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What drama did Elena drum up? Well, she threw such a temper tantrum that I really didn’t know what to do! The thing about my daughter is that once she’s upset, she’ll remain upset for a long time…and the funniest thing is that she’ll cry, then stop crying, then suddenly remember that she’s supposed to be upset, then start crying again… Anyways, she cried because she was hungry, then after drinking, she cried because her diaper was wet, then after I changed her diaper, she cried because she wanted to be burped, and then finally, she cried because she wanted to go to sleep. I swear I’ve never been so glad to see my mum walk through the door (my mum was out that day…she’s able to pacify Elena a lot better than me)

The highlight of the week, however, was Elena’s first jaunt into her swimming pool. Yes, you read correctly. Her swimming pool. Hubby’s friend recommended a baby pool and float that his youngest daughter is currently using, and hubby wanted to get one for Elena. We searched high and low in Toys’R’Us but couldn’t find it until I unexpectedly stumbled across the last box at Babyland. The pool isn’t really huge (in diameter), but its quite deep (deep enough for me to climb in for a soak!) and it took us ages and ages to fill it up with water.

I was abit apprehensive about putting her in…what if she sinks? What if she swallows water? What if she catches a cold after? What if this and what if that? All my fears were unfounded though…she took to the water like a little duckling! She looked so cute in the neck float, and once she got over the initial surprise of having something around her neck and being placed in a warm tub of water, she started moving her hands and legs and made little rounds in her pool! And best of all, she slept so peacefully after that!

Speaking of sleep, I had to undergo another round of 4am poo clean-up two days after the first incident. However, nothing could beat what happened on Monday morning though! I woke up to find Elena lying on her diaper-changing mat on my mom’s bed, which had all its sheets stripped. What happened? Well, apparently, she poo-ed so much when my mom was carrying her during a morning feed that it overflowed her diapers, dripped onto my mom’s pants AND the bed sheets! While I was asleep, a flurry of activity went on in my mom’s room as my parents sought to find a way to clean her up without dirtying anymore surfaces as she had poo smeared all over her back. What a big hoo-hah indeed!

On Wednesday, we brought her to the paed for another round of vaccinations. This time, it’s the 5-in-1 on her right thigh, pneumococcal on her left thigh, and rotavirus via oral medication. Our girl was really steady…she cried in pain when the needles went in, but was a-OK soon after! So proud of her! I had my usual long list of questions to ask the paed (constant blocked nose, she spits up pretty often, the tiny whiteheads on her face, loose stools etc.) and was relieved to hear that everything was ok and there’s nothing to worry about (blocked nose is normal as baby’s nostrils are very narrow, spit up is also normal, tiny whiteheads will disappear in time, loose stools are actually normal breastfed baby’s stools). In fact, her development and growth is right on track, and if we consider her corrected age (she should only be 6 weeks old if she was born on time), she’s actually ahead!

And what new ‘tricks’ has she ‘learnt’ this week?

1. She loves sleeping with her hands and legs spread out wide. She sleeps on our bed at night because I breastfeed her, and one night, after she finished a feed, she used her hand to smack me repeatedly on my chest. When I moved away, she spread her hands out wide and proceeded to fall asleep. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry…I was curled up at the corner of the bed while my little girl took up at least half the bed!!

2. She’s one curious cat, always looking around with her big eyes at everything. This makes it extremely difficult for us to carry her in the burping position as her head would loll around somewhat unsteadily. Even though I’ve tried to avoid letting her head bump onto me, to date, she has hit her head on my chin several times as her movements are pretty quick. And speaking of cats, she absolutely loves rubbing her face on my body. I have no idea why! She takes me as her personal serviette…wiping her mouth, cheeks and eyes on my shoulder, arms, tummy, etc.

3. Drama queen alert! She really knows how to milk our sympathy for all its worth…after we’ve calmed her down when she has had a crying fit (she’s hungry, sleepy, dirty, or just unhappy with the world in general… ), she’ll make little sniff-sniff or whimpering noises for quite some time after that as if to remind us that she’s still unhappy.

4. The other day, I was trying to coax her to finish the last 1oz of milk in her bottle. She tried avoiding the teat, but because I kept following her mouth, she finally sucked it in, but clamped down on it hard with her gums. I kept talking to her and cajoling her, and finally, she gave a huge sigh and started sucking. Of course, I started praising her for being such a good girl. It was only after a while before I realized that the tissue I was holding against her mouth was getting pretty wet…you know what this girl did? From my view, it looked as if she was obediently drinking her milk, but from the other side of her mouth, she was letting all the milk trickle out. And she just stared at me with her innocent eyes as if she didn’t do anything wrong! *faints*

5. She has perfected the art of using her eyes to convey her emotions. She gives us winks when she’s happy, rolls her eyes when she thinks we’re being silly, gives us slitty sidelong glances from the side of her eyes when she’s displeased with something we said. And yes, I’ve been the recipient of those sideway glances far too many times!

Oh, and she now weighs 4.9kgs…that’s more than double her birthweight!

Week 1 to week 9…

See my little caterpillar stretchhhhhh…

When you’re a mother to a 9 week old baby, the one daily chore you dread is cleaning up after The Big Poop. Yes, the BIG POOP that comes once a day and makes sulfur smell like perfume, the poop that fills up an entire diaper (and still overflows!), the poop that makes cleaning up an almost impossible task if not for the entire pack of Pigeon wipes that you used up. Oh, and the poop that makes you hope you’re not on diaper duty when it comes.

