Purposive without Foresight

About four weeks ago, I was cleaning up old stuff in the closet in our bathroom and wondered what to do with an expired ClearBlue pregnancy tester. Should I simply throw it away or make a test just for fun. I went for the fun choice and the result was a very strong positive.

We did not really expect it. I was really thrilled and at the same time scared. Both Dirk and I love kids, however I’ve seen many horror-like scenes of baby delivery from TV or films, delivering a baby is painful, I was not sure whether I could really manage it. Many might want to laugh at me the wimp but it was really the first fear I had after I saw the positive result. Then came all kinds of other concerns: Worrying about a miscarriage since one week before the test, I sat in a train where all the others were smoking ( Smoking is forbidden in German trains, but there are always bold people who do not care about any rules. It was a weekend, all the people smoking in the train were football fans going to watch a football match in Hannover. ). They were all muscle-ful men and some of them were already drunk, I did not dare to complain and second-hand smoked for 40 minutes; I ate fishes and meat that were not 100% cooked during the week before the test; I did not take any folic acid pills like many other women who were expecting babies do….These were really small things and I’m basically not a fastidious person, but I was really concerned because of these small things. Then, there’s a lot to do in my company this year, I feel really bad if I cannot help out as much as I can….Well, really a lot of worries.

Dirk was very happy about the positive result. He said he’s old enough to be a father.

Since the ClearBlue tester was an expired one, I bought two testers from other manufacturers just to make sure. Got two further positive results in the following days. But I was still not so sure at that time, because I did not have anything like morning sickness, headache, implanting bleeding, belly cramp, etc., just felt more tired than usual. Diseases such as breast cancer can also lead to positive results on those pregnancy testers. So I also thought maybe I had some sort of cancer. Before I had a sure message from a doctor, I did not dare to tell it to my managers. I went to a doctor near my office and asked for a check. The receptionist asked about the date of my last period and refused to check me. The reason was, it was too early, the baby was so small that the ultrasonic machine could see nothing if I did a check immediately. She gave me a schedule in 4 weeks. I said I felt really strange and scared for that I did not have any sickness. She said: “You’d better feel happy about that!”

In the next weeks, there was a user conference in my company, I attended many sessions and took a lot of photos during the conference. One of the photos was sent to press and got published together with the news of our user conference. Still, I just feel easily get tired but nothing bad happened. Actually I took a lot of photos during the weekend trip to Hannover, but in the evening, I could no longer manage to process them and upload them to my gallery ( About 50 of the 100+ photos I took are presentable. But will need time to process and upload them. ). All the photos I took in the user conference were submitted to our Miss Marketing without any processing, I was too tired to retouch them in the evening.

The week after the user conference, I started to feel really bad sometimes. I’m allergic to pollen, had my nose and eyes pumping out liquid during the early spring time in the past years. This year, it is particularly bad. I sneezed loudly every other second in the office, I guess that must have disturbed my colleagues. And, the feeling of pregnancy chimed in. I had very strong nausea in late afternoon and evening, after the work. I don’t have it everyday, but when I ate too little or too much lunch, the evening sickness would attach for sure. Have never throw up yet, but sometimes the nausea was so bad that I wish I could throw up in the bathroom. The worst time I had was, my nose running like a waterfall in the evening and at the same time, I had strong nausea. Couldn’t sleep well in nights like these, and could not work efficiently the day after.

I’m craving for watermelon and the food that I was fed with during my childhood. Like mid-size sea crabs, small fresh sea fishes steamed with salt ( qing1 zhen1 xiao3 mei2 yu2), small dried sea shrimps ( xiao3 kai1 yang2 ) in a soup, etc. Oh I wanted those stuff so much. If I live in Hamburg, it might not be too difficult to find similar food but here in Hildesheim and Hannover, I was so dismayed that there’s no where to buy crabs, and the dried sea shrimps selling in the Asia stores are not of good quality. I went to restaurant and asked for fish, but sigh, the local cooks are not aware of the art of steaming and the fishes here are simply too big and they chew like wood even when steamed. At least there are still very good Tofu and Shanghai cabbages ( Shanghai xiao3 bai2 cai4 ) available in the Asia stores here, I bought them and made soups with them in the evening, that really calmed my stomach in the evening. With these symptoms, I was surer and surer that I am actually pregnant, but not having a cancer.

On April. 9th, Dirk’s doctor student Yannick was having his defense and we drove to Eindhoven. I drove the way From Hildesheim to Venlo. It was a very nice day and there were many cars in the express way A7 and A2. I don’t like driving fast but often had to because the cars around us were all crazily fast, it just scared me seeing from the mirror how rapidly the cars behind approaching our car. After three hours’ driving at 150 km/h most of the time, I was totally exhausted. Dirk took over the job from Venlo to Eindhoven and drove all the way back to Hildesheim via Bundesstrasse ( People on express ways are driving too fast for us, and I hope that one day there will be speed limit in German express ways ).

After the Easter Holiday, I could finally visit the doctor. Dirk could not wait to see his own child so he came with me to Hannover. We saw the fast heart beating of the little child on the screen! The doctor told me it was 2cm long. We were both thrilled. Next check will be in three weeks. I just hope everything is normal with our child.

I started to feel tired even during the day. How I wanted to take a nap in the afternoon. The doctor said the tiredness will usually go in 3 or 4 weeks. I really hope so! Drools 5.0 GA is coming out, the project lead Mark Proctor has been asking me to touch up the css and images for the user manual. I said “I’ll do it in the evening” again and again but never managed it. Usually went straight ahead to the bed after I arrived home from the work. I’m so sorry the Drools community! Hopefully in several weeks I am able to do something in the evenings again!

Dirk has been doing everything he could to support me. He’s doing most of the household chores; He did shopping alone when I was suffering from pollen allergy or simply felt too tired; He served breakfast in the bedroom during the weekends; He tried his best to cheer me up when I felt terrible during the evening, played simple games with me so the nausea feeling wouldn’t occupy the whole of my mind; He bought papa handbooks and started to study. I am really lucky to have Dirk as husband and our child is really lucky to have Dirk as papa!

Tags: life