New Kid On The Blog

25 Nov 2009:

As mentioned in the earlier post, the father hasn't been working since I gave birth. He has rolled off the project here and supposedly should have gone back to London but he is currently on unpaid leave till February 2010. He has assumed the responsibility of:

1. Sending Dominic to school - every other day he would go to the gym after dropping Dom off and only comes home after he has picked Dom up from school. Other days, he would come home and either nap or work on his laptop (not sure what he was doing). Whenever Emily cries, he would ask if she's hungry even though I've just fed her 5 minutes ago.

2. Taking care of Dominic at home - he only does this when he "feels like it". On days that he did not go to the gym, he would bathe Dom while bathing himself. On days that he went to the gym, he would have bathed already at the gym therefore I will bathe Dom instead on these days. Dominic doesn't need a lot of taking care of. He eats on his own, plays with his cousin and when he's tired just falls asleep, but when his cousin Wing Sern is not around he wants us to play with him and the father is the one who entertains him.

3. Stay around when I need to go out - for example when I need to get a hair cut.

We have been going out as a family quite often these days - mostly to window shop for stuffs for our new home. The father has prepared a spreadsheet listing all the things we need and the estimated price, and uploaded the spreadsheet on to Google Docs.

The father is really annoying when it comes to the topic of 'feeding the baby'. As mentioned in an earlier post, Emily is thrombocytopenic and that is caused by my own anti-platelet antibodies crossing over the placenta and now eating up her platelet. Since breast milk contains antibodies, he suggested to the doctor that maybe I should stop breastfeeding and the doctor said I can 'try and see how it goes'. So for about 3 weeks, I half-fed Emily formula and half-breastfed her and the father kept pestering me to stop breastfeeding altogether, saying hurtful things like my breast milk is poisoning the baby. He didn't use the word 'poison' but it sounded more or less like that. Finally, we consulted a paediatric-haematologist and he assured that it is totally safe to breastfeed. I then resumed full time breastfeeding but the annoying father then said things like my breast milk is too watery (doesn't fill the baby up) and lack of nutrient (doesn't contain the AA and DHA that formula has). I felt like hitting his head with a broom then, and everytime I thought about it. He even went as far as buying a can of formula (for emergency and backup, he said). One positive outcome from this experience is that Emily can now easily alternate between the bottle and the breast. Her blood count still needs to be monitored on a monthly basis but the paediatric-haematologist is confident that she will recover on her own without any treatment.

It is now school holidays, which means that the father is extremely free not having to send the boy to school. It has only been 3 days and we've been asking each other "What should we do today?". On Monday, we took the kids to Sunway Pyramid. On Tuesday, we took Emily out to meet a friend while Dom stayed home. Today is Wednesday and we haven't been anywhere but let's see what happens tomorrow. :-)

Finally, some photos of the kids.

# posted by Skye @ 3:38 am 0 comments

18-Nov-2009:

For the first two weeks or so, the brother was very possessive over his sister. This is my sister, not your sister. (Me) But she's my daughter. No, she's not your daughter, she's my sister.

I've heard stories of the older sibling misbehaving because of jealousy but fortunately Dominic is not that type (yet). So far, he hasn't shown signs of jealousy and I believe that he truly cares for his siter. For example, there was a time when Emily was lying on our bed and I moved to the edge of the bed to reach Dominic (to help him with something). As I was shifting my backside towards the edge of the bed, I accidentally sat on Emily's pants (which were too long) and Dom thought that I had sat on her foot. He shouted "No!" and pushed me away. You should see the look on his face when he discovered that it was only the pants.

I think Dom might have been a little bit disappointed that his sister can't actually play with him yet. By now, he has accepted the fact that his sister can only sleep, poo and drink milk. His favourite time with Emily is when she has done a poo and he gets to help with the cleaning up (i.e. playing with water). He has tried various ways of engaging with her though, for example, holding up the iPhone that was playing Little Einsteins in front of her face, talking to her and then asked why her sister didn't want to talk to him and shouting into her ear. It's nice to see him so interested in the baby. On the other hand, in my mind Emily is extremely fragile since she's still thrombocytopenic and I'm constantly worried that Dom will accidentally hurt her.

