Saige Week 1

It's been a week and we still have not dared to try to get a picture of Saige and Faith together. Unfortunately, Faith has been down with flu and is currently on a bout of antibiotics. For now, thus, the two sisters will have to contend with taking seperate pictures.

Faith meanwhile has been the adoring sister, and she comes running to us whenever Saige cries - to remind us that "Saige is hungry, mummy, daddy!!". She also never fails to coo "Saige is so cute" whenever she sees Saige.

Feeding-wise, Saige is so far so good on the nursing front. Without wanting to jinx it, I shan't elaborate any further, but Eve and I are keeping our fingers crossed.

Apart from us having to balance between keeping the sick Faith away from Saige, while letting the two sistes develop a bond, all is well at Week 0.

Saige at home

The verdict seems to be - Saige looks like me (Louis)!

Oh dear, not sure if this is a good or bad sign, but her hair pattern/parting, shape of forehead suggests that she is closer in appearance to daddy at least for now. Well, if there is any consolation, Eve and I are convinced that Saige also has her mum's double eyelids.

Here's some more pics of the little one in the hospital and at home - and Faith jie jie holding some flowers in anticipation of her return.

Saige! :)

Saige is here!! :)

After a nail-biting 15 min procedure, Saige arrived safely in the evening of 24 Feb 2010 (Wed). With a loud hail, she announced the extension of our little family in the OT and you can imagine my relief when our PD gave me the thumbs up to let me know that all was fine with our Number 2.

The perenial question now is - who does Saige look like? Does she look like Faith?

(Top: Saige; Bottom: Faith)

More pictures to follow :)

Daddy's girl(s)

I think Louis is going to be dead meat. In about a week’s time, the ratio of male: female in our little family is going to be 1:3.

He’s badly outnumbered... especially when Faith is getting to be quite good with emotional blackmails, despite her not even being 3 years old yet. Perhaps calling it emotional blackmail makes it appears that she’s cunning and sly for one so young, but kids these days sure know how to turn on the charm and twist their parents tightly around their cute little fingers.

Last night, we had our usual nightly “battle” of her trying to stretch and lengthen her bedtime routine. Faith was trying to get Louis to sit next to her until she falls asleep; a situation which Louis really doesn’t mind but one that I strictly vetoed against him doing, when she surprised us both by saying, “Daddy, sit with Faith for a little while. Pleeeeease!!! I miss you so much. Daddy, you are my best friend!”

All the above were uttered in a convincingly earnest and pleading tone, well aimed to weaken and melt even hardest of hearts.

Call it feminine wiles, genuine affections, innocent love or whatever. There’s no fighting chance that any honest-to-goodness daddy can withstand the onslaught of their little girl’s affections, especially a softie like Louis.

I’m just waiting to see how the family dynamics would unfold when #2 is out. For now, Louis is luxuriating in all the kisses and affections that his little girl is pouring his way.

Pat's school house Chinese New Year Celebrations

On Tuesday, Teacher Belle told us that this Friday (12 Feb) would be the school's Chinese New Year celebration - and the kids in Peter Rabbit would also be putting up a performance!

As many of you would be aware, Faith has had her ups and downs adjusting to school. She still gets the Monday blues and would often protest at having to be woken up early at 7am.

As such, Eve and I received the news of the CNY performance with mixed feelings. While we were glad that the teachers would be investing considerable effort in bringing CNY to life for the kids, we were also quite resigned to the fact that Faith takes a longer time to adjust to school much less peforming on-stage!

Came Friday, both of us accompanied Faith to the performance. We dropped her off with the class and like the other parents, waited at the "concert venue" just a few steps away, at the Pat's SchoolHouse nursery.

And what was probably the proudest 'school-moment' for us came quite unexpectedly. Faith literally took to the stage and danced her heart out. Not only did she not shy away from going up, she was literally put in the centre of the stage alongside Connor - a Caucasian boy.

