Rapper beanie buddy

This is my beanie buddy

I've recently bought nate a couple of beanies because the weather is getting rather chilly as well.

But it's also to hide his receding hair line

ha

Happy holidays to you and you and you and you

(:

smiling baby

this has been happening of late.

I hope its an indication of his temperament in the near future. Actually sooner than later is better.

Santa is a Disney character?

I've yet to look this story up but according to TC who scans through wire stories everyday, there was a man who was thrown out of Disneyland because he was big and hugable (like santa) and he was wearing a red t-shirt and red cap and spotted a beard (like Santa) and apparently kids started coming up to him asking if he was Santa. Guy didn't want to break the kids' hearts so he played along and went "Ho Ho Ho" and then got himself thrown out of the happiest place on earth becuase he was accused of impersonating Santa Claus who apparently is a Walt Disney character?! Now, i know that Santas are not supposed to be real but now we're fighting for copyrights over Santa? "Oh Oh Oh and sigh.." I say.

Spot the baby

that's a lot of stuff for someone so small and what you see is not just it

lucky chap had better learn to share

(:

thank you everyone for coming to nate's one month celebration

time really flies and they grow so quickly too

Little big gestures

These are the two men in my life. Terence and Nate.

This father and son team have seen me through my frustrations and yet put up with it. They've also encouraged me through their smiles and help reveal more of myself; to myself through the different journeys we take together each day. Terence has been a pillar of strength to me and has taken on the role of fatherhood very quickly and competently. Nate, is still little and his personality hasn't fully surfaced yet but if he's to be anything like his father, I'll be an even luckier woman right now.

EBM, BF and CFs

this is just from the first 2 weeks of collection

This whole baby business adds on a new dimension to your life.

And it adds in a whole new set of vocabulary as well; well let's say two sets if you don't already speak baby. For me, I'm good with languages, I speak English, Cantonese a little Chinese and Thai but Baby is pretty challenging. I also found out that I have hidden talents. I am able to produce up to 300ml of milk/3hours. Not bad for a first time cow. But seeing the progress in which i'm making, and taking into consideration i'm a pretty fast learner, I might consider a career change.

obsessive compulsive checking - thank god for my Avent manual pump

milk dud

Some people say i'm lucky... to be able to produce so much milk for nate. I've even earned myself the reputation in Mt. Alvernia Hospital as the "mommy with a lot of EBM". However they don't see the pains that I have to go through to ensure i don't get engorged breasts. They HURT like hell. And this one time, I had a blocked milk duct, and it drew a temperature of 39.3 degrees celcius out of me. Did I forget to mention that just before the fever hit, I was shivering my arse off. NOT FUN. Hey you know the irony of all this? I can't drink a single drop of milk myself - but yes I know.. cows don't drink milk; they drink water.

Three weeks on and things are looking better. My over productive milk factory has watered down a little (no punn intended) but things are more managable. I'm producing a little less, but enough for freezing for future use and daily consumption.

Disclaimer: Don't be fooled by all the glamour advertisements you see about breast feeding. Truth is its messy, you get your shirts wet and stained, milk all over your pillows and you smell like a walking lactose thingamabob if there's such a thing.

But things get better and I'm still for breastfeeding.

Glossary:

EBM - expressed breast milk

BF - Breast fed

CF - Cup fed

and check this one out. I still can't figure it out. When the doctor asks you " is nate fully breast fed?" I say sometimes, thinking that breast fed meant feeding straight from the breast but apparently it doesn't matter if it goes into his system through a bottle or from your tits. What they mean when they say that is that He's not on any other formula milk.

Just so you know.

Happi-durial

Come to think of it, the story of the day I went into labour, which I am going to tell you, seems to get a little more anti-climatic the more I think about it. You know, its the usual pain, exclaim, pain, inject, drip, no pain, numb, push and then it's out. Apparently my baby was pushed out so fast that he didn't even cry and kept on sleeping for the next couple of days. So much for drama. How could he do this to me after 9 months of anticipation?!

Anyway.

I did have a few interesting take aways from the delivery suite.

So as mentioned in the earlier post, I felt pains and shrugged it off as just a stomach upset and decided to go back to sleep and by the next morning, Sunday Nov. 19, 2006 at about 7.30am i started feeeling it bad. Decided to take a nice shower, wash my hair (was worried that i'd be bed ridden after popping and I hate not being able to take a bath) and woke the husband.

