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…Baby papa is buying shoes online for his mini-him. Hehe.

…was the one with the moving images of my baby in the ultrasound.

I had to see the gynae on my own yesterday, because the baby papa needs to save his leave. And I wasn’t really looking forward to it. He’d been with me to every single session before and of all the sessions to miss, he was missing the one where we were going to confirm baby’s gender. Major bummer.

But the session turned out just fine. I was hooked up to the ultrasound machine, and this time, I didn’t need the gynae to tell me what I was looking at. I already knew.

First it was the baby’s head and torso, and it had its hands up like it was trying to pounce on something. (hmm…) Then it kept shifting around, changing hand positions, and I could clearly see baby’s heart beat twinkling on its chest.

Next she showed me baby’s bottom, with its long skinny legs, kicking and recoiling. I was pretty amazed that with the amount of movement baby was making, I still couldn’t feel any of it.

Then of course while I was marvelling at my baby’s pre-birth athletics, I spotted a small little thing sticking out between baby’s legs. Gynae confirmed it. It was definitely a boy, and she made a “boy__” indicator right where the evidence was.

Aaron Jr. So fun. Aaron yawns really adorably when he’s tired. I want my boy to yawn like that.

So despite my apprehensions about seeing the gynae alone, I really enjoyed myself. In fact, if I could, I really wanted to sit in that chair all day, watching what my baby boy was doing, marvelling at how perfect he looked already, 22 weeks before he is even due to be born. (Maybe they’ll sell ultrasound equipment on eBay?)

So we can start thinking of boy names, though I’d clearly been putting a lot of thought into it.

I’ve been getting the occasional seat on the MRT, from nice passengers. It’s really sweet considering I’m not all that big yet.

Yesterday’s was this plumpish good natured looking lady who was actually going to a much further location than I was. She gave me the seat and stood in front of me for the rest of the journey. (it was a packed train.) I guessed she didn’t want me to feel bad taking her seat so she read her book so high it covered her face. When I got up at my stop, she was still there. I thanked her again while leaving and let her take the seat back.

Such people really touch me.

However, there are those who sit at the reserved seats, who are clearly not-old, not-pregnant, not-injured, and don’t try to see who might be standing right in front of them, because they feel completely entitled to their seat. Those people, I don’t feel too kindly toward.

I’ve seen them sit stubbornly at their seats, even though some old lady or old man (sometimes both) is standing right in front of them. If you don’t see my belly when I wear a black loose top, fine. But I’m sure you can see their wrinkles and how they are clinging to the poles for dear life right?

It’s people like that who really make MRT rides completely disgusting.

I’ve heard this one before, about couples taking time out from their kids for date nights. Our pre-marital class lecturers emphasized the importance of continuing to date even after the wedding and after the kids arrive. In fact, one teacher mentioned that she would be willing to babysit for anyone, if they badly needed a date night.

But here’s something interesting: Apparently, not everyone needs it. Like this couple.

Date nights are great to have, but not having them doesn’t necessarily mean that your marriage is going to fall apart.

The point is, as this mom of 4 explains, the commitment of both parties in bringing up children together, builds a bond between the couple, and with their children as well. When you and your other half build closeness into the family, it can bring intimacy to your marriage as well.

It sounds about right.

Because if children were only placed into our homes to wreck havoc on our marriages, then what’s the point really? Since marriage and families were all part of God’s plan, it’s really not His style to put two good things together that can’t exactly work together.

So yes, we don’t always need a date night to make a marriage work.

But that aside, I would like one, once in a while, especially when I’m starting to feel fat and unattractive. Hubby, are you listening?

I’m saying this now, once and for all.

I’m not allowing my children to be addressed as princess so-and-so, if it’s a mini-me, or prince so-and-so, if it’s a mini-him.

Not me, not Aaron, not the family, not the grandparents, and not even the nice godmas, godpas, uncles and aunties who will no doubt spoil the baby rotten. No one is going to be allow to address them as royalty and allow them to lord over everyone.

We’re not royalty for goodness sake. So neither would our offspring.

It figures right?

And frankly, I think children who get mollycoddled into thinking they are some sort of extended royalty usually need to get a good spanking. So no, not for my kid.

I understand if girls grows up wanting to dress up like a disney princess. That’s something I’ll deal with later.

But for now, while the kid really knows absolutely nothing, I’m nipping the prince-y, princess-y problem in the butt.

Baby can start to hear us already.

Awesome.

Hubby and I were shopping around for a small bedside table at Ikea on Saturday.

Luck would have it that we found the perfect one, only that it was much bigger than we’d hoped it would be. So we decided to shop around, and head home to reconsider its size before coming back to buy it.

Instead we found this great dish dryer organiser for the kitchen sink, which I held on to while hunting for more bedside tables.

As we reached the end of the Ikea trail, leading to the checkout counters, i looked down at my hands and discovered the dryer thingy was gone. I looked at hubby’s hands for it, wasn’t there either.

