The First Scan!

Maybe because I didn’t spend any money on seeing a doctor during my stay in England, I was surprised by the welfare change when I came back to China and forgot to apply for a “medical insurance card”. When I took back the blood test report my family and colleagues were all surprised that the hospital would ask me to do a blood test and a scan instead of just a urine test. They thought I was cheated. However, every cloud has a silver lining; I got Kima (or its house)’s first picture.

  The day when I got the blood test report Ben and I told the great news to our parents first. In China, the tradition is you shouldn’t let everybody know until you finish your first trimester, so we just told my parents. In England there is no such taboo, so we called mum and dad and grandmas and grandpas and ask them to spread the news to every corner of the United Kingdom. Ben’s mum’s mum is a very out-bursting young lady who is famous for her silent squeak when she is excited, and she did that. We all had tears in our eyes; I felt all the seven oceans were boiling with joy.

  I was very looking forward to the scan the next day, although the doctor said it was only to check how big the baby was. I took it as if it was going to be a professional photo-shoot. I was lucky that work was not busy after the golden week, so I had time to relax a bit in the morning. The scan was one-thirty in the afternoon. I started to drink lots of water from 11:30 to keep my bladder ballooned.

  When I arrived at the scan room at 13:15, I found that many people were already waiting there. The scan room wasn’t in the gynaecology department; many of the patients were either men or old women. I saw only one girl about my age and I subconsciously looked at her stomach; it seemed flat to me, but I still couldn’t help but kept peeping at her.

  After a long hour’s waiting, it was finally my turn. At that time my bladder was so swollen that it was hurting a lot, and I wasn’t thinking of glamorous photo-shooting any more. All I could think about was not peeing the bed. There were two young female doctors in the scan room, one in charge of scanning and the other in charge of keying in. The scanning one asked if I wanted to go to the loo. I said very badly. She said ok, lie down then.

  When she started pressing my lower abdomen I started to worry about Kima. Because I’m uncultured and my brain was filled with pee, I was worried that Kima would be drowned in me, or be squeezed to death by the scanner. As I was panicking, she asked, “you pregnant?”

  I calmed down at once. Oh, good, even the scan shows it then I’m definitely pregnant. I said, “yes, I think so. I tested it at home and I came here to confirm it.”

  “When was your last period?” She was emotionless, and she looked exhausted – maybe due to seeing too many foetuses on the screen.

  “22nd August.” The key-in doctor started typing. I thought, eh? Shouldn’t you find it out yourself by scanning my baby?

  “So do you want the baby?” She asked, casually.

  My heart sank and froze. Was that a common question to ask? How many mothers-to-be decide to give up their babies in this room every day?! Or is Kima not good? What happened?!

  “Yes,” I said, firmly and cautiously, and waited and waited for her reply.

  She didn’t. All she did was keeping pressing my uterus with the scanner and read out loud the data for the doctor next to her to key-in.

  I thought, ok, there is data. At least that means my baby is still alive.

  “Your baby is too small. I cannot see the embryo or hear the heart-beat yet,” she said coldly, “ok, you can get up.”

  She gave me a printed report. That was the first time I saw my Kima. All of a sudden the discontent and fright disappeared. Our first baby, a baby who was too small to be seen yet, was forever printed on this piece of paper.

  On the way back to the office I kept my hand on where Kima was. I couldn’t feel anything physically yet, but I felt new. The embryo was growing in me strongly, quietly and speedily; this was God’s blessing. I felt powerful and I felt I could overcome anything for it – like all mothers.

  Ben rushed to my office after work to see the scan. I said you can’t see Kima yet you can only see its house. He still looked pleasantly surprised and said wow Kima would be living there for the next 8 months! I said you finally believe we’re gonna have a baby don’t you? He said yeah totally. I said is it because of the scan? He said no, because I saw the brand PHILIPS on the scan…

♥The Flashback Corner♥

When Ben came back from Guangzhou I also gave him a new-year card as a thank-you gift. At that time I was helping him and his coursemates with their Chinese mid-term exams, so we spent more time together. One evening our group was eating dinner at the PizzaExpress opposite to uni. I ordered some spaghetti but couldn’t finish it. Ben was sitting next to me. He asked if I still wanted it. I said no I’m too full. He said I can help you if you want. I said do you not mind my DNA? He said if it was your DNA I wouldn’t. I thought, what a nice boy! Not racist at all!

