The only thing constant is change

I try to make the pictures be consistent so we can track the actual growth of the belly over time, however, since we are in a transition period, our location is not constant. As you can see from Week 1- Week 15, the location is the same (our first home in Vancouver, the master bathroom). After that, we moved and lived separately :-( In Week 20 & 21 the picture was taken in my room at the Lim's and in Week 22 the picture was taken in Caleb's room at Mike's place where he is renting. I think it is interesting to see the comparison between week 1 and week 22 where change is so drastic! I didn't even realize that my tummy is now pointy! Not only that, my hair is growing along with the belly! Hehe :-) I'm glad that my hair is long enough to put in a pony tail so its disable baby to pull my hair haha!!

Belly is a hand magnet

On June 11 Caleb and I felt the baby kick for the first time. I was told that the baby was probably moving heavily in me, but since it is a new experience for me, I probably couldn't recognize them as baby movements. But I was 100% confirm that baby was squirming and kicking on that Sunday evening when Caleb and I were snuggling watching a movie. I told Caleb to put his hand on my tummy and shortly after that we felt a very distinct kick! It was super exciting! Ever since then, little baby has been kicking up a storm everyday; not too strong but little bumps here and there randomly throughout the day. Brings me so much joy to feel baby's movement :-)

At Week 22, baby should have developed more features like eyelids and ears, so I try to hum or sing more. Since baby is kicking, that means baby feels me as much as I feel baby, so I would frequently rub my tummy or simply place my hand on my belly...makes me feel like I am holding baby. I heard about having random hands rubbing pregnant bellies, but since I work in a male-dominant environment, it would be super awkward to have men touch my belly. So the only hands that has been touching baby are mine or the dad's :-) So my belly is only a hand magnet to us, not strangers!

Since my belly is rather big now, it is challenging to cook..I made dinner last night and since the kitchen counter is waist height, I am constantly using my upper back muscles to reach out and that causes a sore back!! I thought having backache would be from carrying the belly, not from bending over...sigh, I am just glad that so far, I don't have to be cooking so much.

Our midwife called us with some bad news a few days ago. One of my tube test came back positive for BV which is bacterial vaginosis...this is supposedly common for a lot of pregnancies, but may be dangerous for the baby if not treated well - we could face a premature birth. To treat it, we need to kill those bad bacteria by flushing out all bacteria with antibiotics, and then build up the good bacteria with probiotics...I was given metronidazole prescription which is basically antibiotics in gel form applied vaginally. It was a difficult process to go through to get those medication and here's why. With Caleb and I being in transition between jobs and housing, our insurance information, medical history and mailing address are all over the place, and to add to complication, the medical clerical staff were not very efficient in their work ...the different clinic/test lab/hospital that we had to go through did not know how to handle paperwork transmission well...thus lots of time was wasted just waiting. I suppose that's why the people waiting to see the doctors are called PATIENTS!

After our ultrasound from two weeks ago, I mailed postcards home to the other side of the world for the gender announcement and my family knows what we are having, so they are already giving input on the baby names. We narrowed down to top 10, but with family assistance, I think it got slashed in half haha! The announcement in USA will happen on July 1st which the soonest when the Webbs and Martins can get together. I am biting nails to not leak!! But thankfully I am able to discuss it with my family in Malaysia, since they are also giving ideas for the baby's middle name.

Baby's First Video

We were at the ultrasound yesterday to find out the gender of the baby. Before they called our name to the service room, I told Caleb to take a video of the session. What I forgot to tell him was to not ask for permission because I was previously informed of the dumb rule that any photography or video footage was not allowed during the ultrasound. When we went in and I was prepped up for the scan, Caleb asked," Babe, do you want me to video the whole thing or just the gender discovery section?" This blows our cover and the technician proceeded with telling us what I already knew. Feeling sorry for exposing our cover, Caleb decided to take the following action...

I don't know if the technician knew Caleb was trying his best to bluff, but we sure had a good laugh from his attempt to redeem himself. Even though we weren't able to have a video session of the entire experience, the service center was nice to give us a CD of some pictures and short clips of the ultrasound. Here are some cooler footage of the session that we can share :-)

This is baby's kicking activity...

This is baby playing peekaboo and opening/closing mouth...

Daddy and Mommy loves baby

Since Daddy and Mommy have to live separately for a short time in order to setup a better career arrangement that enables Mommy to take care of baby from home, we still love each other very much and we talk every evening through FaceTime on our iPhones :-)  Yesterday night we spent some quality time together praying for baby, reading some scriptures over baby for God's favor, grace and wisdom. Today is the revealing of the gender and Daddy woke up very nervous and excited to find out what baby is!

Daddy was playing with his iPhone and making fun of Mommy's belly since it is growing so big now, it really feels like the belly cannot be any bigger!! As you can see, baby is taking up so much space inside Mommy that the belly button is being pushed out..when Mommy sits straight, the belly button is still an Inny but when Mommy bends back, belly button is almost and Outty! It is a very silly picture, but I thought it would be fun to show Daddy and Mommy's silly side :-)