Triple test…

One of the most scary things for pregnant women to go through, besides the actual labour process (needless to say), is all the prenatal tests, or rather say is the tough time while waiting for test result..

The blood test carried out around my 16th week (about 4 weeks before the full scan blogged by Win below..), is the so called "Triple Test" (we nearly forgot to blog about this for some reason). Basically the result of this test will show if a mother is at either high-risk or low-risk for having a baby with a birth defect (such as Down Syndrome, Edward Syndrome, etc). It is only about 70% accurate, normally high-risk patients are then referred for other tests like an amniocentesis to receive a more accurate diagnosis.

We visited Dr Lim on a Sat morning as usual. After the routine checkup in his room, I was asked to review and sign on a consent form for the triple test, the details of it, I could not recall at all. After which, Winson followed me to another laboratory right outside the clinic. A lady (not sure a nurse or doctor anyway) brought up a tray with tourniquet(the rubber strap to be secured above the vein), needle and tubes. Without knowing much about what's going on exactly, the needle was already inserted into my vein and she started collecting my blood sample.

Win was standing right in front of me and I guess either his tolerance level for pain is really low, or he simply cannot stand it when seeing blood being drawn out from my vein, his face just changed and looked so tortured while at the same time, I did not really feel a thing.. I immediately decided that he is only allowed to stand behind my head during my labour. I am 100% sure that he cannot "tahan" the whole process.. The lady was not surprised at his reaction at all, she must have seen many husbands reacting like this before.. Haha.. She just carried on the casual talk with me and even explained to me how the "vacuum blood tube" works. Looks quite interesting, haha it stops drawing the blood automatically once the tube is full. (Err.. or maybe I am just too outdated to find this interesting??).. After the blood draw, I was advised to hold and press the cotton ball placed on the puncture site but not to rub it, or else it will cause bruise. That is really new to me.. Haha…

Then, here comes.. the long wait…
I was told to wait for the result which will be posted to me in a week's time (provided the result is all good). And they will give me a buzz if there's anything wrong with the test result. Throughout the week I had to look at my hp every few seconds and pray for not being called up.. Okay that sounds a bit exaggerated but seriously, I bet I've never realized that my hp can be so important to me at any point of my life time. So you can imagine how excited I was on the 5th day, when I found the Tow Yung Clinic envelop in my letter box. I am so grateful that they printed the clinic name and logo on their envelop itself..

And here's the final result:
With all the scientific jargons that we could never understand, but the graphic is really self-explanatory and basically shows that I do not belong to the high risk group..

But still.. more tests to come..
And what I realized is, for parents-to-be, no need to worry too much about your foetus because no matter how, there's nothing you can do about the result and worrying is not going to make things any better.. SO… BE POSITIVE!!!

p/s: saying is easy, but I am still feeling super anxious everytime before the checkup appointment.. and that feeling can really last for a few days.. -_-!! Luckily Win is always there for me.. *sob sob*.. so touched..

Baby Chan in full...=P

*Note: Sorry about the late post... Just came back from reservist and having writer's block... lol

It was April Fool's Day when we were scheduled for a full scan for Baby Chan. On the full scan day, things are slightly different. After checking in, we had to make our way to another part of the building for the full scan. So out the exit of the usual Tow Yung Clinic we went and just ahead and left... into another unit, owned by Tow Yung too.

We were greeted by a nurse who usherd us into the room where she nested Feli into the seat while I hovered around the room, scruntinzing the different instruments that were lying on the doctor's desk. Before long, Dr Lim. appeared... but not the usual one who examined Baby Chan, this was Dr Lim Lean Soon (mmehhh... do all doctors go by the same family name?). Dr Lim Lean Soon looked a decade younger than our usual Dr Lim Teck Chye, but spoke in the same gentle tone. So he started the scan with the usual generous supply of gel on Feli's belly and carefully placed the scanner on her and magically, Baby Chan was on the monitor. haha... the active little baby is kicking around in Feli's womb, Dr Lim asked if Feli could feel it and when she said no she couldn't, Dr Lim simply laughed and murmured that probably those kicking were still too small and gentle.

The full scan took quite a while... about half and hour or so. During which he projected Baby Chan on the monitor in every angle conceivable. Fortunately, Baby Chan was cooperative enough to make the scan as fast as possible by moving into the correct positions for Dr Lim to take a quick camera shot and slowly explain each snapshot to us. "This is the left ventricle of the heart, this is the aoeta... " reminds me of my biology class back in secondary school... so much so that I started mumbling the terms to myself, and a curious Dr Lim paused midway through just to ask me what profession I was in... heh... I sure wish I was a doctor...=P... well, at least the pay is good I presume...