  Ben’s version: Flirting and scrounging food at the same time, typical English uni student behaviour! Got some nice spaghetti, but the flirting didn’t really hit home at that point.

PizzaExpress from Google Maps

“Typical English uni student behaviour” – photo by Miss Anita McMahon

Names & a Trip to the Hospital!

I thought I forgot to mention something in my last entry. I know that scientifically and medically speaking, my memory is inevitably affected by the pregnancy, but I’m trying not to let it do too much ‘damage’.

  Maybe many of you have already guessed from the title of the last entry that we’ve decided to nickname our baby Kima, but I forgot to explain why. Here’s the etymology. My favourite flower is camellia, and that’s also a girl’s name, so I’ve always wanted to name my daughter (if there will be one, you can never know for sure by the look of the recent Carter genes) Camellia. Ben has no objection to that, so Camellia (in short, Kimi) for a girl it is. As for a boy (if there will be one), Ben and I both like the name Matthew very much, so Matthew for a boy it is. Since we don’t know the sex of the baby yet, and it is illegal for the scan doctors to tell the parents-to-be the result (if you’re interested to know the reason why, look it up), we combined the two names. We are left with the options of Maki and Kima, and Ben said Kima is better, because then I can be Kimama; he can be Kimapa.

  We (or I) are parents-to-be who think way ahead of things. Before I got pregnant (ok, before we got married) we have started to think about and finalise our children’s names. I have always wanted Ben’s eldest younger brother John-Joseph to be the Godfather (from the English side) of our first-born, so we have decided to middle-name our eldest son Joseph. We also want a second middle name – I learnt that English people can have as many as they want –, something exotic for his/her colourful bloodline, and I’m not an expert in non-Chinese names, so Ben was left to do the creative work. He wants to use Ulysses, the Romanised name of the hero, Odysseus, who came up with the Trojan plan. Therefore our first son’s full English name is 99% decided, a syllabic and rhythmic Matthew Joseph Ulysses Carter.

  However, we are still stuck on our girl’s name. Ben is from a Catholic family and it’s best for our children to have Saints’ names. Matthew is but Camellia isn’t, so we need at least one Saint’s name to put in her middle names. Ben’s mother’s name is Nicola, which is a Saint’s name and naming the granddaughter after her grandmother is sweet. Therefore we decided to use Nicole to be Camellia’s first middle name. Ben said I could choose the second middle name. My favourite female fictional character is Eponine from Les Misérables, but the character’s fate is too sad. No mother, when naming her daughter, is thinking of letting her die for somebody who doesn’t love her. If I choose a name to match with Ulysses, I need to choose from all the Greek/Roman Goddesses. My mother-in-law kindly read out loud all their names for me and I liked the sound of Persephone. When finding out she was actually Hades’ bride and had children not with her husband but with her father, Zeus, I got put off. My favourite Goddess, the Goddess of Hope, Elpis, sounds anything but appealing to me, so we are still stuck – well, at least I’ve got something to occupy my mind during labour.

  Oh, by the way, we (ok, it’s me again) want 7 children, 5 biological and 2 adopted. My dream order is this: a boy first, then twin boys, then twin boy and girl, the youngest being a girl. When our children are old enough and we have won a lottery of several million pounds, I would like to adopt a boy and a girl with slight disability from China, because children like them usually end up in an orphanage rather than being adopted by other parents. Of course, this is only a dream, and sometimes it’s healthy to have lovely day-dreams. However, it doesn’t mean that I want a son this time; it really doesn’t matter. Whatever God gives is the best.

I should have posted them before, the future baby (2 boys & 2 girls) pictures I did with MorphThing. Ben finds them very scary.

