prayer

Now that Day is going to school, it's inevitable that he learns things outside of our little sphere of influence. Sometimes, he spouts things which catches us unawares.

Just the other day, he prayed. "Thank you God for everything" was what he said, repeatedly, before clasping his hands together.

We were speechless. Yes, it's a full sentence and yes, it's cute.

But we didn't send him to a church kindergarten.

Should a secular kindergarten even be teaching these things?

I reckon it's a generic prayer, something which I gather from Day is said before mealtimes. It's logical, for a school where there are heaps of teachers and students from other races, faiths and countries.

In any case, I figure it's good for him to thank God because I certainly do all the time. I'm more of an agnostic who believes in the power of prayer.

But KK the atheist was temporarily miffed.

We're not stopping him though. I'm sure he'll make his own spiritual choices when he's of age.

hot mama

By virtue of my being able to speak passable Mandarin, a truly rare attribute in Singapore, Deb asked me if I would be so nice as to talk about Maternity Exchange as the shop was being featured in a programme called "Hot Mama" on Channel U come April.

Hot. Mama. I seriously don't know what the hell that translates to in Mandarin, but I sure hope it's a lot less... hot.

I said yes immediately, imagining poor Deb tearing her hair out trying to find, among her clients, visibly pregnant women who speak some Mandarin and are willing to try and stretch that meagre Chinese vocabulary to sound intelligent on TV.

All in all, the shoot took 3 hours. Deb, former broadcast journalist that she is, is well aware that it will probably translate to all of 10 minutes on screen without the ads.

Luckily, it was mostly all about Deb: Why she started the shop, what it sells, popular pieces, her clientele, the packages she offers. Hats off to her for managing all that in Mandarin. Since she had to talk so much cheem stuff, she actually had to ask how to say certain words and "memorise" her script before the cameras rolled.

Here she is with the host of the programme, Ying Ying, riffling through the racks of clothes.



Little Ally came along too, so viewers can see the boutique owner's cute button of a daughter! Unfortunately, though she was all dolled up with like 10 multi-coloured pins in her hair, she refused to look at the cameraman. Precisely because he's a man. She's scared of men.

Thankfully, when my turn came after an hour's wait, it was a real quickie. I basically had to pretend to be a customer coming in to return clothes, try on new ones and take those out. As I am browsing through the clothes, the host would approach me and ask me what I'm doing and I'd have to answer her questions.


Simple ones, like why I want to rent maternity clothes, how I knew about the shop. Apparently I was coherent.

It was a bit of stretch, though, as everyone includng the host would fire off instructions and talk in English when the camera lights were off (we have to anyway as the cameraman is Indian) and I'd have to switch back to Mandarin when the lights were on. It made the whole thing feel even more like a performance.

I found that the hardest part, however, was not in speaking Mandarin. It was in having to pretend to try on sexy clothes, walk to the mirror and do little pirouettes as if I'm admiring myself. As the title of the programme is "Hot Mama" I have no illusions that the usual clothes I rent, and the usual manner in which I try them, if I do (yank them on, give a cursory look and yank them off) would suffice.

I actually had to look like a woman who cares about what she wears. You know, all that jazz: Viewing, primping, adjusting, whatever it is. Believe it or not, for the first time in my life I wore a halter neck. A lovely embroidered white cotton slip of a thing which made me feel very feminine but a little awkward.

This isn't the halter top, but a tube top I had to try.


Deb tried to mitigate the situation by smoothing down the stray hairs sticking out all over my head and putting some blusher on me.


I hope it worked. I hope I did justice to her clothes because they are damned nice.

With any luck, they would just focus on the close-ups of the clothes.

gracious singaporeans

What a title.

Seriously though, there's hope yet for Singaporeans.

I wrote before when I was five months pregnant about how no one would give me a seat on the public transport.

Well now no one fails to get up for me. So much so that I have absolute confidence to hang back when a crowded MRT train or bus draws up at the station (no need to fight), stroll in when everyone has squeezed their way in, and be certain that I will get offered a seat within five minutes.

The only thing I have to make sure of is that me, or rather my tummy, is on prominent display to all those seated. No point standing near the door where no one can see me.

It's such a nice feeling...

