Reminiscing Part II

Year 3 2006
This year was a massive year for me. Lots of new experiences.

First of all, hubby and I moved into our first rental house together. It took a month or so to finally find a house. It was a one bedroom unit that was like a cave even in summer. It was freezing to go to the toilet. Lots of mishaps happened; like our unit was flooded when the washing machine's outlet pipe overflowed. The water seeped until next door! Our hot water boiler rosak and it took a month or so for the estate agent to finally send someone to fix it so we had to wash dishes and takes showers with cold water. Sejuk giler! Funny to think of it now.

We lived in semi-poverty and had to calculate every dollar spent. 80% of our money went to the rent. We only used chicken wings for lauk because that was the cheapest meat. Hehehehe.

We didn't have any proper honeymoon really. But we did go on our first holiday together at Mount Buller in the middle of the year. Hehe. Yeah, it took us that long to save up $200 for the day trip. It was great fun. Lots of excuses for hugs when it's cold!


Semester 5 was the last semester of pre-clinical years i.e last semester at the Uni campus. It was the best semester out of all the pre-clinical ones. Simply because it was well-organised and because my PBL group was amazing! Everyone in the group was awesome and nice including the tutor. We loved our tutor!
We learnt Microbiology in this sem; loved memorising the bugs and antibiotics names (not that I remember much of them anymore!)

I was pregnant with Layth this year. Alhamdulillah I did not have any of the morning sickness. I just had worse back pain and sciatica, reflux, cravings for McD fries and aversion to rice. I put on 20kg but my tummy did not look that big (see photo left). Even when I was 8 months' pregnant some of my colleagues didn't notice that I was pregnant.

Ultrasound in the third trimester showed a low amniotic fluid index so they thought Layth-foetus was growth-restricted. Had to see the specialist who said it was probably just a statistical thing, us being Asians using a Western reference range, of course we would be 'smaller'. My mom said we siblings didn't weigh that much at birth either. Mak said "Baik berat kat luar, daripada berat kat dalam".

I did the first part of my research year this year too..oddly enough in Perinatal Medicine at the Women's (where I delivered Layth too!). It was cool. Learnt the O&G lingo, history and examination (which helped me a lot late on when we had our O&G rotation) and did some fancy laboratory work like RNA extraction, DNA extraction, electrophoresis and Western blot. That made me realise what a farce the CSI shows were :p

Oh yes, because we were in semi-poverty, I had to look for a part time job because my research year was kind of part time too. I got a job as a medical transcriber. It was great fun to earn my own money and it did help us a lot because we had enough money to move out of the small unit into a 2 bedroom house in preparation for Layth's arrival. However I had to stop working because I was extremely tired (3rd trimester + increasing demands to get my lab work done before delivering).

I had a fall in the lab and then had some contractions so I was admitted to the hospital for 4 days. Boring macam apa. Luckily hubby kept me company and brought movies to watch and my friend Sue came to visit me and brought magazines. All my other friends were back in Malaysia at the time for summer hols.

My mother and little sister came that summer to help with the pantang period. They were here two weeks before Layth was born.

Layth was born 21 Dec at 5.30pm, NVD + episiotomy. He didn't weigh that much hee hee. He was a bit drowsy for the first two days because I had been given Pethidine during the labour.

We named him Layth on the 3rd day, after the prominent scholar al-Layth ibn Sa'ad.

I stayed in hospital for 3 days and then we went home!
Then I never had a good night's sleep until the next 2 years =p