Food for thought

The irony of it all...

The truth about nursing

Breastfeeding is the most beautiful thing in the world.

I guess that statement is as true as saying that red roses are the most beautiful flowers there is in the world. Subjective? Exactly my point! And I don’t like red roses.

Don’t get me wrong – I am, above all a big, fat advocate of breastfeeding and I am completely sold on the benefits of feeding your baby breast milk - but I do think that the actual act of having to breastfeed a baby is purely functional and therefore over rated.

So, this second time round, I am only too happy to trade my boobs for the bottle with pumped breast milk when Squirt was 6 weeks old. At Squirt's 5.5 months mark, I am feeling oh-so-ready to give up nursing.  And unlike with my first, I had no issues whatsoever if Squirt decides that he was going to reject my breasts.

Maybe I’m weird, but I am one of those who can’t seem to correlate a baby stuck to my boobs as bonding. I don’t even find it enjoyable, and I see no reason to go all crazy googoo-gaagaa over the act of breastfeeding a helpless baby. To me, the baby needs to eat (or wants some comfort) and he/she needs a source – the source need not necessarily be just from the boob.

If that makes me a terrible mother by not wanting to nurse anymore, so be it. But there’s an upside to not nursing:

Quicker

Oh hell yes!! Feeding becomes quicker with a bottle. What used to be a half an hour or 45 minutes sessions which rendered me immobile several times a day, now takes me less than 10 minutes. I realized that as time goes by, I don’t have the patience to sit through a 15 minutes to half an hour nursing session per time.

Less fussy

With the bottle, the baby is assured of a very even and smooth flow of the milk. With the breasts, Squirt tends to fuss a lot more at my breasts as he tries to navigate the let downs – too fast and he chokes then get upset, too slow and he starts tugging and then get more upset.

With my breasts on the line and subject to rigorous tugging and changing of sides every 5 seconds just to get him to feed, the entire experience do get extremely frustrating for the both of us. Most of the time, he fusses so much that I might as well just stay topless;  because when you start changing sides every 5 seconds, there  really was no point to cover the exposed side again.

(Slightly) more dignity

I don’t have to flash my boob in public under a breastfeeding cover no more just to feed and be subjected to uncomfortable stares all around! I don’t have to subject myself to embarrassing situation of being caught with both sides of my nursing bras down because Squirt was fussing so much between the left and the right in public places.

With a bottle, I don’t have to be discreet.

Quality time

Most often than not, I am always doing something else while I was nursing. When he feels relaxed, he usually tends to close his eyes and I’ll either be catching some zzzzs, or blogging on my laptop or meddling with my phone.

Besides, other people - especially his Papa and his grandparents - can spend quality time with him by having the chance to feed him too.

Quantity

With nursing, I have no clue of his milk intake, and sometimes there has been a tendency for him to “snack”.  I don;t quite like the idea of being a snack bar. With pumping and bottle feeding, I have an idea of how much he needs and how much he feeds per feeding session.

With a bottle, I can SEE when the milk in the bottle is diminishing. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Weaning

No problem here. He can’t even remember being breastfed and that is a good thing. For me personally, I cannot imagine having a one year old still stuck to my boobs. After 6 months, my pair of boobs is no longer a shared property.

So there! I get that breastfeeding is the absolution of goodness all around, but really, enough with romanticizing breast feeding, because with me, all that beautiful, gushing feelings about breastfeeding and bonding didn’t happen at all. There was no serenity – only fussing and probably 5 minutes of calmness.

In my case, I felt that it was good while it lasted. It was necessary in the initial stages and it was, above all functional.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with not nursing, nothing wrong with bottle feeding and absolutely nothing wrong with a child not being dependent on the boob at all. We bond in various other ways.

And yes! I do want to wear a regular bra again once this pumping milk shit is over.

Rock Buns

My first memory of making my first rock buns dated back to more than 15 years ago at Home Economic class in my secondary school years - a subject I was not too keen to do at that time. But I remembered liking what I made and felt quite proud that I could bake!

I never did try to bake it again for some reason. I guess I just forgot...

