EARLY SIGNS OF PREGNANCY

        The first sign that you might be pregnant is that you have missed a period and have had some discharge or traces of blood. The symptoms you will probably experience, and not in any particular order, is that you might feel a little nauseous when you wake up. For some women it is the smell of coffee or the aromas of bacon sizzling in the pan that sets them off. Your mouth tastes funny and you have a sudden urge to vomit and run to the toilet to throw up. Throwing up in the mornings can sometimes last for three or four months and you might want to suck on a sugar-free mint to change the nauseating taste in your mouth. Some women take Gravol to diminish the nausea, but you might not want to do that for the baby’s sake.

Another symptom is that your breasts feel tender. They feel swollen and full. Your nipples are sore to the touch and seem to be getting larger. You also feel bloated and your feet feel uncomfortable in your shoes. As the pregnancy progresses, your breasts will grow larger in preparation for the baby. An ideal bra to wear is one that can accommodate your swollen breasts and also has a flap so you can feed the infant without taking it off.

Another big symptom is craving for particular foods, and sometimes in the middle of the night. You might never have had dill pickles, but now crave dill pickles with ice cream or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You might go off tea and certain foods altogether and/or binge on other snacks. Be careful what you eat, and be light-handed with spices and caffeine as you want to avoid heartburn. Don’t eat things like chips and chocolates and stay away from fizzy drinks. You don’t want to stack on extra pounds as you’ll be stuck with it afterwards.

Your hormones are in flux now. If you have curly hair, it might straighten. You might also experience a change in sexual desire; for some women, they may not want sex during pregnancy, and for others, they want it more now than before they were pregnant. You might experience a discharge at certain times.

You will also feel very tired and if your doctor has not already recommended it you should take an iron pill. Don’t wear shoes that are too tight and have no way for your feet to breathe. Put up your legs whenever you can. The obstetrician will keep an eye on your iron and prescribe iron pills if you need it. Your stool will be black; don’t be alarmed. Take the iron pills that have a stool softener. Make sure you eat healthily with lots of salad in your diet to prevent constipation. Try to drink at least five or six glasses of water every day.

Get into a regular routine of exercise by walking three or four times a week. Don’t do anything drastic. After a few weeks you will get used to your symptoms. By the fourth month, your morning sickness should have subsided or stopped and everything will be normal except for the little bulge which has started to show.

CAN MAN EVER BE GOD?

        Man can never be God. Man is mortal. He lives and he dies. He needs food to survive. He needs people in his life or human beings will become extinct. God is indescribable. God needs no companions. He can raise people from the dead. God does not die. Man can think because of his wealth he is God, but he is just dust in the wind. Material things do not make a God, and it is a foolish man who thinks he can be God.

In the Bible it says to love your God with all your heart, with your mind, with all of your strength, with all of your love, with all of your soul, and love one another the same way. Man is not capable of loving one another in the same way. We are too selfish. We want to live on our own terms and not follow the Commandments.

In Surah x 31-32 in the Qur’an, it states: ‘Say, who is it that sustains you in life from the sky and from the earth? Or who is it that has power over hearing and sight? And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the dead from the living? And who is it that rules and regulates all affairs? They will soon say “God”. Say, will you not then show piety to Him? Such is God, your real Cherisher and Sustainer: Apart from Truth what remains but error? How then are you turned away?’

The commentator, Yusuf Ali explains this verse in footnote 1422 in the Quran: ‘Sustenance may be understood in the sense of all the provision necessary for maintaining physical life as well as mental and spiritual development and well-being. Examples of the former are light and rain from heaven and the produce of the earth and facilities of movement on the land and sea and air. Examples of the latter are the moral and spiritual influences that come from our fellow men and from the great Teachers and Prophets’.

Can man do this? We can build airplanes and put people in the air and produce technology that can destroy nations of people, but we will never be able to do what God can do and can never destroy Him.

God says He is closer to you than your jugular vein. In footnote 1426 in the Qur’an it explains: ‘The wonderful handiwork and wisdom of God having been referred to as the real Truth, as against the worship and false gods (cars, wealth, material things) that men set up, it follows that to disregard the Truth must lead us into woeful wrong, not only in our beliefs but in our conduct. We shall err and stray and be lost. How then can we turn away from Truth?’

God’s handiwork is evident in the mountains and the sea and the deserts and the sky. We worship false gods, but with all that we have we will never have peace in our lives until we recognize and believe in the Sustenance, Love, and Existence of God.

THE 95/5 PERCENT RULE IN A RELATIONSHIP

       You are at a party with three women who have practically begged you to come along. The party has a great atmosphere. You see a man seated at a nearby table with three of his buddies. You almost stop breathing as he looks at you across the room. Your legs tremble a little under your dress as he gets up and walks directly towards you, holding you in his sight all the time. You feel his hand on your arm as he leans towards you and whispers in your ear: “You look smashing, girl.”

The relationship is fast and furious. You can’t believe that you have met such a great guy. He’s tall, he’s got great soft grey eyes, his mouth is full, he has a six-pack, and you can’t look at him without wanting to touch him. Most of all, he has his own business and has money to treat a girl well. On the fifth or sixth night he takes you home to meet his mother. His mother likes you even though you are not Italian.

There is only one nitpicky thing bothering you. His mother practically runs his life. He makes no decisions without her and once had allowed himself to be on a television program where contestants dated various women and at the end the mother decided.

There is that 95 per cent of the relationship that overwhelms all your senses and you don’t want to take cognizance of the co-dependency between mother and son – and that five per cent that niggles under your skin and tells you that there is trouble ahead. You ignore it. He is too secure within himself to let his mother rule him as if he were still a child. He has his own mind, his own ideas and ways of doing things. All will be fine, you tell yourself; eventually he will let go of his mother’s apron strings.

Years later when the relationship breaks up and you look back on it you see that it was not the big things you thought were problems that ended it, but that it was the five per cent you ignored. We know instinctively in the first twenty seconds we meet someone what their psychological make up is, yet we sweep it under the rug. Women think they can save a man or reform him, but they can no more save him than they can save themselves. They should stick with their first instincts. And next time rearrange the percentages and put a twenty-five per cent hold on their feelings and think with their heads.