School holiday is coming up soon and I wonder what we'll do with him for that one month plus. He's been quite fortunate so far since his daddy hasn't been to work since Emily was born (more on that in another post). Because both parents are not working, he still gets plenty of one-to-one time with both Saimun and I even after the arrival of the baby.

Dominic's current best friend is his cousin Wing Sern. They spend a lot of time together and I'm very thankful that when Wing Sern is around, Dom doesn't bother us at all. Their daily activities consist of building things, pretend cooking (didn't know that even boys enjoy masak-masak), cutting hair (pretend), singing, drawing and lots more. Recently, they have even taken up photopgraphy - will upload some of pictures that they have taken later, which include the baby's buttocks, my slippers, their grandfather sleeping and two photos of Saimun which I have deleted - one showing his bare chest and two nipples (only the chest, no head, waist up) and another showing his daddy in the process of getting dressed, pants unzipped (only the hips).

Dominic has also learned to speak a little Chinese and he can most of the time understand what his grandma is telling him. Next year, I have enrolled him into another kindy where he'll learn Mandarin.

# posted by Skye @ 1:02 am 0 comments

6-Nov-2009:

Apart from being thrombocytopenic, the baby is doing great. Emily was discharged from the hospital when she was 8 days old, with a platelet count of 100. Three days later we went back for a blood test and her platelet count has dropped to 55. She already had 3 doses of IVIG (Intravenuous Immunoglobulin - like what I had in London) and that costs us RM7k. My total hospital bill when discharged came up to RM11k. She needs to be monitored on a weekly basis and her last platelet count was 61. What happened was I am thrombocytopenic myself. The doctor said that it is an auto-immune disorder whereby my own antibody recognizes my platelets as a foreign substance and starts attacking them. During my pregnancy, my blood got transferred to the baby through the placenta and causes her to have a low platelet count as well. She will only return to normal after my antibody in her blood stream wears off, which may take a few months. Breastfed babies will take longer to recover since the mother's antibody passes through breast milk.

When I brought Emily home, she was fully breastfed but the doctor 'suggested' to stop breast feeding for a week and 'see how it goes'. Emily has been on formula for 1.5 weeks now, i.e. formula during the day time and breastfed at night. Why breastfed at night? Because it is simply too much work for me to feed and then still have to express milk. Anyway, I hope this will not go on for too long.

Emily was very tiny when we brought her home - even tinier than when she was first born. The skin on her legs was all wrinkled and she looked very fragile. She slept all the time and didn't wake up for feeds and I was getting quite worried. She also didn't poo much. I woke her up every 2 hours for feeding anyway and within 2 days she began to look better. By the 3rd day, she was poo-ing 5-6 times a day (a sign that she's getting enough to eat) and she weighed 2.90kg (a slight decrease from her birth weight which was 2.92kg).

Now, Emily has a very round face and she has double chin! Since a mother is hard to satisfy, I now wonder if she's over fed. :p Her weight, taken on Monday, was 3.22kg. She's doing fine in terms of weight gain, although I think she's a small eater. She also wakes up on her own for feeding now.

She's doing fine in other departments as well. I find myself comparing her with Dom when he was her age. I recall that Dom had trouble sleeping in the afternoons as he was easily awaken by any sound in the house. This was probably due to the fact that we didn't live with my in-laws the last time and our place was quiet, so any noise no matter how small would be amplified. Contrary to that, we now live in a house with 5 kids. There is not a moment of silence and Emily sleeps through all the screaming and yelling. The first few nights were however slightly difficult as she refused to sleep in her own cot, but now, after some 'training' from mummy, she's out of our bed.

People have been telling me that she looks like Dominic but when I compare their photos, I don't see much resemblance. One thing for sure, she has huge eyes like Dominic. She was extremely fair when she was first born but after a few days she has tanned a lot. She's now 3.5 weeks old and she can ... let me see ... (1) Cry loudly (2) Move to her favourite spot in the cot (my FIL there must be some magnetic field causing her to position herself the same way, same spot every time) (3) Smile (4) Laugh (5) Drink from a cup and (6) Lift her head when lying down on her stomach.

# posted by Skye @ 10:36 pm 1 comments