Project Baby Week 10: Out And About

I am one of those people who get a heart attack the moment their baby starts bawling in an enclosed public space, particularly a restaurant or airplane cabin. For someone who drives, I am also jittery about taking Ju on public transport. Today we made our maiden journey on the MRT and it went quite swimmingly.

Dhoby Ghaut and Orchard stations are quite disabled/baby friendly with lifts and ramps as well as those bumps on the ground leading you to the nearest lift as soon as you alight. The only irritation are the able-bodied people (without strollers) who use the lift as well. Even at 6pm (rush hour), my fears were somewhat allayed when I managed to cram myself and Ju into an almost-full carriage. Luckily we only rode for two stops and it was fine.

Time really flies when you're out with a 2 month old, and it positively streaks at the speed of light when you are two babies. Lunch and coffee took a total of 2 hours, feeds and diaper changes included. The thing that one must really get used to is looking for the lift as well as the ramps when you're faced with stairs. That takes the most time after feeding. Luckily Ju didn't need much burping today, probably because he was kind of upright in his carseat most of the time. He seemed to be fascinated by everything around him so much so that he didn't even get hungry at his usual 2 hour mark. He only got grumpy when he woke from his nap, but he was really attentive when he was awake, delighting passersby with his earnest and boyish handsomeness!

Being out and about today gave me a sense of achievement I haven't felt in a while. It sounds ridiculous of course, but when you spend most of your time on the couch at home, being out with a baby doing "normal" stuff in the city feels like running and completing a marathon. I guess there is such a risk as having too much help that you wind up sitting on your ass until someone comes to babysit so that you can go out. But seeing that Ju seems to enjoy having different things to see, I shall take him out more often. After all, I should make the most of the rest of the time I have with him before I go back to the office.

Project Baby Week 9: Aches and Ailments

Ju is almost 9 weeks old and growing like a....well, he's big. At his doctor yesterday he weighed in at 6.6kg and measured 61.5cm.  Compared to the other babies in the room, he looked like a giant. It's a myth that his size has to do with half his genes being German. I'm serious. Every Caucasian parent I've spoken to so far has had a baby smaller than mine at birth and smaller in size month-for-month compared to Ju.  So race has nothing to do with it and neither does diet, since I am still thinner than most of the mothers around me who had smaller babies.

Speaking of weight, hoisting Ju up and down every day has given my wrist a strain or sprain from the pain I have. It's likely due to his weight because most babies his size are at least 4 months old and can hold up their heads. Ju's neck, on the other hand, has not strengthened, so I have to pick him up with the babyhold (supporting neck and butt) and this really puts a strain on the wrist. Not to mention it looks a tad ridiculous cradling a baby this big in my arms like an infant. So I'm crossing my fingers his neck strengthens REALLY soon.

In other news, Ju got his shots and it was hilarious (to me anyway).  He got the oral Rotavirus vaccine first, but because it was sweet and he hated it, he coughed and choked and started screaming in rage. The injections on each of his chubby little thighs went smooth sailing since he was bawling at the top of his lungs anyway. I've never heard him scream so badly before and I did feel a little sorry for him. So we gave him his bottle afterwards to calm him down. 

His cradle cap is still looking rather bad, and the doctor gave us a shampoo for his scalp. I rubbed olive oil in his scalp before his bath yesterday and Daniel shampooed him. Afterward, there was lots of skin flaking off and I spent the next hour or so picking it out of his hair. Gross. I hate dandruff.  But as they say, the condition is quite harmless and bothers the parents a lot more than the baby. We'll just have to wait and keep treating his scalp, hopefully it will improve in a week.

Meanwhile, I sw my gynae a final time and had a pap smear. It was less invasive than I feared but then again, I haven't been penetrated in a while. Doc confirmed that breastfeeding really kills your libido and makes the whole place dry as a desert. He recommended some contraceptive options for me, but I declined. Dan would agree that the chances are slimmer than slim that we would get pregnant again. As a matter of fact, even though your period doesn't show up, you're fertile after the second month, even if you're breastfeeding. My doc informed me that my ovaries were "waking up". Good news lost on me I guess.

Breastfeeding is going a lot better, and I finally put my Medela pump to good use. I got 100ml out in a couple of minutes last night, but that was a good 7 hours after the last nursing. Pumping and feeding it to Ju from the bottle is a lot more effective but in the day, I don't bother as I don't get quite so much out with the 2 hourly feeds. Ju still needs a bottle of formula after nursing from the breast. I doubt mixed feeding is responsible for his weight, he doesn't look overweight, just big. I suspect his bones got a power-packed dose of calcium from me in the womb.

