i’ve been on a month-long hiatus from running but today i restarted my engine to prepare for the upcoming realrun competition. i must admit, for the month of ramadan, i didn’t really train, but today’s warm-up session was rather encouraging. did a 30 mins slow jog around pasir ris and tampines. although the distance covered was just 4.8km, i felt quite refreshed after the run.

this will be the first time that i’m taking part in the realrun. what is so different from the usual run is that you get to run on the road, the beach, a mini forest and get this, the RUNWAY!! how often do you get to run on the changi airport runway? anyway, i’m kinda short on training time as the run is this saturday. but luckily i’m just taking part in the 10km run rather than the ambitious 15km. i guess, i’m just gonna enjoy the scenery and not worry too much about my timing.

btw, anyone out there taking part in the competition? maybe we can pace each other, don’t worry i won’t outpace you guys, me just gonna plug in my ipod and enjoy the run

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i realise i don’t have as much updates or interesting thoughts this time round as i did as a first-timer.

oh, i forgot to mention that kak maya *guessed* that the shape looks like it’ll be a girl. coz it’s spread around the waist this time, where it used to be ultra-pointy the last time, like a bullet.

we’ll only find out some time next month or december, i guess.

anyway, i think things are progressing much faster than it did the last time too, or perhaps i have a keener awareness of my body after going through this before. i know we technically get braxton-hicks from as early as six weeks, but we don’t really feel it till the third trimester, usually. i *think* i can already feel it now, at, errr…. 16 weeks? (great, i even lost track of how far along this pregnancy is.)

my stomach is, of course, much bigger than it was the last time around the same period, but i think it’s just mostly distended due to air, not so much the womb, which kak maya ‘showed’ me when she massaged me.

one of our relatives is having her third child around the same time as me. her second was born the same year as aniq, but about eight months earlier.

she didn’t initially want this third baby, coz she wasn’t ready for it. it’s not easy looking after two super active boys all alone at home all day, so i empathise with her. furthermore, she had plans to take up driving and other lessons, and with another arrival, she’d have to shelve them all away yet again. she meant to have it aborted, but after being referred to a psychiatrist (apparently, you get this when you go to the polyclinic) and being shown abortion pictures, she discussed with the husband and decided to keep the baby. and who knows, it could be that much-coveted girl for the family…

i’m not sure if i have such strength to go through all that, being unprepared for another child and intending to have it removed. i used to be pro-choice when i was in JC, believe it or not, during those GP debates we’d have in class. it’s crazy and i was quite likely insufficiently informed, but as time went by and i understood the mental, and of course, religious implications, i changed my stance to pro-life. like, duh. there’s no two ways about it, unless the mother or baby’s life is at stake.

so anyway, i’m sure she’ll look back and give a huge sigh of relief that she’d kept the baby after all. there are all kinds of possibilities that we’re unaware of in an unborn child’s future, and there’s more often than not a pretty good reason why God has made a mother’s heart move to make the decision to keep an unplanned child.

speaking of possibilities, i think many of us have read about dr j’s wife whose family has a total of six doctors (three siblings married to other doctors). masyaallah, how blessed the proud parents are. to have raised one successful child is a great undertaking as it is, but that many… must be really, really hard work. (of course, good genes helps too, heh.)

i don’t know where my little ones’ paths will lead to eventually, but i wish for them to always be happy and great at whatever they do.

amin.

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we’d just wasted three hours of our lives this morning, waiting… and waiting… and, yes, waiting…

usually, if it’s just me, i’d make a quick visit to the 24-hour private clinic nearby, which invariably has either one or even zero patient before me pre-lunchtime hour, so it’s always a painless five-minute quickie with the doctor on duty.

but today, both of us were down with the sniffles, and he *insisted* we go to the nearby polyclinic together since it’s, well, free. :S

hokaaay, i thought. well, technically, i couldn’t really think, seeing how i was suffering a blocked nose and ear and violently sneezing my eyes out.

we made it out of the door by 8.45am, and arrived just before 9am, BUT! a throng of people, sick or otherwise (it WAS a rainy, monday morning after all) had already made their way into the clinic and more were lined outside.

i was reminded again why i urghh-so-hate public healthcare, and if only it weren’t freaking free (for persons like the husband and myself), i’d never step into this waiting-room ‘hell’. :S

after registration, we took our time for a prata breakfast, toiletries shopping, and returned to find that it STILL wasn’t our turn. i’d even perfected my game of miniature golf on my mobile by the time #2284 blinked above the consultation room door.

so much for the real-time webcam queue watch to supposedly help people find out how many are waiting in line in these polyclinics.

and the information on the website is REAAAALLY useful too.

eg. “When are the Polyclinics less crowded?”

“We encourage you to avoid visiting polyclinics during peak periods (red zones) in order to minimize your overall visit time.”

and it proceeds to display a chart with the ENTIRE monday, from 8am to 4.15pm, highlighted in, you guessed it, RED. hah!

mondays or otherwise, if you gotta go, you gotta go, right? and you do it in the morning to get it over and done with, so you can have the rest of the day to recover. and i sure wouldn’t wanna travel all the way to the other side of the island just because it’s half as crowded there. (besides, wouldn’t your employers be ‘suspicious’ if you do that?)

so, the moral is, go to work on mondays, even though you’re almost dying, coz chances are, you’ll die waiting in the queues at the polyclinics anyway.

ps: and for all my ‘effort’ and unrelenting ‘patience’, the doctor gave me, no – OFFERED me two days of mc, thanks to my swollen nasal passage and other ‘ailments’. thank you, doctor! it was well worth the $8.70 consultation fee (as printed on my invoice, of which i was to pay a total of $0) that the gahmen is paying you.

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