5 Months On...

B turned 5 months last week. Yet, it was still not enough to convince myself I have a baby and that little boy sleeping in the room next door belongs to me. Crazy.

He is so playful recently and he makes me smile all the time (though there have been times of frustrations too). His newfound hobbies as of today are: blowing raspberries, flipping and hitting something repeatedly. Last week, it was screeching.

I took him out to meet Karen today and it was nice seeing her and Baby K after so long. Baby K is 18 months and I still remember visiting her when she was born. It was kinda funny seeing us both pushing our strollers with our babies. Funny how fate brought us together - getting ready for our wedding, in laws woes, work nonsense, trying to conceive and now, we have our little bubs. So thankful for this friendship as I've learned so much from Karen when it comes to parenting and tips.

Thanks babe!

Same Old Same Old

Yesterday I met with my ex-boss and ex-colleague from my hotel days. I spent my formative years there and whilst towards the end I was so annoyed with the power struggle at the management level, it did groom me and gave me exposure and opportunities one would not expect at my age then.

We had lunch at Tanglin Mall which was near the office, and also a place for many expats mums and their bubs. I popped by the office to say hello to one of the director and was somewhat surprised to see that the office has not changed a bit at all except for some new faces. I always thought if given a chance, I would go back, being a tad smarter and wiser now. But seeing how things are the same, ie same management, same issues, I don't think I can ever work there again. Oh well, I guess let's just leave the sweet memories as it is.

A Day in the Life of a SAHM

I an exhausted. Really exhausted. 

Mentally I'm doing fine - enjoying my time at home and spending it with B, I can't ask for more. But physically, I am crumpling away. Every night as I lay in bed, these aches and pains scream for attention, but thankfully I'm so tired I fall asleep almost instantly. But when I am patting B to sleep and he stares into my eyes, it makes all these worthwhile. Although a foot/shoulder rub will really make me feel so good.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to document down what a typical day for me is like, since I find myself getting asked this a lot.

Morning

I pump four times a day now, supply is dwindling a little, but that's for another day. My pumping times are 5-11-5-11, so everyday by 5-530am, I'm up pumping. If B wakes at 4ish for milk, that's when I sfart my day. I could possibly go back to sleep and wake at the same time as B, but then that makes me very busy. Getting up early gives me time to take a slow, long shower, take my supplements, read the papers and have breakfast.

After pumping, there's much washing to do - the pump parts, milk bottles, pacifiers etc. I've tried Tollyjoy, Pigeon, Kodomo and Pureen liquid cleansers and my favourite is Pureen. For the simplest reason - it has "no flavour". Tollyjoy has such a strong scent its still present even after sterilizing. Pigeon is mild but I find that it can't clean the breastmilk fats effectively. Kodomo is the next best as it is mildly scented and foamy enough to remove breastmilk fats and stains. 

After washing, there's the sterilizing to do. I sterilize the stuff twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

With all these barangs barangs done by 630am, we just wait for B to wake before we head to my mum's place. Sometimes B wakes up at 5ish, sometimes 6ish and occasionally 7. When we get to my mum's, it's all about feeding him, making him sleep, pump, playing. I try to slip in a nap when he takes his first nap of the day, but this is not always possible. 

When we get home in the evening, it's a mad rush again because it will be near his bed time and he gets cranky when he doesn't get his sleep. So we need to give him a wipe down, change into his PJs then get him ready for bed. Once this is done, I'll sometimes prepare dinner, usually a sandwich or one-dish-meal and dinner will be finished by 830pm. That's not over - there's still preparing for next day - stuff that I have to bring to my mum's -  fresh sets of clothes, new sterilized bottles, pump parts. I then take a longish shower and plonk myself on the couch waiting to pump before I call it a night. By this time, I am so tired. Last night, as I was typing this post, I actually fell asleep while still typing. When I finally snapped out of it and read my post, I'm amazed that I could actually "dream type". Crazy.

So you see, every day is the same. That's why I try to take B out often, whether it's meeting a friend for lunch or just a walk in the mall, just the 2 of us. I believe when I stop breastfeeding, my life will be so much better. But B will be 5 months tomorrow, which means I'm this much closer to the goal of 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding. One part of me can't wait to stop, but another part of me still want to continue. Dilemma.

I guess meanwhile I'll just still sit on the couch and prevent myself from dozing off and think about this question again when he's 6 months.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节

Bradley's very first Mid-Autumn Festival!

Noticed anything wrong with these pictures?

