Hello, HELLO!

Hello, HELLO!
Quiet silence follows as our youngest girl awaits for a reaction from the Little One.

Again, she shouts "Hello, HELLO!" directly into my belly button.
All of a sudden, the Little One makes its presence felt by sending out a few karate kicks, followed by giggles from an excited little girl who feels the karate kicks and chops. Her excitement at becoming a Jie-Jie is evident to all.

From the time the Little One first kicked and punched in my tummy, I had noticed that almost everytime the girls scream and shout, the Little One would surely kick, punch or just squiggle to join in the chaos! More chaos is surely to come our way in the months to come.

The Little One hardly seemed to rest. He would always be trying out his karate kicks, punches or simply squirming around all the time, taking only little minute rests here and there. Dr Wong had to assure me it was normal for some babies to be ultra-active even during the last stages of pregnancy. Apparently, the more pregnancies one has, the larger the womb becomes as it is accustomed to the needs of the baby. This seems to be so, so true as even on the night before i went into labour, as i was trying to reach Dreamland, the Little One was still busy exercising in his 24 hours personal gym!

When Mr Karate Enthusiast finally made his grand arrival on 11th January 2010, Mr T witnessed for himself the antics of Mr Karate as within the hour of his arrival, he furiously kicked his way through and made his presence felt when the nurses tried to measure and weigh him, and even more so when they were cleaning him up. Even Dr Wong commented about his kicks!

Wanting to show off early in his life, the Little One has on many occasions during his bath time, tried to stand up. It's hard to believe, i know, so here are a few pictures of the little Show Off in action during bath time ...

[these pictures were taken on 3 Feb 2010 - i.e. day 24]




Perhaps the kicks, punches and head-butting like actions that the Little One has displayed since birth his neck is rather solid and can almost entirely rotate from left to right when carried over our shoulders from around the 3rd week from birth] is a combination of the many late hours spent at his 24 hours personal gym and his eagerness to start kicking ball with Mr T as well as watching Man Utd's matches with his dad.

~ Written from the Heart
by an Unexpectedly Expecting Mother of Four-to-be
thankful that her womb has been the one chosen to house the 24 hours personal gym of the Little One.

GrumbleNot

I start to press the car's accelerator a little harder, desperate to make it through the last 3 km to reach the finishing line ... the humble little toilet bowl at home!

I grit my teeth hard as i make the call to Mr T, asking him to open the gates as well as our front door and to roll out the red carpet all the way from the main entrance to the bathroom as i race home from work that evening. My nausea was at an all-time high. I make it safely to the bathroom before i regurgitated the little that i had eaten that day.

As was the case during my pregnancies for Princesses No. 2 and No. 3, my evening sickness was back with a vengeance. I try not to grumble about the affliction as i think it is far better than morning sickness. That would really spoil your day. At least with the evening sickness, i could just force a cracker or 2 in, drowned with a hot cup of milo and have a hot shower before crawling into the comforts of our bed and sleeping it off.

Pimples also began making many unwelcomed appearances on my freckled face. As i did not have this problem with my 3 other pregnancies, i did quietly wonder whether this was a small sign that we were expecting Mark Junior......
A healthy baby was what we prayed for daily during the pregnancy...
This pregnancy was already an unexpected blessing ... being totally unplanned. Admittedly, having Mark junior would really be a double blessing.

Mr T was a great support during the first trimester. Left without a maid since March 2009, Mr T has been the one cleaning the girls up every evening, getting them ready for bed and attending to their every need whilst i zonked out in bed by 9.30 almost every evening during those trying first three months.

As for PIL [that is, my Papa-in-law], i noticed that he had been quietly trying to cook my favourite dishes in an effort to increase my appetite in the evenings. And it was much appreciated, though it made me feel guilty when i still could not eat much.

So despite the nausea, despite those horrible pimples, despite the extreme tiredness, despite the flatulence, despite the moodiness, i shall grumble not ... for there is a beautiful life growing inside me. Despite it all, we prayed hard for a perfectly healthy baby, with all his or her 10 fingers and 10 toes beatifully formed.
At the end of the day, that really was all that mattered.

