A Pampering Week

What a weekend! After 7 over months long of not scrubbing, masking and pampering my face, I finally get the green light to go for a nice relaxing facial spa! Coupled with a gentle eye and shoulder massage, I was in 7th heaven! I guess the only uncomfortable part was having to lie down flat on my back for 1.5 hours with the baby twitching and kicking every half hour. I even had to tell the therapist not to be surprise if she can see the sudden moving bumps on my tummy under the sheet - as it can be quite visible especially in my semi nakedness with only a thin white cotton robe covering my top half.

At the end of the treatment, I felt rejuvenated and it was time to leave. However, it got pretty hillarious at that point as I could not get up from the bed! It got my therapist laughing seeing my clownish attempt in trying getting up from the rectangular-stretcher-looking bed and she in the end had to come to my rescue.

So far I've received many remarks about my tummy size in this 7th month plus period:-

"very small"
"nice shape! so sharp looking! it must be a boy!"
" wow! 7 months??? Looks like 5 months to me!"
"everything is small on you...your tummy, your hands, your legs,... only your face is fat" (*you can see my eyes rolling here*)
*so cute! you look really young to be pregnant!" (*ahem! thank you! hehe! I am still in my twentiesss afterall*)

On my last Friday scan, my doc told me that the baby is now weighing 1.3 kg and has already positioned itself downwards. Meaning, the head is heading down and soon wil be moving towards my pelvis! In this period, I would be feeling slightly uneasy as my tummy is getting heavier day by day and occasional breathlessness would kick in (I am currently feeling this way by the way).

Oh did I mention that I can never sit on the floor ever again as I would never be able to get up unless you heave me up from behind?! I ain't drunk for sure but I sure do feel like one when that happens!

Fetal Development in this week

Final Trimester

2 nights back I had a wonderful sleep. I gloated about it. I was delighted...because it doesn't come that often these days. As I'm now entering my final trimester, I constantly wonder what are the new symptoms that I would be facing. A good note of advice to all my pregger frens who have yet to reach the stage of where I am currently at, do lots of research/ read up on pregnancy and what to expect on your weekly progress. My favourite site is  www.babycenter.com as I get to subscribe to its newsletter and constant updates on my pregnancy details (a general idea of how my baby developes) would be sent over via email to me every week. Its good to know what to expect!

This week as I enter my final trimester, occasional heartburn and haemorrhoids take center stage now and indeed I am suffering from the slight discomfort (pain at times) at my buttock! Apparently my growing uterus contributed to the haemorrhoid and that these swollen blood vessels in the rectal area are common during pregnancy. I am no stranger to this "rectal nut" as back in 2007 I was wheeled into the surgery room to have it removed. Now that its back, I wonder will I need to remove it again and will it ever give me problems when its time for me to give a hard "push" on 31st October??!

I pray for a normal and safe delivery.... pray for me too my dear frens. As the little munchkin is getting more and more active inside me, it gives me the reality goosebumps that I am going to be a mom soon!

Week 30

2 posts in a row for this week - just for my ardent readers/ followers. =)

The earlier one was about my overly promoted butter chicken dish. But of course, some of you would want to know how I am coping with my pregnancy and all.... well, for one, I'm in my Week 30! 10 more weeks to go before I cry in labour pain? Exciting or scaaaryy? Take a guess.

My tummy is getting bigger and bigger and that is what everyone seems to be telling me. Its like an overnight balloon. One thing for sure, they told me it will get even bigger in my 8th month!! This morning as I looked into the mirror, I realized how fat I looked. Not just looking fat, I feel fat too. Sigh. Well, thank goodness for my hubby who constantly tell me how beautiful I look and his constant touch on my tummy (besides the occasional jabbing and rocking my tummy just to intentionally make the baby kick inside in retaliation) I would have been in distress - psychologically. Looking at the yoga pamphlets that comes to my possession seems tempting and I've made up my mind to sign up for it as soon as I've delivered! - if that's possible.

Like any maternity/ nesting instinct, I willl be packing my bags soon - who knows the baby might decide to say hello to this world earlier than scheduled? Will see how it goes... as my doc told me from this month onwards, I will be seeing her every fortnight now instead of the usual monthly check-ups. Time is getting nearer and nearer... I could just feel it...

