and here’s where the unnamed blog entries disappeared for good, down the virtual drains of cyberspace.

so from here on, it’ll be mostly recollections of what happened when, according to the dates when the accompanying pictures/videos were uploaded.

oh well. for the sake of posterity.

but hey, as they say, hindsight is always 20/20!

(~24 feb 07)

other than buying the latest issue of mother&baby, you should also go buy this month’s issue of young parents, for they have thoughtfully reviewed 30 nursery rooms in major shopping malls and is proving very useful for mallrats such as myself to have in the diaper bag at all times.

i love malls!

ok, another thing is, there’s a b/feeding talk by a mat saleh paediatrician who’s written a book on the subject , at kkh on 23rd april, sunday, from 2pm – 5pm at 12bux per pax, baby included. anyone interested?

http://www.abas.org.sg

i was thinking… technically, the boy is one year old, if you count from the date of his conception. march 05, that’s when i think he happened.

nine months inside + three months outside = twelve months of life.

so yey, happy one year of existence, you!

i guess it’s only right that i promote this… lol!

muka poster betol.

***

oh, and i guess i should also tell you to go buy mother&baby magazine.

er, not for these muka posters below lah.

but for the chock-full of info inside. really.

our complimentary copy of ‘mother & baby’ finally came in the mail today.

i held my breath as i flipped through the pages…

gah!!

aniq, the unborn version, was seen in a few pages. eh, even izad, the father, made an appearance, ok. heh.

and i also spotted the person who sent me the magazine. can you? ;)

thanks, kak lin!

oh, reading about the feeling of baby kicking in the tummy made me wistful.

i think i’ve forgotten how it feels. but i KNOW i miss it. :(

anyway, mothers and mothers-to-be, go get your own $5 copy, ok?

we went to not one, but two hospitals today.

first, after driving dad’s wrecked brand new SGA-plated jazz to the workshop (that’s a whole other story i shan’t get into) (and yes, i repeat, i still drive), we went to The Hospital for a pre-registration.

kiasu mah.

also, we’d been encouraged to go on a hospital tour to familiarise ourselves with the rooms and facilities, so after signing the documents and collecting the baby bonus package to fill in (haha so strange to be on the receiving end of this, with my own boss’s name signed on the letter), we had a very tall model-like PR girl (who made a stark contrast to my super fat and stubby stature – not a good feeling) to bring us around, showing us the delivery suite, the different wards, where to register at what times, etc.

we asked if we were allowed to bring in our camera in the delivery suite, but tall model-like PR girl didn’t know the answer. tall model-like PR girl also had no idea the hospital has a circumcision package. so much for her tall knowledge.

hearing from the receptionist the cost of the circumcision done at The Hospital made our eyes grow as big as saucers.

we definitely are going to the clinic to do the snip.

and yes, we do plan to have peanut/jeruk snipped as soon as possible, preferably during the first week. coz: a) it’s cheaper than doing it when he’s in primary school; b) he doesn’t know pain yet, and he’ll cry ANYWAY; c) the snipped part will heal faster.

he’ll thank us for sparing him the traumatising experience later.

later in the day, we went to The Other Hospital.

to visit a little girl who was supposed to come out ohhh… on christmas eve. santa delivered his package a tad earlier than expected. :)

proud daddy omar.

lookit that healthy pink skin and oh-so-red lips. and she’s tiny too, at 2.5kg.

hearing mum ogy describe her contractions as ten minutes apart and not very painful but just hardening of the abdomen, made me a little worried. coz i DO get hardenings pretty often, and they’re not painful either, just uncomfortable and makes me take a sharp breath each time. but it’s always in my mind that they’re false false false, and i’m waiting for that backache, or that mucous plug, or that waterbag trickle, or… ANYTHING other than just contractions.

but there isn’t.

so it’s back to waiting it out. except that i now look at the watch/clock more often.

own time own target, this peanut/jeruk.

