and baby makes three...

aidan/aiden

He's not yet a day old, and Mae and I are putty in his tiny hands. He's just so precious. We are still debating on our preferred spelling of Aidan/Aiden. We'll let you know. :)

introducing aidan urquhart naylor!!!

he's a little 8lb/3.6kg miracle, a precious gift of a baby boy. He arrived at 4:29am after about 12 hours of labour. Both Mae and baby are doing fine, and getting a little rest now. More to follow.

flu be gone!

Sunday night, and I'm slowly emerging from the grips of a viral flu. I was especially worried about being infectious at the imminently-due delivery, so I dragged myself to the doctor, and after sleeping through the entire weekend, am feeling much better.

press 'Pause', please

I'm crossing my fingers that the baby will come next week so Andy & I have the weekend to rest.

He's got a nasty bout of flu and I'm recovering from a laundry binge (4 loads in a row - I have no idea what possessed me) & from making tasty cottage cheese and spinach canneloni. Such simple tasks, and yet I feel like I've run a marathon!

Hopefully I'll have more stamina taking care of the baby after I deliver (at least I'll be less encumbered). Let's see:
Baby - approx 3kg (at last count 2-3 weeks ago)
Amniotic Fluid + Placenta - approx 1kg

And that's already 1/3 of the weight I've put on, so that would be a weight off my chest (or rather, torso).

Take your time, baby - let your parents get some shut-eye this weekend!

edd

Andy's entry:

Today is the day we've been counting down to for the last 8 or so months, since we found out we were expecting. Today is our E.D.D. or Estimated Due Date. It has been marked on every calendar we own, and I guess we have invested a lot of significance on the date. But now it is here, and the baby isn't budging from it's warm watery cocoon. It feels like an anticlimax to get to our due date without anything to show for it, tho I suppose it is a little unfair to expect so much from the 25th of August (only 5% of babies arrive on their due date). With lots of amniotic fluid to swim around in, the baby seems very contented. Perhaps it wants to be a September baby???

Estimated Due Date - today...

mae's entry:

The baby's pretty snug where he/she is, in the built-in waterbed (I imagine soothing underwater "glug glug" noises, like when you're deep sea diving).

At our doctor's visit yesterday evening, Dr Choo said everything's looking swimmingly fine - the baby's heartbeat and the level of amniotic fluid in the womb are good, and that the baby will be out soon, since space is running out. I briefly entertained an image of a pygmy Houdini-esque escape artist that's been planning his great reveal for the past 9 months. Very surreal.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the quiet and the long sleep-ins while they last. All new parents have been warning us about the exhausting first few weeks - no glowing reviews so far! :)

sorry folks - no baby yet

Friends: "So...have you/Mae delivered yet?"
Mae/Andy: "Nope, not yet."
Friends: "oh, still haven't popped yet?...oh, ok..."
*silence*

--------------------------------------

It's so wierd how some people have been so fixated on us delivering they actually sound disappointed that it hasn't happened yet!

So unfortunately, it looks like we won't contact friends and family unless necessary, because it's just no fun receiving disappointed responses over the phone/SMS/messenger.

donut cravings

Mae had a craving for donuts at 10pm tonight. Of course it's difficult to find donuts in Singapore late at night, so I went to the kitchen and much to my surprise, found some fresh donuts in the cupboard.

From top, clockwise:
waffle-flavoured donut, banana bread-flavoured donut, apple-flavoured donut, and strawberry-flavoured donuts.

super preggo and her amazing feats

Super Preggo has been spotted over the Clementi heartlands. Her special powers include: eating, sleeping, and moisturising her tummy in the blink of an eye. Her nemises include: Captain Stretchmarks, A.Chee Ness and the evil Dr. Peefrequently.

She is often seen with her sidekick: Flash-boy, together they are a force to be reckoned with.

Rumour has it that in a week or so, their dynamic duo will become a trio with the addition of Mystery Baby. At which point, Super Preggo and Flash-boy will attempt to turn into super parents.

old wives' tales

I took a test based on old wives' tales for a laugh to gauge my chances of having a boy or a girl:
http://www.childbirth.org/articles/boyorgirl.html

The results were a 47% chance of having a boy and a 52% chance of having a girl. It's a pretty close toss up (clearly all the wives coudn't agree on a single test. )

According to some old wives' tales:
1. "Dad-to-be is gaining weight right along with Mom-to-be, which means that you'll have a boy."
2. "You had morning sickness early in pregnancy, so you are expecting a girl."
3. "Your belly looks like a basketball, so it's a boy."
4. "You have been craving fruits, so it is a girl."

Girl or boy, I'm sure the kid's gonna be as good looking as his/her parents (as evinced from the photo on the left)

battle scars that i shall embrace

Ok, ok, those stretch marks don't belong me. But they could by the time I deliver!

The whole smooth Demi Moore/Brooke Shields/Kate Moss preggo tummy is a MYTH. It's either Photoshop/Digital Imaging/ make-up.

I do have some freaky red stretch marks on my tum, but not as bad as what's in the photo. I found the photo on this site with a section called "Belly Gallery" that had a range of photos of preggo stretch marks throughout different stages of pregnancy.

I confess that the photo was of some comfort for vain me. But I've decided to embrace them stretch marks as battle scars.

