surprise!

Finally had the congenital anomaly scanning that my ob was requesting. We were supposed to have it done last Saturday but according to the ultrasound technician at Healthway, only doctors can perform a CAS and I need to have it scheduled. She also informed me that the CAS costs P2250 plus the ob’s pf of P2500. Huwat?!?! So it would cost us almost 5k? We decided to look for cheaper alternative. Hehe!

So I started the haunt for a cheaper CAS. I called several hospitals and the cheapest I found was Delgado Medical Center, P1540! Capitol came in a close second with P1575 but since Ramil’s cousin works as an accounting staff at Delgado, we trooped to Kamuning last Tuesday. I also asked around for their prices on 3d/4d ultrasound. Capitol has a really cheap price for P1700 (most hospitals charge 3k-4k)! So for other pregnant ladies out there, you might want to try it. We plan to have a 3d/4d ultrasound on my 7th month. Excited na ‘ko! :)

Anyway, back to my story. We were in Delgado before lunch and the doctor who was scheduled to do the CAS left already. According to Ramil’s cousin, another doctor can do it but it’s a male doctor. I told Ramil to just go ahead since the procedure is just an abdominal ultrasound. So we went to the ultrasound room and waited for the doctor (which turned out to be gay!). The whole thing didn’t even last an hour. While the doctor was doing all sorts of measurement, he suddenly asked us whether we know the baby’s gender already and whether we would like him to tell us. Ramil and I eagerly told him that we want to know. Before I reveal our baby’s gender, let me make a side kwento...

A lot of people have been trying to guess our baby’s gender and 95% of the time, people would say that we’re having a girl. Kasi daw ‘di daw ako pangit, hehe! Pag boy daw kasi pumapangit yung mommy. We really don’t believe that superstition but with almost everyone telling us it’s a girl, I was almost convinced it’s a girl. We don’t have any preference at the start of our pregnancy but after a few months, Ramil suddenly announced that he wants a boy (talk about girls changing their minds!).

So anyway, the doctor announced that it’s a boy! Ramil and I were both really, really shocked. I had to ask the doctor again if he was sure. He took a picture of our baby’s penis (hehe!) and said that there’s no changing it anymore. Ramil’s face almost split into two with all the smiling he was doing.

teacher kwento #3: raw honesty

A 2nd year high school student of mine who has autism wrote this when they were asked by their teacher to make a trimester-end comment on their class, philosophy. The kid is 14 years old but his emotional age is actually that of a 7-8 years old. His paper made me want to hoot with admiration. Such honesty, it can only come from a kid.

I think that Philosophy class is (no offense) downright boring. The reason why is because all we do is talk about this or that, sit around, write down our comments and questions and “if-it-were-your-way” type of questions, and we do not do it as often as Geology and just as often as we took Business classes before this was written. I feel so bored that I want to say “What is the purpose of learning Philosophy if we can learn something more practical like History, etc.?”, or sleep the whole session through. I have nothing else to say about this.

Sounds like a future lawyer to me ;)

summer in september

Back in my first few months, a lot of people are saying that I am lucky, I will be at the height of my pregnancy during the cold, rainy months. Maybe all those comments jinxed me because it feels like summer right now. If I could collect all the sweat that came out of my body these past few weeks, I would be able to fill up liters of containers.

My co-workers would usually complain about the heat and then they would see me and realize that I might actually be experiencing twice the discomfort. All the hassle is amplified whenever I am in front of my grade 4 class trying to talk at my loudest (yet comfortable) speaking voice, struggling to clear my face and vision from all the chalkdust, plus the little gremlins have the audacity to NOT listen to whatever it is I am discussing. With our own baby on the way, I am very challenged to raise our kid not to come out like some of my students (this topic deserves another post some other time). Good thing that late afternoons and nights are not so uncomfortable. I am going to work on sweetly persuading Ramil to use up our unused Linden Suites coupon which are about to expire this September anyway. Hehe!

crunch time

malulunod na ata ako sa papel at deadline. kawawa naman si baby namin. wah!

itchiness, pregnancy blues, and fatherhood

My growing tummy is being plagued by sudden itching lately. I would get unsolicited advice not to scratch my tummy to prevent stretch marks. Sometimes though, the itch gets so unbearable that I get so frustrated because even Ramil keeps on reminding me not to scratch.

