My philosophy

Things are getting more or less back to normalcy at work. The mess created by "unplanningly" evacuating all the stocks from our Thailand warehouse to Singapore warehouse has been cleared and finally we can have more free time to start our cycle count from tomorrow. I am also going home at the normal hour of 5~6pm from this week and I am planning to start my exercise regime...maybe next week. I am still struggling to lose weight which is exceptionally difficult this time round due to my age, I guess. And having a hubby who is skinny by nature and loves to go for buffet dinner once every week is definitely not helping at all...Can't blame him actually...I love food too...*sigh*

I thought it's quite a pity that Demi Moore is splitting up with Ashton Kutcher...I sort of used her marriage (older woman with younger man) as a role model for my own when I remarried again to someone almost 10 years younger a year after her. She is like the ultimate example for all the cougars out there! And she is so damn good looking! But he still cheated on her with a much younger woman...so who said age doesn't matter?

To be honest, I had my reservations and I had my doubts initially. But after being happily married for 5 years and knowing that my hubby at this very moment still loves me and treasures me is good enough for me. Not that it won't hurt or it won't matter to me if later on my hubby cheat on me or something. I mean men are men, it's proven that they will be more easily succumbed to infidelity than women. So, if they will cheat, they will cheat, it doesn't matter if your hubby is younger than you or much older than you. My philosophy is: I would rather marry a younger man and have him cheat on me than to marry an old man and have him cheat on me too. Get it? It will hurt anyway, so why not do without the additional unjustified feeling of having the much older husband cheat on you, right? At least this is how I see it.

Another thing, I can take it much better if my hubby cheat on me with someone entirely new than to cheat on me with his ex-girlfriend or someone he knows as a friend all along. Explanation: If my husband cheats on me with someone entirely new, at least I know that the time before he met this someone new, he was loving me truly and solely. I will treasure those memories and may or may not leave him, depending if the cheat was just a fling or not and if he is repentful and wants me back or something...But if he cheats on me with someone he knows all along or his ex-girlfriend, then how  can I trust that the time when he was with me, he wasn't thinking of her and loving her? So, those times when he was with me will not be worth remembering at all! And I will not forgive him...totally out of the question.

That is why, I am so fed up with N who likes this boy knowing that he is still not over his ex. This is plain stupid. But I guess every young, naive girl will have to go through this at least once in her life, get hurt, cry it out and then learn from it. But she doesn't know that as a mother, I get hurt as well when my daughter gets hurt...*sigh*

Success Redefined

I am preparing for the Japanese Language Proficiency N1 Level Exams by doing some mock exams questions daily with whatever little time I can squeeze out at work. Some of my staff were asking me why do I need to take this exam since I am already fluent in Japanese. I know I don't have to, but it will be good to have a the highest certification there is for a foreigner to attain. Technically, I already passed the JLPT 1 exams some 17 years ago but I didn't collect the cert. I was too busy running my own business and I didn't think that I will need the paper. Not that I need it now but I am just curious to find out how well will I do for the exams. It's not easy.

Traditionally, a successful woman is defined by the man she marries and the family she helps to raise. Now, there are 2 routes to success for women; the traditional one of marrying a successful man and becoming a tai-tai and the modern route of becoming a successful career/business woman on her own. I am the modern woman. My success is defined by the pay package I bring home at the end of the month and the title printed on my business card. However, I start to have a different view about my suceess lately. After giving birth to baby J and now that my 2 older children are 16 and 13, I am beginning to feel really proud of myself as a mother. D is in a good school and a good uniform group that brings him for volunteer work in Singapore as well as overseas. N has been admitted to Mass Communications in Ngee Ann Polytechnic and baby J is developing skills ahead of his age. Every little achievements that my children make are my achievements as well and I will be so proud.

4 weeks on...

4th week back at work and I am more or less getting used to the routine, although waking up in the morning is still a struggle...I am still breast-feeding and baby J wakes up several times at night...Hubby has resorted to sleeping on the floor so that baby J and I can have the whole bed to ourselves. I feel kind of bad...since baby J's arrival, I am so overwhelmed by the motherly love that I am experiencing, I think I am neglecting my hubby. Initially, I had planned to just breast-feed for 3 months then go for a romantic holiday with hubby and get back in shape as soon as possible and quickly go back to my "normal" life. However, baby J is 4 months 3 weeks old now and I am still terribly stuck on him! Other than signing up with Contour Express for workouts in attempt to loose weight, I have not done any of those things that I have planned!

Post-pregnancy and post-confinement, I am still weighing at a massive 62.5kg and the worst thing is I am loosing a lot of hair! It's worrying to see so much hair fall out every time I shampoo and the top of my head getting quite scanty...Why must women suffer such consequences for bringing a precious life into this world? I think it is unfair! If only women can become healthier, slimmer and prettier in terms of better skin and more luscious hair for having babies!

6 weeks on...

Baby J is into his 7th week from today and everything is going well. He has given us his gorgeous smiles, coos, makes good eye contacts and also sleeping through slightly longer (3~4 hours). He is also getting more attached to me as the days go by which is worrying to me as I need to go back to work in 9 weeks. I just hope that he will grow out of this phase soon...physically, baby J has grown quite a bit. From being 3.6kg at birth and 53 cm in length, he is now 5.2kg now and measuring almost 60cm!

