1 day old – Already open her eyes a few minutes after birth

1 month old – Can ang gu gu, staring at our face and said “ang gu”

3 months old – Kept wanting us to hold her to stand, doesn’t want to lie down. Extremely happy and cheerful when show her the piggy toy.

4 months old – Doubled her birth weight to 7kg. Can hold both her legs up while lying down and like to suck her toe. Able to flip over.

6 months old – Can sit without support. Start having stranger anxiety.

7 months old – Start crawling.

8 months old – Can stand on support.

10 months old – Start walking.

1 year old – Her weight is 10.8 kg. Can mimic what we do and what we say. Can know the objects that we say, but not able to say them out yet. Expert in saying “mum mum”, “nen nen”, “miao”, “da da”. Know where to point her legs, hands, eyes, nose, ears, mouth and head if we ask her to.

13 months old – Only started growing her teeth. Unable to see the teeth yet, but able to feel them when touching the lower gum.

I can’t remember when she started drooling, stopped drooling, started putting objects into her mouth or said out her first word. But will update the list as I recall them.

Nadia doesn’t like stranger touches or hold her, it takes some time for stranger to break the ice with her before she even want to get near the person. Basically, she likes to fight for stuffs with another 4 year old boy that my mom in law is looking after. She loves throwing her stuffs around. She’ll cry when we don’t allow her to do something. She likes to play with gadgets like remote control, handphones and toy cars. Those cute soft toys don’t get her attention that well. Oh, she likes it when we bring her out to shopping mall. I’m really having headaches on how to discipline her in the future.

My cheeky girl

At week 39, my belly is getting heavier and I felt so uncomfortable already, walking, sitting and sleeping became so hard. In my mind I did wish that I can give birth that week, as my OB would be away on holiday during my EDD. During my week 39 checkup (on 6^th Sept 08 to be exact), there was signs of labour already, and OB let me go for the contraction monitor scan (I don’t know the medical term for this) to look at the contraction rate. OB asked me to get ready, it could happen within a few days though. I was happy there were signs and hoped that I could give birth on that day.

As I reached home from the checkup, I started to walk around the house non stop in hope to trigger the labour faster. That night I can’t sleep, kept tossing and turning. At 2am, my water broke. I woke my husband, and he was pretty anxious and quickly grabbed my hospital bag (which I prepared a few weeks earlier). I didn’t feel any pain, just water kept flowing out.

We reached the hospital quite fast, my husband handled the registration while I was brought into the labour room. After the nurse checked on me, she said it won’t be so soon to deliver yet, the contractions wasn’t close to each other. My husband went home to sleep. I didn’t feel any pain, and the contraction rate was so slow. My OB came in at 8.30am and insert pill to fasten the opening. It didn’t help much as my cervix opened at 1cm only even until noon. The nurse advised me to walk around. My husband was in the room with me already. When I walked around, the pain started to get stronger until I gave up walking. Another mother that was admitted in the morning that day, already gave birth to her baby girl at around 4pm. And I was still lying on my bed with slow contraction rate.

My OB called in and asked the nurse to put me on the drip. The drip started to kick in, and the contraction rate became faster and faster. I asked for epidural during this time. It had been more than 12 hours in the room, and baby still not coming out. About 10 minutes after the epidural was injected, my lower body became numb. That was at about 5pm already. I rested while my husband read the newspaper in the room.

At about 8pm, I could feel baby head emerging. And my OB came in to check on me at this time. He said I was ready to push. I can remember that while I was pushing, “Phua Chu Kang” show was on the TV, and I was still watching the show! I asked my husband to shut the TV so we can concentrate haha! My husband told me that the baby head came out half way only and I can’t seem to make any progress by pushing. So, the OB used vacuum to help the baby out. He put the baby in front of me once she was out.

Nadia came out smoothly at 8.45pm on 07^th Sept 08. She was 3.45kg in weight, 52cm in height, and 35.5cm for the head circumference. She was indeed pretty big, especially the head size. My husband and I were glad that there was no complication. We were officially upgraded to parents that day. Total hours in the labour room – 18 hours.

