Last Friday night, I was crying in the car as we headed home from the 24-hour clinic because the doctor didn’t have a doptone machine to read my baby’s heartbeat. Apparently, a stethoscope is not adequate to read heartbeats through all the amniotic fluids. The doc might have sensed my impending breakdown because he waived the charge on our consult.

This morning, we made an emergency visit to the gynae even though our next appointment is just a week away because I was still worried all weekend about not feeling any baby kicks. The gynae cut short my apologetic ramblings by telling me that it’s normal to be worried and that she has mothers who come by almost everyday. My weight gain of 3kg in five weeks was also a good sign since I didn’t put on any weight in the first 15 weeks. I definitely felt much better with just those words alone because it meant I wasn’t the only crazy new mother in town.

We proceeded to the ultrasound room and about two seconds into hearing his heartbeat, I felt tears sneaking out of the corner of my eyes. I dabbed quietly at my eyes (careful to keep the eyeliner from running because I certainly didn’t want to look as crazy as I felt). In the meantime, the gynae kept on talking as she showed us his perfect spine, the waist, the head, the side profile, the fingers and toes (one, two, three, four, five!), and the boy parts when Wen asked if we “still” had a boy.

The gynae speculated that the baby may be kicking my bladder (which I’d suspected given the increased need to pee) and that the I probably couldn’t feel his kicks because (a) he had to kick through a layer of placenta in addition to my belly fats, and (b) when he did the occasional kick, I probably didn’t know what it was.

Bottom-line, the hormones were having a party in my head and I should probably start watching some Korean drama to get the tears out of my system.