Baby J at week 11

Immunisation

Other than the 2nd month immunisation in government clinic, we gave baby J rotavirus vaccination in private hospital. He had a little diarrhoea for 2 days (plus today) and stained all his clothes because of the watery bowel movement. His weight went up 0.3kg in one week time! He is whopping 6.6kg now.

Feeding

Baby J drinks different amount of milk each time. Some of the days, it is hard to get him to finish up 3 oz milk but today he drank almost 5 oz from bottle without even stop for a breath. Glad.

Baby sitter

We finally got him the playpen! It's 1/2 price piece from a mother in workplace. She selling it off after her baby used the playpen for 6 months. It's Graco and still in tip top condition.

Play time

We got him a playing gym!

Baby J at week 10

Social

Baby J can response to smile now. He return us a smile when he saw us smiling at him. However that only happen when he is in good mood. It was so fun to see his toothless grin. He also starts to "talk". I can talk to him about anything, just make everything exaggerate, your mouth and the voice. He will response back in his own voice and language. He also starts to put his fist into his mouth.

Sleep

Baby J is still very fussy. We have to put him in hammock to make him fall asleep easier. He cannot be left alone and sleep by himself. I introduced him latex pacifier and he seems to be enjoying it and some how helps in soothing him. There are times when he was drowsy, I could read him story book in very soft and soothing voice, and he can doze away but it still depends on his mood

Feeding

I am relieved that he is finally asking for milk every 2.5 - 3 hours now, no more 1.5-2hours like previous. It gives me a little more time to myself, to rest and run some errands in between feeding. All thanks to bottle feeding which helps to make him drink more. He can drink from both bottle and direct breast feed now. He drinks up to 4 oz from bottle so he is trained to drink more which means he can last longer in between feeding. This also reduces his wake ups through the night from 3 to 2 times. I feel better though till exhausted. I hope he can reduce to only waking up once through the night for feeding when I am back to work by trying to adjust his sleeping time in day time.

Baby sitter

We took him to baby sitter house last weekend. We talked to Mrs Cyril about a few items which I think I want her to understand and know like feeding baby J with breast milk that I will supply to her every morning, warming up the milk, changing diapers, bathing and etc. We still need to buy a baby playpen for baby J to use at her home.

That's the update I have on his week 10 progress

Baby J at week 9

Today is Baby J's 2nd month immunisation. We took him to "klinik desa" at our area for the jab. He behaved but gave a loud cry during the jab. Which baby does not? We gave him paracetamol because this jab might cause fever. Baby J has been growing horizontally!!! He is 6.3kg at his 9th week. Do not underestimate the power of breast feeding.

This morning we had a big poo incident. I fed him on bed early in the morning and gave a secure layering between him and me in case his poo leaks out again. However the extra layer did not prevent his explosive poo from leaking onto my pants and the bed. End up I had to cut short his feeding and drag him into the sink for cleaning. We had to change the whole set of bed sheet in room too including the mattress protector. Actually this is not the first time we experience this kind of disaster. After I gave him a clean wash, I placed him on the rubber mat on the bed and took a towel to cover his penis to avoid pee from shooting everywhere, in case. However over his excitement because both mommy and daddy were running every where in the room to clean up his mess, he pushed the towel aside and shot his pee towards his own cot. Now, we not only had to clean our bed, we have to clean his bed too. End up we took off everything , bedsheet, blanket, bolster sheet and pillow sheet for wash and sun dried his mattress. What a busy morning before we dragged the 3 of us to the clinic. How does that sound? A great and fun day! :D

Update: I have been direct feeding baby J for the past 8 weeks and now we have to introduce him to bottle as my maternity and extra annual leaves are going to end pretty soon. However he refused bottle from me and only willing to take from his dad. I guess I have the milk smell because he kept turning his head towards me when I am trying to bottle feed him. Another problem I have is he is still wake up every 2 hours for night feeding. This is exhausting even now and I can't imagine how it going to look like when I have to be awake in the day time to work. I am trying hard to make him drink more at each feeding.