• I have a lot of milk – Nope, I struggled to keep up with my baby’s demand. I feel that my milk supply is just nice for baby’s demand. If I want to keep stock, I must pump more often. My ebm stock is not much, only can cover 2-3 days feed now.
• I have many people that support me – Not initially, as mentioned before, I have no relatives or friends at that time to give me advice because they don’t breastfeed exclusively.
• I don’t face much problems – I faced a lot of problems as mentioned in my previous post.

To me, husband support is very important for successfully breastfeeding. My husband supports me as much as he can, bringing me all the breastfeeding information and helping me to find out about how to store ebm (expressed breast milk) correctly. Till now, he’s still in charge of sterilizing bottles and ebm storage. There is a mothers club at his workplace, which encourages breastfeeding, and he knows a few of his colleagues that breastfeed exclusively. He helped me ask them for tips, and it gives me motivation because I know that many people are doing this, and I’m not alone.

Talking to a breastfeeding consultant or an experience mother is also important as I have no one to consult at home. When my baby was 2 weeks old as I was about to give up, I called up a breastfeeding consultant (got the number from a parenting magazine) and we talked for an hour. She encouraged me, and brushed away all the issues I faced as small problem and very normal. I gain more confidence and continue to breastfeed with better mood. However a few days later, I was feeling down again and wanted to give up again. Then I know I have to self motivate constantly or else I will easily stop. So I read the breastfeeding articles everyday to remind me of why I should continue. When the government nurse came to check on me and baby, she also motivated me by praising me and giving guidance to me. I need to thank the nurse a lot as she also encouraged my mom to support me and told her the benefits of breastfeeding. This nurse breastfed her baby until 2 years old and told me how happy she is with her boy’s progress. She told me not to give up. I also get encouragement by my gynecologist. His 3 children were all breastfed exclusively for at least 6 months.

My parents and in laws do not have negative comments on breastfeeding, but they do sometimes wonder whether baby gets enough milk or not during early months. When I told them of my baby weight, they are not worried anymore. My baby is taken care by my mom in law, and she never questioned on when I wish to stop breastfeeding. So overall, I feel that getting people support is very important, and if they don’t, just don’t listen to them but get connect to the people that can help. We need to learn to breastfeed, it’s not like we will know how to do it naturally. It’s good to prepare ourselves with breastfeeding information during pregnancy, so that we won’t get frustrated when face with problems later on, like what I faced earlier.

One of the main issues that many moms give up breastfeeding is milk not enough. Every mom is able to produce enough milk for her baby. Breastfeeding is based on demand, especially during early months, there’s no fixed timing in between feedings. Feed as per baby cues. How much milk a mom can produce depends on how often she clears her breasts. Once the breasts are cleared, the body will refill the milk again, and that’s how it works. Therefore, I learnt to feed baby as per her demand, and also pump as often as I could. That’s why there’s not much rest involved as I will wake up in the middle of the night to pump as well. I was advised to pump every 2 hours if not direct feeding baby, even if not much output, still need to pump often to trick the body to produce more milk. Instead of every 2 hours, I actually pumped every 3 hours (lazy me). I found many tips or recipes to increase milk supply, but somehow they don’t work for me. But when I changed from single manual pump to double electric pump, the milk output increases 1 oz every session which helps a lot in increasing my ebm stock. During confinement, as we need to eat a lot of heaty food, we need to also drink more liquids like soup. For me, I think first few months are the crucial time for the body to know how much milk it needs to produce. And direct feed baby is the best way to clear the breasts faster, because baby suckling is the best, better than any other pumps in the market. Breasts must be cleared often or else engorgement can happen and cause infection. Another point to make is when feeding baby with ebm, at first I thought need to follow about the same as the guidelines on formula milk can. Luckily is we do not follow that guidelines, it scared me that the guideline stated that at about a few months old, baby is fed with 7-8oz of milk which is way too much than the amount I feed my baby. Baby stomach is very small and I don’t think we need to stretch the tummy too much just to fulfill the 3-4 hours gap that most formula fed baby follows. I find this website is very informative on ebm feeding.