As it turns out, after a whole day of relatively poop-less diapers, The Big Poop came at 4am in the morning, halfway during a breastfeeding session. Elena was fussing and I just sleepily popped my right breast into her mouth when suddenly, I heard a…’praaa-aatttt’…followed by a couple more of the same. My eyes snapped open, and a quick shimmy down the bed and a sniff of her diaper told me all I needed to know. The Big Poop has decided to make its appearance and oh joy, guess who’s on diaper duty.

I gingerly picked her up from the bed and transported her quickly to the diaper changing area. Elena has a history of her diaper slipping down her butt when she sleeps and the last thing I want is a lava of poop flowing down the floor in the middle of the night.

I let out a loud ‘ewwww’ when I opened her diaper, and hubby at least had the presence of mind to turn over and sleepily ask ‘Need help?’. Gosh, was I tempted to say yes, but the poor man had to work the next day so I just shook my head and asked him to go back to sleep. The next day, hubby said he remembered a flurry of activity that sounded like it bordered on panic… Well, almost! I had to rush to the bathroom to get warm water (who likes cold water trickling down your butt in the middle of the night?), wipe wipe wipe her butt, change her PJs caused some poop got onto it, change all the towels at the diaper changing area cause those were stained as well, rush back to the bathroom to wash my hands and finally, pick her up back in my arms before she decides to go WW2 on me and wake up the entire household.

And that, was the highlight of Week 10. Yes, a relatively uneventful week, finally! Her diaper rash has cleared up, pooping consistency is almost back to normal, no new developments to report and feeding amount has not changed (in fact, it has reduced as she has suddenly decided that formula doesn’t taste as nice as breast milk and is drinking less during the formula feeds).

However, we still have a couple of amusing incidents to report…
1. I was carrying her in my arms when I asked her if she wanted daddy to carry her and she shook her head. Yes…turned her head from left to right to left to right.
2. My mum was carrying her and my mum asked her if she wanted me to carry her…and she shook her head again (so now you can see her order of preference…my mum over me, me over hubby… )
3. Hubby was snoring away in his sleep and both Elena and myself were tossing and turning coz we couldn’t sleep. I tried nudging him but it didn’t work as he was so sound asleep, until Elena lost her patience and gave a loud yell…that did the trick and woke hubby up!
4. One night after dinner, we were all sitting on the living room floor playing with Elena after her feed (sans hubby coz he was still at the office, poor guy!). We asked Elena…’Where is mummy?’ and she turned to look at me. ‘Where is Wai Poh (grandma)?’ and she turned to look at my mom. ‘Where is Wai Kong (grandpa)?’ and she turned to look at my dad! We did this several times in random order, and funnily enough, she turned and focused on the right person each time, garnering loud cheers from all of us!

And as I’m typing this, Elena has just drummed up some new drama to be reported in Week 10’s post! To be continued….

Note: As I haven’t tried other pumps, this review will purely be a review on the PIS and not a comparison between pumps.

I bought the Medela PIS from The First Few Years in Singapore (@ Paragon) after doing some research online about breastpumps. It was a toss-up between Medela and Avent, however, I did not choose Avent as their bottles are not BPA-free (at that point in time). The Medela PIS has also garnered quite a lot of good reviews, plus it’s a dual and electric pump, both of which were criteria that I wanted in a pump.

Photo from The First Few Years

What I like:
1. There are not many parts to clean/sterilize, only four in total: the breast shield and funnel, the valve and the membrane.
2. It’s easy to put together, easy to use. Just attach the four parts above to the tubing, attach the tubing to the motor, turn the knob and pump away!
3. It uses Medela’s 2-phase expression system, which means for the first two minutes, the pump stimulates your baby’s initial suckling motion, ie. fast pumps, then once let down occurs, you can switch to the longer and more powerful pumps. I go back and forth between the two as I found I’m able to squeeze a little bit more milk when I do that.
4. The power of the suction can be adjusted. Most women do not have equal sized breasts, yours truly included, hence I need to tweak the suction slightly when I switch breasts.
5. It’s pretty quiet (at least it doesn’t disturb Elena when I pump while she sleeps).
6. If I remember correctly, you can use all standard sized bottles with this pump, so it’s not necessary to buy just Medela bottles. Medela also produces breastmilk storage bags that can be attached directly to the pump (it’s not cheap tho!).

What I dislike:
1. It’s not hands free if you’re dual-pumping, hence it’s very hard to adjust the suction if you’re halfway pumping. In the end, I usually resort to expressing one side followed by the other (which also leaves one hand free to surf the ‘net…but also defeats the purpose of buying a dual-pump… !).
2. The motor unit is not exactly very light.
3. And that’s all!

The set that I bought includes two extra membranes, and cooler bag and ice pack, four bottles and one teat, a battery pack (which I’ve never used coz it needs 8-10 batteries!)…and all of it fits into a nice black shoulder bag (see picture above) which I’ve also used as a diaper bag.

For the price I paid - the cheapest I could find in Singapore - I think it was definitely worth purchasing considering I get more use out of it than my handphone these days (yes, it costs about the same as a decent handphone)!