~ Written from the Heart
by an Unexpectedly Expecting Mother of Four-to-be
besieged with pimples and freckles all competing for space on my face.

Spreading the Joy!

For 4 years, whenever anyone says to me "You have 3 girls? You must try for at least one more; you must get a boy.", my immediate reply would be "No more. 3 is enough. Closed shop already!". Well, i must have opened my mouth once too many times as the Almighty Powers must have heard me and decided that 3 is NOT enough for Mr T and i.

To be very honest, the pressure of producing a son has always been there, not from my dear husband, but from everyone else.
Or maybe somewhere deep inside, i was putting pressure on myself, afraid that i would be disappointing the Tio Family on the lack of a boy in the family. Afterall, i did marry an only son.
Even if the feelings were not felt now, it would perhaps be felt at some point later in life when the "shop" really was biologically closed.

Aside from there being no guarantees that another pregnancy would produce a boy, both Mr T and I were very happy and contented with our 3 Angels.

As it is, we already had very little couple time...having to quietly steal a night date every few months. Stealing a kiss or a hug from Mr T is almost as challenging as one of the 3 Angels would almost always be at the right place at the right time to place their little hands over either mummy or daddy's puckering mouth!

Mr T and i pondered on how we should best break the good news to our 3 beloved Angels and to the rest of our family. After 4 years of waiting for news of another grandchild, Yeh-Yeh and Nai-Nai will finally receive the news that they want.

We decided that the first person with whom we would share the good news would be our First Angel.

When i was expecting her 2 siblings, our First Angel seemed to already sense that i was pregnant before even we knew it! This was especially so when we were expecting our Second Angel. Our First Angel was only 3+ then. She had returned from her babysitter's house one evening, complete with her dirty clothes which the babysitter normally washed. When I arrived home from work, she dumped her dirty clothes on me and with all her might, declared that "Mummy has to wash my clothes!". Then, she took her Nemo pillow and said I had to wash that too. "I don't want Kakak [i.e. my parents-in-law's maid] to wash it; i want Mummy to wash it."

The outbursts were rather out of character for our First Angel, but we did not think much of it then.

It was only a couple of days later when we discovered that we were pregnant with our Seond Angel that it all began to make sense.

This time round, there were no funny outbursts from our First Angel.
She did however make some unusual comments to me on the way to school one morning in mid-May 2009 (just about a week or so before we found out that we were pregnant), which left me lost for words.
"Mummy, why do i only have sisters? Some of my friends make jokes that i only have sisters...they have brothers and sisters..i want a brother..."

This was rather out-of-character for our First Angel as she has always been lamenting the fact that we do not have much time for her as she has to share us with her 2 sisters.
AND she has always and always been complaining that we always seem to shower more affection and time on her sisters, and that whatever time we had with her, we would be reprimanding her for her faults.
Little did i know then, that our lives would soon be changing...

When we shared the good news with our First Angel, she was extremely happy and excited. She had tears of joy! We told her that as she was the Da Jie [Big Sister], she would be the one to announce to the Family of our upcoming new addition. She was elated!

We then shared the good news with our 2 younger Angels. As my tummy wasn't showing yet, they could not quite comprehend what it all meant at that time.

Soon after, during dinner at Yeh-Yeh and Nai-Nai's house, Da Jie made this announcement:
"I AM GOING TO BE A DA JIE AGAIN ... early next year!". The smiles were infectious!

A couple of days later, at Ah Kong's birthday dinner celebration where the entire Ling Family got together, Da Jie made the same announcement.

The guessing game has started ... is it time to save up to buy trains, Ben 10 and Transformer toys, or is it a question of digging out the girls' dresses ???

~ Written from the Heart
by an Unexpectedly Expecting Mother of Four-to-be

The Doctor's Prognosis ... Mr T has an army of commandoes!