Contrary to what these people tell me, texts on stretch marks say that they’re actually hereditary. If your mom had them when she was pregnant, most probably you’ll have them also no matter how much lotion you spread on your pregnant belly. Putting lotion helps the itch though so I’ve been massaging lotion on my tummy every morning and evening. The ritual also makes sure that I have time everyday to notice my tummy, the baby inside it, and to ‘talk’ to our baby.

I’ve also been having pains in my sides and just below my ribcage. Sometimes my ribs themselves are painful. According to my hubby (being a biologist, I always ask him stuff like these), these might be due to my growing uterus putting pressure on all the other things inside me. Good enough explanation for me. Hehe!

With all the physical changes a woman has to undergo just to bring another person into this word, it’s amazing how many babies are born everyday. That these women would go through pregnancy over and over again is pretty admirable. But the other day, while I was in my low moments (sulking over pregnancy blues), I looked at Ramil and suddenly realized that women are also luckier than men. The baby inside me is our baby and yet I’m the one who gets to feel him/her most often, I’m the one who gets to bond with him/her as early as now, I’m the one who gets to care for him/her. If I’m just a tiny bit cruel, I’d say that it’s just his sperm, it’s my baby! That’s why right now, I try to look for as many chances for Ramil to bond with the baby also. Slight movements would make me scramble for his hand to place on my tummy. I give a detailed report of things I’m feeling and things about the baby to make the experience more real to him also. And I must say, the father-to-be is very much a father already. He has never taken so much care of me, in effect taking care of the baby also. My tummy has never been kissed as much as before I got pregnant. And Ramil does his share of ‘talking’ to the baby. Being parents is really a two-person thing. I couldn’t imagine being pregnant without Ramil around, it would make everything suck so much.

recovered...almost

We were able to recover our files!!! Weeehhh! The guy who tried to help us charged us only 1500. There's a catch though, we couldn't open them. Even the jpeg files cannot be viewed. It was good enough for us for the mean time. According to Ramil, it provides an illusion of having the files there even though we couldn't open them. When we tried looking at the files' properties though, they looked ok - bytes and all. So we think we just have to get a software or something to help us open the files.

On another note, our baby has been very active the past few days. I've been noticing more and stronger movements. Ramil was finally able to feel our baby last night only to realize that he felt those kinds of movements before already. I think he felt good afterwards, thinking that he also felt the movements early. Hehe!

I've also started wearing maternity clothes already. My mama was kind enough to buy clothes for me. Hehe! I would tell her before that I don't want to buy maternity clothes yet because I can still fit in my big clothes and that we don't need the extra expense right now. Worked well I think ;) Plus, my older cousins who were also recently pregnant have now started giving me several pieces of maternity and baby clothes. It has been so exciting lately, with the baby becoming more real everyday. I had my ob visit last Saturday and my ob scheduled me for an ultrasound on Sept 16, my 20th week. Ramil and I are very excited because they might be able to determine our baby's gender by that time already. We just hope our baby will be cooperative on that day.

crashed.HELP!

We had very bad luck last Wednesday. Our laptop harddisk drive went boink on us. Ramil was defragging our laptop when suddenly a blue screen appeared saying something about unmountable boot volume. We tried restarting but it wouldn't continue to Windows instead the blue screen kept appearing. We tried repairing the Windows with our XP installer to no avail. We decided to bring the darn thing to megamall to have someone look at it. The guy we talked to told us that our harddisk have bad sectors and that they couldn't read from it. Waahhh!

Our thoughts were, nevermind if it's broken, we'll replace the drive. But we need our files! We have more than a year's worth of memories stored in the harddrive, not to mention all the mp3's we've acquired during those time, all the work-related documents. Not to mention that all the trim tests we've made for the exams next week (freshly made right before it crashed)and the grades for the first trimester. What a mess! Seeing the look on our faces, the guy in the shop told us there are some people who can retrieve data even from broken harddrives. He told us to buy a buy and sell magazine and look for ads there. We tried calling the numbers in the ads and we got outrageous quotations for our 40GB hdd. The prices we got were around 4k but one person who said that the data are sure to be retrieved, gave us a whopping 8k quotation!Just for retrieving files from a broken hdd. Crap.

So I am making a shout for HELP! Anybody know anybody who can help us? We've already bought a new 60GB hdd (instant upgrade) so we're not really after fixing the damn drive but just to salvage whatever files we can. So please, pretty please, any ideas?