Time Alone

Pong has a family event to go to. We, me and Kallie, were supposed to go with him. We ended up leaving Kallie at my parents’ house and I begged off so I can finally have a day alone.

For most of this year, I hated being alone. After today’s experience, I realized it must have been my pregnancy, hormones, and all that stuff that made me so clingy.

I spent a happy 16 hours alone now. I remember now how it felt like to walk alone and do stuff alone again. I am happy. I miss Kallie, and I am off to pick her up in a bit. But I am not dependent again.

I can move easily again. I can function normally again.

I am relieved.

Congested Breathing

It has been a week now. Kallie has been breathing roughly. It is not alarming yet though I wonder what is causing it.

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I see infants from poor families enduring pollution in the city. They are carried around in dirty streets, exposed to a lot of people, and subjected to the sun, the wind, and other conditions. They sleep soundly through it. They seem a bit malnourished, but these kids are hardly sickly. Their parents will not rush to the pedia at the first sign of a cough.

So why should I?

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I think there are things that everyone just has to go through. I know Kallie is still a baby hence needs all the assistance she can get. But there are things she will really have to overcome on her own. If I force things, like by letting medication overcome the phlegm for her, how will her body develop the necessary mechanisms to overcome it in the future?

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I have been reading around. The congested breathing (minus colds, cough, fever, and other symptoms) tends to be normal to infants. It can be the cool weather that affected her. Or a myriad other reasons. Even if it is a virus, we really have no choice except to wait it out.

Post-Natal Memory Loss

I have a lot of things to blog about, especiallly with the week I had caring for our baby. Surprisingly, my mind is blank.

I cannot seem to write much.

They say that the body of a mom produces oxytocin, a hormone that makes her forget stuff. I am lucky I have not been forgetting where I left things or whether I have done things already.

I do forget lyrics to songs I used to know. I realized this because I tried to sing to Kallie so she will fall asleep.

Mostly, my mind is blank. Blank in a way it has never been before. I guess it is my body’s way of making sure that all my focus is on the baby alone.

Making A Believer Out Of Me

I have been a mother for one week now. Kallie has been with us here at home for the past two days.

I always believed in a God, not necessarily the religious God. A Supreme Being. Aside from that, my belief system has always been relatively pragmatic and empirical.

But now, watching an infant grow and function every day gives me a sense of wonder, joy, and peace. I marvel at how intricately designed the human body is. She is dependent on us in the same way that we find ourselves attached to her already.

I have a mild case of baby blues. Not the depression. Just the tearfulness part. A lot of things make me cry. Things I used to hate like Christmas songs now have a different meaning to me. For someone who believes that people make their own luck, I thank Whoever it is that gave me this gift. I do not know what I did to deserve it, but I sure am thankful.

She is beautiful.

I am now a mother. We are a family.

Christmas came early.

Hollow

After two and a half days of labor, I finally gave birth to a baby girl last Sunday. Labor was excruciatingly painful and long, long drawn out. Nonetheless, she came out, healthy and normal.

I was discharged from the hospital yesterday. I have been getting grumpy the past two days. The nagging soreness and the constipation is frustrating me. I guess after the ordeal of labor, I am really out of tolerance for pain.

I think the biggest reason why i have been grumpy is because we could not bring our baby home with us until tomorrow. Since labor was long, the baby defecated inside my tummy already. She had to be treated with antibiotics to ensure her safety. She passed the crucial 48 hours so we expect her healthy and easily discharged tomorrow.

I feel hollow, literally and figuratively. For the past 9 months, there was someone inside me, always with me. She somehow became my anchor and it gave me peace knowing that she was inside me. For the past four days, I do not feel her inside anymore. And I do not have her with us here at home either.

It feels like I am back to my old self. My tummy is flat now. The stretch marks are easily lightening up. The back pains are gone. I am an even hotter version of my single, pre-pregnancy self. Is not that what every woman wants?

I somehow do not feel solace from that thought. It feels like a bad dream where the pain and the travails of the pst nine months of pregnancy disappeared all in a day.

I am melodramatic now. I am sure everything will be better as soon as we have her home tomorrow.

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I realized that I do not want life to go on as before. Where I can easily pretend or dismiss the fact that I am a mother already. I suddenly realize, yes, I want my life to change.

Laboring

The baby is really taking her time. I have continued bleeding but water still not coming up.

I managed to get some sleep in between contractions. Thank god. I have been forcing myself to walk already but it would not come out.

More than a day of this already. I am tiring down.

Bloody Show

Last night before sleeping, I told Pong that I am near already.

This morning I woke up with spots of brownish blood on my undie. It could be hours or it could be days away. But she is near.

Showtime, baby.

The Baby Can Take Her Time

It must be the panic or mild stress of people around me who expect me to shout any second and ask them to bring me to the hospital. I find myself rushing my baby to come out. In a way, the pain of delivery scares me, a part of me wants it over with.

Anyway, she is still a few days early.

There are things relevant to my career, our finances, and our future that are pending for the next two weeks as well. Those things while important and crucial on their own are finally taking a back seat to my juggling act. For the past 8 months, I have negotiated with the baby to stay still, to be healthy, to cooperate and not to come out early for vaeious reasons – we still have to save up enough money, we still have to transfer to another place, we still have to look for a yaya, etc.

