Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Father
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.