We checked into the delivery ward by 8.30am and by then nurses were buzzing in and out of the room, checking on me every few minutes. Everything went on like clockwork. These nurses must deliver like some 100 babies every few days, they kinda run on auto-pilot. So after losing a lot of dignity, I was told to be 2.5cm dialated. Terence was busy making sure he got all the admission details and CPF Medisave thingamajig stuff done while i was controlling my face as it got distorted every 10 minutes or so from the pain. At that point i was still not sure if it was too early to be in the room and if i should go home and wait til later to come back. The nurse just looked at me and said that I was mad and I was already on the road to delivery. How comforting. All I could think about at that time was whether I was wasting everyone's time with a false alarm.

The one thing I really appreciated from the staff in the delivery ward was their sense of humour. One nurse came in to check on me and handed me a mask which administered laughing gas. She called it "WONDER GAS" and claimed that it was what they used back in their days. "No such thing as epidurial. Last time all we had was Wonder gas. Of course we sang a lot of Songs along the way." (meaning there was a lot of screaming.

By 10am the pain started to get more intense. At that point it was all still natural. I hadn't started on any drugs. And wonder gas didn't seem to work on me.

maye: so... should I go with epidurial?

nurse: how are you feeling now?

maye: well, the pain is getting more intense but I can still live through it. umm how far am i?

nurse: about 3.5-4cm

maye: is it going to get worse?

nurse: YES much WORSE.

maye: oh in that case maybe.. I do wanna enjoy and be in control of my labour.

nurse: then take it. All the female gynaes will tell you to take it. They had it themselves.

at this point my OBGYN comes in... I LOVE HER by the way. She's the BEST. And drops me a line that I will never forget.

"In this hospital. Epidurial is known as HAPPY-durial! Because after that you feel NO PAIN"

And boy was she right.

About an hour later, after all the happy-durial and drips were administered, I was happy. NO PAIN at alll.

So what do i do?

Play travel scrabble with Terence.

But the game lasted about 2 hours because my blood pressure kept dropping at one point they had to give me a shot of something to make it higher. I had a lot of shots of something during my stay in hospital but I didn't bother remembering what it was. Even if i did, I prolly won't be able to spell it anyway.

Everything went pretty smooth for me and I thank God for that. Because at about 1400 hours, I felt this intense need to go to the toilet and take a dump but was told that that feeling was just the baby's head which was low. And i was ready to take the near final stage of labour.

So pushing was easy. ( In fact i conclude that giving birth is easier than being pregnant. )They lowered my dose of epidurial for a bit, so that i could feel the contractions. And at 1415 I started to push. Stopping in between to catch my breadth and have mindless conversations with my OBGYN. We had this running bet that baby would either have a lot of hair or be bald. So before the last push, I stopped to ask her if Terence or I won the bet. She told me to REACH down and TOUCH the baby's HEAD!!! and all I could feel was - i dunno what it was but i just said EEWWW.

By 1424 he was out.

"He's so ugly .... but he's mine!"

Apparently that's what I said when they first plonked him on me.

He did look a little odd. Reminded me of Golem from Lord of the Rings. He was all blue and covered with vernix ( the white creamy stuff that covers the baby's skin preventing it from being wrinkled, Nature is fantastic cause i know i sure didn't go in and apply it on him) and his eyes were swollen but i was more amused than grossed out.

Knowing my need to see things to make sense of things, my OBGYN presented to me what the placenta looked like and after seeing it, I don't see how anyone can eat their own placenta nor keep it as a pet or whatever. It's dam cool scientifically, especially when you see how it looks when it's in the waterbag and imagine that baby was in there too; but it should just be kept like away, in the fridge of the hospital or whatever they do with it for whatever human tests or make it into cosmetics etc.

So there. Baby was out and epidurial will always be known as Happy-durial to me from now on.

KUDOS to all staff at Mt. Alvernia Hospital. You guys Rock'd!

Day of births

terence baptised by Pastor Tony, right and Pastor Poh Ham, left

our cell members pray and bless our new brother in Christ!

group photo!

seng and I

Today was meant to be the Estimated Due Date of Nate (who was born 3 weeks early) but instead it was the day where we witnessed Terence's Spiritual birth-day.

Terence got baptised today and many of our cell group mates turned up to rally around him with love and support. What a blessing it is to have so many people love him like the way our Lord and Saviour does. Praise God indeed for the many journeys which we have taken individually and together now as a family.

Allelujah! Amen.

