A Cradle Song

The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.
God’s laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.
I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.

~William Butler Yeats

The birth of my little pups, Shuo

Besides spending a good amount of time with Shin before delivery, I read every single birth story from DesignMom. These inspiring, lovely real cases helped me a lot in visualizing the kind of birth I had hoped for – that I would like my labour to progress naturally, free of stringent time limits as long as baby was not in any medical danger. It also gave me courage to think about delivering naturally without pain relief and reaffirmed other details in my birth plan that I wanted control over.

God heard my prayers. My totally-zenish gynae did not believe in induction and the nurses really read my birth plan at the hospital. At 39 weeks, Shuo took his time to arrive (yeah he outdid his sister’s 16 hours with another 8 hours!) and for the first time in my life, I felt and knew what real contractions were.

As I reflect on 2011, the single incident that stood out for me has to be my birth experience – SEEING Shuo being delivered via a mirror held by the husband. Him crowning and then shoulders and full body slipping out was the most magical moment, ever. With Shin’s experience of a lung infection, YC and I were very anxious and prayed that he would be healthy. Praise God I delivered Shuo and his loud cries were such a relief. YC got to cut the umbilical cord. I held and breastfed my little baby for a long time immediately after he was measured and assessed.

I am thankful for the beautiful and relatively smooth process and Shuo even came with what I hoped for secretly – a full head of hair and big eyes that he got so much compliments for in the past 4 months!

Freshly out of oven, nice and sleepy (haven't chut pattern yet)

Seven is the number of perfection

7 Sept 2011 we welcome little boy Shuo into the Yeo household after 24 hrs (!) of labour. Like I prayed, he came with big eyes (from YC’s side of the family) and jet black full head of hair.
We are thankful that the birth process was rather smooth other than the long waiting time and silly mummy not being able to push correctly (again!). I hope to write the birth story in due course when life is more stable and after I try to figure out Shuo better — he sure is a feisty little bun not giving mummy any rest for the past 7 weeks. Till then I’ll still be concentrating on baby.

Kite festival 2011

We visited The Promontory @ Marina Bay Kite Festival on Saturday evening as Shin has been asking to go kite flying for sometime. The event started at 4pm but we reached only around 6 plus as Shin woke up late from her afternoon nap and I wanted her to have dinner at home (apart from the few unfortunate injuries that Shin sustained in the past few weeks, she has also been plagued with occasional bouts of stomach cramps and diarrhea).

It was a good thing we went late. The windy cool weather was awesome and the atmosphere relaxed with lots of families chilling out and buskers entertaining crowds for a good stretch of the bay. There wasn’t any spectacular kites (just the normal huge ones) but it didn’t matter. The thing was that for once, it felt like we were in a temperate country — no humidity or overcrowding or stressed locals spotted in the vicinity! It was definitely an enjoyable walk for me despite having to carry my 38.5-week belly around.

The best part for us was to see Shin having a good time exploring the area, looking at kites and checking out Singa the Courtesy Lions lining the walkway, knowing full well that she could be cooped up at home for sometime and have to share the attention with Didi once I pop.

Shin loves balloons and was delighted that she could get one!

How lovely are the mornings

When everyone needs to sleep in because the elections results took so darn long the night before…

She doesn't like snoozing on our bed, but this morning she did, just because no one else wanted to wake up and tend to her..;)

License to chill — the last stretch

She comes to me every 3 minutes to share a giggle while I work on the computer on the kitchen table and she watches Kungfu Panda; kisses me when I close my eyes on our extremely soft and comfortable bed; massages my tummy and asks Didi if he needs to share her blanket; leads my arm around her when lying down, saying ‘Mama protect me’ when things go bump at night…

To put everything in perspective, she also throws tantrums, demanding the TV/iphone/fridge a few times a day and bawling her eyes out at the slightest hint of no. I had to steel my heart often to indicate that crying does not get her what she wants. In fact my frazzled nerves felt so defeated on Tuesday the blues came. Things got better on Wednesday when I decided to stop focusing on myself and just go with the flow, treasuring the moments with Shin which will be so so rare when another little one arrives.

The interesting part was, once I changed my mindset, I began to feel happy, and rested and that I was ready for Didi.

Rest really does one good, and I am thankful for the past week away from work (though I am very sure that I can’t be a SAHM under normal circumstances — I would surely go crazy and I salute SAHMs)!

Accident-prone

I guess we should have seen it coming. Shin, the ever-reckless, throw-caution-to-the-wind, no-sense-of-danger sam seng po hurt herself once again.