It’s better with our real baby pictures.

  I have written so much about names that I nearly forgot to write what happened on the morning of 9th October. I woke up at 6am on the dot – something which hadn’t happened for a long time, and rushed into the bathroom. I was very, very anxious. I still remember how I witnessed the two bars appear little by little. I was 90% sure that was it, so I woke Ben up and told him the double-confirmation.

  After a night’s sleep, Ben wasn’t as calm as the night before; he started to become serious about it. We had to decide if we should go to the hospital or let our parents know first. At that time I was preparing to apply for a visa to go back to England, and we didn’t know if pregnancy would affect the application. We had already bought the tickets (14th to 28th December) and going back for Christmas every year has always been our plan. If I was really pregnant, would the long flight and jet-lag affect the foetus which might only be 3 months old? We first checked the visa application regulations and found that I didn’t have to tell the immigration officer that I was pregnant (it didn’t seem practical anyway), so we decided to go to the hospital at the weekend first and then tell our parents.

  We have a lot of nice young mums in our office and I find myself very lucky. I asked two colleagues at lunch for their advice; they were very happy for me. They said I didn’t have to wait till the weekend. There was a nearby hospital and I could go have a check-up during the lunch break. I didn’t think it was that easy, so I asked Ben’s advice and walked to the hospital, panicking.

  There were a lot of people at the gynaecology department of the hospital that day and I queued for nearly an hour. I don’t play games on my phone and I didn’t have a book with me, so I spent most of the hour panicking. I told the doctor that I thought I was pregnant. She asked me for some basic information (if I was married and if I’d already had children) and my last period date. I record all my cycles so I remembered it very clearly; I didn’t realise it was 50 days ago… She said if the stick showed the pregnancy twice and I already felt sick and missed my period for so long, it looked very likely that I was actually pregnant. She suggested I do a blood test.

Blood test report with hCG at 41647.00 mIU/ml

  Holding solid medical proof in my hand, I rang Ben up, “it’s medically confirmed. We’re gonna have a baby. You’ll see its first scan tomorrow!”

  Although I was a lot calmer than I thought, my eyes were still welling up. Finally, after 13 years of waiting (I have wanted to have a child since I was 14), I’m going to be a mother.

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♥The Flashback Corner♥

I was embarrassed to find that the two “Flashback Corners” from the last two entries were the same… It looks like I really have to take DHA-related stuff… This time I’m going to write about how we started to like each other. Actually we liked each other the first time we met, but because we were in the same friend group and he was one year my senior, plus we lived very far away from each other, we didn’t spend much time alone. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend at that time because I’d decided to go back to China after I finished my degree, and having a relationship in England wouldn’t make much sense. Maybe because of that I was very relaxed in making friends and showed my true character, which attracted him (as he told me later). We met in September and soon it was December. I knew he was going to China with his Wushu class (which was also a reason for me to like him) that Christmas holiday and would leave before term ended, so I went to say goodbye to him. We still met up in the dining/study area. He was very happy to see me and gave me a Christmas card, but he told me not to open it in front of him. It was still early December and I didn’t think he would give me a present so I was unprepared. I was very embarrassed. On the train back home I opened the card. He wrote “Happy Christmas” very neatly in pencil in Chinese. It was obvious that he made a lot of effort but he still got some strokes slightly wrong. It was very cute and sweet. That was the first present a foreigner gave me carefully using my mother-tongue; I burst into tears.

Ben’s version: Once upon a time I gave a girl a Christmas card and she cried, nice.

Baby Kima on the way!

Even I cannot stand not updating my blog any more. I’m afraid if I don’t start doing it now I’ll end up spending the rest of my life regretting it (and Ben has already started making fun about the obvious setback in my English, sometimes correcting my Chinese at the same time).

  Following the topic from 3rd August two years ago (if you are interested please click here), Ben and I were buzzing with the preparation of our wedding in England. Then we smoothly got married on 28th December! It feels like ages ago now, but that was definitely the happiest day of our lives. Straight after the wedding we flew back to Shanghai to start preparing for our Chinese wedding which was on 11th February last year. Again there was a lot of stress and sleepless nights, but the outcome was more than satisfactory.

