New Kid On The Blog

This weekend, we took a trip to Northampton, which is about an hour's train ride from London. SM's friend SK has been staying there for a few years and he kept telling us that it was a small town and there was nothing much to see. Nevertheless, we had a scrumptious lunch which SK's wife, ML cooked. There were chicken cooked in ginger brown sauce, ikan bilis with leek and traditional Chinese herb soup. We haven't had ikan bilis and Chinese herbs for a long time and the dishes were especially delicious when you've been deprived of them for so long. We recently bought ikan bilis from China Town but it was for Dominic. A very small packet costed us £1.25. When you think about it, that's about RM8 and you probably could buy a whole sack of ikan bilis in Malaysia with RM8.

SK and ML's house was a double-storey semi-D with a huge garden at the rear. If they were to build an extension at the rear (like how almost everyone in Malaysia did), they could have had another house which is bigger than their current one. Yes, that's how big the garden was.

After lunch, we took a stroll near a lake. It was a cool, windy day but nice. We didn't do much except walked and talked. After that, we were hungry again so we grabbed a bite at KFC. The KFC here was sadly not as good as the ones in Malaysia. It was extra salty and there was no such thing as 'Hot & Spicy'. KFC is probably not a big hit here because SM and I had been wanting to eat it for some time and we could hardly find any KFC outlets in London. And their website ... my God, don't ever go there. Seriously lack of information, full of useless information, poor usability, bad design.... It was one of the worst websites I've seen. Still .. if you'd like to see how bad it is: http://www.kfc.co.uk.

While we had our KFC, Dominic had his yoghurt and milk. Of course, he was more interested in our food, so we gave him a bit of our burger bun.

That was what the website said about the Nottinghill Carnival. To me, it is like a huge street party, with loud music, dancing and food everywhere. There was also a parade and lots of people. It was the largest party I've ever been to. And it was Dominic's first exposure to loud music. My heart went 'THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!' whenever we walked past a 'sound system' and I'm sure Dominic's did too. He looked neither happy nor unhappy. But I think he was rather confused.

We had jerk chicken for lunch and we watched half of the parade. That day, Dominic woke up almost every hour during the night crying.

Ever since Dominic was born, I've read numerous articles about sleep issues. Sleep ... it is the number one problem faced by most parents. I've had my share of sleepless nights too. Well, not exactly sleepless nights, but it would be great if Dominic could just fall asleep whenever he was sleepy and stay asleep the whole night without so much as a whimper.

My problem was that Dominic would not fall asleep on his own. He needed to be cuddled and rocked. Sometimes when I was luckly, he would fall asleep on his own, but rarely. And he often woke up at 4-5am. Although he would play quietly in his cot but after he'd done playing and wanted to go back to sleep, he would cry for me. The most inconvenient thing was when we were out. When he got sleepy, he wouldn't stay in his stroller. He needed SM or me to cuddle until he fell asleep. This is my problem ... or rather problems.

Experts say that we must train baby to soothe himself to sleep, i.e. we must put baby down in his cot while he is still awake. I've read this soooo many times. And yet, I did not do anything until now. Well, I did try once when I was living with SM's parents. As predicted, Dominic cried when I put him down. Experts said that I mustn't pick him up. Instead, I should comfort him with my voice, my touch. And if that didn't work, baby will almost always cry himslef to sleep. And so I let Dominic cry it out. In less than 5 minutes, SM's mum was knocking on my door and asked me what was wrong. I decided that I would not do it with her around.

About a week ago, I decided to try again. This time, there were nobody at home to interfere. On the first time, Dominic cried continuously for 45 minutes until finally he drifted off to sleep. As advised by the experts, I went in occasionally to reassure him, but my presence made him cry even louder. So I decided to just check on him by peeping into the room.

The second time, I left the room immediately after I put him down. He fell asleep on his own without a whimper. And ditto for the third time. I was euphoric, thinking that my plan had worked. But that night, he started crying again when I put him down. For the next 3 days, he went to sleep on his own throughout the day but it just didn't work at night. The first night, he cried for 30 mins; the second night for 15 mins; the third night for 30 mins; and finally on the fourth night, he fell asleep on his own without crying. He was good for two nights and then back to square one.

I'm still working on it and I do not understand why the method works like a charm during the day but not at night. Maybe he was afraid of the dark, so I turned on the lights. Maybe he wasn't sleepy yet, so I put him to bed later. I don't know ... it really stumps me. And I have no idea what I did right during the two nights when he was good.

I accidentally discovered that Dominic could understand what I said. He used to love tugging at anything that he could tug, such as the computer cables, electrical wires, telephone cables, etc. One day, he was reaching for the power socket and I said 'No'. To my surprise, he stopped, turned to me and started cyring. It was the first time I realised that my words had meaning to him. To make sure that it wasn't a coincidence, I said 'No' a few more times each time he reached for something forbidden and I got the same reaction. Here, I have captured one of the incidents on video: http://sukye.multiply.com/video/item/12.

Besides 'No', Dominic understood other words too. For example, he would open his mouth wide when I said 'Let mummy brush your teeth. Open your mouth'. And he would react with excitement when I said 'Nan-nan'.

Dominic now understands that power sockets, cables and such are off limits to him. They still fascinates him, but each time he wanted to reach for them, he would hesitate and look at me. I would always tell him 'No'. Sometimes he would cry, and other times he would just move on to his other toys.

Where can you find the best Dim Sum in UK? According to SM, it's Royal China at Bayswater London. In fact, he was being told that it's the best Dim Sum in Europe. Since, it's the best, we had to try it. So there we were at 15 mins to noon on a Saturday. The restaurant opens at 12 noon, and there were already more than a dozen people waiting at the door. It must be really good - we don't see this very often in London.