I feel a bit guilty knowing that in a way I asked her to grow according to my pace, albeit those were definitely necessities. Right now, those things can wait. They may be important, but they will have to adjust to the baby’s pace.

Waiting It Out

I am 4 days away from my expected due date.

I am still reporting for work, mostly because I do not want to be alone when I go on labor. Still, my presence seem to rattle my officemates because they seem to expect chaos erupting anytime soon. I am thinking to be considerate and maybe stay home instead so they will not worry. But there are still some stuff left for me to deal with at work.

I have been closely monitoring myself for any symptoms that can warn me that labor is pending. But from what other people say, it tends to hit you all at once.

Here is what I have noticed the past few days though. First, I feel hot inside, like hot flashes. I sweat easily. I sweat even when I am in an airconditioned room. Second, I am a bit bloated. My feet are a bit swollen. I really do not like wearing my shoes anymore because they are too constricting. Third, I get contractions. Not often. But it definitely aches like crazy. Fourth, I keep on waking up in the middle of the night. Usually around 3 or 4 am. I have to pee or I am hungry.

Hmmm, I am a bit lazy. But I do have some energy bursts especially when I have to finalize stuff at work or for the baby.

They say that lightening should occur a few weeks before the expected due date. But my tummy has not gone down yet. I think it will be one of those cases where it happens a few hours before and I will just have to rush to the hospital soon after.

A few weeks ago, I was paranoid that the baby will be early. Now I am afraid that the baby will be delayed. I read that a baby would get suffocated inside the womb if it becomes too big for the uterus.

Any other symptoms I should know about?

Girls and their Mothers

This must be the result of being in a family centric culture or being in a paternalistic one. Or it can be the result oc coming from a specific social class – lower middle class. But darn, there are certain features about my and my high school friends’ families that are disturbing indeed. 

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Last Friday, I got a text message from a friend asking me to call her at home. 

This friend got knocked up and married at 19. Things luckily turned out well for her since her husband was responsible. Their kid was precocious. And they just had a new baby. They were both earning well. They seem to get along well as a couple. 

So I was really wondering why she seemed so harrassed, heavy, and stressed all the time. 

It turns out that her hubby’s aunt (sort of surrogate mom) have been bossing them both around to run her business for her while they are left with an unpredictable share in the business. My friend really wanted to get the account they worked on for the past months so they can finally start building the house they wanted. She was also counting on that deal so they can stop working for her hubby’s aunt and start living their own lives. 

I asked why she was in such a hurry. The truth came out. She seems to have been pushing herself so hard so she can finally have the approval of her family. They were so disappointed at her for getting married early. They keep on holding it over her head.

Her family, mostly through her mother, insists that she buy them stuff, pay for her sister’s tuition, and show off to the neighbors how much money she has.  

Hearing that kind of woke me up. Maybe some people just cannot help themselves. They are really like that. But living a life with someone else having power over it causes unnecessary unhappiness. 

Both my friend and her hubby should be happy minus their families’ interference. They are at fault for letting them have a say in their lives. But I also wonder whether these people really want their children’s happiness.

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Pong is lucky, he did not have to deal with this crap. His family is not like the families I grew up with and I heard about. Sometimes it is irritating for him to pontificate about how easy things are supposed to be dealt with. He did not have to go through any of it. 

For me, I was raised to think that I was a big inconvenience. That my presence cost my mother a lot. And I should spend my life as a good daughter to pay her back for everything she has sacrificed for me. That my choices and my preferences should take a backseat when it runs counter to my ability to give them more money. “Helping out family” is the epitome of being a good daughter. 

Because of that premise, I am deemed a bad daughter. 

Maybe it is because we are girls that is why we have this dilemma. I know that my eldest brother fucked up his life and our family’s so much worse than I have. But he will never be seeking for approval. He will always be the hope of the family. Like in the families of my other friends. 

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In a way, this sounds spiteful. I do not know how this will impact my daughter in the future. But for now, I am a week away and I have no plans of alerting any member of my family about my delivery. I have no plans of bringing my daughter to our house for Christmas. 

I do not know how to explain to my daughter in time when she looks for her grandparents. If she will take it against me for alienating them.

I hope she will understand. 

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My family is made up of good people. Often they are well intentioned. Sometimes, they cannot separate what is good for the family and what is good for the individual member. They also have a hard time reconciling themseleves when choices go against the norm. 

I wish I can let my guard down and simply let them in my life. 

From how my life went, it is ironic how off they are about me. Everytime I considered their advice and followed it, I ended up being miserable. Not because I wanted to be miserable to prove them wrong. But it was just not the right fit for me. They blame me for not letting things work out. 

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My baby girl will be here soon enough. I do not know what kind of mother I will be. I wish I would know my daughter, really know her as a person, and she would know me.

A lot of parents have great plans for their children. At this point I do not. All I am planning for is to make sure that we can prepare her to face the world on her own. She will grow up with our love and the rest is hers to deal with.

I only have one gift to give her. It will be knowing that she came into this world wanted. Never will she feel that she has to live her life to pay for her presence.

She will be welcomed in this world.

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We finally agreed on a name. She will be named Kalayaan.