30 weeks

I’m about 30 weeks along, 2 months away from pushing out another human being from my flabulous body. I still cannot believe we will be blessed with 2 kids before our 2nd anniversary, how did we get here?

Alya’s already becoming quite a handful, preferring to forego eating for playing and exploring. She has fearlessly crawled all the way up the staircase at my parents’ house (I blame my dad who has been covertly training his cucu), she’s doing that thing where she sorta talks but can’t actually vocalize properly yet, she can sort of snap her fingers and she gets all excited at the sight of any animal (cats, dogs, birds, even a grasshopper). Oh, and she will gelek to absolutely any piece of music – even if it’s just the ice-cream man’s tinkly recording. Jangan jadi minah dangdut sudah…

They say every pregnancy is different. Emotionally, I feel like there’s a lot less anticipation this time around. We’re still excited but there’s a certain ‘been-there-done-that’ quality that’s unavoidable. We had already picked out Alya’s full name by the 5th or 6th month; our baby is simply ‘Adik’ up til now. Sure, we have an idea on the name germinating but it hasn’t exactly been trotted out for use yet. Maybe it’s because the 2nd time round, everything’s all set. The supplies just need to be dug out of storage and spruced up (I didn’t even manage to put some stuff away), you’ve got the check-up routine down pat (monthly, fortnightly then weekly weigh-ins and test) and the daily cocktail of vitamins and supplements. No more shopping for baby stuff (except for some new clothes, as a lot of kakak’s stuff is pink), reading pregnancy books and waking K up in the dead of night when Adik is somersaulting..

Physically, it’s as different as night and day. I was still kinda active during Alya’s time, regularly speed walking to BB Plaza during my lunch hour. Now, I feel like such a tired, lumbering dinosaur. I’m doing the pregnant waddle and lunch is usually just nasi campur from the stalls behind my office, no more going here and there. Heartburn is a frequent complaint, night or day. I thought I had reached a pinnacle when I didn’t manage to stay up long enough to watch the first song from Grease last Wednesday. You know, “..tell me more, tell me more, was it love at first sight..”. I was dead wrong. Last night after Alya drifted off early, her mummy didn’t even make it past the end credits of the 8 o’clock news…