Baby J at week 8

Post natal

I was searching for the time I can start swimming after childbirth. It is said in some articles or answers that people asked online that I need to wait 4-6 weeks before going back into the pool to avoid infection. I am desperate to lose weight. I gained 13kg throughout the whole pregnancy and now I am still 5kg above my pre-pregnancy weight. I have to lose the 5kg or more in order to be able to wear my skinny jeans and short pants again. Plus I do not want to show the extra flesh hanging at my belly when I am in my tight tops. I can't wait to go out show off my baby to everyone but it is impossible now. He is too difficult to handle out from the house.

Rocking

Baby J is a good boy but required cuddling most of the time. It is lesser now but still a lot to my opinion. He still want us to rock him so he can fall asleep unless we put him down when he dozed off after feeding. We try to avoid putting him in hammock so that he does not rely fully on hammock for comport. I only let him rock in there during our meal time which is around 12-2pm and 6-7pm.

Poo

For the past 1 week, I experienced a lot poo incidents. Baby J has already almost overgrown S size diaper. Normally he likes to poo during feeding time which means when I was holding him close to me. So what happen is that his poo always being squeezed from the back of diaper up towards his back. Mostly it will stain my pants, or shirt or both and my thighs. Luckily his poo is not smelly unlike adults. I just treat it as custard :p and wash off. I am getting used to poo, pee and milk spit around the house. I guess it is the usual things that happen if you have a baby. I know it's time to clean up everything around me, myself and the baby when I felt warm liquid on my hand or legs during feeding. Luckily I have 2 rubber mats so I can use the other when this one stain. Nothing is worse than splashing poo during night feeding.

Alert

Baby J is more alert starting last week. He can focus on things and not just blindly swing his head around. That's why we can use the musical mobile already. In earlier times, he did not even stop to look at the musical mobile although it is rotating and have music and just continue crying. We can play pee-ka-boo with him, tickle him, and use certain motion to attract him. He smiles more than previous week although he has not really return us any smile directly. I am satisfy. I know every baby grows in different rates and cannot compare with each other. Baby J has his own milestone. He also can swing his hand trying to catch things that we offer to him.

Raise his head

We give him tummy time everyday during evening nap for around 1 hour. I think this helps him to practise lifting up his head. He can now lift his head and turn his head when he is on tummy although not for long. He struggles to raise himself using both legs and arms. I only let him try to push himself up for about 2 minutes the most. I know his neck muscle is not very strong yet. I think he is going to roll his body over soon though I don't know how soon. Let's see.

Baby J at week 6

I am still on maternity leave and handling baby J alone during work hour when my hubby is off to work. Baby J's schedule now is predictable and I know what he wants and when. It's relief that I told my hubby to hold his parents from coming over again after their first 2 weeks here. When they were here, I barely had my hands on my newborn and I was pretty upset and slightly depressed everyday during that 2 weeks plus. I miss how he looks like at his first and second week. I seldom see him as I was in room resting where baby J was taken out to the living hall all the times just because they want to play with him. I only got to see him during feeding time just that little while and had no chance to hug him more or look at his face directly.

I managed to establish a daily schedule with him that suits my temporary home maker life at the moment except for the night feeding which is still at every 2 hourly. So that makes me a zombie in the day time due to the lack of sleep. I only have 1 hour nap the most in the afternoon during baby J's tummy time (nap). Reason? I got to catch up with house work when he is not awake.

Now, I feel a little relax with the help of hammock that my sister brought here during her visit 2 weeks back. It is a life saver because baby J likes to be rocked and soothed by being carried and walked to and fro in the house. Before this, I can't put him down even for 10 seconds and he will cry to be picked up again.

Here is how his and my schedule looks like at 6th week.

(* the time varies each day)

1:00 am: feed baby J and go back to sleep

3:00am: feed baby J and go back to sleep

5.00am : feed baby J and go back to sleep

7:00 am : feed and go back to sleep

8:00 am : I wake up and fix breakfast for myself and do a little chores in the kitchen and around the house

8.30am: Baby J wakes up and stare alone onto the ceiling and surrounding in his cot

9.00am: Feed and rest for 10 minutes

10.00am: Bath baby J

10.15am: Play and cuddling time with baby J until he starts squeaking. At this time, I have to soothe him, rock him, walk to and fro with him in my arms

11.00am: Feed baby J and put him to nap in hammock, auto-rock.