Well done Faith! :)

Farewell 2009, Welcome 2010

Better late than never! :)

As the post title suggests, this is a much delayed blog of the year in transition...as always, most of these centre around our precocious girl. Here's one for the photo books, so we can look back one day and see how much our little girl has grown, too quickly.

Baby @ 30 Weeks and 3 Days

The countdown now is about 7 weeks to go before my c-sect. That is, if everything goes to plan and the last placenta abruptio with Faith was a one-time only experience in my lifetime.

A huge part of me is looking forward. I've puked so much in this pregnancy than I ever did with Faith and in my entire lifetime. Even though I'm in my 3rd trimester.

Yet, each puking session is not a result of any prolong morning sickness. Instead, I've developed some extreme backaches since the early days of my 2nd trimester. Sitting for long periods becomes a trial and some sort of tribulations. On good days, I can put in a full day work and am none the worse for wear except that I need to head straight for the bed after I reach home to give my aching back a break.

On other days, I start feeling nauseous around the afternoon of my full-day workdays and it inevitably results in a porcelain-hugging session in the ladies. Every bout of these puking session leaves me weak and again, I'll be zapped of all energy and appetite at the end and would pretty much head straight home to bed for the rest of the night.

There's just no predicting whether the body can take the long periods of sitting down. I've taken to keeping my nausea pills, in addition to my seaband (it was great at combating my early morning sickness but not for these backache-induced nausea) in my wallet.

Apart from the puking and the extreme backache, I just can't seem to dredge up as much energy compared to the first pregnancy. Maybe its age, maybe its the fact that each pregnancy is different. Regardless, I've taken to a lot of bed rest whenever I can.

Poor Louis and my mom ends up taking on most of the task of care-giving and entertaining Faith, especially on my work-days.

With 7 weeks left and the festive CNY period around the corner, I'm also feeling jittery and apprehensive too. There's a lot of backlog grant memo work that I haven't been able to clear as I was involved in corporate planning exercise. Sure, I'm not indispensable and I only work part-time. However, I've got a great boss and a bunch of understanding colleagues who have been very helpful and accommodating of my part-time arrangements.

So, I hope to be able to clear as much work as I can before I have to either quit or take a leave of absence. It is my intention to attempt to apply for a leave of absence again. But if I can't, then my last alternative would be quit my job at the end of my maternity leave.

Back to baby @ 30 weeks.

This week, the check-up was a bit more encouraging in that I've put on nearly 2 kg in 2 weeks, compared to last month when I only put on a miserable 300g in my 6th month(Yep, you read right! Its not a typo.).

My total weight gain so far is about 7 kg and I've got another 7 more weeks or so to go to hopefully ply on a bit more weight - or rather, that baby would be able to fill up better and I'm praying fervently that I wouldn't end up with another low birth weight baby again. With Faith, I only had a total weight gain of 8 kg.

Yet, as I have all this considerations in my mind, today's check-up also put puts things in perspective for us as to what's really important.

Becos of my previous placenta abruptio, there's a 5% change of it re-occurring and no one can predict if and when it ever happen again, which time period would it occur again.

My ob/gyn shared that over the weekend, a colleague of his delivered a stillborn baby of a woman who was 36 weeks along and had placenta abruptio. She had no signs of bleeding and it was too late by the time they discovered it.

As a mother and as someone who had gone through a placenta abruptio, it leaves me with a sense of great sadness for the woman and her stillborn child. More, it serves as a reminder that while most pregnancy ends in a joyous celebration of life, for me, there's always an element of uncertainty and risk involved.

For all that Louis and I sometimes wonder whom the baby will resemble or whether she would be a normal weight-ranged newborn, the truth of the matter is that they matter less than the healthy and safe delivery for both me & baby.

We certainly trust our ob/gyn implicitly in his experience and skills. What's left really is faith and hope that things would turn out better this round

We had faith the last time and were thankfully able to deliver Faith, safe & healthy. We can only put our faith and trust once again in our ob/gyn and the higher order up there for a 2nd time and pray for a safe & healthy delivery experience.