The restaurant opened and we went in with the crowd. As soon as we got seated, I looked around and noticed that the whole restaurant was already full. And it wasn't a small restaurant. There were at least 15 tables there and one table occupied about 6-7 people, some occupying only 2.

The food was really good. But I'm not sure if it was the best in Europe. So far, it was the best in London that I've eaten. We had plenty of food and it costed £12 per person.

Dominic was an angel. He slept through the entire time and woke up just when we were about to leave. By then, it was about 2:30pm. Yes, we spent 2 1/2 hours for lunch.

We were stuffed after lunch, so we took a stroll at Hyde Park and Oxford Street.

Here's a photo we took at Royal China. The rest of the people in the photo are mostly ex-Accenture or currently with Accenture (i.e. now SM's colleagues) or ex-Standard Chartered who used to work with SM in the Siebel project. The world is really small and somehow we managed to find each other miles away from home. :-) Dominic's not in the photo cos he was sleeping in his pushchair.

When Dominic started eating solids when he was around 6 months old, his stool had become firmer and he grunted each time before he pooped. And so it occured to me that it was a good time to introduce him to the potty. Each time he started to grunt, I'd take him to the potty and he'd do his business there. After a few times, he kinda got the idea that he was supposed to poop in the potty. And so I started the routine. Every morning before his bath, I'd sit him in his potty. Sometimes, he'd go. If he didn't, I'd try again in the evening before his bath. But most of the time he would go after his lunch. And you know what? Ever since then, Dominic had not pooped in his diaper once. I guess sometimes he was trying to tell me that he need to go, but I just could not make out what he was saying. I think he's doing great so far and I hope this will continue until he is able to speak.

Dominic created his first masterpiece on the sofa cushion today ... with a ball point pen. Maybe you can't really see it in the picture, but it's there. I had no idea when he got hold of a ball pen and I only saw his drawing long after he created it. Phew! Being a mother, you will need eyes at the back of your head!

Just for laughs, here's something funny.

My 6th-uncle (I have 7 uncles and aunts labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) sent out an e-mail to the whole family with an mp3 attachment. In the e-mail, he included the lyrics of the song and said that it should be sung to the tune of James Blunt's 'You're Beautiful'. (Click here to download mp3). And the lyrics:

When Dominic was 3 months old, he was diagnosed with Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). This was in KL and his paediatrician charged a minimum of RM50 each visit. On his first visit, Dominic had a blood and urine test, all done on the same day and the results known on the same day after about 1 hour, after which UTI was more or less confirmed and the doctor put him on antibiotics for 7 days. Then, the doctor ordered a culture on his urine and the results were known a week later, during our 2nd visit. By the the infection has cleared. Another urine test confirmed that. The doctor explained that UTI could happen due to several reasons, of which, two of them are serious cases and need to be diagnosed:

I received a letter from the hospital on 7-Jun-06 telling me to book an appointment by phone. I checked my calendar and decided that the next Friday or the following Monday would be fine. When I finally called, I was told that the earliest date they had for me was 12-July-06. I then settled for 24-July-2006 because we wanted a Monday or Friday so that SM can have a long weekend off.

On 24-July-2006, we arrived at the hospital on time. The paediatrician was also right on time. We didn't have to wait a single minute. She asked tonnes of questions ... how is Dominic feeding, is he crawling, rolling, etc. After that, she said that she will book the test and we will get another appointment by mail in 4-6 weeks time! She then prescribed us more antibiotics and we waited more than 1 hour at the hospital pharmacy for the prescription (because it was a 'pink slip', which means we can only get the prescription from the hospital pharmacy and not any high street pharmacies). She also gave us a follow-up appointment to review the results of the test, which is 3 months later, on 2-Oct-2006.

A few days later, we received another letter from the hospital saying that a micturating cystogram has been booked for Dominic on 4-Aug-2006. We went there. A doctor inserted a catheter (which is a tube) into Dominic's bladder through his penis. Well, I didn't know that you can actually insert a tube there. As you might have guessed, he screamed bloody hell. But I didn't think it was painful because it was a different kind of scream. The catheter has an opening at the end where the radiographer later inserted some dye to fill up Dominic's bladder. Then an x-ray is done.

The radiographer could see instantly that the test was negative. However, he advised us to continue with the antibiotics until we see the paediatrician. The paediatrician will receive the results in 10 days time, but we will only be seeing her on 2-Oct-2006.

I stopped the antibiotics the next day.

Well, SM liked the health services here. According to him, it's fair. In Malaysia, you'll need to have money to get good services. Otherwise, you need to be acquainted to some Dato' or Tan Sri. And he liked that the doctors here respect his time. In KL, we always had to wait a minimum of 1 hour and we had to be there at the hospital before the clinic opens. Here, the appointment said 10:20am, and we were attended to at 10:20am.

I think I still prefer the private medical services in KL because I like things to be done NOW and RIGHT HERE. SM argued that we had to pay outrageous amount of money in KL but everything is free here. But I reminded him that I claimed everything from my company (except maternity costs, which the company doesn't cover). There are private medical services here too, but I think it will be very expensive.

At the end, if you compare government to government, the NHS here is definitely waaayyy better than in Malaysia. Not that I've been to any government doctors in Malaysia but I've heard enough stories to know that it's hell in there.

When you come right down to it, money do speak louder than anything and no matter what other people say, money is important. Whoever said that money can't buy happiness was just trying to console himself for not having it. No one can deny that money makes it much easier for you to do the things that will make you happy. And it helps take away a great amount of suffering from your life. Maybe some of you will beg to differ. :-)