Apples of my eye

Hey there!

It’s been a year since my last post. With a toddler and a baby under my belt, I’ve been pretty busy at home & and work. A LOT of things have happened, but I won’t reveal everything in one post because that would make this post extremely, painfully, undeniably long, that people would get an eye strain just trying to get through it.

So, first things first. Here’s the new addition to the family.

This is Aliff at 1 ½ months old. For those of you who can’t tell, he’s a bouncing baby boy. He’s in a pink cot with a pink pillow beside him because those belonged to his sister, Aliah. I bought the blue pillow underneath his head later on to show that he’s a boy, haha. I am so proud to say that he is exclusively breastfed (he’s 9 months old now) despite me contracting breast abscess a month after giving birth.

So my maternity leave was extended because I had a minor operation called incision and drainage to get rid of abscess and was given another month for hospitalization leave. On the bright side, I got to stay home longer with my baby. On the downside, I was in excruciating, multiple pains; I wasn’t fully healed from the pain of childbirth when I contracted the abscess, and I was still experiencing hemorrhage. I was physically exhausted, and I’ve gone through childbirth only twice. Oh well.

In spite of the incision and drainage, the major drop in my milk supply, the breakdown of my mom’s fridge (I already had about 50 bags of frozen milk stash for stock. I had to throw them all out, and start all over again.), which in turn, broke my heart, the excruciating pain of trying to pump from the affected breast and only getting 1 oz, the extremely painful dressing changes twice a week when the doctor cleaned the wound (without painkillers!), the tears that flow, I managed to continue pumping. And when the wound healed, I was able to breastfeed again. But that is another story for another day.

Fast forward to 9 months later, here’s the little boy.

And here they are together, sister and brother. Sitting peacefully on the couch. At the moment. Wearing the new Busha leggings I bought them. Hehe.

Aliah was baffled that I wanted to take photos of her bum! Who can resist such cute bums? Hehe.

I’ll keep it short and sweet today. Brainstorming for ideas here.

How to cope with two

Courtesy of www.autonomoussource.com

I’m currently 5 and ½ months pregnant, and somewhat apprehensive about the soon-coming of our second baby. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for this gift; God must have known that I could handle this. But I’m not so sure! My last pregnancy was 15 months ago, but it couldn’t have felt more different than the first time around. I am much more tired than before, having to put up with Aliah, who’s pretty much still a baby herself. All the tantrums, the mess, the running here and there, I’m left breathless with an aching back most of the time.

My husband surprisingly asked me the other day “Are all babies really this messy? Or is it just our daughter?” after Aliah successfully got herself smeared in rice, fish and crackers. Not to mention the mess within a meter radius around her high chair. No, make that two meters. I was like come on, how can you expect a baby to be clean and tidy all the time, I mean at any time? To babies, mess equals fun! I tried to comfort my husband by saying that in the midst of all the mess, she’s actually learning something. “I don’t care what she’s learning, I just vacuumed the house!” Okay, time to shut up.

But really, we’re both up in our wits to the max, how in the world are we going to handle another bundle of mess-making, tantrum-yelling, poop-producing joy? I simply cannot imagine. Oh, I can imagine the state of the house then, but I can’t imagine how I’m going to keep myself from going insane when I’m already at the verge of insanity and tears.

Okay, okay, you might think that I’m exaggerating this a little. There are millions of people in the world who have more than one child. But it’s little hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes when you already feel like you’re at the end of your patience most of the time. I mean, parenting is hard work. Literally. I still go through some not-so-smooth-sleep nights now that Aliah’s 15 months old. So how’s it going to be when the baby arrives, won’t I be able to sleep a wink? (Like I’ve mentioned before, sleep is a luxury to tired and energy-starved moms.) Sometimes I can’t even go to the toilet in peace, with Aliah wailing outside the door. (She usually wails in despair whenever she sees me leaving her.) Again, the nervousness and anxiety pops in. Can I be a good mother to both of them? What if I turn out to favour one of them? I’ve already poured so much love into Aliah, will I be able to love them equally?

Then I accidentally came across this article on coping with two and helping siblings to bond in Babycentre UK. It talks about how to prepare your toddler for the baby, how to treat them as individuals and not to compare them, how to teach the older sister or brother to help care and love the younger sibling and of course, that sibling rivalry will happen, to a certain degree. It even mentioned that some experts say that sibling rivalry is an opportunity for our children to learn the skills they’ll need in their future relationships. Have a read, it might put some worries at ease for second-time parents.