More so since I discovered this week that HH can't have kids. I didn't know how to console her. After going through almost 9 months of pregnancy, feeling the first kicks and hiccups, looking at the foetus grow from a tiny booger to a 3kg baby sucking its thumb on the ultrasound monitor...
The best I could muster was "I'm so sorry". I won't even pretend to fathom the agony she must be going through.

It was a reality check for Andy & I. We realise now how easy our (unplanned) pregnancy was and how we've taken for granted our whole journey, which truly has been smooth sailing so far.

The miserable 4 months of unrelenting nausea that made me consider surrogate motherhood, the sleepless nights from our jungle-gym-baby practicing somersaults, and yes, the 'unsightly' stretch marks that now paint my belly - they're all battle scars that I am so grateful for.

the gauntlet

Andy & I had a tasty home-cooked meal last night with the Gauntlet (a sweet bunch of guy friends who set the stage for boy bands before its conception into pop culture, but that's another story).

The main course was steak with onions - really simple but oh so tasty. The sweet onions were such a great complement to the delectable steak that PNG cooked. He's paying his dues to become a chef & has been working in restaurants the past year, so he managed to whip up 7 steaks in a blink of an eye. And to end the meal, he served chocolate tart, where the crust was just an excuse to prevent the creamy cocoa butter filling from spilling. It was divine *sigh*

We landed up watching some soccer after dinner & TKG patiently gave me a run down of the rules throughout the game. And then some. He also filled me in on how soccer betting works. Illegal betting, that is. It's a whole different world, with 24-year old bookies making and losing tens of thousands of dollars within a day *gulp*! But seeing how Andy & I won't even buy a $2 lottery ticket, listening to TKG's 'expose' was as close as we'll get to betting. (Although there's a possibility that they're [a] betting on my delivery date OR [b] betting on the gender. Shouldn't I get a cut??)

It was great hanging out with all of them, and hopefully having a kid won't change that. I've been warned that single friends go awol after one has kids, but I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be different with the Gauntlet :)

close to home.

We had our second last antenatal class this week. It was a really useful hands-on class with bathing, burping and nappy changes covered. All *very* important skills to have practiced before the arrival of our little one. One of our classmates started having contractions in the class and Mae and I just looked at each other as if to say "that could be us!!!". As we approach our Estimated Due Date (only 12 days to go!) it still seems such a strange idea that this whole journey is going to end soon with us taking home a precious little baby.

Our doctor appointments are coming weekly now as we approach D-Day. This week's appointment was our shortest yet, a quick check that everything is okay, and we're on our way.

national day

National Day has come and gone and the baby's still swimmingly fine (and inside). So there go my chances of having a National Day baby (aw shucks, so much for showing my patriotism and being featured in Lianhe Zaobao.) It was a leisurely day, with little luxuries that we're indulging in while baby-free:
- we overslept (waking up at noon! oh bliss!)
- grabbed a quick lunch out cuz i was starving (we'd be following the baby's feeding schedule next)
- went for a long drive and grabbed a bite at Changi Village, where we watched the National Day Parade (no late nights with the baby)
- chilled in front of our laptops with MTV on when we got home (quiet nights will be a thing of the past, although i'm sure the baby wouldn't mind listening to Green Day.)

We're expecting an exhausting first few months when the baby comes - thanks to many young parents giving us ample warning. It's very telling that no one gushes about the first few months : ) it's always a reassuring, wizened "Oh, yes, the first few months are the hardest, but when you finally settle into a routine, you'll be fine..."

At least Andy & I have lots of practice getting little sleep thanks to work :)

On the upside, we've been faithfully catching a movie every weekend, since (according to most young parents) that too will be a thing of the past for the next 2 years. Sin City, Fantastic 4 and most recently, Charlie and the Chocolate factory which i thoroughly lapped up. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are such a brilliant combination, with the right touch of irony and dark humour that did Roal Dahl justice. Thank goodness Speilberg stayed away from that one.

Once again the week flew by again with work consuming most of our time, and us squeezing in some shopping for the new office. It's such a great space with high ceilings lined with exposed beams and dark wood floors - shophouses have so much character. We really love the space.

Next up would be to decorate our 3 walls that are currently a clean, albeit sterile, white. They deserve a big splash of colour, something that's larger than life. It would be great to see the space decorated before I pop :)

The countdown to the estimated delivery date is just 16 days away. There's not much left to prepare for the baby materially - we've bought everything that needs to be bought (or so we hope!)
More immediately, I'm just concerned about a smooth handover at work. Once again, I wish I could tap on my tummy and send via morse code a message to the baby to come out AFTER everything's sorted out at work. But time and baby wait for no man.

human snowglobe.

We're now at week 37. It is nice to tell friends that the arrival is only a few short weeks away.

Today we had another doctor appointment. Mae got strapped to a little pink fetal heart monitor and we listened to the baby's heartbeat for about 20 minutes. We could see (and hear) the heartrate rising and falling from about 140 - 160 beats-per-minute. It was slightly unnearving to hear the baby's heart racing, but our doctor mentioned that this is what they want to see, heartrate that rises and drops back down to normal.

We had another scan to check the status of the baby, including things like levels of embryonic fluid. On the scan, little flakes of vernix* floated in the womb like an organic snowglobe. It was quite pretty really.

*Vernix is a cheesy coating that protects the baby against the 9-month soak in embryonic fluid. It flakes off as the baby approaches full term.