Another Chicken Recipe

I did mention in my previous post about my new found hobby - cooking right? I've discovered yet another delicious dish (yes, its another chicken recipe) and I must say, I am rather proud of this particular one on how it actually turned out. =D

Butter Chicken ("lai yao kai" in Chinese) and my recipe is as follows:-

Marinade
Pepper, salt, sugar, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, cloves of garlic and dry curry powder
Duration: Overnight

Ingredients
Curry leaves, chili padi, evaporated milk, butter, corn flour, 1 egg

Here are my ingredients of what I was about to cook. The empty bowl is of course for my eggs =)

Ta da! My butter chicken!

I cooked 3 dishes in total. Besides the butter chicken, I treated my hubby with telur dadar and for myself, brocolli with ikan bilis. Not bad eh? I gotta think of what else to cook next week!

Any suggestions?

Cooking, a New Hobby!

Nothing really interesting going on this week except for the fact that I found my new hobby - Cooking! That's right. For the past 3 days, I've been experimenting food and putting my cooking skills to the test. Of course, like all women do, their boyfriends/ husbands likes and dislikes are put to top priority when comes to cooking. Mine the same. My cooking options evolve around what Tim likes most. Chicken. And Egg.

Cooking Attempt 1:-

Menu: BBQ chicken drumlets with Fu Yong Egg and rice
Outcome: Soggy rice, burnt chicken. The only edible part of the dishes is the Egg! (We ended up eating Mee Goreng (instant noodle) to go with the egg).
Hubby's verdict: "My wife can't cook".

Cooking Attempt 2:- (1 week later after convincing my hubby that the dishes will turn out better than before).

Menu: Spaghetti Hash Brown
Outcome: Perfectly fried golden hash brown with excellently cooked pasta to go along with it.
Hubby's verdict: "Not bad. Hash brown is perfect". (yey!)

Cooking Attempt 3:-

Menu: Fried Rice with chicken, chinese sausage and egg
Outcome: Rice turned out perfect this time (phew!), the entire dish turned out colourful and tasty.
Hubby's verdict: "Try adding more flavours next time". (Don't really know what flavour he meant, but he said something about the flavouring comes in a Maggi packet or something...)

Cooking Attempt 4:-

Menu: Chicken Maryland with French Fries at the side
Outcome: Chicken with bread crumbs toppings fried to crispy perfection, butter garlic gravy turned out delicious, french fries deep fried to perfection.
Hubby's verdict: "Yummm! Nice! Not bad!"

Conclusion: I guess I have to do better in the chinese dishes. I probably score a B+ for my western, a C- for my chinese. I gotta find more recipes! The good news is that my girl friends & I have agreed on having cooking activities every fortnight so that we could learn from each other on how to cook! Awesome idea....I wonder what can they learn from me....

p/s- Sorry no pictures on my dishes. You probably wouldn't want to see it...yet. =)

All About the Baby

Its August now. 2 more months to go before the little munchkin arrives. Lots of movements within me tummy lately - the baby squirming, poking, kicking and its visible to the eyes too on these movements sometimes (which facinates my hubby)!

Its mega sale in Malaysia now and what a good time to shop for baby stuff. We went to Mid Valley (which is like 5 minutes away from our house) as early as 11am, just to beat the human traffic, but boy were we wrong! There were soooo many people earlier than us! We walked around, trying to get movie tickets for Inception (heard its good!) but mostly sold out, so we ended watching the horrible-disgusting Om Bak 3 and my least-favourite-type-of-movie "Shanghai" as it turn out to be war related. We didn't last long. We left the theatre after 20minutes of the show.

Despite the not-so-worth-it movie marathon, we did end up shopping for baby items and I am extremely delighted with the purchase! We finally got our hands on:-

a) a Peg Perego Pliko 3 baby pram with a matching baby capsule (in black!)
b) a Luciole natural wood colour baby cot
c) a cute little Hoppop Potty (blue in colour)
d) a Hoppop diaper bag
e) A food steamer
f) a bottle Sterilizer
g) Luciole Nursing pillow (its for breast feeding purposes hehe)
h) Luciole Bedding set (blue in colour)
i) a Latex mattress
j) 2 sets of toys (a musical mobile for the baby cot and one to be tied on the pram)
k) a baby art 3D photo frame (Its for us to stamp our baby foot print and hand print on it!)

All come in a package and these will be delivered in 2 weeks time! We've gone past the house-moving project, and now its on the baby!

Luciole baby cot. You can see the little musical mobile toy

hanging at the far end

Our Peg Perego baby pram

(its light and its easy to handle - very important as we will be

flying the baby back with us to Brunei pretty often!)

Didn't take the photo of the actual baby capsule.

But this would give you an idea how it looks like

(the actual fabric is exactly the same as the baby pram)