EDD

During the dating scan (to predict the due date of the baby) today, Dr Ong informed us that the due date will be on 26th July 2014, we thought the date sounds very familiar.  After much thought, we realised that it is the Feast Day of St Joaquim and St Anne (parents of Mother Mary). What a meaningful EDD to remember!

*EDD = Expected Date Of Delivery

St Raphael

[posted by Eileen]

Justin told me that when he was attending the Parish Retreat earlier today, he heard a sermon given by Fr Augustine about St Raphael in the book of Tobit. (Briefly, St Raphael healed Tobit of blindness, he protected and guided Tobit's son named Tobiah on his travels and he delivers Tobiah's wife named Sarah from an evil demon. Tobit, Tobiah and Sarah were beset by trials and difficulties to purify them, but they remained steadfast in their faith during the period of testing, and eventually enjoyed God’s blessings and mercy. All prayed for deliverance and God sent St. Raphael.)

So Justin suggested that we named our child after St Raphael and I was very surprised when I heard this. This was because  1) We always planned to have our boys to have names that start with letter 'J' and girls with letter 'E' ever since we got married.   2) I was praying a few days ago, and during my reflection, I thought about the Theology of the Body course that Justin & I attended some months ago, and Fr David Garcia also spoke about Marriage and also reference to the book of Tobit, so I was also thinking that Raphael will be a beautiful name for our child :)

What a coincidence that both of us were thinking of the same name (it must be God's message to us).
And when we looked up the meaning of the name Raphael, it means 'God Heals'. :-)
So yes, we shall name our child after St Raphael.

It's a Miracle!

[posted by Eileen]

We have been trying to conceive a child since we got married in 2003, but without success. We have seen three gynaecologists over the years and undergone many fertility treatments but to no avail. Then in 2012, our 3rd gynaecologist suggested IVF as the next option but we did not go ahead with her suggestion as it is against our Catholic values. So after that, we decided to stop stressing ourselves to conceive a child and discontinued our treatments with the gynaecologist. 

Then in February 2013, Justin and I read from the Catholic Digest about the Naprotechnology FertilityCare program that focus on finding and treating the underlying causes of fertility problem, and also an article about Adoption. I have heard about the Naprotechnology program from a church friend before, but never proceed to find out more. Over the years, we have also thought about adoption but felt that we were not ready to adopt (Our church priest, Father Anthony even suggested to us about adoption twice because he thinks that we will make good parents even if the child is not our biological child).

So after reading the articles, Justin and I discussed and decided to give the Naprotechnology FertilityCare program a try so as to understand and learn about my fertility issue through natural fertility awareness and tracking. I started seeing the catholic general physician Dr John Hui. And also after much prayer and thought, we decided that we would like to adopt a child even if we have a biological child, and hence we signed up for the adoption briefing at Touch Community on 21st November 2013, wanting to find out more.

Then on 13th November 2013, we found out that I was pregnant! To be able to conceive naturally is a wonderful miracle for us! Dr Hui was surprised at my pregnancy because I did not have signs of ovulation that cycle. Upon checking our fertilitycare chart tracking, we also found out that the little one was conceived on 1st November 2013, Feast day of All Saints. :-)

[Even with the wonderful news of pregnancy, Justin and I went ahead with the adoption briefing on 21st Nov to find out more about the adoption process.]

After confirmation of my pregnancy from the HCG blood tests taken, Dr Hui recommended us to a catholic gynaecologist Dr Douglas Ong for follow-up checks to monitor the pregnancy and we started to see Dr Douglas Ong since then.