Observations at 30 Weeks and 3 Days

Today I am 30 Weeks and 3 Days pregnant. I am feeling quite uncomfortable, and am dreading the thought that things can only get more rather than less uncomfortable from here on in. That thought makes me feel quite put out, but I know there is little I can do except to wait things out. So far pregnancy has been everything that I thought it would be, but also a lot worse and filled with more unknowns that I could have imagined. Still, a tiny part of me thinks It'll be worth it.

Anyway so far here are the worst 3 symptoms of pregnancy that I've experienced:
1) Gastric issues: 'morning' sickness that lasted somewhat into the early weeks of my second trimester; elevated GERD and IBS issues that ensure my stomach is usually almost always in some sort of discomfort, which then leads to...

2) Insomnia and sleeping issues: since getting pregnant I've alternatively been so exhausted I feel like I can't function, or been in a constant state of worry that I can't sleep because of either hormones or stomach discomfort. I have gone several nights without being able to sleep at all because of either reason, and now the thought of whether I'll be able to sleep gives me anxiety. Since coming back to Singapore, I've experienced 4 nights worth of sleeplessness where I can't sleep a wink until 7am+ the next day.

3) Symphysis Pubic Dysfunction + whatever other strange new pain that has just cropped up: around Week 18 I started to slowly notice a pain cropping up in my pelvic area whenever I walked. After one particularly straining day when I walked through Central Park, the pain started to get very severe. For a while after getting after getting back to Singapore the pain abated, but is now definitely here to stay, as it has been for the last almost 3+ weeks. Basically it's a deep, wrenching pain that I feel in my pelvic area, and it particularly affects my right side. I would rate it a good 7.5/10 on the pain scale, and it tends to be the worst right when I get up from the bed after lying down. I read someone online describing it as feeling like being torn apart - and while that seemed a little dramatic to me, when I experience it, that description does feel very apt. Joining this pelvic pain, for the last 2 days, is a mysterious sharp pain I feel on the left side near my tailbone. I don't know if it's sciatic pain, or something else altogether, but it's very distinctively different from SPD. As a result now, from all the pain, I waddle around slowly and hope I don't make things any more worse.

Basically, pregnancy has been one of most physically and emotionally trying periods of my life. I really cannot understand how some women say they enjoy it, or feel like goddesses. I am definitely not one of them. The main perk is that if I don't think about things, I can sometimes go several minutes on end forgetting about how uncomfortable I feel.

A Random Day

Today was one of those days where I just followed a parent around, with no real goal in mind, and just enjoyed it unfold.

I woke up around 9:00 am+ as usual, getting just under 8h of sleep. I saw the time on my phone, noted that I had forgotten to plug it to be charged last night, and felt thankful anyway that I had managed to get around 7h of sleep. I continued slowly rolling around in bed, waiting for the pelvic pains to lessen, as I browsed reddit. Then, around 10:00 am, I finally got up and went downstairs to have breakfast. At about 11:30 am, my Dad returned home from exercising, and I quickly went upstairs to take a shower, because I wanted to join him when he went for lunch with Uncle Joo Leong. Around 12 noon, it started to rain really heavily, and we both got into the car to head to Bukit Panjang.

From about 12:30 pm to 2 pm, we hung out with Uncle Joo Leong at the Bukit Panjang hawker centre. We ate Mee Sua for lunch, from one of the famous stalls in the hawker centre, and also had wu xiang. Then my Dad went to hang out with one of his old mentees from China, He Chao, and so we picked him up from his apartment and headed to a canteen in Ngee Ann Poly. Around 3:30 pm, we left and my Dad then drove to Clementi to pick up Ryan from his day care centre - one of the rare few days that Ryan actually decided to attend school. Then, we headed to Ghim Moh around 4:15 pm, so I could pick up my new passport from the Singpost outlet there. While I lined up to get my passport, Ryan and my Dad went to the Ghim Moh hawker centre to eat Chee Kueh. By the time we arrived home, it was about 4:45 pm.

And thus this is how my random day unfolded, just whiling time away until baby arrives, by following my family around.

NLB

Today marks exactly a month since I've been back home in Singapore. As always, the month seems to have simultaneously gone by fast, yet also slowly. Things have largely been uneventful, which in a pregnancy is always a good thing. I have fallen into a quasi-schedule of prenatal pilates on Tuesday, and following my parents/mama around on other days, interspersed with little meetings with old friends in between.

Today was also a Thursday, and hence also a day where Ryan has an art workshop at Ng Teng Fong Hospital in Jurong East. I tagged along so I could visit the library branch there after we had lunch. Before this, I had gone to the library in NEX a few weeks prior, and had just finished my last library book a few days ago. Even though I did bring some books back from the US with me, they tended to be slightly more serious pieces of work - and I have not been in the mood for anything weighty.

Thus, my objective today was to return those library books, and borrow some new ones. Much like my previous visit to the library however, I noticed something odd about where I found books that caught my fancy. Just like my previous visit (discounting the quick 5 min return trip I made to the NEX library to borrow Book 2 and 3 of a series a few days later), I would go through rows and rows of library books and find absolutely nothing that I wanted to read, but would then chance about just one row where multiple books looked appealing. As a result, all the books I would/have ended up borrowing all had authors with names close to each other in the alphabet. In my previous visit it was the MAs - Juliet Marillier's Blackthorn and Grim series, and Jamie Mason's Three Graves Full. This visit there's a little more variation - a mixture of HAs, GUs, and a lone GR; making up 3 crime thriller style books, 1 trashy historical romance, and 1 slim slightly literary looking book (my one concession to serious thought?)

Anyway, I am very thankful that in Singapore, libraries are so easily to access and are thoughtfully scattered around the island in convenient locales. It helps that they are cheerfully designed, and always look like welcoming spaces.