12.00am: Fix simple lunch and shower

1.30pm: Feed baby J

2.00pm: Put him on tummy for a nap and I can too get a quick nap but get up earlier from him to run some house chores and prepare dinner ingredients. Thaw meat/marinate meat/wash/etc.

4.00pm: Feed baby J and play with him a little while

5.00pm: Give baby J a wipe (to clean and freshen his body)

6.00pm: Feed baby J and yay! Daddy is home!

6.30pm: Fix dinner

7.00pm: Put baby J in hammock so we can eat dinner in peace

8.00pm: Feed baby J

8.30pm: Put baby J to sleep in his cot

11pm: Feed baby J

I think the schedule will be different when I started work :)

Quick update to my new life

Hi, it has been long since I posted an entry. Time is too scarce now and not being so generous to me anymore. I don't cook much and only did the simple steaming in rice cooker and baking/grilling/roasting in oven dishes. There are a lot updates with my newborn but let me summarize them as quick below

1. There is a lot spit up milk everywhere in the house. Eg, on the living room floor few patches, on the carpet in living room ( So we move him away to tiles area)
2. I smell like milk
3. I learn to eat even faster than previous so I can complete my meal before he starts crying
4. My baby drinks a lot these few days like every hour. It exhausts me a lot especially through the night I have to wake up every 1-1.5 hours to feed because he is in growing spurt. By the way, I direct breastfeeding. Never thought this will be so tiring. Anyway, I get to create bonding with my baby. However he still cry all the times
5. The same point, he cries all the times whenever he is not sleeping or feeding
6. My baby can't sleep by himself. We have to soothe, rock, carry, lullaby him to sleep every night for like 2 hours.
7. My husband is very understanding and helpful. I love him and him. Both
8. My baby is alreadyweek 4 now. He looks like a little monk after we shaved his head

He is here at last

I gave birth to a 3.5kg baby last Monday naturally without any instrument or epidural. My son's daddy said I am very tough because of the pain I endured for popping this 3.5 kg flesh and blood out. It was a 12 hours ordeal that I went through. I wanted to jot down a little memory here so later when I looked back, I still remember the moments I spent along the 12 hours on that very day.