Fast forward to last week, I had this sudden urge to look up the recipe thinking that I could interest Spud to play with flour and dough and bake with me. She wasn't too keen when I asked if she wanted to make cookies on a Saturday afternoon, and opted to watch Dora instead.

So left to my own devices, I started making a batch and I was practically done baking in less than 25 minutes.  These babies are really easy to make and a good side munchies to have with a cup of afternoon tea.

While the recipe is pretty simple, I'm still not too happy with how it turned out - I accidentally burnt some and it was a little too dry. I'm still experimenting and will post the recipe once I am happy with the result.

Stay tuned!

Pump-Dump

Only a nursing mother can understand how this feels...

If you don't already know, breast milk is precious, and, handling pumped breast milk in a bottle is not for those with butter fingers!

The one with a busted head

My husband had to get his head examined over the weekend.

Really.

While our home is pretty much child proof, the kitchen while is separated by a safety gate, isn’t. And while the corners of both the tables in the living and dining room are fitted with rubber paddings, the corners of our fridge door aren’t.

And so,  when Silver Bullet  stood up to pick things up from the kitchen floor just right at about the same time I stood in front of the fridge (he saw me!) and opened the top door of our fridge as I called out "watch it"…BAM! he banged up the top side of his head real hard on the corner of the refrigerator's door. The knock was so hard that he busted his head. I believe he saw stars.

I saw how it happened, I heard the loud thud that came with it and I shuddered when I saw that he had blood on his hands right after he touched his head. I could imagine how painful that could be and what I saw and heard almost knocked the wind out of me.  (I still shudder as I wrote this, and probably will if I were to re-read it later) 

I didn’t know what to do, and as guilty as I felt (I KNOW it wasn’t my fault and it’s not like I hate him or anything), the last thing I didn’t want to be was go into a panic mode. Instead, I quickly shoved him out of the kitchen, had him sat on the sofa, gave him a cold compress to his bleeding head and gave him a glass of water. Deep inside, the blood in my heart felt like it was swirling; my head felt light-headed.

While Silver Bullet reassured me that he was ok, I got a little wary when he continued to bleed for more than an hour despite getting some cold compress for more than 15 minutes.  Even though there was no gore of blood gushing away, I am ever so paranoid with injuries to the head. And so yes, even though the wound might be superficial, I insisted that he needs to get his head checked.

I reckon he thought (as usual) I tend to over react when it comes to such things, but he agreed with me when he saw the picture I took. Poor, poor Silver Bullet; his hair is already quite thin as it is and now there might be a dent!

Usually, on a weekend, we’ll be scratching our heads to try to find things to do in the afternoon to keep ourselves occupied. This time, we managed to find something to do – we went to the hospital.

In the end, all is good. The bleeding stopped eventually, and the doctor confirmed that he did not need any medication for his head. I am still a little paranoid and have been incessantly asking him if he feels fine and constantly nagging him in the past few days to please, please, please immediately alert me if he feels a bit “off in the head”.

But then again, he probably is a little off in the head already – after all, he married me.

Spud's BFF

One of the benefits about dropping your kids off to school yourself is that you sometimes get to yak with the teachers in school for a little bit each time before you leave the school compound. Even if it feels more like making small talks, it is nice to get first-hand information on Spud and her progress and the mischief she has been up to without me asking about it. The information was all volunteered.

One of the “insiders” stories related to me is of Spud's social circle. While I have been told that she plays with mostly everyone and anyone most times and quite the social critter, there is this one boy, her age, Leo, whom she hangs out everyday with. According to several teachers and eye-witnesses, these 2 are best friends and almost always together all the time. They look for each other (mostly Spud looking for him!), play together, they eat together, they share snacks together (mostly Spud sharing the snacks I pack for her), they chase each other and quote-unquote, they both “go crazy together".

We actually do know the boy - and his parents -  as they used to be in the same swimming class with Spud a while back before they changed their Saturday class to Sunday. Quite a cute kid!

Kids at this age are so innocent. My heart swells up when I hear stories like that. It sounds so endearing. According to her homeroom teacher, they are always up to some mischief. Why am I not surprise!

