BABY TURTLE: The First Few Days - The whole truth and nothing but the truth

"Cherish every moment because they are very precious. " - B.

I m writing this blog to remind myself of all these moments - its less than a week and i m already forgetting many wonderful episodes which I would kill to record for life.

During breastfeeding, Megan will sometimes exhibit the most innocent eyes, looking keenly from me to the surrounding and back. It is a look that melts my heart but hey wait a min, that is her signature innocent look when she is guilty of something. When she does that, it is almost a certainity that she is going to poo big time while suckerling. After which she will give us a most satisfied coy smile and expect us to clear up her mess..

Our first non assisted poo poo experience was hilarious (in hindsight). Megan was doing her room in and halfway through her feeding, I smell poo and since I am nursing a wound and cannot move around (yeah!), I pass this first diaper changing task to Ken. My god, it was A LOT of poo.... Disgust aside, Megan was already crying and we went into panic. Ken removed the soiled diaper and threw it onto the floor and in frenzy start wiping her butt with wet tissues (throwing very used item onto the floor as well... a baby cot is only this big for so many items rite?!). I was screaming at him for wiping the shit in the wrong direction which may cause infection for Megan... More panic... Ken ran to press the button for the nurse.... too much shit everywhere, cannot finish wiping....Megan cried louder... no nurse came (Sabo us big time - they were usually prompt. cheat us with their sales pitch)... more panic... where is the new diaper?... more things fell on the floor... "dear how to wear the diaper? which side is front?"..."er.. the wings sides in front... ok not sure... try wing side front... oh shit! No? ok opp side?".... CRY!!!!!!!! After an eternality, we were saved by the nurse.

Ken also made one extremely important contribution - naming and renaming Megan. We were fixed on the chinese name Loh Rui Bin months before.... But the very night before the operation, Ken crawled into bed around 11plus and told me "we got a problem". The teochew pronouncation of Rui Bin is Swee Ping aka sweeping. "The other kids in school will laugh at Megan... gotta change"... So how did we manage to conjour out a new name within our 2 days hectic life in ward 81 bed 25?

Introducing the chinese fortune teller shop on L1 of KK.

For $128, the master will propose to you a selection of chinese characters that will best suit the child based on her ba zhi. The name will take into consideration the character stroke count, avoid words that clash with her seniors in the family, and compliment plus compenstate for her 5 elements.... the package includes a detailed explaination of the meaning of the chosen name and a general forecast of her life ahead. Gee... Oh we actually only paid $120 because KK gave us a $8 voucher to offset the service. PLUS you are entitled to some AIA insurance package at a discount of sorts. Wow.... Roll EyeBall now... Despite all the roll eyeball tactic, the master's proposed characters are actually pretty cool. His recommended characters are not the commonly used ones and they have deep meaning... errr.. actually I cant really read half of the text. ok 60%... FINE... 70%... its times like these when you want to kick yourself for not learning more mandarin.... (so how do I know how to pronounce the words and their meaning? - Peizhi lah... still number one). All in all, I rolled my eyeball, bought into the service and am a happy customer. Megan's chinese name is now Loh Hui En.

Confinement Help.

Everyone, you need as much help as you can get. The best people to help are parents and a good confinement lady. In my case, they are both my inlaws and SC, a lady from malaysia. SC was recommended to me by our GE agent and I can tell u, I am a cool mother simply because SC did such a good job looking after Megan and me. There are many food I dislike - kidney for example but that happens to be one key ingredient. My inlaws already did a good job frying it with ginger to mask the taste but SC manage to make them more tasty even wo heavy flavors. Her food is good and their job is really not easy.They work 24 hrs for 28 days in a row in a stranger's home, facilitaing the whole process till our house feels like a confinement resort. On top of the job requirements, SC really dotes on Megan. It did not take me long to realise that other than recuperating/blogging/ enjoying life in this home resort, I need to quickly tap into SC's skills and learn as much as possible in this one month.

My inlaws were the greatest help. There are just so many bits and pieces to do. Our place is not equipped for a new mum in confinement, much less for a new born. My fridge is not stocked with "real food" per say... Yah ice-cream, chocolates & drinks aplenty. Herbbs, red dates, fungus, chicken, pork, fish... sorry. My FIL also took to be our driver, fetching us for our various checkups. My MIL was also so busy that on some days, her hair was dislevelled. Trust me, THAT is a rare sight...

On the forth day, Megan makes a trip to the Polyclinic to check for jaundice. With a baby in tow, we attracted a different kind of crowd - the grandmas! They walked pass, glanced at Megan, went "so cute!!!" then lingered at lennnngth to chat with you on the topic of grandchildren and babies. The lingo used to describe babies are worth compiling into a book. "My granddaughter is only 2.6kg at birth, so small, the head is only an orange.", "aiyoh, my grandson worse, 26 week, only 1 kg, the size of a black chicken in the market, so heartpain..."