There's also one thing I learnt about breastfeeding: drink lots of water before and during the feed. Dehydration does nothing for your milk flow and it might even have detrimental effects on your body as it needs to generate supply for the baby. Water is therefore essential.

Project Baby: Month 2

From birth, Ju has been a rather upsized baby, as I had probably remarked on other occasions.  Like all parents, we are fascinated by his stages of development and sometimes concerned if he didn't seem to be doing something "expected" of his age. I guess at less than 8 weeks old, one cannot realistically expect him to conform to any standards since all babies grow and develop at different paces. Even so, I couldn't help comparing! I was particularly concerned about his eyesight and attention span (given Dan's ultra short one).  Here is his progress at week 8:

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Attention

There is no problem with Ju's eyesight since he could squint at direct sunlight or bright lighting as early as the first week. He just couldn't focus on me or anything within a few inches of him even at week 6. Opinions (both "professional" and laypeople) online about when a baby could see ranged from a ridiculous 3 days old to 3 months. Some people seem to imagine that their baby can track them from across the room at 3 weeks, lunacy. Anyway, Ju's paediatrician thinks his sight is normal, he could focus for 1 or 2 seconds at the last check (4 weeks). At week 8, Ju has become a lot more focused on people close to him, especially if we are speaking directly at him. When I caught his attention and moved my head to the left and right, his eyes seemed to be able to track my movement.  He liked to be held in the sitting position since turning a month old as he could see a lot more, so we bought him a rocker. He's always looking this way and that, so even if he couldn't focus on anything for longer than 2 seconds, there is plenty to occupy him everywhere.

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Communication

Ju has been smiling since his first week, but I figured it was more a reflex than reaction to the world. He would smile while nursing and often, sleeping. Between week 6 and 7 he seemed to smile in response to me as you can see from the photo. He still smiles at no one in particular, especially while staring at some unknown point in the distance, but he definitely smiles when we talk to him these days. 

He also started gurgling and doing baby talk, like ah-goo, ah-grrrr, haiii, and a range of squeals and sighs. Yesterday I put him on his rocker and read a couple of books to him (the Bears by the Berensteins) and he was delightfully baby-talking back to me.  It could be he was super awake then and felt like communicating but he sure seemed to like my voice. 

Ju has never been much of a howler, so his cries are always only motivated by 1) hunger, 2) need for burping and 3) need for sleep although the last two are more whining than crying. Ju's body movements are more telling of what he wants than his vocalisations. For example, rubbing his eyes and swatting at his face are signs of tiredness, along with yawning of course. When he is pooping or needs to poop he scrunges up his face, makes pushing noises and lifts both legs high up like he is really pushing crap out.

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Feeding & Sleeping

Ju used to feed every 3 hours until week 4 or 5 when he switched to 2 hourly feeds. It was hell at first, but I am used to it now althought it makes me feel like I am doing nothing but feeding. The upside is he is sleeping 5 to 6 hours after his last feed at 9pm. Last night he managed to go almost 7 hours.  He is still on mixed feed -- bottle and boobs -- though we give him formula at night to hasten the whole exercise. From the very beginning Ju got formula because of his weight (4.3kg) so we stuck with it. Plus I didn't have enough breastmilk to satisfy him. Even now it's impossible to completely breastfeed him unless I express the stuff into a bottle. He takes up to 120ml (4 ounces) per feed which is quite normal for a baby his  size (6kg). Ju is very impatient when he's hungry but he chokes when the milk "lets down" and so when he lets go of the nipple, he gets a faceful of milk when it sprays him. This enrages him even more but it's hilarious. I always have a burp-cloth in hand in addition to his bib.

He naps a lot less in the day and has longer periods of awake which he spends kicking around with his arms and legs and baby-talking in his better moods. I still try to get him on a sleep-eat-wake routine although this is more dictated by Ju than me. He sleeps rather well, does not need help falling asleep as I refrain from carrying him too much or rocking him to sleep. Usually when we get his cue that he's tired, we put him down either on his spot on the sofa or in his cot and cover him with a blanket. The blanket trick is perfect as it signals to him that it's time to sleep. No problems at night either as he falls right back to sleep after his feed. I do not speak to him at all during his night feed and keep the lights as dim as possible to maintain him in a sleepy mode.  He poos every day although the frequency is less than the first 2 to 3 weeks, averaging about 3-4 poops a day.

