Leaving Trimester 2...

It's been a rollercoaster ride, the past half a year. I'm now 24 weeks along which I guess makes me almost 6 months pregnant. How time flies when one feels well.

I have to say my first trimester is something that I never wish upon anyone especially not myself. The beginning of the 2nd trimester was not very smooth either but the body is an amazing thing and things have worked out and we have come to a compromise between pain and pleasure. This means that I still get pains but they are not excruciating and pass pretty quickly therefore I am now able to enjoy what pregnancy has to offer (which honestly speaking, and many mothers may firmly disagree, isn't all that much to enjoy. I mean, swelling belly, kicks in the bladder, frequent urination and I'm now just beginning to swell in the hands and feet. UGH!!).

The house is pretty much complete in terms of baby furniture and essential except for the bath time necessities because honestly, we hardly have space for the baby car seat that dear hubby's sister, Jessica, so kindly gave to us so what more a babytub, towels and whatever else I'm supposed to have available when it comes for junior's first bath. I keep going through my head the list of things I guess I'm supposed to have and I am surprised that I have about 85% fo the things I need.

And that worries me.

How is it that I'm that well equipped so far ahead of time? I have not been very kiasu. Well, except for that week when husband had time off and we journeyed to Ikea about 3 or 4 times to look, measure and buy stuff for the house and baby. But apart from that, I have been very good at ensuring I stay AWAY from the baby stores so I don't get sucked into looking at prams again (since we've already made up our minds abt which one to get) and I'm not tempted to buy things that are pretty and nice to have but just another way of spending money frivolously. For example, do I really need a changing table when I have the bed, the sofa and the dining table to choose from? Heck, I even have the top of the washing machine if I'm too damn lazy to carry the tiny troll all the way back to my bedroom. Do I really need a baby swing that I can attach to a doorway which is oh so fun to have and see the tiny one suspended from the door post, bouncing up and down while I cook or clean or God forbid clean the toilet??

So many new, innovative and entirely unnecessary pieces of equipment are available now on the market that leaves me to wonder, have mothers all these decades had it so hard that they now need toys and machinery to make life easier?

I want a simple bouncy/rocker chair for my baby, mostly for it's first months of life when it's too little for the child to sit anywhere properly without rolling over it's own head. That way I can put it down and look at it, play with it, rock it to sleep and when the time comes feed it mushy yuck that babies supposedly like (To be honest, I think babies just eat that stuff cos they don't know any better). So anyway, back to the bouncy chair. We went to the baby store and saw a whole collection of chairs that would put Ikea's seating department to shame. There were rockers, swingers, bouncers that were manually operated, machine operated (I started looking around for the coin operated too). There were chairs that just bounced or rocked when you move it and there were chairs that looked like suspended baby walkers that are designed to simulate the rocking arms of the parent. Now, I don't know what kind of parent they designed the rocking motion from but I sure as hell hope it's nobody like my husband who still has no idea how to hold a baby,much less rock it without causing some form of mild brain haemorrhage. Not only that, the chair also gives out a whoosh whoosh sound as it rocks the child back and forth which just sounds eerie to me and certainly not something I wanna be hearing when alone at home with my baby. Why would I spend a few thousand swedish kronors on something that gives me the creeps? Unless God forbid, far into the night incessant infant crying is involved and this is my only hope against commiting infanticide, I doubt I'll be buying any form of machine operated baby rocker.

And now I'm slowly but surely entering the final trimester of this epic journey of gestation. The finishing line seems close but not close enough and yet I also feel like I don't ever want to reach it. I'm at a stage right now where I'm running the marathon and my legs are cramping, every breathe I take is an arduous painful pull from my overworked lungs, I'm sweating so much it's starting to get beyond PG rating, every step is like a step closer to collapse and I'm thinking, was it really wise of me to even enter this damn race?

I had a good, peaceful life filled with spare time, carefree moments and a contentful marriage. I didn't need to go thinking about how much better my life would be if I entered the marathon. The run towards motherhood. So many reasons to say no and yet so many reasons to say YES! I never thought the race could be this difficult. It didn't seem so bad when I was running it through my head but then again life never seems to be quite as good or as bad as one imagined it to be until one is actually living it.

Where is the radiance? Where is that beautiful, sexy sillouhette of a pregnant stomach? Where are the encouraging, uplifting doctors and nurses I'm supposed to be encountering that will lift my spirits and make me excited about this bundle of joy?

I'm not afraid of labour and childbirth...yet. No, I've been too busy dealing with the now to even want to think about 3 months down the road. Why freak myself out even more than I already am? And you know what is the worst of it all?

That I KNOW the moment this entire ordeal is over and I'm holding my beautiful baby in my arms, all the pain and discomfort and frustrations that I have felt for the past 9 months will melt away into nothing and I will suddenly develop pregnancy amnesia.

Yup, I've realised why so many mothers seem so damn positive and happy and unrealistic when talking about their pregnancies and birthing experiences. It's because they develop this amazing mind phenomenon called pregnancy amnesia. It's almost as though the discomfort of something kicking your bladder every other hour (if you're lucky), the nausea, headaches and light headedness, breathlessness and general excruciating pains in the back, hip and leg areas didn't happen. But I guess this is a necessary evil because without it, the human race would never have survived. And I will be no exception. I will smile and laugh and poo-poo this whole experience away as an over dramatic reaction of a first time mother to be.

So even though I seem to be bitching a little too often about my own pains and pregnancy woes, I believe this is an absolutely crucial process of documentation and evidence that carrying this child was no walk in the clouds. It has been more of a run on a road made of nails with lots of blood, sweat, tears and pain. And I still have 3 more months to go...