Getting There Burp By Burp

Like everything else in life, getting good at this baby business only takes one thing: a lot of practice.

And luck.

I would say luck has everything to do with whether you spend your days and nights tearing your hair out or not.  Juju hardly cries very much unless he is (a) hungry, (b) very hungry or (c) pissed off about having his face cleaned which he hates. And as luck would have it, his appetite operates on a 2.5 to 3 hourly schedule so we are always primed with boobs and/or bottle ready before he has the chance to really bawl.  The rest of the time he merely complains a bit, like when he needs to be burped or when he is trying to poop. Other than this, he either sleeps or fidgets until he demands to be picked up.

As I said -- it's a lot to do with luck for each baby and each parent's experience.  Well, one month has passed and we survived!

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With more awake periods now that he's a month old, life with Juju is certainly more interesting. He likes looking everywhere even though I am sure he can't focus yet. If he's completely awake, he will have trouble getting himself to sleep. Luck plays a part here -- if he gets grumpy, a pacifier would be required to soothe him, otherwise he can lull himself to sleep most of the time.

We haven't started on the sleep training yet, despite the most well-meaning advice from others.  Juju can sleep up to 4 hours after his last feed before midnight. But the last feed varies between 9.30 and midnight. This means someone will have to wake up between 1am and 5am to give him the bottle. Daniel usually takes the first shift and I take the second shift in the early morning since I need at least 5 hours' uninterrupted sleep. We're going to wait and see if Juju can stretch his shift to 6 or 7 hours before giving the training a go. At our last doctor's appointment, Juju was 5.5 kg and 58 cm.

That's heavier than a sack of rice. I'm wondering how heavy he would be before my back gives out.

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Now that the days and nights have fallen into a familiar rhythm, my mood has likewise stabilised. I get grumpy and edgy from time to time of course, when I spy Tobi - my brother-in-law - coming into the house reeking of smoke, or Daniel tidying up which inevitably means he's moved my stuff someplace. He does this less often now after I flew into an almighty rage the last few times he kept my stuff away and I couldn't find them. Going out with Juju is also giving me less stress as we learn how to pre-empt him before he gets totally upset. Besides, the carseat seems to have a magical effect on him: he falls asleep almost instantly after we strap him in.

As my baby and I learn to respond to each other (mostly me to his needs) I can feel myself enjoying his babyhood more rather than fretting and sweating over his every cry and whine. After all, I've got less than 12 weeks left to be with Juju 24/7.

We ought to be thankful for some things.

Fed, burped and farted.

Project Baby Week 4: I Need A Nanny!

Mummy's big helper: Papa

I am dead serious.

I now understand fully why we Chinese take confinement nannies so seriously in the first month; why so many women get post-natal depression; why husbands cheat on their partners/wives once the baby bursts onto the scene; and why real women (celebrities in magazines don't count) look like shit during the first few months of motherhood.

Mothering is a full time job.

So? Well, if feeding, burping, cleaning, pacifying, bathing and investigative observations (of different kinds of cries and fussing) are a full time job, then where the bloody hell am I supposed to find the time to feed and clean MYSELF plus do the laundry, cooking and ironing? Oh, I haven't added sleeping, yes, the thing that can kill a human if said human is deprived of it.

The only reason I haven't gone around the bend and hired a nanny is because I have had a lot of help from day 1: Daniel, my Mum and my aunt who comes every week to mind Juju while I -- yes, believe this -- wash my hair and sleep for 2 hours. Today I seriously considered chopping off hair like all my friends have done before their babies were born. Who has 20 minutes to spare for hair washing and blow drying?

Daniel pooh-poohed the idea of a confinement nanny from the get-go because to him (coming from a culture where the women pretty much handle everything baby-related themselves) the need for a full-time helper simply to tend to the baby's needs is ludicrous. I agreed with him in fact, and did not hire one. Plus with Tobi staying with us, there is no room for someone else, also I did not like the idea of a stranger living with me and tending to my kid, the real reason for my decision. Daniel also tsk-tsked one of my friends who has 2 helpers and a nanny for her 2 kids who are under 2. I mean, okay, 3 servants for 2 babies while one does not work? I did not agree with the necessity, but trust me, by now, I fully understand how a person with the financial means would do it in order to regain control over her life.