So snapshot after snapshot, biological terms after biological terms, we were going through a mundane process of listening to his macro-like explanations, until suddenly, Dr Lim, zoomed in on one particular snapshot and congratulated us. Puzzled, we took a longer stare at the image and then realised... Baby Chan is MR. Baby Chan ~!... wheeeee~...took us quite a while to realised it was his privates that we were looking at. Okay... at least now we know the baby's gender, something that everyone have been asking but we were answerless due to his shyness all this while...=P

The next image that mesmerised us was that of Baby Chan's beautiful spine. The long line of proportionally shaped bone cartilages, evenly spaced out and arched so prettily that I believe that no man can ever piece out such an art. As the knowledge that all this 'architecture' was happening in Feli's womb just makes me think that she is simply the most amazing.

At the end of the scan. Dr Lim sat down with his nurse and wrote down a whole bunch of notes in the classic doctor's handwriting and then passed us a CD with the recordings of the entire scanning process (!!... apparantly they are the only ones who provide such a service)

And the report came back to us... well... was too wordy for me to wanna read through in details. Only need to look at the "Comments" part to see the interesting stuff...=P


Oh.. and after the full scan, we did go back to Dr Lim Teck Chye to schedule the next appointment and also to answer more of Feli's questions.

Q1) It is safe to paint the house during pregnancy?
A1) Yesh it is~

Q2) Can Feli go to Manicure and Pedicure and Perm/Rebond her hair?
A2.1) Dr Lim: "Yes she can..."
A2.2) Daddy Chan: *checks bank account*..."Yes she can..."

*Note: The above Q&A is just comments from our memories. Please consult your personal Gynae for advices... (excluding the financial advices..=P )

Mummy Chan's Nightmare

On Feb 23rd, 4am in the morning, I woke up as usual(pregnant lady needs to wake up a few times at night due to frequent urination..), then something disastrous happened -- I found myself BLEEDING!!

It was not the pinkish or brownish kind of color, but the fresh red color of blood! I was totally freaked out!!!

Earlier that evening, we were having a food tasting session with the family for Wilson and Lucretia(Winson's brother and sis-in-law)'s upcoming wedding banquet. During the dinner, I drank a glass of red wine and a bit of white wine also. I am fully aware that I should stay away from alcohol, but Lu's sister who is a nurse and a mother of two told me that red wine is good for baby and I could just drink a little bit. So the first thing I could think of was, is that because of the red wine?? I couldn't think more but started talking to my poor little baby: "dear are you okie? did mummy do anything wrong? Mummy promise you that I will not do that again but can you promise mummy that you will be strong and healthy??..."

I heard about a mother-to-be lost her child when she was in her 8th month. I suddently felt the pinch. I remember during our Australia trip, I even told my mother that if a miscarriage happened to me, I think I can take it, because maybe it means that me and my baby just have no "yuan fen".. But at that very moment, I was 100% sure that I could not take it at all, and I do not want to lose my baby, he's been inside me for 3 months already and he's a true life. Just a week ago, we were assured by Dr Lim that our baby is perfectly fine, and I have passed my 1st trimester so now everything should be stablised. But why? Why I experienced bleeding out of sudden then? I woke up Win (for a moment I was wondering if I should do that since I might scare him and make things even worse), he kept telling me not to worry and things will be fine. He even turned on the computer and started reading on topics about "bleeding during pregnancy".. We finanlly decided to wait for another 2 hours as we thought it might be too early to wake up Dr Lim. We tried to grab a nap and woke up at 6am to give Dr Lim a buzz. His nurse picked up the hotline and told me that Dr Lim will get back to me in a while. 20 minutes later, my phone rang and Dr Lim called me with his cellphone. He told me to go down to hospital if my bleeding continues badly, or else just see him at his clinic at 9:40am.

I checked that my bleeding seemed to stop at that time, so we waited patiently for another few hours, then there we were, at Dr Lim's clinic on a Monday morning. On our way to clinic, we kept talking to each other and telling each other that it will not be too serious and our baby is definitely able to pull through this. I told Win that I was not nervous, not scared.. But my high blood pressure of 148 clearly showed how bad my feeling was.. Dr Lim looked very concerned but he still greeted me calmly with his friendly smile.. This time he immediately did a physical check on my cervix (I only did this during my first 2 visits, thereafter he has been using transducer to scan my abdomen area which is known as the usual ultrasound, I thought I will never need a physical check like this as it really causes slight discomfort).. But it all worth the pain as he straight away pointed out that the bleeding was caused by my "cervical polyp" - a small tumor in my cervix. Some pregnant women have that and usually it disappears by itself after delivery. I guess mine just gets bigger and Dr Lim said he will do a small operation to pull it out if my bleeding continues after 2 weeks. After that he did a normal ultrasound scan, and I felt a total relief when he pointed to me that there was no blood in my womb at all..

My blood pressure dropped right away to 120, and I told myself, as long as our baby is healthy, be it that I have to suffer from frequent bleeding, or an operation to remove the polyp, I am all fine with it..

So here we have the scan from that day, probably my fave scan of all those taken thus far.