Everything is still fine except...

Went for my X times of gynae checkup on Sat (23rd Feb). I am already week18.5. How times flies, but I hope it can be faster!

Gynae scanned through and said the little things are growing well. They had grown much bigger now with a length of about 13cm. 2nd trimster had been pretty good for me with no more nausea or vomitting. However my immune system seems to be bad as I had a bad flu right after 2nd day of CNY and it took 1 whole week to recover. That's because I refrained from taking any medicine as everyone says if fall sick during pregnancy, best is to let the body build up its own anti-biotic to fight the virus. This will enable a stronger immune system for both the mother and baby. Indeed, the flu auto recover after 1week which I'm glad I had successfully fight the virus.

Next visit will be the detailed scan and by then, I will be around 21.5weeks. As Hui was not convinced of what the gynae scanned and said about the gender (probably also because that day the screen was quite blur) during the visit, I would reveal the gender after the detailed scan. :)

Everything regarding the pregnancy is still in good shape except...

MY JOB!
I had break the news to my local (Singapore) manager and US team lead that I am pregnant. However, the work assigned to me did not get any lesser, infact it got more! As I'm currently involved in 2 projects now which are running concurrently, the dateline of the solution design that I had to come up with is very tight. Just when I had finish some and thought I could relax abit, I saw another requirement was assigned to me again!

As Singapore is the global resources to the US, most of the knowledge still holds by them. Therefore in order to find out more about my requirement and how to do it, I had to stay up at night to sametime them or arrange conference call which always can only start after 9pm SG time. My team members mostly resides in US or Germany and in order to arrange a call with them and had to accomodate to 3 different time zone, my night is the best time.

For the past 2 weeks, I had conference calls for the 5 consecutive days from Monday to Friday and had to work till wee hours. Sometimes within a night, I can have 2 to 3 calls right after the other! So you can imagine if each call last for at least 1 hour and usually it can only start at 9pm (That is US 8am) or sometimes later, by the time I finished all calls, what time is it already in Singapore??

After putting down the call, I still need to continue working so that all those discussion during the call are still fresh in my mind. If I head to bed straight away and start working the next day, I knew I would miss out some important details as my memory seems to deteriorate during this pregnancy.

If staying up late could help to solve my issues, I would still think it's worth it BUT NO! That's not the case! I can talk and talk for 3hours and not come to any conclusion because even the experts in my team couldnt answer my questions as well! So I'm back to square one going round in circles contacting all over the world for the right answer but in the end, the last answer I got was: "You can try XXXX, she is the expert in this area". And you know what, this XXX is the person in my team whom I had talk to for 3 hours but couldnt come up with a solution! So it's obvious I am still turning round and round in a ring!

I tried my last resort, that is to email my Team lead for help. Not only did he read my mail (I put return receipt) and didnt reply, the only mails he sent out to the team are mails that keep pushing us for the work and remind us constantly that dateline is near! I sent him a calender invite to join a call to discuss a requirement and he did not click Accept or Decline. When the call was over, I received a mail saying he accepted that call. When I emailed him saying that call was already over, thinking he might had saw the date wrongly, he replied saying: "I know, I just don't like to reject a call even though the call is already over". WA BIANG!

I went back to office on Thursday and many colleagues who saw me said I look pale and tired. I think that's probably also because I just recovered from a bad sorethroat and headache. Again no medicine was taken as I let it heal itself.

Many advised me not to work so late or be too stress as it will affect the baby and my health. A male colleague even told me his experience with his wife when she was pregnant and due to overstress at work and the hectic working hours, it causes some complication with risk of premature and low amniotic fluid.

Probably the nature of my job scope for this newly built department in Singapore (only set up last year) really wasn't suitable for a pregnant woman to work in. Or probably I was just the unlucky one to be assign to this US team which always had the most work to do because this system that I'm involved with always had a share in most of the world wide initiated projects.

If I am not pregnant, I would probably not care so much and just fight till the end. But since now that's not the case, I wouldnt want to risk the little things in my tummy over my career-minded thinking. I wanted my babies to be really healthy and come to this world safe and sound. I heard the baby will follow what the mother feels during the pregnancy. If the mother is always happy during the pregnancy, the baby come out will be very cheerful and active. If the mother is always stress, the baby will always frown and crying. I definitely want my child to be happy always!

I only have 3 choice:
1) Continue in this way until my 3rd Trimster or something really happen then ask gynae for mc to bedrest me at home so I could escape from the rest of the work.

2) Request to my local manager for a transfer of team (out of the CBS system!) but this subject to what job are there available now which allows me to go on 3mths maternity leave starting July.

3) Throw THE letter.

I would definitely want to keep #3 as my last resort unless I'm really in serious health problem or super high risk of pregnancy complications.

What should I do???
Advise can come in email, MSN, call or simply type your comments in the 'rattles' section or tag it on the tagboard! All advise are mostly welcome.