Shin has the habit of getting very excited around her beloved blanket. She treats it like some long-lost friend and goes delirious when she sees it after a wash or in the evenings. So the story goes that when her dad handed her the blanket yesterday evening before bedtime, she jumped onto it (as usual) in excitement. Just that this time, the minute she hit the mattress flat, she cried big tears inconsolably. She complained that her wrist was ‘itchy’ and was fussy for the next 2 hours, dozing intermittently only to wake up demanding YC to carry her again and again. We suspected that it was a sprain, applied cold compress but noted that there was no abnormalities in her arm and tried to distract her, thinking she was just cranky.

She woke up this morning crying for Daddy and Mummy again — she usually just comes out of her room searching for us but this time she kept whining from her prone position and asking us to sleep with her. Seeing that she was not moving her right arm at all, I tried to flex it gently and test if the sprain was getting worse. Big tears rolled down her face and this was when we knew that a visit to the doctor was imminent.

Turns out that the poor girl had dislocated her right elbow (instead of her wrist that we had thought). After a long wait at the paed’s (she was able to use her right arm to play with the toys in the clinic while waiting, strangely), 3 minutes of massage from the good doc and $63 later, Shin is as good as new thankfully. No medication required.

I thought Shin was really brave at the clinic today. She used to wail the minute we stepped into the doc’s room but today she just eyed him suspiciously as he flexed her arm to find out what was wrong. Only when he begun to fix the elbow back firmly and when the pain set in did she start to cry.

She is able to raise both her arms and move her fingers more. She’s taking her nap now and I hope her arm heals properly. And I hope that there are no more accidents. We had quite a number in the past 2 months — 2 big bumps on the head which warranted a frantic dash to KKH, followed by razor cut on the chin just Thur night and now this. Sometimes I think I am the walking example of Bad Parenting 101.

Shin at the ob-gyn's yesterday during my OMG (!) 36-week check.

Shin’s 3rd

Not quite sure what she was up to but Happy holidays all!
I have been enjoying 4 glorious days with my little family and doing a lot of cleaning, scrubbing and dusting! It makes me happy to live in a very clean home and have leisurely time with Shin in the mornings when she’s a darling. We are still on leave tomorrow — one more fine day!

Prepping Shin

A lot of people have been asking me if Shin knows that there’s a new baby in tow. So far she’s been acting really sweet about the whole thing and has shown some signs that comfort me:

• Kisses and pats my tummy willingly, calling out Didi, Didi.
• Can identify that the cot, rocker and freshly-laundered layette belong to Didi.
• Says she loves Didi.
• Reads to Didi without prompting, pointing to my tummy, saying apple, orange etc.
• Keeps saying, ‘I baobao Didi when Didi comes out’ and ‘pat Didi to sleep’.
• Still extremely attached to the life-like baby on display at the repeat Taka Baby Fair. She headed straight for it and would not let it go; hugged it and patted it while fingering other toys. Ran away when we tried to pry it from her arms.

We had the most awesome conversation the other day that I would want to remember for a long long time…
Shin (looking at a book of children building sandcastles): What’s that?
Me: He is building a sandcastle Shin. Do you want to build sandcastles?
Shin: En (meaning yes). Mama go together ok?
Me: Yes dear. And Papa?
Shin: Yes. Papa. (totally out of the bue) And Didi, baby together, build sandcastle.
Me: (*melts* and gives her a big hug and kiss.) You are a good Jie Jie Shin.

I think it helps that we leave books on pregnancy lying around and she sees illustrations of the baby in the tummy. She also sees pictures of breastfeeding mothers. She was perplexed at first and remarked that she also wanted to drink milk like that. I explained only babies drink from the breast and she is now a Jie Jie and will drink from the bottle. She said ok.

We are still contemplating whether we should do the ‘exchange-gift- thingy’ at the hospital, not because of the bribery concern but more because I think she already has too many soft toys at home and I don’t want to add to the collection, part of it already bundled up in the cupboard. We’ve been trying to find life-like dolls for Shin and YC found this online. How’s that for very very creepy? I digress, but no way are we getting this for Shin. I can so imagine myself trying to breastfeed the doll under sleep-deprived conditions and Shin carrying her real Didi around (without me knowing). Nightmare!!!

Update: I found a useful list of comments Preparing Siblings for New Baby here.

Dressing Little Shin

For a girl, I really feel that I don’t dress Shin very well. She’s in tees and shorts most of the time. And I have to reason very hard with her when she insists on wearing a particular Mickey/Minnie top. Nothing wrong with the top but I just generally do not fancy any cartoon characters on apparel.

Over the weekend, Shin decided that she wanted to put on her new tulle skirt, which is size 2T but still a little too big for her small frame. It was impossible to remove it after she tried it on. So we trooped down to town with it. The overall ensemble really looked like she was headed for some party with a pink theme, a bit OTT if you ask me, but we got a few ‘oh so cute’ comments from strangers. She also loved the skirt thoroughly and constantly fingered the tulle.

Pardon the hair -- never ever let the men in your home cut anybody's hair!