When prayers are answered

A couple of weeks ago in the post My sister's an alien! I described how Bilaal had been praying every night for a baby brother. Well just as with Sumayah, Bilaal's prayers have once again been answered! I don't know yet if the 'boy' part was granted, but I am very much pregnant. But the surprise and excitement doesn't end there, oh no, in true mumdrum style there is a little twist in this story of mine. So a few days after the post mentioned above, I started to feel that maybe I was pregnant. I hadn't yet missed a period or experienced any nausea, but I was visiting the toilet very regularly during the night and seemed to be hungry all the time. So I took a home pregnancy test. I even bought one of those fancy digital ones that give you an estimate of how long ago you conceived. Eighty bucks is quite a lot of money to spend just to pee on a stick! But there I was nonetheless staring at the flashing screen while Yaasier patiently waits outside the toilet for the result. And there it was...'pregnant-3+'...which meant pregnant 5 weeks along or more. As surprising and completely unplanned and unexpected as this was, we were undoubtedly ecstatic.

For various reasons that I won't go into detail about here, we couldn't use the classic method of working out how far along we were, so we assumed that it couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 weeks. this is what I told the receptionist when I made an appointment with the gynae, so I had to wait a whole week before I my appointment. So Tuesday 20 September I anxiously waited in the doctor's waiting room, nervous that I would have a scan and there would be no heartbeat. I was hoping and praying that this wouldn't be the case, that I would see the tiny little bean with a tiny little blinking area indicating a healthy hearbeat.

Finally lying on the examination table, the doctor palpates my uterus and has this really serious expression on his face and my heart begins to sink. I think he's going to tell me that there isn't anything there. Instead he says in his heavy Paraguayan accent, 'well! there's definately something there!' And then the moment arrives, I look at the ultrasound screen and nearly fall off the table with shock... because there on the screen is not a bean, nor an alien-like figure with a beating heart, but a clearly defined baby with fingers and toes and limbs moving all over the place! Turns out I was pregnant far longer than I realised... 13 weeks and 6 days to be exact! Yes I know what you are thinking, that after 2 kids one would think that I would know when I am pregnant, but I honestly had no suspicion till that week.

So that explained why my clothes were steadily getting too tight and why I was constantly hungry, and why I was so tired during the Ramadaan. I even fasted for the whole month of August without knowing and I just assumed that this was the reason I was so sleepy in the afternoons! Well the nice thing about finding out so late is that I don't have to wait too long before finding out the sex of the baby. At my next visit I will be 18 weeks already and I am definately showing already. I still keep looking at the scan image now and again to prove to myself that I didn't just dream this all up, but it's still strange to think that in only 6 months time we will be welcoming a new member to our family, Inshaallah.