So it turns out, I’d left it behind on some bed in the middle of the Ikea showroom, and we were both too tired to go back in to hunt for it.

Hubby patted my head and said it was okay.

“Just don’t forget our baby next time ok?”

I figured aloud that if I did forget the baby, I would probably find him/her playing happily by his/herself in the Ikea Kids area, accustomed to being left behind by mommy and knowing that they would be noticed and found a little while later.

When people found out that I was pregnant shortly after Aaron and I were married, the main responses I got swung between “Wah, Aaron power siah” and “Huh, then got no time for yourselves”.

But there was one person I told, who conducts the premarital course in her church, who jokingly said “I’m gonna go back and remind my couples to prepare their contraceptives BEFORE they get married.”

I was mildly amused.

Let’s put it this way. I didn’t get knocked up because we were two eager young teens who didn’t know any better. First of all, we clearly aren’t teens. Secondly, and more importantly, Aaron and I had made the conscious decision to go natural after we were married.

I’ll emphasize it here that it is not a decision to be taken lightly and it isn’t for everyone. But we felt it was right for us and that’s why we chose it.

Initially, I was hoping for some 二人世界 for a year, before we had a child. But the fact that we were going to be living with his family, until our punggol BTO came into existence, was not going to make that happen.

Then we considered waiting for half a year, so that our baby wouldn’t be born in the dragon year, for reasons like: Too much competition, too many people, too few spaces in school, etc.

So then luck would have it that a few friends came to talk to me about having children. One couple was doing IVF, and told me about how expensive it was ($10,000), how tiring it was for the wife (she had to rest for weeks), and how unsuccessful they had been (two times down, going for third try). The husband’s advice to me was, “Don’t wait. You’re still young. Have children when you are young.”

Another couple was actively trying for a child, after delaying it for about 10 years. “Actively trying” is a euphemism for “having lots of sex” as my single friend pointed out. The husband told me that sometimes, his wife would call him at work and remind him to go home early on those days. “Sometimes I don’t know what we are doing anymore!” he laughs.

Aaron and I discussed it. There was an emerging pattern among a lot of our friends that, having children doesn’t always happen according to your plan. It’s easy to control when you don’t want them. But when you really want them, it sometimes becomes really hard to have them.

It’s like balloting for a BTO flat from HDB.

Some people get a really good number after 1 try, others won’t get a decent number even after 20 tries. We were unfortunate that we tried for a year. But we were fortunate that after our 1 year of trying, we got a very good number.

So finally, we decided that since we both loved children, we were willing to have children whenever God was willing to bless us with them. If it takes a long time to come, so be it. And in the chance that we might have them early, we were willing to be responsible for them too.

Thus the choice to go natural. And God sprang us a nice little surprise.

Perhaps, I had some inkling that we might have a child early. It happened with my sister. Linus was conceived so early that it almost seemed that he was conceived before her wedding. (That’s the feature of the calculation method by the way. It starts from the formation of the egg, and not from the date of conception.)

As for me, I’ve always had a regular period, without any major medical problems. Plus, the app on my android phone told me that the two weeks after our wedding was my most fertile period. I’m a very bo chap person and I don’t keep track of the cycles. I never know when it’s going to happen until it’s here. (It’s how I handle most things in my life, I noticed.) I got that app so it would sound me a warning when it was almost time.

So yes, the confluence of all these factors brought us to today.

But like I said earlier, it wasn’t a decision to be taken lightly. Nor is it for everyone.

I know of many couples who are not ready for a child so early, a conscious choice on their part more than anything else. That’s fine. If you are both on the same page, by all means, pursue your career, spend time with sickly family members, or do whatever it is you need to do before you are both ready for a child.

A child adds a lot of additional stress and responsibilities, so if the couple isn’t ready, it’s not going to be very healthy for either the child or the relationship between the couple. But on the other hand, if a child is conceived to a willing couple, it can strengthen the relationship.

I don’t think Aaron and I are worse for wear from my being pregnant. It has added another dimension to our relationship and gives us another little ‘project’ to work on together. In fact, I know so many couples like us who would be more than happy to have children, but who chose to wait simply because they felt they had to have the ‘customary couple-time’, and found themselves with some trouble after.

We didn’t want to be that couple who gets angry with each other when they can’t have kids.

Just because we went natural doesn’t mean that we are very ready to be parents. We’re not. It’s our first time too, and like everyone else having their first baby, we’re clueless and terrified. And just because we didn’t plan for our first child doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t for the subsequent ones. There’s something to be said about allowing the body to recover before having another baby.

All it means, is that we were willing to be thankful for who God gives us, whenever He chose to give it to us.

And we are very thankful.

Heard the hubby shuffling around in the morning, while I was still mostly asleep. There was something he had to get up early to do.

Awhile later, I heard his voice breaking into my dream space.

“Dear, I won the bid.”

I smiled and went back to sleep, knowing baby has a new BabyBjorn carrier that costs us less than S$200.