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.

My sister's an alien!

Bilaal is convinced that his sister is an alien! Before we found out we were pregnant with her, Bilaal had been earnestly asking for a baby sister every night in his prayers. But one night he said to his dad, 'when I asked Allah for a sister I didn't think she was gna be like THIS!'. He has since concocted this very creative conspiracy theory that Sumayah is in fact not the real baby. Down the road from where we live is the hospital where she was born. And on the opposite side of the road is one of those old, huge concrete water tanks with the dome roof. According to Bilaal this is in fact a space ship that crashed on that piece of land and is now stuck in the ground. Apparently an alien from the spaceship then took the place of our real baby (I don't know what supposedly happened to our real baby). This, in Bilaal's mind is the only explaination for her being the way she is!

So the other day Bilaal comes to me and asks me if I would mind a boy baby. 'Uh, huh? What do you mean?' was my initial response. So he says to me, 'I mean do you mind having a boy baby, can I ask Allah for a baby boy, 'cos Sumayah is just too strange...'. I was very amused and simply replied, 'my boy what you ask Allah is between you and Allah. It is up to Allah to decide to grant you your duahs (prayers)'.

About three days later and I find him sulking and sighing. When I asked him what the problem was he asks me, 'why's it taking so long? I've been asking Allah every night and every day and still nothing!'. Now how does one respond to that? So I say to him, 'well what do you expect... A baby to suddenly appear at our door in a basket?'. To which he replies, 'well maybe if one night you feel like a cramp in your stomach then it means there's a baby 'cos I think it will be painful when you get the baby'.

No comment.