On sunday morning, I had bloody show and I figured that the mucus plug had came off. I read that after the mucus plug came out, it can be within hours, days or weeks before baby its born. So I told my husband that we shall go and see my obstetrician the next morning. During the whole morning throughout the afternoon, I felt constipated every now and then. I phoned my sister and another friend to find out how contraction pain should feel like. Both of them told me it's almost like menstrual cramp but more severe one. For me, it's hard to judge because I don't normally has menstrual cramp. I just ignored it until about 6.30 in the evening when I started feeling the pain which is not so mild anymore. I had to stop everything I was doing whenever the pain came just standing there deep breathing until the pain is gone again. Something is wrong. I think this was a real contraction. I timed it was about 6-8 minutes apart. I already boiled a pot of soup since 3pm and I have to stir fry one more vege for dinner besides cooking rice. I didn't even marinate the pork that I was going to stir fry with the vege because I can't stand too long anymore. The pain was quite intense. Quickly after cleaning the kitchen and washed the wok, I woke my husband up for dinner (he was having evening nap) and told him I most probably going to give birth soon and we should eat quickly. I ate like thunder with in between I stood up and changed position trying to relieve from pain. I headed towards bathroom for shower and reminded him to wash and clean up after he finished eating while I shower first. I had to sit on the toilet seat to wash my hair because at that moment, I had trouble standing whenever the pain came. Around 8 pm, we drove to the hospital with packed bags and his beloved DSLR. One funny thing is that when we arrived at the parking arena, hubby pressed the parking ticket from the machine and shoved it to me. He told me to hold it. I was in such a pain that I had to ask him to simply just put it somewhere, don't give it to me. He wasn't aware I was already in real pain. We went directly to the birth unit upon reaching hospital. Nurses plugged me to the machine to monitor my contraction for 20 minutes. It showed my contraction lasted about 30 seconds and 6 minutes apart. Nurse said I should be staying here in the labour room for the night because my contraction is already quite close period. Nurse told my husband to go down to do the admission process while they continue monitor me because I have not even dilated for 1cm yet. At around 11pm, my pain became quite severe that they gave me pain killer jab. Since I had not dilated nurses estimated I will only give birth the next morning, I sent my husband back to sleep at home. He went home and spent some time cooking the red date, longan tea for me so that he could bring it with him later when he came. Around 3am, my membrane ruptured/water bag burst. I vomited the dinner I took the night before sure to the effect of pain killer. Nurses told me to sleep because I would need the energy to push in the morning but I could not fall asleep in this kind of pain. I texted my husband and he came again at 4am. From 3am until 6.30am, I was dilated until 8cm. Nurse said I can't give birth yet because my contraction doesn't last long enough to give the push. Doctor came at around 7am and I was still at 8cm. Doctor gave me a dip to fasten the contraction and making it last longer. I was in terrible pain and already feeling very weak. I had already been in intense pain for the last 10 hours. After he gave the dip,it was like in hell. My legs cramped whole times that my husband and the nurse had to massage my legs every time the contraction came. Both my hands were numb because I hold the railing of the bed too tight whenever it was so pain. I curled on bed like a caterpillar, shaking. My husband asked for the laughing gas (nitrous oxide) from doctor but he was reluctant to give because he worried I won't be able to push as the gas effect will make me drowsy. I told him I was already in pain for almost 12 hours now and if I can't relive from pain, I can't survive anymore. He gave in as I promised I would be able to push later. At around 8am, I can't wait anymore. They told me to wait until 10cm, but I can't. The baby was already almost out. They didn't believe me in the beginning because I had already told them the same thing that I had to push since 7.30am. One of the nurse asked me to try and she saw baby's head. They quickly called the doctor in and setup the bed for labour. At the 3rd time pushing, doctor performed a 2cm episiotomy which I could not even feel it anymore, baby came out at the 5th push at 8.08am. He was so adorable and I could not cry from happiness because I was still drowsy from the overdose off laughing gas. The gas effect made vomited until lunch time. I took too much of it but luckily I was still able to push and get baby out without the help of vacum or forcept.

The labour lasted 12 hours and he is finally out. Love him. My husband loves me more after baby is out, I can feel it, and I know why.

Fried crabsticks

I can't make pineapple cookies this year because it required too much effort. So I sent WL to get me 6 packets of crabsticks. I will just fry crabsticks this year. I need to have at least something to serve our families when they came over to visit us soon.

After the cutting and shredding for like an hour on 12X6 sticks, the frying needs another 3 hours. I am quite satisfied because it's one of his favourite snacks. He keep sneaking in and stole the freshly fried crabsticks to munch on when I was frying. So hot, sweat kept rolling down my tummy. Pity the baby because he was closer to stove than I was so I tried to stand facing the side when frying. The fried crabstick is a very delectable snack.

Chinese New Year in 2 weeks!

Roasted black pepper pork

I am not very sure if it's called roast or bake but I used the oven to do the job.

I marinated the lean pork which has slight fat with black pepper sauce, soy sauce and salt overnight. Be generous with the black pepper sauce and you will get very flavoured roast pork ;)

I just popped the 2 lean pork I have on aluminium foil, do not seal up so the dry heat can roast the pork just like char siew. There is a slight burnt on the skin outside which gave really aromatic taste after 30 minutes in oven at 240 degree celcius. The pork turned out very juicy too because of the little fat it contains. I am very happy with today's meal because it was really easy to make and tasty to the bud. Moreover, I don't need to stand there for hours to cook a perfect meal, and I don't want too at this rate of being pregnant.

Anticipating

There are 2 more weeks before my maternity leaves official starts. However I am not sure if I need to be off so early but that's what the labour's law says. So let's see. I am taking off 2 days to recuperate. So I am sitting here right at home playing jigsaw puzzle in live messenger with my sister. I have been putting up some gifts from friends over the months for our little sunshine so it's not fair if I do not post this up. This is a gift from my buddy Suet Yin that can fit the baby at later stage. A little to big for him at the moment. :D Thank you very much.

