Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Baby Shower !!

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Two months ago, in one of the rosary prayer meetings, Tante Leslie Tan, an Indonesian woman who has been living in Austin for long period of time, offered me to host a baby shower for our baby. I was touched by her kindness and generousity. Considering I no longer have parents (both my parents passed away in 2004 so did my husband's parents), she's pretty much like a second parent to me.
I discussed with my husband, and we both agreed to take honor to be showered by her.

She asked Lilis Suryati Villareal to help her out with preparation. Lilis is a best friend of mine. We met through our friendship with Lily Widodo, another best friend of mine -more like big sister to me. After several discussion, we decided that the baby shower is also gonna be a "selamatan 7 bulan" (a ceremony in Javanesse tradition to mark 7 months of pregnancy), and also a rosary prayer meeting.
Tante Leslie will rent out a clubhouse at Terravista, Round Rock for the party. We planned to have this shower on Saturday early October. Considering some guests live out of town. But the clubhouse was fully booked until third week of October. Oh well..

Lilis is in charge of invitation and decorations and tante Leslie will work on food and advisor. Me? My part is providing them a guest list and looking for party favors.
At the end though, I decided to make "nasi tumpeng", an Indonesian dish which includes cone shaped rice and lots of side. It's always been our family tradition, plus I thought it would look unique and exotic at the baby shower.

The baby shower was a blast! I can't thank you Tante Leslie and Lilis enough for their efforts to make this event successful. Lilis made a game "Guess the Mommy's tummy size". I can't believe myself I was that big. To that date I gained 38lbs already. Big momma!

Thank you everyone to make this baby shower "a dream come true". We love you all!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

28 weeks Check up

September 30th.

Today we went to Oakwood clinic to have pregnancy check up and blood test for gestational diabetes. Friends of mine told me to avoid eating too much carbs few days before the test so that my glucose level won't be so high. Even I learned that it is not necessary I was a bit nervous that I started to count the carbs I ate.

This morning I woke up at 4am and was so hungry. I made wrap with tortilla and scramble eggs, and ended with grapes. An hour later I went to sleep. Woke up at 9am, I made yet another scrambled eggs (now that our hens make eggs daily, we always have good supply of eggs, sometimes abundant), but this time I had it with tofu pups and tortilla. For dessert I made smoothie (yogurt, rice milk, frozen fruits and blueberries, sweetened with agave) and one Bartlett pear. Yum! That should do good until after the test.

Once at the clinic, nurse gave me a small bottle of dextrose liquid to drink. I had to drink it up in no more than 4minutes. Then I have to wait for 1 hour before they draw my blood. The drink was in raspberry flavor and was really, really sweet. So sweet it almost made me sick.

30 minutes later, I met with Dr. Orth and she was happy to see my progress so far. I gained 23 lbs since the first check up (in my 5th week), I had normal blood pressure (100/70), and my baby grows well, too. She measured my belly and checked on baby's heartbeat with doppler. The heartbeat was 145 bpm (slower than last check up which was 154 bpm), but doc said when the baby is resting it's heartbeat slows down. So, we're happy.

Doc said now that I'm on my third trimester, I need to gain about one pound a week now to reach the goal of 30 lbs total. She asked how do I keep my weight gain, Loel told her we are vegetarian and we eat healthy food, all natural and no artificial flavor/sweetener, and we always try to look for organic food. I'm just happy that most of the weight I gain goes to my belly. Loel even said when he look at me from the back I don't look pregnant. Old people say that when this happens, they usually cary a baby boy.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Bleeding in 27 weeks of Pregnancy

27 weeks pregnant and bleeding

September 25, 2009
Yesterday, I had yet another bleeding episode. I'm 27 weeks pregnant now and I had couple bleeding and spotting in my early pregnancy (first trimester). But those were lighter than this one.
When I saw the toilet bowl turned red I was scared. I thought I have haemorhoid. But when I wiped out the blood came from my vagina. I was panic and called Paula, my manager right away, to tell her I will not be able to come to work today. Loel told me to rest and we'll see if it doesn't stop we need to see doctor immediately.
I laid in bed with my legs propped high and prayed to God that it's not early sign of labor. I talked to my baby to stay and was in alert of any pain in my body. I was upset and blaming myself for not being able take a delicate care of myself. I listened to my hypnobirthing cd to calm myself down. It really helped me get into a relax state.
Loel was very supportive, he checked on me almost every half an hour and offered me food and drink and massage. After couple of hours, I got up and checked myself. Bleeding has stopped! I still had spotting, though, but I was just relieved that there was no pain accompanied this bleeding and my baby was still active and responsive.
I texted Paula that afternoon that I had to take another day of rest just to make sure that I'm perfectly fine. She called me few minutes later and told me to get plenty of rest and not to worry about work. "Your baby is your #1 priority. Just let me know when you think you're ready for work." She's wonderful!
The spotting got lighter and lighter and it completetely stopped the day.
Thank you, o Lord! I promised myself I would be more careful to myself and my baby.

20 Weeks Anatomy USG

I was scheduled for anatomy USG at Texas perinatal center. Since everything else looked normal, we skipped the amniocentesis and CVS which are highly recommended for women over 35. I really want to avoid it, so it was great relief to know that we don't need to do it.
I checked in at 2.45pm did the paperwork and waited for our turn.

At 3.30pm they called us in. The operator came in and prepared everything. 10 minutes later a doctor came in and did the ultrasound. He ran the probe around my belly, sometimes he shook my belly to get a better look at the baby. He checked on every organ of the baby while explaining to us what we were looking at and what we expect.

The result was excellent! Our baby weighed about 14oz and 7.5 inches in length which was above the average size. Average size of baby at the same age is 11oz and 6.5 inches. Every part of his/her organ and body part was normal and is functioning well. We're having a healthy baby!