With the same number of hours in a day to care for a completely helpless human being as I was previously entitled to before becoming a mother, I see no way of doing everything without collateral damage. And believe me, I would be a lot more damaged if not for my mother who comes with food daily, my aunt who minds the kid while I do the chores and shower and my husband who takes over non-boob responsibilities after 7pm.  Do you even wonder why the privileged classes of every age and culture had scores of servants to raise their children?

I am not extolling the virtues of subcontracting childcare to third parties. I would never put Juju in child care if my family were not able to do it for me (this would mean I would never have a baby since I don't see myself quitting work) and I would never hire a domestic helper to care for him while I work. See, I still see no way out of this alarming quagmire that all women like me face: want baby, need job. Subcontracting childminding to my parents is not any more noble than hiring a nanny or using daycare. The truth is this is a full time job, sometimes, a two-person job as you can imagine from our experience, and it is laughably unfair that women have been saddled with two choices when it comes to raising a child: quit their jobs or pay someone else to raise their child.

Well, I want to do neither of that and if you ask me what's the solution, I can only see a total overhaul of our society and work processes or else we would remain dependent on either third world labour or second-rate childcare services, both of which are damaging to the psyche of any family. 

Back to my situation at home: Juju is actually quite an easy challenge, given that he has escaped colic and jaundice thus far and only cries when he needs a burp or a meal. He operates more or less on 3 hourly cycles in the day and 4 hourly cycles at night. This is crucial if we parents are to have any chance of sleep, personal grooming and spare time to do blogposts or make phone calls. So I would say we are doing okay, as luck and plenty of family help would have it. But not everyone is as lucky as us.

Then again, there's always a nanny for hire.

Much Ado About Poo

Fascinating how so much yucky gunk....

.... can be produced by such an angelic thing.

Project Baby Week 3: Inching Close to the Blues

Ju's pacifier. My friend.

It's  the third week of Juju's life on earth and my post-natal transition has moved dangerously close to the edge of ennui, fatigue and depression. The first ten days were unbelievably pleasant if only because Ju's feeding, pooping and sleeping schedule ran like clockwork: every 3 hours. We had time to eat and go online, receive guests and the sleep interruptions and loss weren't all that severe anyway since we were still on a new baby high.

Then came day 13 and everything started to unwind.

Ju's awake periods began to lengthen. He was alert and we would revel in his shortlived cuteness until he would inevitably start to whine. At first we thought he had wind or hadn't had enough to drink (this despite the boobs plus bottle) but we soon realised he had to sleep and needed the boobie for a comfort suck to lull himself to sleep. 

It was draining. He would cry after we'd fed, burped, changed him. He wouldn't go to sleep for more than 5 minutes before howling again. His asleep periods would sometimes be nonexistent between feeds so that I had no time at all to do anything but respond to his every whim and whimper. This was especially trying at 5am in the morning after I had nursed him in a hunched position for almost an hour and stuffed another 50 ml of formula down him.

Last weekend I came dangerously close to the Edge.  I was crabby and snapped at Daniel, I had no interest in pacifying Juju when he went on one of his whinging moods after he was "supposed" to go back to sleep. I just wanted to lie in bed and sleep for 20 hours.  The worst part was, I still did not feel like I had "bonded" with my kid. In the exact words I said to Daniel: "I just see a cute baby when I look at him."  I found myself getting teary and even crying every time I thought about Juju and how I could not muster the energy and will to pacify him, nor did I feel enthusiastic about having him. To my own horror, I admitted that the words I tended to associate with my baby were "duty, responsibility, chore" rather than "love, love, love".

I know he's mine, don't get me wrong. But knowing is like a theoretical concept, I did not feel the connection. I shed tears at the hospital, I smile every time I look at his cherubic face and go gaga (like everyone else) whenever he flashed his angelic -- albeit accidental -- smile.  I've been conscientiously recording poos and pees, exact time of feeds, quantity of formula intakes and the like. I've been manually expressing my own breastmilk in all the different positions imaginable, even while nursing him, taking care of my boobs that they don't get clogged and end up engorged, worrying they would get engorged and worrying that the milk would never ever fully come in. I've been stressing over getting Juju to sleep before we take him out either for a meal or an excursion to the mall, receiving people who've been streaming to our apartment to have a look at him, making sure his daily baths (which used to be a total nightmare for all of us) went well now that Daniel has perfected the art of bathing Juju without the ritual turning into a torture session.

