of me, like one of those little volcanoes kids make for science projects. I was trying to be strong for her, and support her, because I knew as bad as it was for me, it was worse for her. This was what she thought was a new life miraculously growing inside her. When it didn't, I knew she felt that her womb, her body, her being was somehow at fault. That's why she would suddenly blurt out she was sorry, and start crying. Then I would hold her, and we would both cry.

I did my best to reassure her. We were both obviously very fertile. We would have another baby, no problem. Next time there would be no problem. We would go back to Dr. Jaya, get a full blood work up, and see if we could find out what caused the problem.

Despite my best efforts to comfort her, I could see she still thought it was ll her fault. I almost had to yell at her to get her to stop suddenly apologizing for no reason, sitting with her and holding her hands and saying 'stop it, there's nothing you did or could do to change things'. finally she did stop saying these things, although I could still see she felt some guilt about it.

We went to get the blood test. She was scared, because she was afraid it was going to show some serious incurable infectious disease that we would both die from. Sometimes my wife is an optimist, just like I am.

A few days later, the results came back. We got a surprise. Yes, there were a few conditions indicated, but none we were going to die from.

The surprise was that she had Rubella (German Measles). In the good old USA, you get vaccinated as a kid for such things. But if you are from a poor family in the Philippines, the government and schools aren't so careful about what shots you get. If you don't get a vaccination for a certain thing, it's probably because the money for the shot went into someones pocket instead of buying the medicine. That's the way things are there- screw you and go to hell so I can live a nice corrupt life. Killing your own and putting them in misery so that you can live as a big shot.

There was more than just Rubella. There was also two types of non-sexually transmitted herpes indicated, and Cytomegalovirus. It s seems that you can get CMV from babies, and even though my wife loves to hold and coo over any baby she sees, it is just as likely that I was the one that gave it to her. It's possible that I got infected while working at the orphanage in China, what with 26 cute and active (and possibly CMV infected) kids climbing all over me.

So the doctor prescribed some pretty strong antiviral medication. We were told not to get pregnant while taking it, as it causes neural tube defects. Well, we were careful, except for one night when we got carried away . . .

Well, a couple weeks later she started feeling nauseous, and showing all the signs of being pregnant. We knew what that meant, and we didn't want it to be true. Another visit to Dr. Jaya confirmed that it was true. It was a completely normal pregnancy, and the baby was there and developing normally. All signs looked good. My wife would probably carry the baby to term, and have a normal delivery. Yet there was a big risk that the baby was abnormal. Sure, maybe it was normal, but it wasn't likely. More than likely, the baby would be born retarded, or with severe problems. Or my wife would deliver the baby, only to have it die a couple weeks later.

If only it had happened a few days later . . .

So this time it was no surprise, and we went in for another DNC. This time it was easier for my wife, as she had been through it before. A simple outpatient procedure, and in a couple hours she was resting at home, her loving husband doing his best to pamper her and look after her.

This time there were no tears. We had cried ourselves out the first time. This time, we were numb.

(To be continued . . .)

I Don't Know How to Think or Feel About This . . .

We're Having a Baby!?!?!


The cheap home pregnancy test we bought in Lapu-Lapu City came back positive. Well, the second one did, the first one didn't work at all. Her body hasn't shown any of the physiological changes that happened the first two times she got pregnant, and her morning sickness has been non-existent so far, except for a little nausea. She didn't go to the doctor after the test, because she wanted to wait until we got to Malaysia, and see her Ob/Gyn here. OK, I can live with that. I have to, like it or not, because it's her body, and you can't argue with women about these things. So we're not 100% sure yet that she actually is pregnant.

OK, so you might be wondering what the problem is. My wife and I both love kids. We both have been told we are great with kids. We both want to have some of our own. I have no doubt she'll make a GREAT Mommy, although I do have doubts about me as a father. She is kind and patient and loving with children, and every time she sees a baby, she gets the brightest and most beautiful smile I have ever seen.

The problem is, this is the third time she's been pregnant in a year. During that time, she was pregnant a total of 5 months. The first time it was 3 months, the second 2 months.

The first time, it was bad. It was my first day teaching at my new job in a government residential school in northwest Malaysia. It was also her birthday. We had a nice dinner. To celebrate, we went to see Dr. Jaya, the Ob/Gyn at a local private clinic. Our previous Ob/Gyn near KL told us that next time we went for a checkup, we would be able to hear the baby's heartbeat. We were excitedly anticipating hearing the first sounds of the new life growing in my wife's womb. Dr. Jaya was very nice, talked to us, then took an ultrasound to check on the baby. That's when our whole world changed. No life was growing in my wife's womb. It was just an empty sac. There had been an embryo, and it had implanted, but it never developed. There was enough there to cause all the signs and symptoms of developing life, but no baby. Nothing.

My wife burst into tears, and I had a hard time trying not to do the same. We both really wanted this baby. Just a couple days before, we had gone to the local department store, and looked at the baby clothes, the toys, and all the things we needed to buy. We talked about who the baby would look like, and what the baby would be like. As we wandered through the store, we both felt like kids ourselves, laughing and playing, and excited that what we both wanted was coming true. In that one moment in the doctors office, all that joy seemed so useless and futile.

The same thought crossed our minds- the doctor was wrong, and there really was a living and growing baby there. You just couldn't see it. Just give it time, and you'll see.

The doctor spoke softly and soothingly trying to comfort us. She said we could take our time and think about it, but that it had to be done. When we were ready to deal with it, we could make an appointment.

We didn't have to, as things took care of themselves.

When we got back that night, she noticed a little spotting. It wasn't too bad. We went to bed, but her bleeding started getting worse. At 2am, it was bad. She went through two pads in 5 minutes. Being the eternal optimist, of course I thought the worst. So I ran to the Principal's house (we were living on campus), and pounded on his door. No answer. So I stood in the driveway, and called him on my cellphone, and he picked up. Then I had to run back to our dorm room, and get her.

She brought a plastic bag to sit on, so there wouldn't be a stain in the car. I could smell the blood from the front seat. We got to the Private hospital at 2:30am, and they called Dr. Jaya. One good thing about living in small town Malaysia, is that she was there in 15 minutes. She examined my wife, and cleaned her up a little. Dr. Jaya said my wife was OK, that the pregnancy was terminating itself. When Doctor Jaya came back at 9am, they would do the procedure- a "DNC". In the meantime, the nurses would come in every hour to take my wife's blood pressure, to make sure she wasn't hemorrhaging.

I didn't get much, if any sleep. The nurses got her ready, and just before they wheeled her in, my boss, Mr. Wong, and the head of the English panel, Zuraidah, came in to see how things were. Then the principal, Haji Jamaluddin bin Yussoff, came in to check on us.

Things went quick. She was in and out within 15 minutes, while I sat tensed up in the waiting room. I went back to the room with her, and kissed her and held her hand. She slept for a couple hours, so I took a walk around town to try to clear my head. It didn't work, as I had several emotions swirling around inside of me in various mixtures, fighting to see which one would get the most attention. When my wife woke up, the first thing she said was she was sorry. She kept saying she was sorry. I told her to stop it- it wasn't her fault, and she had nothing to be sorry about.

Then I had to run to the bank and get the money to pay for it. Just before we were ready to check out, Mr. Wong showed up and asked if we needed a ride. Good old Mr. Wong. He seems to have the uncanny knack of always being there when you need him. Whether you know it or not.

It was hard emotionally after that . . .

(To Be Continued)