Gong Xi Fa Cai!

This is baby Valerie's first Chinese New Year. Look at my baby all dressed in red. We went over to grandma's place early in the morning for the CNY gathering and stayed around till evening. Nothing exciting happened, except just sat around watching TV, eating yummy food whole day and receiving lots of angpows (on behalf of Valerie of course :P ).

Oh yeah, this was also a stressful day because for the first time, baby Valerie refused to feed from her Avent bottle. No idea why, she just moved the bottle teat left and right without really sucking in and then chewed on it and fell asleep. In the end, poor mommy has to breastfeed her instead. I had planned to start bottle training her daytime as a transition to going back to work. Looked like the plan failed miserably. In the end, only Ivan's 2nd sis aka 'Lai Ku' managed to feed her.

At night, we lit the 'Guo Min Deng' up to the sky which was pretty fun. I really admired the Chinese who created this more than 2000 years ago. A simple theory, by lighting the candle, it produces enough hot air to push the paper lantern up. (Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I scored a C in Physics :P ) Apparently it was not easy to set this up. We needed 2 persons to hold the balloon parallel on both sides and a third person to light the candle. And we had to be really sure there was enough hot air before gently releasing it up to the air. Failing to do any of this and the paper lantern will fail to launch.

More CNY pics for the occassion... Mommy and baby ang ang...


Note: After a week of battle getting Valerie to take her bottle (we did the "if she's hungry enough, she will eat" theory, means starving her on a few occassions), we found out the root of the problem. It was because the flow was too slow for her! LOL! Silly mommy, never thought of upgrading her bottle teats when she's already 2 months plus, still using a newborn teat. Sorry baby, for starving you the whole week and labelling you as a 'chou' baby...

2nd Month

2nd month was no fun at all. Mommy took over the full-time job of caring for baby Valerie, and boy.. was that hard work. The constant back and shoulder pain due to carrying the baby most of the time, coupled with sleepless nights make me slimmed down 3kg in a month. There was also no time to eat or even go to toilet. It was just the monotonous job of nursing, changing diapers, bathing, then more nursing and more changing diapers and washing her daily clothes. Gosh, makes me wonder how did my mom survive in her days? There was certainly no free time to cook. So Ivan just tapao lunch for me and night time, we went over to MIL place for dinner.

The first week we took over (her 5th week), we couldn't get Valerie to sleep at all throughout the day. I read babies are supposed to sleep for 20 hrs, my Valerie was barely sleeping 12. Because of her lack of sleep in the daytime, she was very very tired by evening and that became even worse. She would startle at every single sound. She would fall asleep like 15 mins and then wake up again. Later we learned a 'sarong wrap' which swaddled her very well and that helped her to sleep through the night.

But that lasted for a week. By the time she was 6th week old, she was getting smarter. Her arm would wriggle her way out of the sarong wrap and minutes later you would find both her arms released. So our sarong routine ended. She then adopted a new routine where she slept throughout the day and woke up around midnight instead. From midnight to 7am, she would sleep for a while, wake up and wants to chat with you (Oh yes, she's very chatty, saying anggugu already this young). But the daytime was great, I had so much free time to do house chores, read a book and even went online.

We tried a new strategy on the 7th week. Since Valerie loves to explore and look around, we brought her out shopping in the afternoon instead. This didn't allow her to sleep during the daytime and thus she learned to fall asleep in the evening instead. Slowly Valerie started sleeping by midnight and woke up noon the next day. It was an achievement for us but then, the daytime was tough for me as I now have no free time to do anything. She just want to be held ALL the time. But still, this was better than her getting her days and nights mixed up.

During the 2nd month, I went into exclusive breastfeeding (except for 1 bottle of expressed milk a day during dinner time at MIL). This helped me to cope as I find this approach very workable. I didn't have to run around preparing milk and washing bottles when she cry for hunger. Plus, no need to be fully awake for the night feeds. I just need to held her close and she would get her milk while both of us continue to sleep with her in my arms. Cool eh..

The poo-poo was still pretty frequent, about 4 rounds in the day and 3 at night. Her feeding was about 2 oz every 2 hours. She would smile a lot and very chatty with her non-stop ang-goo-goos... Grandpa simply adores chatting with her; him with his 'Ni yao pao pao arr?' and hers with her 'Anggoo... Anggoo...'.

Going Back to Work

For the next 2 weeks I was focused on training baby Valerie to take the bottle daytime in preparation to going back to work. Compared to the 1 bottle feed a day, she now had to take 4 bottle feeds, this actually gave me more work.

First I needed to feed her every 2 hours, burp her, wash the bottle and then try to schedule milk expressing time. It's a lot more work compared to direct breastfeeding but I didn't mind. This training was required to ensure smooth transitioning to nanny. What's tough was really finding time to express milk while entertaining Valerie.

Well, baby Valerie was still pretty much a high-demanding baby who needed my 100% focus and attention throughout the day. I know they say you shouldn't spoil a baby by carrying her or accompanying her all the time. But being a first time mom, I just responded to her cry every time. I did try to ignore her, but that got her even moodier and harder to handle. So I chose the 'no-cry' baby approach.

The training went well for 2 weeks and we were ready to pass her over to nanny on my first day back to work. We were a little anxious leaving our precious baby with a stranger for the first time. The nanny was very understanding and reassured us Valerie would be in good hands.

Halfway through the day, Ivan urged me to give nanny a call to find out how she was doing. The first thing that nanny complained was how attention seeking my baby was. Valerie would cry to be held and she would play around with the bottle when offered. Also, she hardly took long naps. Max about 30 mins, she would wake up. I smiled sheepishly, although nanny didn't say the mommy spoil her, I knew she indicated that.

When we picked her up in the evening, we noticed Valerie was a lot quieter than usual. She didn't cry that much to be held. Somehow having a nanny helped to 'train' her to be less clingy. Still, we kinda miss our 'noisy' baby when left alone for barely 5 minutes :P