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Physical development

Ju has always been an active baby, using his arms and legs enthusiastically when he is awake.  At week 4 he could hold his head upright for a second or two when being burped over the shoulder.  We give him tummy-time too, although he responds much better on our tummies than on the floor. He can lift his head up for quite a few seconds in this position. His neck is still not strong enough to support his head all the time although this week his much stronger and loves being held upright over the shoulder. He swings his head around so much (to see this and that) we have to keep a hand on his neck all the time.



This week he started to put his fist to his mouth, he likes to lick his finger or thumb, sometimes both fists at the same time.  He also started grasping at cloth, probably inadvertently. He has been pulling at his hair since birth. He is still not as sociable as his friend, Dion (below), aged 4 months, as he can't focus very well yet. Dion's vision and attention is much more developed and he can stare intently at Ju and smile at me when I speak to him.

Ju used to dislike being in the car when it was stationary, he would cry until I sped up to 60km/h. He would usually fall asleep pretty quickly after that.  Now he is quite content to be strapped in and stays awake, looking out the window.

Our next PD appointment is on Wednesday, when Ju will get his vaccinations. Poor guy, we are giving him 2 jabs (the 6-in-1 and Pneumococal) and an oral vaccine (Rotavirus). His BCG (against tubercolosis) jab on his butt has swelled to a red welt the size of a 10 cent coin but it doesn't seem to bother him. He developed a very dry, flaky scalp  few days ago which seems like cradle cap. It's gross as it looks like dandruff. I've been using some baby oil on it but it hasn't worked. We'll see what his doctor says.

At 8 weeks, Ju is over 6 kg and 58 cm long.

Project Baby: the multilingual update

A while ago I wrote a post on how Daniel and I intend to raise Juju linguistically. From the diagram illustrating the various languages that will be used in Ju's various relationships, you would expect that remembering all that would be a gargantuan challenge in itself, as there are three languages in all. It has been 7 weeks now and I must say everything has gone as planned (as far as who should speak what) but for the weakest link -- me.

I knew speaking Mandarin, my second language, would be the biggest challenge of this project, but it wasn't until our baby arrived that I realised just how tough it really is. First, there is the "other speaker challenge". Basically, when you're the only one in the household who speaks the language, it means no one else in the vicinity understands you when you're speaking. We don't realise how most of the time, we speak to the baby but we're communicating at the same time with our partner or others who may be in the room. Oftentimes I speak to Ju in English not unconsciously, but deliberately because I am communicating to Daniel more than Ju. An obvious example is: "Daddy is such a moron, isn't he? He didn't wash his hands."

Second, Mandarin is not my mother tongue -- meaning it isn't my first or natural language. I am more fluent in English as my vocabulary is much wider and I can express myself perfectly whereas in Mandarin I often find myself at a loss for words (literally) as I hunt for the right word. Ironically I speak to Ju in "high" Mandarin rather than the colloquail (or "pasar" Mandarin) tongue that I use in daily life. Given that I use Mandarin only 10% at the most in daily living, speaking to Ju in Mandarin feels like speaking a foreign language. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I am so bad in the language, it just doesn't come naturally as I do not associate it with Ju the way I associate Mandarin with my father and some other family members with whom I have spoken Chinese all my life. I suffer the same paucity of vocabulary with them, but it feels a lot more natural than with Ju.

Third, it's weird speaking to a baby who can't understand nor answer me. The natural response on my part would be to limit speech to a few phrases, usually "What's the matter?", "Wait a minute, milk's coming", or "Ooh you made a big poo". 

Throughout this exercise I've discovered certain things about language from observing myself with Ju: code-switching is normal and natural since I have done it all my life with my parents and relatives; this means Ju can do it too, as long as he associates Mandarin with me. Second, language is like a ball game. Imagine the language as a tennis ball. The ball goes nowhere unless there's another player on the other side returning it. We can't just speak monotonously at someone, it isn't a conversation and after a while, it gets really tiring. Third, because of the above point, if there is someone else around, the natural instinct is to revert to the mutually-used language. In our case, it is English since Daniel doesn't speak Mandarin and I don't speak German. It is also a matter of social inclusion as propriety dictates that in a social gathering, one would use the common language if there is even one person present who does not speak the majority group language.

Hence I am glad for my friend Loping, whose son Dion is also being raised bilingual in German and Chinese. Loping is Taiwanese and her English is not as fluent as her German. This means we speak Mandarin with each other, and I've found myself improving after a few hours together. Dion and Juju are almost 3 months apart, with Dion being the elder. They would also be able to bounce off each other when they are both ready to communicate with language. Yesterday, Loping and I were having an animated conversation and after a while I noticed that the two babies were looking intently at us. Ju was doing his karate kicks as usual but he was paying rapt attention at me as I spoke. Babies love listening to adults talk, Loping said.