As for myself, I have lost 11kg so far but I still need to lose another 9kg at least to be able to get into my old clothes. Will I be able to lose 1kg per week from now? I doubt so.... I will need to seriously exercise and go on a strict diet for that but I am stuck with baby most of the time...I need to plan a schedule...I cannot afford to procrastinate any longer!

Breast-feeding and blogging

Baby J is going to be 4 weeks old soon and I am also into the 4th week of my maternity leave. I have not been away from work for so long since D's birth which was like 13 years ago and I feel like a 黄脸婆 as well as a tethered cow...baby J is feeding so frequently that I have decided that maybe he is not having enough from me, so I have started to supplement him with formula milk once or twice a day. The idea is to have him well-fed so that he can sleep for at least 2 to 3 hours before waking up for feeding. Sadly, I can't really say that it's working as he still cries for my breasts after he finishes the bottle...

Back to the topic of being away from work, I am feeling kind of lethargic actually...12 more weeks to go and I wonder if I will still be keen to go back to work by then! To be honest, I don't think that I am much needed at work...baby J needs me more than my work but I need the income...that's the cruel reality of life. When I go back to work, baby J will be taken care by the 2 old folks that stay with us and maybe occasionally by my mum who stays upstairs and also sis-in-law who stays a stone throw away. I am glad I have lots of help but I will still miss baby J when I go back to work...I have grown attached to him as much as he has grown attached to me...that's the problem with breast-feeding! By the way, I am breast-feeding now while I blog and that's one more level up on my multitasking skill. I was also playing "minna no golf 5" on the PS3 yesterday while breast-feeding!

Baby J has arrived!

To be honest, I had totally forgotten how painful labour and delivery was until I went through it again with baby J. It all started on the morning of 6th March, at around 6:45am, I woke up with some mild contractions, much like menstrual cramps. Thinking that it might be just Braxton Hicks, I got up to drink some water and went to pee. The pain went away after my pee, so I went back to sleep. But every 10 to 20 minutes, the cramps came back repeatedly. I tolerated with the pain until 9am before waking hubby up to go to the hospital. By that time, the whole house was awake and after some light breakfast, hubby and I drove off to hospital. We reached the hospital at 11am and the cramps was getting more intense.

11:30am, I was all settled in the delivery ward, bowels cleared, strapped up, having a milo and waiting for my gynecologist to arrive. The midwife checked me and announced that I was already 4cm dilated and asked if I wanted epidural. The pain was still very much bearable then and I could not imagine how much worse it would get, so I decided not having epidural. 10 minutes later, the midwife told me that my gynecologist wanted to put me on the drip to expedite the process and I was like "WHAT?!" I had actually wanted it to come naturally but it was not up to me anymore, was it?

Dr. Heng arrived at 12 noon, broke my water bag and announced that I was 6cm dilated. Then she jovially told hubby that I would have the baby in half an hour! The pain became excruciating after the water broke, I was totally out of control and I regretted not having epidural then. They offered me laughing gas but I remembered that it only made me feel nausea, so I rejected it. After another 2 rounds of intense contractions, they told me to try pushing. I tried, but I just couldn't get it right, the pain was just too overwhelming. I asked for pain relief but it was too late, baby was already coming out, I just need to push...which I had no strength for and so Dr Heng helped me with the vacuum.

12:39pm, baby J came out and I was so relieved to see him so perfect. The pain didn't subside like I remembered that it would... I was still having contractions, then Dr Heng pulled out my placenta. She also tried to help me expelled more blood clots by pressing my tummy with her hands and then she stitched me up. I could feel all these pains so clearly this time which I didn't feel before. In a way I was glad, I truly had it all natural this last time. It was a memory and experience that belonged to me alone.

The nurses and Dr Heng were claiming that baby J was strong and big. He weighed 3.58kg and was crying so loudly and kicking so strongly when being cleaned up by the nurse. J is our miracle baby, a miracle made possible with IVF and lots of blessings from God. When I tried to breast-feed J for the very first time, I was totally consumed by love. I lost all senses of pain. I was in bliss!

Then the pains of being a new mother all over again dawned on me 3 days later. My breasts were painfully engorged, my milk ducts were blocked and my nipples were sore. I couldn't express the milk, it was just too painful. I could only bear with the soreness of my nipples and continued to feed baby J. I fed him throughout the night, once every hour and resting only about half an hour between each feed. In the morning I felt better.

On the 4th day, we went back to the hospital to check baby J's blood for jaundice and got bad news an hour later from the pediatrician. J's jaundice level was borderline high, he could either get admitted to the hospital or we could do home phototherapy by renting the bed. We wouldn't bear to part with J of course, so we chose to do the phototherapy at home. The bed must be quite uncomfortable, we couldn't get J to sleep in the bed for a minute without him crying! We could only let him cry until he slept and even though, J slept in the bed for at most 5 hours in total for the 3 days that we rented the bed home. The 2nd blood test showed the same results, J's jaundice level didn't go down... Again the pediatrician ordered us to do phototherapy and so we rented the photo-light unit this time. It's a overhead light unit, so we could put J under it anyway convenient for us. I had to resort to going under the light with him! We were sure this time he had spent more time under the light and at the same time, I could feel that he was getting more milk from me. He pooped a whole lot more too! The third blood test showed good results, the jaundice level went down, we could stop phototherapy and no need to do further blood test. Thank God!

Baby J is going to be 2 weeks old now and I am also getting used to breast feeding him. That's my job for now.