#2 at 34 weeks

My strange girl routinely hiccups for 10 minutes every morning. What I saw as little twitches of my abdomen came to life on the ultrasound screen when I visited the doctor, as I saw her whole body bunch up and I almost heard the big "hic" before she visibly relaxed.

I can't believe it's only 34 weeks. I thought I was already 36 weeks gone. That means another 1 1/2 months of weight-bearing to go.

And while her weight gain was on par with her bro before, she has slowed down somewhat. Day was 2.5kg at this point, now she's 2.4kg. Thankfully, rather like a bat, she likes being upside-down and her head has always been in the right place for a fuss-free labour, just above the cervix.

I'm at the point where her bones are getting in the way too. So I'll be doing something and suddenly, I feel a big hard bump on my abdomen, she could be pushing out her knee or her foot. If I press it, the bump scrapes along the inside of my abdomen until it's somewhere else.

bintan before birth

When I turned up at the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal last Friday morning with passport in hand, the immigration officer, who only had eyes for my tummy, said dubiously: "You sure the other side is OK with you travelling on the ferry?"

I was gobsmacked. What's the problem? I only found out later that eight-month pregnant ladies are usually not permitted on the ferry to Bintan. Apparently someone had given birth on the ferry before, in the short hour-long trip between Bintan and Singapore. The ferry folks learnt their lesson after that.

Oh well too late. I got on and it did cross my mind on Friday night that if I went into labour there and then, on Bintan (not impossible), it would be a real mess. No ferry, no hospital, no doctor, no nurse, no facilities, no painkillers, nothing.

Luckily I didn't. So this will be my last trip out of the country before I pop. For once, it was all relaxing with lots of vegging out.


That's Day and me on the beach. I'm happy and more relaxed than usual because my bro, Day's Uncle Choon, went along to babysit so I could veg out. No wonder people who have maids always bring their maids along on trips. It does make a major difference.

Otherwise, the rest of the trip was still all about Day. He called all the shots and this time, the trip was all about WATER. More so than usual.


He fell in love with standing with his back to the sea, letting the waves smash unexpectedly into his knees. As it's the time for the North-east monsoon, the waves were pretty rough.


KK and Uncle Choon, maybe because they are men, were rather a lot more adventurous with Day in the water than I am. They dunked him all the time. But he didn't seem to mind which is good.


Lots of throwing about, lots of rough play, which Day relished.


Erm, my little contribution to childcare, which also has to do with water. He's cutting up KK's salad and dunking everything into a cup of ice water to make soup. That kept him occupied for a good, long time so KK could finish his noodles in peace.


And that's him, glowing after the jacuzzi in the men's toilet, a spur-on-the-moment thing when we had a too-long wait on our hands for the ferry. It was harrowing when Day, who jumped off the jacuzzi pool ledge into the deep end, ended up flailing like a drowning victim. Of course KK turned around in time to leap in and save Day, who didn't seem to understand the danger.

I think Day will miss swimming when we go to Sydney. Apparently there aren't many pools there.

tennis

That's my boy, dutifully mopping up the tennis court with the whatchamacallit as his Uncle Choon races to smash a tennis ball overhead.

The scene spells danger danger danger but somehow, letting Day have full run of the tennis court as his Papa and Uncle Choon play tennis has become... routine. I tried telling Day to keep off the green part of the court and stick to the red in the beginning but telling a kid not to go after tennis balls is like trying to restrain a dog after you throw it a stick.

The men swear too, that they are such crappy players their balls are going really slow and that of course, they would never ever hit Day.

Actually, they have. Once. And me twice. On the head. But though I cried bloody murder, Day didn't complain.

And they claim that since they spend more time picking up balls than hitting them, I don't have to worry too much. Hmmm. I'm having to dig deep into my trust reserves. I suspect everyone else who is playing in the surrounding courts is secretly horrified at this travesty.

In the family, tennis is a new-fangled thing, something which Choon adopted in the last two months or so. KK joins him for games at the Bedok tennis courts once a week on Friday nights, when Day can stay out late because he has no school on Saturday.

Tennis has become something Day really looks forward to. There's all that running for him to do, all over the court.

He gets to down gallons of ice-cold diluted rose syrup. Every five minutes or so. It's certainly the most I have seen him drink, probably due to the exercise.