No wonder. Ju is now vocalising. He makes the ah-goo and aiii sounds in between gorgeous smiles and gurgles. It's amazing how he's growing. He can now focus on me as move his eyes with my movements if I can catch his attention. He will be 8 weeks old this Friday and I can't wait for the rest of his life to follow.

Maid in Singapore: Policy Failure or National Bigotry?

Source: The Online Citizen

The latest social issue that is gripping one segment of our society is whether to legislate the one day per week off for domestic workers. For a full story, the online citizen has the facts and debates. I would recommend reading the comments section for an appreciation of the kind of stupid dumbassery that some Singaporeans are known for.

The point of view I am offering concerns how we as a nation have arrived at this point in our development: the way nationalist pride in our economic growth and standards of living has grown in tandem with a snobbish sense of entitlement, an utter disregard for the rights of other human beings who "serve" us, and a complete ignorance of the way macro policies have manipulated us as a citizenry to behave in a manner that disgraces us amongst our global peers.

I am referring to a widespread opinion (no numbers since no institution has published any decent study of attitudes towards migrant domestic workers) that maids do not require a mandated day off because
(a) they would use the day off to engage in morally unacceptable activities such as sexual relations;
(b) they would get pregnant as a result of (a) and hence be deported, resulting in the loss of the employers' $5000 surety fee;
(c) they would become too "savvy" as a result of interaction with other maids and "cause trouble" for their employers;
(d) they do not want a day off anyway because they have no money to spend.

The above opinions are common excuses offered by Singaporean employers for denying their maids a day off. To give some context to the issue, we do not have any labour law that gives domestic workers any rights to a day off. It means that maids literally work 24 hours (the number of hours they sleep varies according to the decency of each employer) 7 days a week. It was recommended some years ago that employers give maids a day off, or compensate a day's wage in lieu of that. However, this has never been legislated and a majority of employers continue to work their servants 7 days a week. (There is the exception of Filipina maids, their contract mandates a weekly day off due to Filipino labour laws)

To address the horribly flawed arguments against this legislation which I've enumerated above, Singaporean employers typically take a suspicious and cynical view of granting such a right to their maids. An ex-boyfriend of mine objected to my argument that his mother should give their maid a day off, saying that I "did not understand how these people are". Essentially, "these people" would get really crafty and create trouble for their employer if given a chance to socialise with other maids, he claimed. He also told me that they had caught their maid with photos of herself naked with some guy stashed in her mobile phone. How they had gotten access to her mobile phone troubles me, but back then, I had to let the matter rest since it wasn't my domestic helper.

Singaporean employers are dismally uneducated when it comes to what's legally right and what's morally wrong.  They do not forfeit their $5000 deposit if their maid gets pregnant and is deported, this fact may be little known to them, but I doubt making this public knowledge would change the anachronistic mindset that it is preferable for their maids to remain "naive" and stay out of trouble than to risk their becoming "clever" by socialising with other maids.

The implication being that socially closeted and marginalised maids make more compliant employees. Reminds you of the doctrine of a certain government in a certain era doesn't it?

The saddest part about this story isn't that Singaporeans indulge in irrational logic borne of arrogant stupidity. It is the fact that the maids suffer psychological stress as a result of overwork and social isolation. Some employers who had written to the Straitjacketed Times alleged that their maids were not overworked at all and even described how cushy their lives were in comparison to the horror stories of overworked and abused maids. After you close your mouth from the sheer idiocy of such a claim, you would wonder what objective yardstick this person had used to measure her maid's burden of work in order to arrive at this dodgy conclusion.

If anyone were to turn the lens onto themselves, as Singaporeans love to do when it's time to complain about their own troubles and burdens, they would do well to consider if they would like to forgo their days off on Saturdays and Sundays. After all, based on our national productivity rates, Singaporeans spend most of their work day on Facebook and at the smoking section anyway (apart from two hour lunches and double tea-breaks).

The truth is, it is no walk in the park to do domestic work. Ask any maid who has attempted suicide. I'm not saying that working in the home drives one to suicide, there are usually other serious conditions that tips the balance. I have been at home for 6 weeks nursing a baby and doing the chores. On days when I am completely alone with the baby, I feel like I am going batshit crazy by the time my husband returns. I wouldn't even compare myself with what a maid has to do, since I don't do any cleaning, I have the Internet, the TV and the freedom to leave the house even if I don't want to with an unpredictable infant.