Maybe I've been focusing on everything else except the most important thing of all -- just being a Mummy.

A girlfriend assured me that this was normal, she also had a c-section and it took her a few weeks to completely accept her baby and feel the outpouring of love that Daniel confessed he had instantly felt at the hospital gazing at him through the glass window of the nursery. Ironically, because of the way Juju was born, Daniel got to witness a lot more of hus birth than I did, being drugged and semi-paralysed behind a cloth screen in the operating theatre.

Yesterday I gave in and let Daniel buy Juju a pacifier. Turned out to be a good call as it meant I didn't have to keep whipping out my boobs every time he wanted to sleep but couldn't.  I've also been worrying myself sick over how I would cope when Daniel went back to office full-time (today and tomorrow I would be alone) and I would have to do everything including the chores by myself on sleep loss. Thankfully my mother came over in the morning to relieve me, letting me get 2 hours' shut-eye while Juju lay awake. She will babysit later while I go pick up Daniel from work, a routine from our forgotten "normal" childless days that I look forward to.

It's only been three weeks, you must be thinking. Yes, but it's been three weeks in the first chapter of the rest of our lives. I would describe it as more than just sleep loss, the lack of privacy and the fact that our lives are now dictated by a 4.5 kg poop-making machine. It is all that plus the stark reality that there's No Going Back. It's either go over the edge or go on down that endless, thankless road to parenthood.

I'm here to stay

Project Baby: 0 to 13 days



Day 2

Day 4



Day 5

Day 8

Day 10



Day 11

Day 13

Being completely new to motherhood and its attendant sleep deprivation and irritabilities is made worse by the 35 degree heat and nipples that drip for no rhyme or reason.  The sofa now houses a baby bassinet and doubles as my breast-feeding station in the day. It's the coolest room in the apartment with the ceiling fan perpetually on, giving us respite from the heat and humidity.

Night shifts are gruelling, but we've worked out a schedule and refining it as we go along since there are still some hiccups -- literally.  Daniel takes the first two shifts (between 10pm and 2am)  so I can sleep and I take the next one between 4 and 6 am.  The only problem is I don't know how to burp Juju properly (or I don't have much energy left to do a 20 minute burp session after a 60 minute nursing) and he winds up cranky and refuses to sleep resulting in Daniel having to wake up to finish the job.

On other fronts, my wound is healing and I can now move about more or less nornally as long as I am on my painkillers.  My mother brings me dinner and tonic soups daily and I drink only approved concoctions although once in a while I sneak in a cold beverage, an ice-cream or a half glass of wine.  (We are not allowed to have anything cold in the first month while my stomach and intestines are still descending to their original position)  I have dropped 10 kgs and my jelly belly is shrinking slowly but surely.  I still have to wear the awful dark brown stripe down my belly (the pigmentation from pregnancy hormones) but the amazing thing is -- still no stretch marks!

We've been having a steady stream of visitors since Juju came home. He seems to relish the attention when he's awake and is the cutest little thing, letting people hold him without complaining. Once the guests leave, he reverts to Monster Julien and starts howling for his boobies, whining to be burped or punching me in the face if the milk flow is too slow. My flow is still not at full throttle even though there's a lot more than there used to be. These days I nurse him on one nipple and manually milk the other one into a bottle. I feel and look like a cow, seriously.

Daniel will go back to work soon. He will have 3 days off next week and 2 the week after.  I dread the days that I will be alone doing this 2-person job by myself. I said I dread it -- not that I couldn't do it!  Among all of my Singaporean friends, I am the only one I know of who has chosen to do this solo, i.e. without the help of a nanny or a domestic helper in the first month, a norm for Chinese mothers. My friends thought I was nuts and everyone advised, urged or warned me that I could really use the help.

It's day 13 and we are still coping -- albeit with less sleep than we are used to -- and add to that, we've managed to take Juju out to breakfast (prematurely abortive, but not a fiasco), to the mall (he slept right through) and for walks around the neighbourhood. All this at less than 2 weeks of age. I would say that is evidence enough that when you've got the will to do something it CAN be done.