P.s. check out that huge CONGRATULATIONS banner in the photograph. There's history behind that you know. So far its been passed from cell member to cell member when there's something to celebrate about. In a month, its been passed through 3 different families (indicated by the yellow star) for different reasons. Some were for the arrival of newborns, baby dedication to God, and now Ah Seng's baptism. I can't wait to see how filled it becomes and its a gentle reminder of His blessings - which are not all indicated there by the way. (:

commercial break...

transmission break. we finally found a chinese name for nate, and to see what it is, go to http://nate-to-date.blogspot.com/2006/12/nathanael-tan-wen.html we'll be back with more tales from the crib or rather delivery suite later. Thanks for your patience.

Mind over matter

being checked into the delivery suite

Its quite amazing how your mind can be tuned to the desired frequency anytime anywhere. Even when in labour. Mind over matter darling. (some say its denial)

It started Saturday (18th November 2006) morning when I had the "Show" which is one of the signs of oncoming labour. I had read in many books that the "Show" could mean that labour was as close as a day away or it could mean that labour was a few weeks away. Between a day and a week, I thought the second option was a better bet. Anyway, Nate was not supposed to be due till December 10, a good 3 weeks away. I found myself subconsciously playing it down as I didn't want to face disappointment.

Rewind.

I was advised by well meaning people in the office that i should split my 3 months of maternity leave up, taking one month before my EDD and 2 months after the birth. Being in a physically demanding job, i was not able to work till i popped as intended. Understandably, it was getting tough climbing up the hill to get to jobs (a lot of it was at the Istana) so i started to get comfy with the whole idea.

However, I was paranoid that boredom would set in and i'd find myself feeling more pregnant than ever before. I then set aside a time-table which included all the stuff i needed to do from house-hold chores to designing a wedding album for a friend. Much of it was dedicated to putting baby's stuff together; for the arrival.

First week of my leave.

BUSH had to come to Singapore and even though i was not shooting his visit, much of my time was spent co-ordinating accreditation and coverage for my colleague who came over from malaysia on assignment.

Wasted. That whole week of leave was gone. All of it on Bush. ALL OF IT. So when he left on Thursday morning, I was obsessed with making up for lost time.

Fast-forward 2 days.

The "Show"

Obsessive need to go shopping all of a sudden to buy last minute stuff like wet wipes, all this after doing the laundry of course.

Terence and I decided to brave the weekend crowd and make our way out to Carrefour. That's when i started having irregular contractions - which i played down as i was making my way between the tupperware and laundry hanger isle.

2 hours later

I was still up round about 2am chatting with friends on the msn (two very experienced mothers) and we were discussing my contractions. We decided to attribute the pains to some very delicious and potent Tulang Merah which Terence and I had the night before.

Steph: " It's prolly food poisoning"

Maye: " Ya i think so. It can't really be contractions cause the timings are pretty irregular and its not really getting very intense"

pause

Maye: " OH no i just felt another one! And this time my stomach sucked itself in like a vacuum."

Steph: " I think you should just GO to the hospital now, just get it checked out, now harm."

Maye: " I think its ok lah. If I go now, and it's a false alarm, i'm gonna wake my doctor up and by the time i get home it'll be sunrise. I think i'd rather sleep and anyway babies don't just fall out between your legs right? If the pain gets real bad i'm sure i'll wake up and besides i'm only 10 minutes from the hospital."

(actually i really treasured my sleep)

so the conversation went something like that.

I must mention that Steph and Fen did make their way to the hospital at 3am because they thought that i'd be going down to check myself in anyway. Having not spotted me for a while, Fen asked a nurse at the hospital if she'd seen a pregnant lady walk by. You can only imagine the wry answer from our been-there-done-that nurse who said with a straight face " a lot of pregnant women have walked passed!" Thank you for all the love girls. I feeel it.

Sunday November 19, 2006 8am

I check myself into the hospital after waking up firstly to pains in my stomach. And secondly seeing my tummy get sucked inwards like a vacuum everytime i feel a contraction. But more on labour later.

NOTE: no one had been able to really explain to me what a contraction felt like, but i can tell you it feels like really bad menstral cramps- ladies...or for men, just imagine the real real bad need to go and take a dump and your tummy aches until you kinda break into a cold sweat! and you still can't find a toilet and have to hold it all in.

There.

And if you find yourself grabbing your tummy as you read this right now, means you're either in labour or i've just proven to you an example of a mind over matter moment!(: