My windfall

My windfall
A superstitious belief?
In my last company, I had several good friends, one of whom is the legendary Kak Ina. She is a very experienced editor who has several books and a dictionary on her name. Her outlook in life is very refreshing and she was the one who told me about this Malay belief of having many children.

According to her, God will provide the means for the parents to provide for the children they have. Hence, many pregnant ladies and their husbands will experience windfalls or opportunities in the form of promotions, business ventures… even winning lottery tickets (for non-Muslims) an opinion echoed by the husband of my sister in law, an avid lottery ticket buyer.

Monetary gains
When my sister in law was pregnant with her firstborn, he hit the jackpot (excuse the pun) with a lottery ticket. The money he won, he invested in an insurance policy/mutual fund for his son, a new sofa set, and in clearing some credit card debts incurred during the impending arrival of his son. My sister in law is currently pregnant with their second child.

You can be sure he never miss any of the three draws every week.

Before:
My windfall came in the form of an understanding husband.

No, he wasn’t always an understanding husband. He is too dedicated to his work, which is something I resent but had to unwillingly surrender to since one, he is not loaded and two, I am not loaded.

He would work until late nights, over the weekends, have random calls coming in from his bosses, colleagues or from his clients, when we were having breakfast, supper, lunch, dinner, high tea, 24/7/365. He made Technical Manager in a year but his job scope was no different than a normal Software Engineer. The promotion came before I got pregnant, about the same time the fights began.

Honey, there's something you need to know
His response to my being pregnant news was shockingly funny (if there is such a reaction in this world). There was shock and he did look funny; with the confusion smeared across his face as if he couldn’t understand how this could happen even though we had been married for more than a year.

Bad times ahead
Anyways, back to the point of my story. It wasn’t until news of the recession hit the world and South East Asia… and the fact that his company wasn’t doing so well that I felt the start of the transformation that was to envelope him and our relationship in the ensuing few months. The transformation was completed a few weeks before Chinese New Year.

A promise
He told me he would be quitting his job and would settle down as a freelancer to spend more time with me during my pregnancy. He would play a more active role as a husband and a father and will be more hands-on, although he made me promise I will not make him change the diapers after the baby poo-poo.

This is a huge change, one that I greatly appreciated because before this he couldn’t (and didn’t have the time to) understand the problems pregnant women face during the beginning of a pregnancy. He couldn’t be bothered to understand how dependent I became of him, how important it was that he was with me whenever I went to the clinic for a check-up on the baby, how easily tired I can become even when I just woke up, how emotionally unstable I was (from merely 3 days a month to a full 90-day trimester PMS mode) and the nausea episodes that I had every single day for the first 4 months. I became a hassle, and he was not shy about informing me about that.

Transformation from a son to a father
The first moment I felt a change in him was when he told me how much he appreciated and for the first time understood the pressure of responsibility that his dad must have felt when he first became a father. To which I replied “Your mother played a small role too you know? I mean 9 months of torture is no big deal but I think she deserves a little recognition for her part.”

The second was when he told me how sad he would feel if his grownup son or daughter was reluctant in returning home. This was after my sister in law encountered a fortune teller who foretold that her son is one who will be away from home a lot, probably working as a pilot or someone who travels much. My husband placed the same scenario into his own life and felt that the outcome would break his heart. This, coming from a person who rarely goes home even when he was studying in college, a point which I conveniently reminded him.

“It’s different now.” It’s as if he grew up overnight.

I'm becoming a father
Nowadays, even though he is working from home, he wakes up earlier than I do to make breakfast for me. He sometimes cook dinner for two (three, if you count Eva). In the middle of nights, he wakes up every time I need to go to the toilet just to make sure I don’t slip in the dark, and whenever I get leg cramps to help me straighten my affected leg.

He waits for me every step of the way in my daily 3 floors of steps, up, and down the flat we stay in, and physically makes preparations for the baby: the cot, the containers for the clothing and baby items while I supervise.

Work-wise, he has been looking up business ventures, seminars on start-ups, online opportunities, freelance projects and even attending plenty of interviews (and turning down several that may cause him to revert to how he was before). I know the pressure he is experiencing, despite the tough outlook he puts on his ‘mask’ every day.

I offer him support, encouragement, motivation, pull-me-back-down-to-earths; he gives me promises of a better future for our daughter. Because that is how a marriage should be.

We talk more nowadays.

We plan things together.

I can honestly say we are going through the pregnancy together.

And something tells me that apart from being my windfall, he is going to be a great father.