Merry Christmas 2011 !

I spent Christmas at home sick. I am already sick for a week and my cough doesn't seem to get any better yet. I cough until my lungs almost drop and baby keep juggling inside. My legs are also pain from standing. So I need to do everything very quickly.

So I got help from santarina aka hubby to prepare today's dinner. I cooked yee mee for lunch today so for dinner I want to opt for western style of meal.

I have salmon from Jusco yesterday but I do not have lemon (again). So what I did is to make use of orange I have in the fridge. I googled and found orange-honey glazed salmon recipe. Perfect. I did not use the recipe totally but kind of use it as inspiration.


Baked orange-honey glazed salmon
Ingredients
1 piece of salmon about 250g
parsley flakes
salt
pepper
1/2 orange -make zest
1/2 orange -make juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 slice of orange

1. Assemble all the ingredients together and place the slice of orange on top of salmon. Everything goes on a piece of aluminium foil
2. Prepare oven at 220 celcius and bake over 20 minutes
3. Heat up oven for 3 minutes before placing the tray of salmon into oven


Garlic butter rice
1. Heat up 30 g butter in pan, add in 4 cloves of chopped garlic and 1/3 of chicken bouillon cube
2. Add rice and water
3. Let cook for about 2 minutes
4. Transfer everything into rice cooker and cook as your rice cooker instruction

We used bean sprout and carrot for the sides. Cook as you like ;) We stir-fried bean sprout in garlic and salt and blanched carrot and sprinkled some basil on top of them later on.




Merry Christmas !!! Hope you having a great dinner now ;) We just completed ours.

Chicken rice by him

Q4'11 Teambuilding

I haven't been posting anything related to my work for quite some time for now. Here it is, the latest team building which just held yesterday at Hydro Hotel, Batu Feringghi. There are a lot photos but I will just upload this one piece which has everyone in it. It was fun and we had a lot laughters. I was so tired from laughing, for real...

Long bean rice

I have been lazy to update my blog for quite some time and tired too. Anyway, this is something that I make from time to time, not very often but not too little too. Roughly once every 1.5 to 2 months? It is the long bean rice. It has the fragrance of dried shrimp, shitake mushroom, garlic and pork belly ;) All the ingredients are cooked in wok first with the rice before being transferred into rice cooker.



Simple but appetizing dinner for today.

Toys

I was trying to search for some toys for the little one and everything seems so pricey. Anyway, I got him a flexi ball. Before this I bought a cloths book (fluffy chicks) and lamaze learning block from someone at work place. The condition of the 2 are still good and I washed them throughly and now are ready for the little one.



Here is the super big toy for him from Rachel ah-yi! He can only play this when he is older and I will keep it nicely until then :) thank you thank you.

Cute pieces from friends

We received a few more gifts from some friends for our little one who is coming soon. I took this when I was playing with my new phone retro effect apps, the terry bath towel with 4 washcloth from uncle Yee Seng.



A few sets of clothes from Ai Chee and Chun in US. It is so kind of them to have to pass the gift to me through their friend who was on business trip to US recently



I purposely snap this romper because it's so cute. See the butt piece? Piak piak!



Thank you my friends

Yong Tau Foo

It is a very exhausting day for me. I woke up in the morning to the market and came back with lots of ingredients and nicely packed and keep in fridge then to prepare the ingredients for yong tau foo. I had to quickly have my breakfast nasi lemak before I proceed to wash my room's curtains today too and hang them back to the curtain rod because that's where the sun will be every day. I told the aunty in the market that I want taukee for yong tau foo. She thought that I want to cook those soup yong tao foo which I never like at all and recommend me the fried taukee she had made. I didn't want. I want to stuff them my own. The fried one was so hard and "fried". How am I going to fry it again. She never understand what I want and I gave up with her.

