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
No comments:
Post a Comment