The teacher recently gave us a bunch of photos which they took during the International Cultural Day, and there was this one picture from that day which made me laugh really hard:

She somehow managed to look all meek and mild in the picture, standing right next to Leo, but we know for sure that doesn't really happen all the time. Spud plays rough, and from what I gathered, the other kid she tends to play with - although not as much as Leo - is also a boy, called Marc.

In fact, I have a strange feeling that, just like her mother, she’s going to be one of those girls who grows up to be more comfortable as  “one of the boys”.

Not exactly a bad thing.

The bored one

None of our cats at home are over-weight, but out of the 3 cats we have, Donut is the biggest of the lot. Perhaps it's also because he is male.

I've mentioned before that he is a closet bully - still is, as no matter how meek his demeanor seems to be, he still struts around the house showing the other two cats who is boss. He can be a little destructive sometimes (he likes chewing on plastic and ziplock bags), and, not-so-recently-ago (if those words even make sense!), he developed a habit of peeing on our rugs! Every time we put a new rug in the bathrooms, he peed on them.

I don't know what's with him; I reckon it is probably a call for attention given that we hardly ever snuggle with him these days with the kids around.

Or that he is just bored shitless...like how I found him this morning - flat out on a chair in Squirt's room and looking absolutely bored stiff:

He did not even bother looking up to me when I scratched him on his head, but I did hear him purr his turbo-engine purr. Hmmmm..time to get out that catnip and watch him go crazy...!

A colourful wedding

Wedding cards are usually a dime or a dozen, produced in mass production, looks almost similar and rarely ever stands out. But a colleague of mine who got married recently gave us quite a cool looking wedding invitation card which looked like this:

The interesting bit was that every one of us received a different picture of the couple – they were quite nicely done, in my opinion.  Every card had a creative element in it, and every card was inserted into a hand-folded paper doily which was used as an envelope. It was simple yet pretty - not quite the typical Thai wedding invitation. And what I liked about it was that the invitation felt sincere and personal.

I’ve been to countless weddings, and several Thai weddings, but this was one of those invitation cards which stood out really well. The wedding was themed “colourful” - not a typical traditional Thai wedding reception either. It was cosy and intimate. Here is the bunch of us from the office:

The Bride & Groom are the ones with the arrows.

And did I mention that the bride is really gorgeous!

Whilst we are on the topic of Thai wedding, in the Thai culture, rather than giving a gift or enclosing money as gift inside a wedding card, it is customary to present monetary gifts in the envelope in which you receive your wedding invitation. The envelope bears your name on it, so the married couple knows who gave them the gift. The envelope is usually given at the evening reception and as guests, you usually receive a small memento or a wedding favour in return,

As I recently found out, wearing the colour purple to a Thai wedding reception is a complete no-no. According to one usually speculative source, purple apparently symbolises divorce. That being said, it definitely is not a colour one should wear to a Thai wedding reception at all cost.

I don't know how true this is and how reliable the source is (given that it came out of a foreigner's mouth and when I asked the Thais, they told me they don't know of such things -  and granted I spotted a few Thais wearing purple), my take is, if in doubt and when it comes to Thai weddings, don't do it. 

When kids don't listen...

How often do you find your toddler not listening, practically ignoring you, not responding to your request and you find yourself repeating what you said to him or her a hundred times more?

Often, I start off asking Spud to do something nicely, and if she doesn’t listen, I ask again a second time using a louder and firmer tone. And then I would raise my voice a little, and when it gets to the 5^th time, I proceed with threat like, “if you are not getting out of the shower this very second, you are not watching TV and you are going straight to bed!”. And, on occasions, as much as I hate to do it, I lose my head (especially when I’m stressed out and exhausted)  and I yell - which, I know,  is not a very good thing to do.

Yelling is possibly the worst form of communication ever.  I might get a brief attention from her, but that is usually because she got startled before she started wailing her guts out. I am no saint, but I try to be a good role model by not yelling too often (and I really, really try.).  It isn’t a trait I particularly want to pass on to the kids.

It is frustrating to keep repeating myself over and over again, but a quote I saw recently puts me in perspective:

This gives me the creeps, only because there is so much truth in it. And I just need to constantly remind myself that sometimes, it really is OK if Spud doesn't listen...it is about how I react that matters.

And sometimes, just sometimes,  I just have to yell.