As many of you know, I gave birth to Sara, on 31st October. It was an amazingly beautiful day, indeed. Sara is now 27 days, she’ll be 4 weeks tomorrow. As far as my recovery, I finally feel a lot better now.

Although my pregnancy was smooth and relatively easy than other women I know, it was really tough and challenging. If you ask me when I was pregnant, I would say being pregnant is not worth it! Yes, that sounded bad.

Then came labour. I was really terrified of labour. I was. I researched so deep so that I could be physically and mentally prepared. I practiced visualisation every day and think positively about my labour. 6 hours in labour, and it turned out to be the most painful yet the easiest thing. It went smoothly according to my visualisation, Alhamdulillah.

Now, the postpartum. It is the worst thing about having a baby. It’s a lot of pain. Contraction pains, breast and nipple pain, body aches, perineal pain, pelvic girdle pain, you name it. My recovery was slow and I was in 3 weeks of agony. I cried so much.

The first 2 weeks, I lost hope that I will ever recover. I guess it was the baby blues talking. Came the third week, I started feeling more sane, and tried to think positively about my recovery. Soon, I started to see improvements. Talk about mind over matter!

Now that my baby blues are completely gone, I’m starting to enjoy taking care of Sara. It used to feel like a chore, perhaps it was all those pain I was feeling. I love waking up in the morning to Sara. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. To us.

I can never forget the first time she was thrown onto my chest right after she came out. Yes, thrown is the exact word. I looked at her and I did not know what was this moving thing that just came out of me. She looked so pale and grey. Guess  I was still fuzzy from the labour. Then, she was taken away, the nurse put a blanket on and swaddled her. Soon she was given back to me while the doctor sutured my perineal tear.

I looked at her and her eyes were wide open glancing back and forth between me, Eddie and the surrounding. She looked like she was trying to understand where she was and what was she seeing (although she probably couldn’t see anything clearly then).

Immediately, I fell in love with her. I was shedding tears of joy. I’m  truly happy that she came into this world. She’s so perfect and beautiful. I had never been so thankful in my life before. Everyday, since she was born, I thank Allah for this gift. I feel so blessed for having her.

Sara, a few hours after she was born.

9 days old

21 days old

If you ask me now, she is definitely worth it. It was worth all the pain, agony and not to mention, all those emotional roller coaster. Truly, she is a gift. And she’s my personal achievement.

P.s, Read my husband’s story on my labour.

P.p.s, I will write about labour and postpartum recovery soon.

*Warning: Lots of photos ahead*

This year’s Eid-ul-Fitr was a new one for me. A new celebration. Typically, my family and I would drive 8 hours long to my grandma’s in Kelantan. However this year, I am not following my family. Instead, I celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr with my husband, Eddie, just the two of us, in Shah Alam.

Last year, we celebrated Eid 3956 miles away from each other. I was in Melbourne, my family was in Mekka, while my husband was in Penang at his grandparents’. This year, Alhamdulillah, I get to celebrate Eid with my husband. We didn’t follow my family because I couldn’t stand being on the road without puking and the flight tickets were sold out.

The eve of Raya, Eddie treated me to a nice last iftar at Chilli’s, Paradigm Mall. Thanks hun, it was really nice.

Last Saturday, my husband and I got the golden opportunity to become one of the volunteers for ‘Shopping Raya 2013’ for Baitul Ehsan orphaned kids. This program was organised by Projek Iqra.

The home is located in Taman Maluri, Kuala Lumpur. The program said to start at 8.am, but we arrived at 7.45am. Call us eager, and yes we were. After waiting for the rest of the volunteers to arrive, the program finally started at 9am. It started with the opening speech from the founder of the home, also the caretaker. He spent his own fortune to build this home, and this home rely on people’s donation money as it is not under any organisation.

He and his wife started with renting a house, (and they are still renting) and now they recently bought a new house next door and the renovation just finished, earlier than planned. It cost them almost RM600k to buy the house, and they renovated the house into a three-story house (the rest of the houses are two-story) for RM200k. All from donations money, MashaAllah! Now, they have about 63 kids and the boys had to be placed in another house Gombak due to the lack of space.

I had to hold back my tears as I listened to founder talking about the background of some of these kids. There are cases where the kids came knocking at 3am in the morning, traveled far to find shelter. Not all of them are orphans, some come from a single parent family who are unable to take care of their kids.

Some kids have been here for all their lives, they were sent here since they were as young as 10 days old. Baitul Ehsan do not actually take in babies, but sometimes when people asked, they just didn’t have the hearts to say no.

The kids here are so blessed. They are so smart and well-behaved. One kid already went to Jordan to further their studies and another kid is going to Indonesia, with help of sponsors. These kids here are being taught to recite Quran and memorize them. The aim is to give them Maahad Tahfiz education. Other than Quran and Islamic studies, they are also learning academic basics such as maths, science, English and Bahasa.  They don’t go to public schools, all of them are home schooled, and they have teachers coming in everyday to teach them.

After all the nausea, puking, backache (and getting worse), I’m finally at my 23 weeks of pregnancy! Oh, how time flies! I know, I say that a lot. But hey, it’s sooo true.

Even so, I still have 17 weeks to go. Before this, I had 30 weeks to go, and it felt like it was gonna be forever! Now, it doesn’t sound like forever, and I kinda wished I still had a few more weeks more go to than that.

I have to admit, although I do feel terrible admitting this. There are times where I wished I wasn’t pregnant, only because there are sooo many things I miss about not being pregnant.

1. SUSHI

Yeap, probably one of the big thing I miss the most. Unable to eat sashimi means that I can only look at pictures of sushi and crave. Yet nothing I can do about it, because I wouldn’t want to risk my unborn child to listeria, salmonella and whatnots.

2. Ability to drink water without getting nauseous. 

This one kinda suck. Because I am a big fan of drinking plain water. Now, I either have to drink really cold water or flavoured drink. Otherwise I’d probably throw up my dinner.

3. Stamina

Seriously, this extra weight infront of my tummy is making me use extra energy everytime I move. I wasn’t able to run up the stairs. I could, but I’d be panting like I just did a 5km marathon. Oh well, it’s probably my fitness decline because I do a lot less exercise now. I should try prenatal yoga.

4. Walking pace

I walk pretty fast for a Malaysian. If you know what I mean. Now, I walk slower than the elderly because my lower tummy and back hurts if I walk too fast. On some bad days, I have to sit and rest every 10 mins before walking/standing.

5. Choice of clothes

Well, enough said. It’s just too depressing to talk about it.