His favourite: He gets to pick balls. Right in the middle of the action, he runs up and down both sides of the net, gathering as many balls as possible in his arms. Sometimes he over-picks and drops them all.







Sometimes, he gets to wield the racket, only he drags it along the ground as he runs which isn't very good for the racket.









In any case, I heartily approve of all this athletic activity. It is my fervent hope that Day will have a lifelong love of sports just like his dad.

games virus

At a Chinese New Year gathering, one of the dozen or so bored kids saw my brother's Xbox downstairs. The kid asked if he could play it. My brother brought down his PS2 from upstairs instead (yes he's got one of each), as he's got a lot more PS2 games, and that was it.

Everyone below the age of 12 (and some above) clustered round the TV with a similarly glazed (and if I may say, zombie-like) expression. Nobody moved. I found the whole scene quite distasteful.

I hate to say this, but Day too has been INFECTED with the games virus.

Only one person in the house plays games - his uncle Teng - and usually only when he comes home from the army on weekends, but it's enough. Games seems to be one of those things which doesn't take much exposure for a kid to hook onto.

At first, and I'm talking like a year ago, it was rather innocuous. Day would wander into the room when Teng was playing games and he would ignore whatever was happening on screen.


Then he started to pay attention to Teng. He would watch, for up to 30 minutes. (That expression on Teng's face scares me. I don't want to see that same expression on my child's face ever)


Then in the last couple of weeks, Day started picking up the damn controls and pressing the buttons. I'm told he played a game of Tekken (the fighting game) against Teng and he WON. By sheer chance of course, but still...

It doesn't help that my two brothers seem to revel in pitching Day into (what I regard as) gaming hell. They like having him over. They like it when he grunts and yowls like the characters onscreen. They like it when he mock-punches.

I don't like it. Why? Maybe I'm turning into one of those fuddy duddy old pokes who shrieks in horror at everything the younger generation is doing. Then it's all that literature I'm reading about how endless games and TV causes myopia and obesity in kids... when they should be (yadda yadda) running around in the great outdoors (not like there's one either).

Anyhow, I admit, sometimes it's wonderful getting Day off my hands for a a good half hour when he goes gaming. And of course, there will be none of it in Sydney.

SYDNEY MADNESS

This is my first-ever blog posting in Capital Letters and that's because it's something that is so, so important.

Essentially, whole family is going to Sydney in a few months time with toddler and newborn babe in tow, and all four of us are going to live on nothing but the meagre savings of a lowly paid engineer and a stay-home mom. (savings are also going to pay for hubby's astronomical school fees) For over a year.

What an adventure eh!

God knows, this has been a long time coming. Since KK graduated a decade ago he's been raring to get his Masters degree in civil engineering, but the local unis flatly rejected him year after year and the last straw was when my nasty letter to a uni dean, asking exactly what was the problem with KK, was answered in a most pragmatic and cold manner: With such awful university grades (lots of Fs), albeit from 10 years ago, the most brilliant job record would never get him into the uni.

Fine. That's that for never-give-chance Singapore.

So after a lot of hemming and hawing, KK finally settled on the University of New South Wales. It's in bloody expensive Sydney, but he's so picky about his subjects he said only UNSW would do.

And frankly, if anyone thinks the timing is bad, I pushed for it. I reckon if he doesn't do it now, he NEVER will. He was already talking seriously about giving up his Master's so he can spend the money to get a car for the family. A CAR in exchange for an education!!! Never! Of course, it would be even more impossible if the kids were in school, so it's Now or Never.

Does the whole family have to go? Not necessarily. People have told me it would be wiser to fly over for holiday with the kids once every three months or so, and it would still be cheaper than living there. Too bad, I'm not very pragmatic. I refuse to break up the family and I have faith that being there would be an unforgettable experience for all of us.

He's already got a place in the uni now (Thank God for universities which look at more than academic transcripts from aeons ago) and has paid part of his school fees.

Barring some catastrophe (I am praying that #2 will be just as hale and hearty as her bro), it's all systems go.

Lots and lots of issues to sort out. Chiefly coping with expensive everything (from healthcare to food to haircuts) and whether I can transit from being a Fake Stay-home Mom (who doesn't have to cook or clean or do any sort of housework) to being a Real One (God I still can't cook for nuts. What are my kids going to eat??!)

