Of becoming pregnant

I know right off that I wanna have a baby before I complete my Ph.D. Reason being, I will be 30 years old when I graduate, it's too old for me for a first baby. The next question: When?

After my first unplanned pregnancy in which I had some complications, it got me thinking. I should start thinking of the future.

So, I started my first discussion with Jai middle last year. At first, I thought Winter 2010 (December) will be a good time for me to deliver a baby as I will have a month break. But, I will be heavily pregnant if I were taking my exam in the summer. Jai was afraid I couldn't handle the stress of studying, plus being pregnant and he will be not around  to help me like last year since he is already working. He was right. A week before my exam, I started to get morning sickness and I couldn't study cos I was really sick. Thank goodness, I have prepared myself for 2 months, it didn't affect me much.

We postponed our plan to conceive til August this year as I will be delivering the baby early summer and will have the rest of summer adapting to a new life and going back to Malaysia as well (weeee!). If Allah didn't granted us the chance in August, we still have 3 months to try. Plus, I don't have to file for a planned educational leave program (PELP) since I don't have to register for research unit during summer. Not that I know my supervisor will force me to file a leave but just to be on the safe side cos if I filed for a leave, then it might affect the Malaysian scholarship as well. See, being a graduate student is complicated!

I did the best as I could to maximize the chance to conceive. Eating good food, taking prenatal supplement a month before conceiving, didn't bike to school and BBT charting, of course! When I had the first negative result on the pee stick, I was disappointed but Jai convinced me, there will be always next month to try. But I didn't stop praying, praying to Allah, he will give me another chance. 4 days later, the day I should get my menses, I was feeling unusually tired. After performing Asar prayer, I went ahead to use another pee stick and this time it was positive. Tears started to run down my cheek cos I couldn't believe Allah granted me my wishes. It was 13th Ramadan. Indeed, it was a Ramadan's blessing :) 

Jai was still at work but when he came home 2 hours later, I put this piece of notification in front of our door.

He didn't believe it either cos he thought once negative, it will be true negative. So we waited for several days before repeating the test. Got the same result, and the next day we went to Student Health to confirm the pregnancy and ask for a referral. It was the day before my birthday and I got an early present this year as the doctor confirmed my pregnancy :) The next step we did was breaking the news to families and closest friends. Well, Jai got ahead of me by telling our Davis' friends of my pregnancy. He even tell some random guy he bought his paintball equipment from about my pregnancy. I could tell he is excited to become a daddy. 

So, that's my story. Although I'm having a bad morning sickness, as a friend pointed out, it is a blessing in disguise. The hCG level is rising to sustain the pregnancy and that is a good sign. I'm hoping it will disappear by second trimester and I promised myself and my baby to eat healthy and providing him or her as much nutrient as possible *fingers crossed*

As for gender preference, I wanna a Jai Jr. and he wanna a Farina Jr. Mana2 pun tak kisah, as long as the baby is born healthy and sempurna tubuh badan.

Oh, please email me your Gmail email address to get access to my experience of doing a BBT charting. fina_vet@yahoo.com.

See you guys soon!