Another thing that I think is important is do not compare with other breastfeeding moms on your milk output. Each baby is unique and has different demands. So it’s not good to be pressurized by other moms. Even when listen to the consultant, talking to other moms or reading other moms experience, I just take in whatever that suits me, and not everything I think must really follow. I do believe in mother’s instinct and we will know what suits our baby and what’s not.

I won’t list down all the breastfeeding benefits here as those can be searched easily from the internet. I persisted to breastfeed my baby exclusively because of only one reason – breast milk is the best. I want to give her the antibody that no other milk can provide to boost her immune system. Breast milk is designed for human babies and no other milk can come close to it. I once read an article and I like the statement that mention it is not because of the benefits that we should breastfeed our baby, but we breastfeed because our baby needs breast milk, and what are the risks we are trying to take if we don’t breastfeed? To me, breastfeeding is tiring and needs a lot of hard work and yeah it is troublesome to need to pump at work, but I just need to sacrifice for a few months, and my baby gets the life long benefits that no money can buy. So it’s worth it! Actually, I only suffer for the first 2 months, and after that it gets easier, and pumping has become my daily routine. I don’t feel tired because of breastfeeding anymore, but I do get tired taking care of my baby who likes to walk here and there non stop, hehe. I’m not writing this to make moms that don’t breastfeed feel bad or guilty. I respect all moms that care for their children because becoming a parent is definitely not easy. I hope by writing this experience can help friends who wish to breastfeed exclusively know what to expect. Just don’t give up, be positive and yes it will get easier! Do it for at least 6 months, time really flies. That’s how I continue until now

Baby fed very long (up to an hour or more) on breast, sometimes slept mid way. I thought can rest a few hours before she wakes up to feed again, but within an hour, she will want to feed again. As I sent back baby to the nursery, a moment later the nurse will bring her back mentioning she cannot settle down and seemed still hungry. As I fed her for more than half an hour and let her go, she will still cry out angrily again. I extended my stay at the hospital for another 3 days due to baby had jaundice. Since I exclusively breastfeed, I thought it’s better for me to stay there while she underwent her phototherapy. During this time, I learnt to lie down to feed her so that I can also rest. While at night, I will pump out breast milk, the output wasn’t a lot. Causing me to think I don’t have enough milk.

When we were discharged, we went back to my parent’s house for confinement. I still continue to breastfeed my baby as usual like at the hospital. Whenever she’s hungry, I will feed her, regardless of how many hours gap, it can be an hour or 2-3 hours, since breastfeeding is on demand, and each feeding session can take up from 30 minutes to 1 hour at that time. To constantly need to feed her like that was extremely tiring, and I was also need to take care of myself after child birth. When baby cried, I also felt like crying. I guess the emotional is pretty much unstable after child birth due to hormone change. To let myself have better rest at night, baby will be fed with expressed milk at night, meaning I will wake up to pump at night at least every 3 hours. I don’t have much stock to keep, every bottle of expressed milk will be used up at the end of each day.

I don’t have anyone that I know of that I can ask for advice on exclusive breastfeeding. None of my side and my husband’s side family members or relatives breastfeed exclusively. And most of my friends who become parents mix with formula since the beginning. My parents seeing me being so tired did suggest mixing with formula. And relatives coming also gave some comment when they heard baby crying non-stop. The usual comment was milk seems not enough, need to mix. During baby full moon day, I was so busy bringing baby in and out of the room to feed, don’t know why she cried so much that day.

During the second month, I went to stay at my in laws’ house. With the help of my in law, I took care of my baby fully. Unlike the first month, I had the confinement lady to take care of baby most of the time, so second month was also challenging to me. There are relatives as well came and asked when am I going to mix with formula milk, most kept questioned me had I fed the baby, because my baby cried a lot. When I said, fed already a moment ago, then the “not enough milk” look appeared on their face, I think they must have thought I was torturing my baby.  Even though I didn’t really get very negative comments on breastfeeding, but the responses that came out from them can easily deter my will to breastfeed 100%. Maybe they had good intention seeing me being tired, but I just want to carry on breastfeeding exclusively. I got breast infection during 2^nd month due to blocked milk duct. At this time, the breast was painful and I felt feverish. I thought it’s time to stop, I can’t take it anymore. Dr gave me medicine and advised me to pump out milk to feed baby until I recovered from the infection. Because feeding baby direct on breast can be very painful during the infection, so I pumped out the milk instead. Within 3 days, I recovered and I continued to breastfeed.