Yes, the sky is still bright. As silly as it may be, we took B down for a walk with his lantern (traditional paper lantern no less) at 6.45pm. He was sleepy on the way home and we tried our best to distract him. His bed time is usually between 7-830pm so we had no choice but to bring him down earlier. I wanted to take pictures for keepsake. Of course, he had no clue what's happening but seemed happy enough to "soak in" the atmosphere.

Separately, this morning when I was on the phone with a friend, B flipped (with help, he can only do a 3/4 flip, if you know what I mean) and next thing I know, he lifted his butt up like this and pushed himself forward a little.

I was amazed and told my friend I'll call her back as I needed to capture this on camera. It was hilarious seeing him do this. The thing with babies, they really grow so fast and change everyday. I remember Karen once told me, babies' seemingly settled down schedule is never settled. They change their "habits" often. One day they like this, another they don't. Some day they take long naps, other days catnaps. This is what's happening with B, but hey, both he and I are still trying our best at living in this complicated world and being a mother. Life's ain't easy on the baby too, he's got too much to take in everyday! Little wonder he's knocked out by 830pm everyday.

***

八月十五庆中秋。

大概有超过15年没提灯笼了吧。想想以往对提灯笼一点兴趣都没有。中秋节嘛，不就是吃月饼，每年都一样。

但今年可不一样，为人父母，可要教育下一代。我想为俊智拍下很多很多照片， 为他留下许多不一样的回忆。告诉他第一个中秋节是怎么度过的，第一个灯笼又是怎样。

先是中秋节， 再来就圣诞节，跨年， 农历新年。。。

宝贝，我要为你留下许多美好的回忆。让你在18年后勾起回忆，提醒你爸爸妈妈是有多么的珍惜你，疼爱你。

Misconceptions About SAHMs

For the first time since B was born, I had a good 6 hours sleep. He went to bed at around 8pm and slept till 545am this morning for milk, and now back to sleep. He did stir in the middle of the night twice, once searching for his pacifier and another just tossing a little before being patted back to sleep. Whilst he started more or less sleeping through, i.e 5 hours or more, I never had more than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep, because I'd always had to wake up at certain times to pump, if not to feed. So no doubt it's weird for both DH and I to be sitting at the balcony at 630am in the morning, reading the papers and having our morning coffee while every other household is still sleeping, we're thankful for last night's good night rest!

There are some misconceptions or stereotype surrounding SAHMs, and I hope to be able to rebutt some of these, although I haven't been one for long.

"You probably don't earn a lot, so it probably don't make much of a difference if you stay home. It will be a waste for me if I don't work, considering my monthly salary"

 

Perhaps you won't say this to my face, but I know you're thinking about it. And I know of people who were actually being told this. Sister, let me tell you something. Take a good look at the SAHMs out there, I'll wager more than 80% of them are degree holders and many with Masters or PhD. Giving up our monthly salary, a managerial position, attendance at chi-chi black tie events is our choice. Whether you make $1000 or $10,000 every month, it means your husband will have that additional financial burden. Every single cent makes a difference. Don't judge us or belittle us.

"Wahh... SAHM ah? Good life leh, I also want to be a tai tai"

I'll be the first to admit I used to think this way too. In fact, I used to chant this to DH every other day, "I want to be tai-tai, I don't want to work... I want to be tai-tai, I don't want to work..." I even promised him home cooked food every day on top of caring for our little one. 

I hate to burst your bubble, but SAHM is SAHM, she is not a tai tai, yet. You probably will not have more than 5 hours of sleep every night, your life is all about caring for your child, in my case, my 4-month old. "Has he poo-ed today? Why is his poo this colour/texture? Why he's not drinking? Why is he so grouchy and not smiling at me?" or worse, "why is he sleeping through the night, is he not hungry?"

A SAHM probably needs an intensive treatment at the hair salon because her hair looks terrible. Little wonder why hairbands and scrunchy are probably her good friends. Not only does it keep her hair away from baby, it also masks the condition of her hair.

Her fingernails are perpetually short and cuticles and dead skin showing. Her corns and calluses on her feet scream pedicure needed desperately. But if there's one hour of free time, rest is probably more important.

Forget sipping tea and munching on scones, it's more like gobbling and swallowing your food. You have exactly 3.5 minutes to finish your lunch, use the bathroom before baby cries for your attention.

"Don't you feel bored? I bet you can't wait to go back to work"

There are days I wish I was working, not because I'm bored or taking care of my baby, but I think that 8-hours of solitude will do me good. Taking a break from mother duties will make me look forward to the end of the day and spend more time with baby and be in a better state of mind and have more patience.