A possible reason for the common disregard for maids' rights is that people do not consider domestic work REAL work. I am sure this isn't unique to Singapore, but we are certainly not unique in the way we have approached the issue of unpaid and lowly paid household work. A maid who cooks, cleans and cares for an elderly, disabled or infant member of the family is seen as merely doing the work that the female (usually the wife) in the family does. Because housewives (or homemakers, if you prefer the politically kosher term) are not paid and are not counted as part of the workforce, their work is not valued the way paid workers are. The truth is domestic work is still work, whether or not the value generated can be measured in real wages. What happens is, on a societal level, domestic work is utterly undervalued and maids are hardly thought of as active members of the economic workforce who deserve their day of rest.

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Let's look at what state policy has done to contribute to the national reliance on maids from Third World countries. First, our female labour participation rate isn't even among the highest in the world, the Scandinavians being top of the list and NOT being a mass importer of low-wage domestic labour. Yet a bonafide lack of childcare options awaits the mother who wishes to return to work once she is over maternity leave. Therein lies Problem B: we do not have a nation-wide access to affordable and quality child-care. And I would hazard a guess that our government with its worldclass GDP-growth forward-thinking strategies forgot to plan for the infrastructure that would support a large female workforce which doesn't compromise birth rates as well.

Second, there is no social safety net of any sort since the family as the first line of social support is the doctrine of the government. Welfare is minimal and applicants have to jump through numerous bureaucratic hoops to prove one is truly in need before being given a paltry state handout. This leaves the population in a persistent mental state of vulnerability, a state suffered by all except the upper classes. State-sponsored care for the elderly and disabled or sick among us is relegated to private or non-government organisations. There is basically very little help for Singaporeans who need to provide constant care to a family member and so they turn to maids who are often underaged, under-qualified and ill-equipped to deal with such specialised care.

Whenever I start complaining about doing two people's work (a nanny and a maid) Daniel often asks me, how do people in the West, with no access to cheap labour, do it then? I would say, when there's no choice, you don't get to complain much. Having said that, Western European governments provide lots of state support and their policies are oriented towards helping women have children and return to work. They are also a lot further along in dismantling the patriarchal structures of female discrimination when it comes to domestic work. For every argument against this citing Europe's high tax rates, I would caution you to consider the other price tag we pay for our supposedly "low" tax rates: no healthcare, no retirement funds (since all our CPF will b depleted by our property) no protection against unemployment, low wages.

I am not advocating doing away with maids altogether. But I am offering a possible reason for the dismal state we have fallen into: trapped by our needs and bullied by our state's policies. And yet it's still not an excuse to take a crappy attitude towards the people who come here to alleviate some of our burden. They do the hard work in the home so that we can go out and do work that pays us a pittance and keeps us in a vicious cycle of insecurity and need.

Project Baby Week 6: New Life, No Life

I was planning to write a post about one of my favourite social issues since our Acting Minister for MCYS made another blah statement on the dismal rate of marriage here. He said that Singaporeans should "change their mindsets" towards marriage, I suppose he means the single people ought to cast aside their romanticised and/or unrealistic ideals about marriage, quoting his perspective of his own marriage as having been one of "committment".

But as I slump on my breastmilk-stained couch next to the Incredible Milker who has finally gone to sleep after a restless morning, I decided to discard that idea and talk about the reality of housewife-lihood instead.

I've been up since 7am and till now I have accomplished the following: 8am feed/burp/change, the laundry, 10am feed/burp/change, bottle-washing and sterilising, cooking lunch (and some facebook), 12pm feed/burp/change plus an unexpected pee emergency during the change. It is exactly 20 minutes to 2pm, the next feed/burp/change, and it is all I can do to resist guzzling down my beer-laced rootbeer.

As you can see, I am chained to the baby and my daily life is dictated by his tummy which seems to have an automated timer which triggers his familiar scowl and yells if I do not pay attention and get his bottle or boob ready on the mark. I live in fear of every second hour.

I welcome the days when either my Mum or my aunt comes by in the morning to relieve me for a few hours. Yesterday I scooted to the mall to run my errands. It's great having this adorable ball of baby that grows and changes day by day, but it's also great to get out for dinner or a drink with other childless people to remind myself that life can still be full of meaningful interaction and possibilities beyond the next diaper change.

It's a lot of getting used to, and I don't mean the routine I just described above. I need to find a strategy of engaging my mind in activity that is more meaningful than the trivial pursuits of Facebook, tv and blank daydreams.

But first I have to figure out how to get any time out of my current schedule to do that, because my 20 minutes are up and it's time for the next feed/burp/change.