To me, first 2 months was the hardest. Baby cried a lot, I don’t have much confident, lack of advice and information, a lot of questions on breastfeeding popped up and I was desperate to know the hows and whys. It wasn’t easy for me, and I refused to formula feed baby too soon. I really wanted to know how other mothers do it, and why it seemed so hard for me as I thought it was only me having all the problems. A few words to describe the 2 months—exhausted, painful, emotional, sleepy, desperate, stressed, down.

Will share on how I cope with all these problems and why I persist… in my next post.

When I was pregnant, my husband and I know that we want to breastfeed our baby because we were exposed to the benefits through articles and antenatal class, and I think most people know that breast milk is the best. But, equipping ourselves with the benefits is not enough; I wasn’t prepared at all with the challenges I was going to face. I wish I prepared myself more by asking the experience mothers on how they can breastfeed successfully. Because breastfeeding needs a lot of support and commitment, and to me, I need to self psycho to keep going. And I think I can understand why people stop or start mixing with formula to ease the pain.

When people know that I still breastfeed, they begin asking how I do it. Seems like it is out of norm that people breastfeed solely for long. But this is not true, I have come to know many working moms who are still breastfeeding for more than 6 months. After giving birth, I was desperate for information and tips on how to breastfeed successfully. I searched online for the tips and most of them come from experience mothers. From there, I get to know most of the issues I faced were similar to theirs.

The first rule to successfully breastfeeding is:–

Never listen to any negative comments from the people around us including our own mothers, relatives, close friends, friends – e.g Not enough milk, must mix with formula, baby keeps crying and still hungry – all these negativities come from so called experience people who have never exclusive breastfeed before and think they are super right. When I get this comment, it automatically goes in my left ear and out from my right ear straight disappear into the nearby dustbin. I feel strongly about this because it can really make people give up.

I’ll share more on the obstacles I faced when started breastfeeding in my next post

Hence, I renamed my blog to become “CH’s Blog”, as simple as that. And I even changed my blog’s template. Stay tune for more updates from me as I do have a lot in my mind that I wish to share, something I would love to keep as diary too

My weight = Total weight gain so far is 15.5kg

Yeah, I’m patiently waiting for baby to come out. This morning I went for my checkup and to see whether there’s any sign of early delivery. And the result is no, it’s not going to happen yet, at least not over this weekend. At this stage, I’m scared thinking of how labour is going to be, and I’m really feeling scared more than excited.

Somehow I do hope baby can come out very soon as I’m getting more and more uncomfortable with the big belly. It seems harder now to walk or sit for too long, and it gets even harder to sleep, no position seems to be comfortable. I can feel that baby is having a hard time to move too, not enough space to stretch already Anyhow, we’re hoping everything is going to be smooth and fine…

Baby is growing more hair and the water around her is good. From the ultrasound scan, we can recognize the umbilical cord as the Mickey Mouse sign as described by the OB, something cute like this:

With about 6 more weeks to go, I feel like I’m getting bigger and bigger daily. I can feel the baby is moving down already. Sometimes when walking, I will feel cramp at lower abdomen. It’s hard to toss and turn when sleeping now, and I cannot sit for too long or the lower back will feel pain.

I guess at this stage, I should post another of my tummy photo. Here

During the latest scan, we can already see baby’s hair. There are strands of hair on baby’s head now. Hmm, I wonder whether they are curly or straight. Baby moves also getting stronger. Sometimes I find it hard to breathe as my tummy grows bigger and bigger everyday. Although no stretch marks can be found yet for now, but I can feel that the skin is so stretched and I’m afraid eventually stretch marks will come out. I hope they don’t appear therefore I applied stretch mark oil quite often.

Whatever that’s going to happen, I guess we are pretty much prepared for the arrival of baby. There are still some house cleanings to do first though, thinking about it already makes me tired, and hubby definitely cannot get away with this task, no way.