Wish us luck.

pregnancy stress

Would my moods affect baby’s personality? I know my diet is important in her development, but now I even have to watch what I think about?

I came across an interesting BBC article published in September last year, on how children whose mothers were overly stressed during pregnancy may be more vulnerable to anxiety as a result. Researchers, armed with surveys from 74 pregnant women they had studied 10 years earlier, and who studied the saliva samples of the now 10-year-old kids for stress hormones, found that the stressed kids tended to be born to moms who reported the most stress during pregnancy. They are more prone to suffering depression and anxiety.

Another study shows that women who show more stress during pregnancy frequently had fetuses with increased heart rates.

The link is not clear, it could all be hogwash. Lots of research still needs to be done to establish if stressed mom equals stressed baby, but hey, it’s scary enough.

My ex-boss, who has two children, has a second child who is a very loving, open, happy girl. She used to say all she did during her second pregnancy was swim and relax. She had already quit her job then. Whereas for first child, who is comparatively serious-minded, morose and thinks dark thoughts about death, she was still working when pregnant.

It’s anecdotal, but it’s all these stories from people we know that we remember.

How would this affect my kids?

With Day, I was stressed during pregnancy. Quite severely. Many times a day, adrenaline pumping, heart thumping, I would be desperately seeking people to interview while trying to craft a story on the laptop, all the while mindful of the ticking clock. I didn’t eat very well. Frequently missed dinner because I was too frazzled. Several times, I cried as the one thing I wanted to do – go home and make dinner – was thwarted by evil folks who demanded the impossible at the last minute. Then I would end up at home past midnight. I worked all the way until my expected due date and the last series of stories I helped to work on before I popped was the super-stressful saga of the National Kidney Foundation and its big fat reserves. It was killing.

With #2, things are way WAY different. I eat all the time, mostly honest-to-goodness home-cooked food, have dinners every night at 7pm on the dot with the family, my heart is mostly beating placidly away. I’m happy all day long, playing with Day, singing songs, playing the piano. I swim, I walk, I go for long breakfasts, watch movies, DVDs, meet friends, cross-stitch, read, take a two-hour nap every afternoon and most importantly, work when I want to and earn enough for my needs. I gets loads of sleep. Life is a lot slower but a lot more enjoyable.

I can only tell how this would affect the kids a little further down the line.

At the moment, though, I am happy to say the hypothesis doesn’t seem to bear out. Day, though he was not exactly an easy baby, seems a happy enough kid who laughs all the time. We’ll see.

ally again

I think Day misses visiting Ally.

He's been seeing her on and off for the past year, but they've been fickle. Blowing hot and cold, sometimes they are very happy to see each other, sometimes they give each other the cold shoulder.

Today they behaved like they sort of remembered the old times, but they don't really know each other anymore. And why should they? Last time they saw each other was in October.

That's why I didn't say Day missed Ally. He missed VISITING Ally. He missed her nice big swimming pool, her toys, fiddling around with her TV, sitting in her high chair, bathing in her bathtub, eating her snacks and drinking her drinks.

How do I know? He was high, all squeals and jumps during the visit. And at the end of it all, he refused to leave until I abandoned him and disappeared through the front door. Then he came running after.

arowana fish shop

Singapore is a boring place with nothing to do. Is it?

For a kid, sometimes there is no other place to go except the mall (got air-con, food and toys) and sure, Day loves the mall.

But one of the best places we have discovered for Day (in fact, great for all kids in general), is a place which is:

a) FREE (most important as entrance fees to places like the zoo and bird park are prohibitive)
b) not-too-hot (lots of shade and greenery)
c) not too many people (no need to fight with crowds, few people even know of the place)

Namely, the stretch of animal and fish farms hidden in a corner of Pasir Ris, along Pasis Ris Farmway 1.

Day's favourite and the one we make the last (and longest stop) is the Mainland Tropical Fish Farm.


It's a very nice, pleasant huge compound with pool after rectangular pool teeming with all sorts of fishes. Overhead is a net which helps to screen out the sun and for some reason, there is always a breeze blowing.


While it's mainly koi, on occasion, we have seen some amazing fishes there including a humongous, fat, sluggish arowana as long as my leg. Two of them took up the whole pond.