But, in my 11 years of working, I don't recall having any solitary moments. Yes it is a break from mother duties, but it's not a shut-down break. Dealing with bosses, subordinates, colleagues, clients is probably mentally more demanding. 

Besides, there is never a bored moment with B so far. He's growing so fast every day and learning new skills. Work, solitude and me-time can wait.

There will always be 2 camps of mothers - those who are/want to stay home, and those who can't stay home and needs to work to keep their sanity. I've mentioned before and I will mention again, it's just different way of parenting and no one group better than the other. But I do ask for respect for both groups. Perhaps you might be a sour grape, perhaps you disagree with their decisions, but ultimately, you are not them. Next time someone tells you they are a SAHM or FTWM, give them an encouragement, it will make their day.

Expect the Unexpected

There's no fancy way of saying this but a dear, dear friend has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

I have had in the past followed some cancer patients' blogs and it was rather emotional when one day you log in wanting to see if there has been any updates only to find out they have passed away. But them jotting down their experiences made me understand and learn more about cancer.

When C told me, I couldn't really processed it and I had to say I was quite bothered by it. But seeing her today, strong and like how she always was, happy-go-lucky, I feel slightly better.

She's in the second stage and cancer cells seem to be contained in her breast and not metastasized, but we will have more information after the surgery and biopsy of the cells.

Hope to have good news then.

World's Worst Mum

You might have come across this programme on Discovery TLC about world's worst mums. I have not actually sat through the programme but have seen its preview during commercials. It's about how some mums are so protective over their kids they end up being bad mothers. For instance, not allowing a 12-year-old kid to use a knife to cut his food, not allowing a kid to take a bus on his own etc. Bollocks I say, these mothers. They think they're protecting their kids, but they are not helping at all.

But... who am I to judge or say anything? Who is to say what constitute to a good mum and a bad one?

Yes, so you leave your job to care for your child full time. Yes, you attend to his every needs and makes sure he gets the best. You are there when he's sad, he's sick, he's hurt, he's in pain. That doesn't automatically make you the best mum.

So, you can't wait to go back to work and have your personal time, "me-time" as we call it. You leave your child at the infant/child care centre. You can't wait till your child moves out. That doesn't make you a bad mother.

My point? 

Every mother has their own way of bringing their kids up, whether or not you agree with the method.

I don't proclaim to be a good mother. I only try my best. I may be overpowering on many occasions, I may be overprotective, I may even be selfish and stubborn and ignore other's advices. But can you fault me for wanting what I deem best for my child? Its what I do to perhaps make myself feel better about being me, a mum. 

Having gone through 40 weeks of pregnancy and the pains of labour, can I ask for this privilege to protect the child my way? 

I'll try to be a little more open, but meanwhile, bear with me. I'm still learning to be a mother.

Improvisation At Its Best

In his attempt to encourage me to blog more, DH came up with an ingenious idea to make blogging easier for me. Our current laptop is an antique, bought more than 5 years ago when I first started my part time degree course. It served us well, but is becoming obsolete. Blogging on it is time consuming - it probably takes more than 5 minutes to boot up and get connected to the Internet. After B's birth, most of my updates were done on my trusty phone with the Blogger app. But as you can imagine, typing lengthy entries on an iPhone can be very challenging and time consuming as well. So, ready for DH's ingenious idea?

He bought a stand for our iPad and a wireless keyboard. Simple idea but definitely cheaper than getting a new lappy and also ensures our iPad is not under-utilized. Love it!

Shifting our focus back to B, he woke up at 545am today!!! But when we got to my mum's place, he took a 2-hour nap. Who wouldn't? The weather was too sleep-inducing. And I'm so glad to share that I managed to have him nap 3 times this afternoon without the sarong! Two times I slept with him, mother and son cuddled together, so cosy. I hope this is not just a one-time thing. B changes his "habits" and schedules like changing diapers.

Tomorrow will be a looooong day. It's my mum's 70th birthday and every year, the entire family goes out for dinner to celebrate. I have been worrying about this for so long. B's bed time is 7ish and I'm so worried he gets cranky tomorrow night when he don't get his sleep. Not forgetting he is an extremely light sleeper, so I'm concerned about how he will take it tomorrow. I guess by the time we finish dinner and reach home, it will probably be close to 10. There will be much to do and pack. Wish me luck.

I'm having friends over on Friday for 2 belated birthday celebrations and my advanced celebration. So it's gonna be a looooong day too. I hope we'll continue to be good hosts, although I know we will be extremely tired.

