a new record

ethan managed to sleep from 12am till 6am this morning b4 he started stirring! well actually we tried to wake him at 5am cos we were afraid he'd get too hungry but the little bugger refused to open his mouth to drink. then at 6am, when he felt he was hungry enough, he woke up n cried for milk :) does this mark the start of more sleep for us in future? imagine... 6 hrs straight. of course, that would not be the case for me (more for the husband) cos i still hv to wake up to express b4 i get too "full".

ok its time for ethan's bath now...

btw check out the way he holds his own bottle! ;)

ouch!

ethan had his 2nd hep B jab yesterday n oh boy! did he bring the house down with his screams! even his PD was suprised at how big his lungs were :) i guess it's a gd thing tho cos we know he's strong!

anyway i had a lactation consultant come over to our place a few days ago to show me the finer techniques of latching the baby on. it certainly is a mean feat! fortunately tho i think i'm able to get the latch correct now, the only problem is.. my son can suckle on 1 breast for 1 whole hr and still not be able to empty it! so now we hv a dilemma... to express or to latch on? well we still cant decide so we're doing a bit of both now :P

oh btw, ethan was 5.04kg as at yesterday's check up and is 53cm long :)

and did i mention he STILL doesnt know how to handle his pacifier?! strange isnt it. i tot it'd be 2nd nature for babies...

suck suck

i know i know.. i've been goin around telling some pple how i will never give a pacifier to my son. gotta eat my words now cos we just went n got 1 for him! see, the last few nites have been quite a nightmare. he wakes up at 4.30am and refuses to go back to sleep. so we figured the pacifier might come in handy then. funny thing is, the 1st time we gave it to him he didnt seem to know how to handle it - he sucked on it wif such force that the it kept flying out! haha - really funny sight :) anyway he seems 2b getting better at it now and can keep it in his mouth a couple of minutes b4 it starts flying out again. plus i found another use for the pacifier - plug the gap when we;re warming up his milk at times when he's so hungry he's just yelling his head off!! whatever it takes to get a few min of peace, rite...

anyway if in future my son ever comes and tells me he needs money for braces, i'm sad to say that i'm just gonna say it in his face that he caused it himself (cos he wanted the pacifier!) so he's gonna hv to look for a part time job to get his own braces! ;)

till then, sure hope there will be many peaceful nites to come.

party on!

so the full mth celebration was held yesterday and ethan was the star of the show! somehow he seemed to know that the party was being thrown for him n he stayed awake for the entire event - from 9am in the morning till 3pm! we had a little difficulty trying to get him to settle down n sleep after that tho (overstimulated by all the sights and sounds) but once we did, he slept like an angel :)

yes, i had my first proper shower yesterday morning too! two in fact, cos i had another one in the evening ;) the feeling of standing under the shower is oohhh so heavenly - sweet salvation! i took a gd 30 min bath and never felt better in my entire life!!!

and the icing on the cake was that i had a regular meal too - never knew catered food could tast so gooooooood..... come to think of it, even if all i had was plain white bread in my hands, it'd probably have tasted like prime ribs - hah!

anyway life is back to 'normal' now - 'normal' meaning me, hubby and ethan. everyday is a indeed a journey and i'm looking fwd to getting to know my son and learn his ways in the next 2 mths before i go back to work in dec (ugh!). but let me just relish the thought of these 2 mths for now :D

one more week!

yes! only 5 more days to go n it'll be sweet freedom again for me! plus not forgetting ethan is having his full mth celebration this sat too. so in a way, its doubly happy for me cos i get to bathe on that day too :D

anyway today was pretty much the same for us... the little one wakes up to eat, cries a little, goes back to sleep. he's wide awake now actually and having hiccups so daddy's brought him out to have a sip of water - that usually does the trick ;)

i've more or less settled into a routine myself - and expressing milk has become a way of life. now i've got many little bottles of breastmilk in the fridge - just waiting to be warmed up for ethan's next feed. btw, did u know that overheating the milk can kill the vitamins in it, and freezing it (as in frozen hard) will kill the antibodies? just some stuff i'm learning everyday from the website. so many things to learn...

for the past few nites, ethan has been waking up about 2 times for his feed and apart fr tat, he sleeps thro the nite. i sure hope it continues this way so then we can get some rest ourselves!

sleepless in hougang

ethan has been awake since 4pm this afternoon! and this morning he woke up at 4.30am and only fell asleep around lunch time. isnt he sleeping too little for a 23 day old baby? i thought they slept much more than this in the first few wks of their life. i guess every baby's different huh?

anyway i just finished letting him suckle in the hope that he'd fall asleep... it lasted a gd 20 min and then he was up crying again! just handed him over to my mom and i think he's finally fallen asleep now cos i dun hear no crying (fingers crossed). and my right nipple now hurts like hell - think i must have got the latch/position all wrong. hence i'm seriously thinking of getting a lactation consultant to visit me at home next mth and give this whole direct breastfeeding thing one last shot. if it still doesnt work, then i just gotta 'express' my way thro the next 6 mths (at least).

Not Niagra Falls But...

i'm proud to announce that my breastmilk has increased (but certainly not gushing) and i'm able to get more per pumping session now so that my son can be on total breastmilk - no more formula!!! however, it does pose a little tricky during the nites cos as u know, he's impatient and cant wait for his milk to be warmed up. so during the nites, he's gonna wake up some households ;) but honestly i dont give a damn cos its payback time for those neighbours who've been keeping us up at nite with all the din goin on in their house.

i think ethan is slowly beginning to recognise my 'scent' - cos i carried him more y'day and he seems to be more at ease with me now than initally (or perhaps its cos i dont smell as bad as i did previously when i could not take ANY baths). anyway the way he looks at me sure makes my heart melt and watever frustrations i have just seem to vanish! this is probably what makes everything worthwhile huh. all the first words, first steps... there are just so many things to look fwd to :)



anyway we just bought a macbook (the old laptop was a dinosaur) and the husband was busy the whole of last nite configuring it. once it's ready, it means i can start bloggin fr bed! sitting here at the desk can get pretty tiring after a while...

pumping iron (not!)

man... it's been real challenging the last few weeks! never knew how tough it could be!

we all know now that breastmilk is best for babies right? it was unheard of in our parent's era, so that explains why i have so much difficulty trying to breastfeed ethan. the chinese and western concepts are just worlds apart. what's with this whole confinement thing? i can't even take care of my little one on my own ... that's left to my mother in law now and i seriously think ethan's beginning to think she's his mommy :P anyway old wives' tales about not being able to touch water, bathe, etc.. have rendered me pretty much an invalid, so i'm also not entirely surprised why ethan prefers my MIL to me. i simply haven't been handling and bonding with him as often as i'd like to. but i'll just hang in here till after the 1-mth confinement and then i gotta double up to get re-acquainted with the little guy.

now back to breastfeeding... i've succumbed to pumping out the milk for ethan simply cos we introduced the bottle too early (again, due to 'well -meaning' folks around us who said the baby is extremely hungry in the early days when breastmilk has not been established) and now he just prefers the bottle to my breast. kinda sad that he rejects my breast cos i really did want to establish that bond between mother & son, but hey, we can't force things in life right? so now i have to milk myself like a cow every 3 hrs. it can get boring after a while, but i'll do it so long as it's good for him. it's the least i can do to ensure he has a good start.

anyway it's only 1 more week to the end of this silly imprisonment, so at least the light at the end of the tunnel is keeping me going. we're celebrating his first month at our place and inviting some relatives and friends over. nothing fancy - just catering some food and keeping it simple :)