after weeks of waiting for her to emerge from her mama’s womb (and us bugging them when when whennn), her daddy finally sms-ed that she’s ready, after the waterbag burst…

fifteen hours it took for her to come out. epidural after the tenth hour, at 3cm dilation!

baby alya looking oh-so-calm after her most traumatic experience ever – birth.

her parents and us had holidayed in bangkok just last december, when she was only a few weeks old and her mum, zur, wasn’t even sure if she existed or not at that point. but we had an inkling she did, and it’s a wonder zur could do all that crazy walking in chatuchak and sukhomvit without fainting! :D

also, they were kinda the catalyst for peanut’s beginnings… :)

anyway, back to baby alya!

she is such a cutie, weighing in at a slight 2.3kg. when she was rolled back in the room after a jab at the nursery, her tongue started darting out in search of something she knew she should be getting but doesn’t know what. i watched as zur attempted her first time at breastfeeding. very exciting ok. alya whined a bit when a nipple was shoved into her tiny mouth, but it didn’t take long before she was contentedly sucking on it. hurrah!

her two grandmothers were so cute, as soon as the nurse left, they promptly plucked her off zur’s left breast and placed her on the right one. hehe.

grand/mothers are so full of wisdom and nonchalance in the face of childbirth and post-natal care, doncha think? they have all kinds of do’s and don’ts which fascinated me even though some made little sense.

zur’s mum opened a can of soda and made zur drink up. something about breaking down and releasing the gases in her stomach. and the most interesting lesson of the evening was when she opened up a plastic bag which contained zur’s placenta and cord. macam beli daging dari pasar!

it was the first time i (and zur’s sis-in-law, sharinna) saw a live placenta and cord, which, merely a few hours ago, were in someone’s womb. amazing! the placenta looked like raw meat, or as the oldies say, “macam limpa” (erm, gizzard in english?) and the umbilical cord attached to it is long and slimy, with intermittent clots of what looked like blood all along it.

zur’s mum simply picked them up with her bare hands for a mini show-and-tell session, even though plastic gloves were included in the bag. she looked at the clots in the umbilical cord and found it strange that the clots were longish instead of roundish. she pointed out a twin clot and said there was a twin that could have been, but “tak menjadi”. i’m not sure what she meant, but suddenly the clots looked to me like eggs from the womb that kept ovulating throughout the nine months but never got to where it’s supposed to go. :)

it’s a practice for hospitals to return the placenta and cord to muslim families for a proper burial, and zur’s mum has been the appointed placenta cleaner, after which it’ll be buried at saiful’s parents’ backyard. later that night, we met with my makngah, who’d buried five placentas in her backyard (her four grandchildren’s and daughter-in-law’s niece’s), and she said there’s still space, so we “booked” ours too, heh.

makngah recalled how she was advised by my mak ilah, who also had twins, to separate the placenta after the twins’ (faris & faiz) birth. twins come out with one placenta and two cords attached, and according to mak ilah, you have to cut the placenta in two and bury them separately so that they will not fall sick at the same time. makngah thinks there’s something to it, because so far when one twin falls sick, the other falls sick only later.

nenek also advised makngah to bury the hair from the “cukur rambut” ceremony, and they’re somewhere in the backyard too, underneath a cool shady tree, as directed by nenek. we all have no idea why…

ok, back to baby alya again. her mum drank only soya milk during pregnancy coz she doesn’t like the smell of milk, so there ya go, soya milk = fair baby! :D

zur was happy with the services at raffles hospital, so we’re glad and assured that we’ll be happy there too.

FOUR MORE MONTHS TO GO, BAYBEH!

i changed my mind.

i am grateful to allah for the hunger pangs, the discomforts, the burps, the increasing fats around the tummy.

it means my baby is still there, fighting to survive in its fragile world.

but i’m so sorry to hear about your baby, you. i’m trying to hold back my tears for you. it could happen to any of us. it could happen to me.

be strong. :(