Taking a Step Backward to Look Ahead

Sometimes, answers or solutions to challenges or issues are right in front of you, and you don't realise. For a couple of weeks now since I've switched to pumping 6-hourly, I've been having difficulties waking up for my 11pm pump.

You see, by the time we get home and I get all the chores done, it's 9pm. I could either kill some time by watching tv or go to sleep and wake up at 11pm. I chose the latter and it usually isn't by choice. I'm so tired that the moment my head hits the pillow, I'm asleep. And it has proven to be extremely difficult for me to get up and I often oversleep and get up 30-60 minutes later. Then it made me really grouchy because not only do I have to struggle to get outta bed at 11ish, when I finally fall back to sleep, B wakes up for milk. For him, I don't have to struggle to get outta bed, at the slightest stir I'm up. But I'm pissed 'cause I didn't get much sleep. He usually wakes up once the entire night between 2-4am. And then, I'm up again by 5ish for the next pump.

DH is always ever willing to do the night feeds but sometimes I feel guilty because he has to work. So that sometimes leave me a very tired and angry person. But the simplest solution was right in front of me without me realising and DH pointed it out. I could pump between 10-11pm and while waiting, I can work on my blog instead of lying on bed playing with my phone. I mean, why didn't I think of it?  I've always wanted to try and blog more, so this was a good idea.

So here I am, typing on the post, eyes getting droopy, vision getting blurred, yawning away, wondering "how long can I last?". Not too fast I hope.

On a separate note, I took B out again today to have lunch with Viv at Paragon. It wasn't my first time taking him out alone or with the pram, but definitely first time with the pram and taking taxi. I wasn't confident I can manage but turns out I did. Really liking this newfound confidence and am making plans with different friends so that B and I are out at least once a week.

To Give Or Not To Give?

When I was carrying B, I had many ideals on how I want to bring this child up. There were many must-dos and no-can-dos I had in mind. For example, do not carry baby immediately when he cries. This is pretty much a no-brainer, but there seems to be two school of thoughts. One says you should not carry baby immediately and perhaps are advocate of cry-it-out methods. Another says baby at this stage needs to be carried and soothed immediately, otherwise it would affect their confidence and independence level when they grow up. I do a bit of both, but mostly the latter. Not because I want to give in to B but his cries, OMG, are really loud and sharp and painful for my ears. To those from the second school of thought, who said babies are too young at this age to have a habit, I say to you, "WRONG!" Babies are smarter than you and I - now B knows as long as he screams his lungs out, he gets things his way, mainly wanting to be carried instead of lying or sitting down all the time. So I'm slowly letting him realise that this is not going to work, even if it means my ears have to suffer. I hear my alter ego snorting.

Another no-no I had in mind was not to give him pacifier. I was weaned off the pacifier when I was probably around 3 or 4 years old. I still remember the exact day when my dad tried to wean me off by asking me if its ok for him to throw my tu-tu away. And me being me, said ok, and saw him throw it into the rubbish chute.  It took only a few minutes for me to recognise that my pacifier is gone and I started tearing. Thankfully dad was only testing water and produced it from his back. The whole experience must have been traumatizing for a 4-year-old that I remember it to this day. I certainly do not want B to be on the pacifier till he's 4 and really hope to wean him off it latest by 1. But in my short 4 months experience as a mother, I've come to realise hope and reality are often heaven and earth apart.

I also had my own thoughts about letting baby sleep in a sarong cradle. Personally I feel there's nothing wrong with it, but just didn't liked the idea. But even before we introduced the sarong to B, he had difficulty sleeping well in his cot. His startle reflex often woke him up and he doesn't nap long in his cot. Then my mum introduced the cradle, which I accepted reluctantly, as I wanted to  make sure she has it easy taking care of B when I return to work. It was a breeze putting him to sleep in the sarong, and in time to come, I had gotten use to that and putting him to bed at night back home proved to be tough. We caved in and bought one for our home use. For the first couple of weeks, it was ok, we would put him to sleep there, and carry him to his cot once we were ready to call it a night. But I'm glad now, we are less reliant on it, especially since we moved him to his room - we only use it during the day for his nap.

Whilst it took me 3 attempts at different time of the day to complete this post, my life IS complete. Yes I may be extremely tired, but nothing I can't get used to. My body has accustomed to it and I feel normal. Yes, pumping is so tiring and dictates when and where we can go out and have on many occasions thought of stopping, but no one actually forced me to continue. I can stop right now, but I'm not. So who's to complain? Yes I miss my freedom, but there's more joy to seeing your child smile at your like you're his favourite person in the whole world. For this, I'm willing to throw my ideals outta the window and enjoy life as it is now.