Monday, 25 May 2009

We sat at Dr Christina Tai's patients' area waiting for our turn amongst all the other pregnant women, feeling very conscious of ourselves. Afterall, how often do you hear of a modern-day chinese family having four children! Mr T and i debated amongst ourselves whether the other anxious parents were younger or older than us, then we debated on whether those parents were looking at us in a peculiar way, thinking "wow, must be first timers", or perhaps they were saying "another young couple having a kid".
[Mr T has on numerous occasions received curious glances and looks of disbelief when he tells people his age; more so when he tells those same people that he is a married father of three!]

Back to the visit to Dr Tai's clinic.
I took the obligatory urine test and blood test.
And measured my weight.
I made careful note of my weight as even at this early stage, i was already anxious that i would not be able to lose the baby weight after delivery. With this being my 4th pregnancy, all elasticity would have been lost. As exercise wasn't my favourite past-time, i had to be careful with my weight gain...in particular post-delivery. From past experience, i know that one tends to gain weight during the 1 month post-partum period as one gets very hungry and the tendency to overeat is very real, especially if one engages a "confinement lady" to help take care of the newborn as well as to cook nutritional food for the new mummy.

Dr Tai greets us with her usual smile and says "So what can i do for you today?". I manage a rather nervous reply "i think we are pregnant...not sure how it happened". Not a clever thing to say as it invoked a prompt response from Dr Tai: "You mean, you don't know about the birds and the bees?".

As i explained what i meant [note that edits are required here as children below the recommended age may be reading this!], Dr Tai then informed that you only need ONE sperm that is of a COMMANDO LEVEL [i.e. a sperm that can survive for 4 - 6 days!]to reach the finishing line! She jokingly added that perhaps someone had mischieviously pricked holes in the pack of Durex that we had used. I told her that, as that thought had crossed my mind before, i always made sure that i was the one who peeled open the packet prior to usage!

Dr Tai was the 1st to congratulate us on our unexpected blessing; she confirmed that the newest member of our family is scheduled to arrive sometime around 19th January 2010.

Mr T left the clinic feeling rather proud of himself, of the fact that unbeknown to himself, he was heading an army of commandoes!

~ Written from the Heart
by an Unexpectedly Expecting Mother of Four-to-be, anxious of becoming fat and sporting a big hanging belly, post-delivery.

A Truly Unexpected Blessing

Here I am...finally setting down my thoughts to print, after years of procratinating. It's about time i shift my extremely heavy rear-end and get my fingers typing on the keyboard.

To make up for lost time, here's a brief summary of the fateful events since that eventful day of Saturday, 23 May 2009, when our family comprising of Mark's 3 Angels would slowly, but surely evolve to become a family of SIX! One of the immediate questions on everyone's mind (even if they didn't dare admit it) was whether Mr T would continue to be severely outnumbered by all those female hormones running wild, or whether he would have someone kick football with and have a mate with whom he could watch his weekend football matches with...instead of having to watch repeats of the Disney Princesses....

Saturday, 23 May 2009
We were at Backofen, our usual weekend cafe, ordering our usual dishes, when suddenly i was hit by this sudden huge nauseatic wave that immediately sent me to panic mode as I instinctly knew what it meant. Mr T noticed the sudden change in my behaviour. The 4 words that he uttered "Dear, are you ok?" was met with a stoned reply that merely said " I think we better go to Guardian after lunch".
Although my monthly cycle was unusually long, I had put off buying a home pregnancy test as my shop was closed and we had taken the necessary precautions [or so I thought!]. Handling the 3 Angels was more than we could handle. Little did we know that the Almighty Powers above had other plans in store for us.

A rush to Guardian for a ClearBlue test kit was quickly followed by a quick visit to the bathroom at home...with trembling hands for what lay ahead...the speed in which that second blue line appeared on the stick was frightening...



Mr T and I were stunned...lost for words. We just sat there in the cosy confines of our little bathroom, allowing ourselves to digest this very unexpected blessing. This surely was meant to be, as despite the precautions taken, we were being blessed with this very unexpected surprise.

We are in for a huge, huge change in our lives.

~ Written from the Heart
by an Unexpectedly Expecting Mother of Four-to-be