I only used a few ingredients for the yong tau foo because if I use more ingredients, the whole bunch of the stuff will be really a lot. I chose 8 lady's finger, 1 medium egg plant, 100g tauhu pok and a few pieces tau kee. The stuffing is made of fish meat where I mixed with minced pork because fish is really very expensive. I mixed them well with salt, starch, soy sauce and pepper.

After washing and cutting the yong tau foo ingredients, I began stuffing them then fried them in hot oil. It took me so long to fry because I did them a few pieces a time to avoid the stuffing from coming out.



Then, the fried ingredients will be used for cooking. The sauce is made of water, tau chiu, salt, pepper and oyster sauce. I thicken the sauce using starch mixture. It took me around 3 hours for the preparation and cooking process but I like the end product. Satisfying lunch!



Tired, but still sitting here typing after cooking dinner for hubby and have to rush to get ready for wedding dinner tonight. Chao!

Photos gone..

I have a new android phone and I used the sync feature to sync everything from my google into the new phone because I uploaded my old phone's contact to google's contact. I didn't know that the auto sync will also sync my photos online into my phone. I have this blog for around 6 years and the photos I had uploaded all the while accumulated up to 2700++. When I saw the photos in my phone gallery, I was thinking what the heck, 2000 plus photos gonna eat up all my phone memory pretty fast. So what I did without thinking is to DELETE all the photos since I have them in my blog. How much would I know that these photos are exactly the same copies in my blog. A few seconds after I press the delete button, my mind was jumping like crazy, heart beating so fast. I quickly logged into my blog and see.. wwwwwwwwooooaaah, all the photos including my banner's all gone. I was deep depressed due to the lost. Any how, I manage to find some latest photos and uploaded them back into the latest posts. The rest, I have no idea when to find them. So, please be careful next time with your phone auto-sync feature. No more next time.

Chicken porridge

Yesterday I was telling 2 friends that I want to cook chicken porridge today. I want to make silky smooth porridge like what normally seen in dim sum restaurant. All my previous porridges were all not like that. One of my friend told me to buy ready-made rice which is finely crushed to achieve this kind of smooth porridge and she also said I can crush the rice myself using the back of knife. Anyway I do not want to use this option because it will take time to crush the rice and I don't want to hit or knock anything right now. The ready finely crushed rice is more expensive and I still have 10kg rice in my repository. So no way I am going to restock any rice at any moment now.

I opted for other method I found more towards my style. Since I am cooking rice for dinner yesterday, I cooked extra one more portion. Then I add just enough water into a pot with the cooked rice and start boiling. The rice will turn into porridge quicker this way since the rice is already cooked and I do not have much time to waste at night on a normal working day. After about 15 minutes, I managed to get concentrated porridge. I added just enough water so that it's not watery but is able to turn soft.

I let the porridge cool down a little and took my potato masher and mashed the porridge. When it's mashed and cool down completely, I kept the pot into fridge for today's cooking.

I came back from work and started working on the ingredients. I have salted chicken left from last week. I had already harvested the left over and shredded it into tiny strips. I also had a chicken leg from chicken corn soup that I cooked 2 days ago which I shredded too and kept in container. This is the main recipe for today's meal.

I added like 3 bowls of chicken broth into the pot with mashed porridge in it and boil the mixture. When it started boiling, lower the heat to the lowest, add a handful of groundnuts, all the shredded chicken, chopped carrot, 2 tablespoon of sesame oil and simmer for 30 minutes. Add water when you see it's drying up. Stir often. Add salt towards the end, and taste.

Serve hot, add some pepper on top and garnish with spring onions. It makes a great warm dinner on rainy day like this. I achieved the silky smooth texture that I want!

Sambal fried rice

Left over food is gem :) I always like to use the left-over and mix into rice to make all sort of fried rice.

This time I had left over sambal from Sunday lunch nasi lemak and the spicy marinated pork from dinner. What I need to do is just mix both of the left-overs with overnight rice, chopped carrot and egg, add a little soy sauce and there you go, sambal nasi lemak!

It was very spicy due to too many dried chillies used when I was making sambal but so divine. The outlook is nothing much difference from other fried rice because of the common ingredients used but with a little garnishing with cut spring onions. It makes a great lunch alone food :)