The highlight for kids, is of course buying a packet of fish food for $1 and going round feeding. The fish are truly ravenous.


Especially this one tank of strange flesh-coloured fish which I always bring Day to to feed, because it's so shiok to see the fishes leaping and thrashing all over for a bite. In fact there's a warning on its tank, to say these fishes are carnivorous. Sometimes I'm afraid they will take a bite from his chubby hand but that hasn't happened yet.


Plenty of other fish farms around the area, including a dark air-conditioned showroom of arowanas.

Because his uncle Choon is an arowana freak, Day has taken to calling any place which is fish-related (including the fish farms) arowana fish shop.

In fact, Day is quite a fish freak himself. We tried bringing him to a dog training farm in the same area once, but he didn't seem very keen. I can safely say his favourite animal for the moment, is Fish.

snapshot

Bear with me. Another snapshot because I can't go to sleep. Because I have nothing better to do at 3am in the morning.

I'm once again sitting on the floor with my legs splayed outwards so they form a letter M from the top (I am told this is a most flexible position), typing on the computer, finding company on the Net.

Day no longer sleeps with us. He's with his Uncle Choon, which is just the way I like it. Don't want no baby in bed with us.

KK is, as usual, snoring blissfully away, a golf magazine by his side.

My stomach feels extremely extremely heavy and I am bulging alarmingly on the sides, something I never experienced with Day as my stomach stuck out straight like a sharp bullet with him. I was sleek from behind. Also new to me: My tail bone and thigh bones ache in the morning. Is that the result of trying to carry an additional 20kg? (11kg from Day and 9kg from her)

#2: double E-vils

Epidural and Episiotomy. Coming up in 8 weeks time for me.
Godsend to some, these are two things I would rather not have during my labour.

For the uninitiated, an Epidural is that marvellous enabler of pain-free labour, a Painkiller which is injected in between the grooves of the spine so you are paralysed from the waist down.

An Episiotomy is the Snip the doctor makes (with a pair of scissors which looks suspiciously like my silver sewing scissors), a line somewhere between the vagina and anus which is diagonal (of course she's not going to cut straight through), so the baby's head will literally slid out without having to strain the seams.

I had both E's with David. They are pretty standard for women who have natural births. Who wouldn't want a faster and less painful labour?

But clearly, judging from my calling it the Double E-vils, I really wish I could do without it.

There's heaps written about the pluses and minuses of both but here's what I remember.

EPIDURAL Plus
* No or less pain.
* Keeps you relaxed so your cervix can dilate nicely. Some people I know apparently never move along in labour because they are in so much pain everything is tensed up.
* You can sms / watch TV / read a book / sleep and generally enjoy labour while your body is racked with contractions. Seriously.

EPIDURAL Minus
* The bloody needle goes into the SPINE. I had to sign a disclaimer while I was half-dead stating that I understood that I may be paralysed, or some other similarly dire scenario. Of course that is a small risk but still...
* I've heard too many anecdotes about women who suffer back pains or have weak backs for the rest of their lives, they claim because of the epidural they had.
* Because you cannot feel a thing, the body is unable to respond to its natural urge to push. I had to be instructed based on what the nurse could see, and God knows if they were seeing the right thing.
* The epidural injection hurts. You have to lie on your side - while in great pain - and keep very very still while the anesthetist does something which feels like he is pinching a nerve in the back. It's a Godawful sickening feeling.

EPISIOTOMY Plus
* You get a nice neat tear instead of a messy, jagged split.
* Asian women apparently have very stubborn perineums which refuse to stretch (the nurse in my ante-natal class said Caucasian women seldom need episiotomies) so they need the extra help.

EPISIOTOMY Minus
* You might not tear. At all. Then the cut would have been all for nought.
* The best argument: Try holding a piece of paper on two sides to tear it down the middle. Now make a small snip in the centre and try tearing it. It obviously tears a lot more easily when the snip is made.

In Singapore hospitals, the episiotomy is standard. Nobody even asks you for permission. If you tried requesting for no episiotomy, most doctors would label you as one of those "new age nuts" and give it to you anyway.

I reckon I'll end up getting both. Despite what I think, in the heat of the moment, it takes a strong woman to say no to intervention.

And to think about it another way, my mom would probably have taken both in a shot if it had been available to her. So why am I complaining?