  For a person with an ordering obsession (putting things in order), I have found that the problem with having so many great photographers at weddings is that I want to go through all the hundreds of pictures to choose the best ones, rename and comment on them then share them. Also I’m quite lazy, so this big project is still ongoing…

  As a result the videographers became invaluable to me in terms of sharing the best moments of the weddings. We had Peartree Pictures in England and Shanghai My Young in China, both provided high quality and wonderful service. I highly recommend them. Through their effort we are very lucky to have 2 very different but equally sweet wedding videos: UK wedding highlights / UK wedding full (password Carter2812), China wedding highlights / China wedding full (password Zhang0211). You can also find some pictures in my Facebook albums (UK/China).

  We’ve found that married life really suits us. Our relationship has stayed as fresh as ever and there have hardly been any changes; if there have, they are for the better, thanks to the marriage preparation course we had. We understand each other more and more and quarrel less and less. We decided to wait a year to have children because we wanted to experience the four seasons first, just the two of us. Also we don’t believe in the Chinese Zodiac or the Western Horoscope, so we wanted to try for a baby in summer 2014, hoping for a more comfortable birth the next spring.

  Catholics cannot use physical or chemical contraception, so we did natural family planning. I had recorded my menstrual cycles for 6 months before the wedding. If the records are done correctly, natural planning does work 97% of the time. More than 10 months passed. During the last days of the golden week of the Chinese National holiday, I started to feel sick. At first I thought it was just because of the irregular diet I had during the holidays, and I didn’t even pay attention to the lateness of my period (which wasn’t news to me anyway). On the morning of 8th October I woke up feeling like throwing up, and the night before I didn’t sleep well at all. Still I thought it might just be a body-clock problem. When the symptoms lasted until the evening, I started to feel something was odd, so I peed on a stick.

  That wasn’t the first time I peed on a stick, and I came “clean” all the previous times, so I didn’t really care and wasn’t nervous at all. When I clearly saw the double bars on the tube, I started boiling. With heart beating fast and hands trembling, I shouted out to Ben to come into the bathroom to see the miracle.

  I said Ben, Ben I’m pregnant!!! The shock on his face lasted about 2 seconds, and then he looked at the stick and asked, “how much did you pay for this?” “About £1.50.” “Oh, it might be wrong.” “Shall I do it again tomorrow morning?” “Ok, now go to sleep and stop thinking about it.”

  How could I fall asleep?! Ben was unbelievably calm and started snoring within 2 minutes. I knew he wasn’t pretending not to care. There had been several false alarms which already made me a bit paranoid. We did things according to my cycle and I had signs of another period 2 weeks ago, so it was unlikely for me to get pregnant. However, I’d never experienced such sickness before. Anyway I couldn’t fall asleep until 2am.

Ben’s version: Wow, this is sudden. I haven’t written anything here in quite a while. Everything’s more or less as Miki tells it. Weddings are great fun wherever you hold them; honeymoon periods are romantic and very enjoyable and pregnancy scares are… scary. Well, I got over the scare quickly enough by rationalising that cheap Chinese made pregnancy sticks won’t necessarily be accurate but since then I’ve had to eat my words somewhat.

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♥The Flashback Corner♥

How did we become friends? The second time I saw Ben he was doing Chinese homework in the study area alone. I walked up to him and started chatting. I found him very hard-working and shy, despite his long hair. I like hard-working people. English people didn’t give me an impression of hard-working but this boy was different (I already knew he was 2 years younger than me). I started to think, oh, it would be nice to have a son like him.

Ben’s version: Hard-working?? First impressions can be ever so misleading! And ‘shy’ is not the word I’d use; ‘disinterested’ is better. I was in uni with a sole aim of learning Chinese and getting out of there. I was rather distracted by the lovely girl from Shanghai who came and helped me with my homework, though.