As for me, some skepticism still remains. I’ve learned by experience that parenthood is nothing like what’s mentioned in books. But don’t worry too much, it’ll definitely be the greatest adventure you’ll ever have.

A Tribute to my Mom

Mom and her three girls. That's me in pink.

During my childhood and teenage years, for as long as I can remember, my mother was always at home. She told me that she worked as a kindergarten teacher briefly until she had my eldest sister. She chose to stay home and raise her children herself because she couldn’t bear the thought of her children in other people’s care. My father was a busy man, and as his main office was two hours away from our home, we normally see him on weekends. My mother practically raised us single handedly by herself.

I remembered reading a quote somewhere, “A mother never stops being a mother.” Now being a mother myself, I understand now why my mother worries so much for her kids, which are no longer kids, mind you. But there are some things that I admire about her, several sides of her that I wish I had taken after, but sadly didn’t.

All her children except my youngest brother went to boarding schools, so we were pretty independent teenagers for our age. But that never stopped her from constantly mothering us, especially me, because my school was about ten minutes from home. I wasn’t allowed to go home every weekend, so she came every weekend without fail, bringing me home-cooked meals, washing my dirty laundry, sending them back to me nicely folded and ironed. Even when she couldn’t come, she would send my older brother to send my food stocks. When she had extra time, she would even cook up extra food enough to feed my whole dorm. Needless to say, my whole dorm and class were so used to seeing my mother, they knew her by face.

The nag of the house is reversed in our home. My mother doesn’t nag. My father does. But as you probably know, people don’t listen to nags. Their voices tend to drift into one ear and come out the other without you even registering what they say and you just go “Emmm. Ahh… Okay.” That was my father’s voice’s effect on us. But my mother never scolds, at least in my memory; I don’t remember her scolding me, ever. But she would speak in quiet, disappointed tones that would make your heart go thud, right down to your feet. She would say it just once. But it was far more powerful than any yells, screams and nags and has immediate effect. That was her way of enlightening and educating us.

When I started working, my first job was as an auditor, which means absurdly long work hours. I was staying in a big, intimidating city with my cousin. My work required me to travel a lot, mostly to clients’ places around the city. When I needed to work late, I would usually continue working in the office, where there would still be a number of people working until the wee hours of the morning. There were a few times that I did an all-nighter i.e. working straight to 6 a.m., go home, take a shower and put on fresh clothes, and go back to the office. When I think back to those times, I think I must be crazy to enslave myself to work that way. It doesn’t even pay me all that much!

Courtesy of http://parenting.preschoolrock.com

How does my mother come into the picture? My mother calls me every night, without fail, to make sure I have arrived safely at home. I think during those two years I was an auditor, she was worried sick for me. There came times when I just had to lie, knowing she would worry too much if she knew I was still working at unearthly hours. Sometimes she would call when I was hard at work in the main “aquarium”, the main working area where it was all rowdy and loud with auditors. Then I would run to the partner’s toilet and close myself inside and tell her, yes mom, I’m safe and sound at home. Sometimes she calls during my late night drinks with other colleagues at stalls. Then I would yell to any friend whose car parked the closest to us “Give me your keys!” and jump inside her or his car for a few minutes, and again, lie through my teeth. This scenario was pretty popular with my friends, and they never forgot it even after I’ve left my audit job.

Now a mom myself, I understand and appreciate my mother more than ever before. Now when I go back to their home, I wondered how my mother held herself together, being a full-time stay-at-home mother. I am running around breathless with one toddler, who is driving me insane, trying to be a good mother, wife and employee all at the same time. How did she manage five? Nothing more than motherly love and patience, no doubt.

I wish that I could say I inherited her amazing patience, but I didn't. (What a drag.) But I must say that being a mother has extended my patience limit by a whole lot, as I am definitely not a patient person. Even so, my patience is stretched to the limit a lot, and I do lose my temper sometimes with my bundle of joy. But not my mother, no. The phrase “patience is a virtue” must have originated from her. She's more patient with my daughter than I am. (Ermm...I hope this doesn't make me a bad mother.)

So here's to you, mom. Love you more than ever.

The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.-W. R. Wallace