the little helper on his break ...

it's Easter and Spring break for Big Z now. which means 2 weeks off from school. it's now day 4 of his school holidays (day 6 if you count Saturday and Sunday). i had completely forgotten about this school break of his. so on Friday last, he and his Daddy made their way to school as per normal, only for them to return home 10 minutes later. they were met by locked school gates. only then did i check his school calendar; 2 weeks off school. so THAT'S how 'attentive' i've been ever since a lil someone entered our lives. they say as you progress through each pregnancy and each baby, you tend to grow a little more forgetful. eeek!! so, not wanting to take anymore risks, i think we'll just stop at 2 kids. i dread to think how much more forgetful and absent-minded i can get otherwise. heheh ...

i would love to say i've done some good productive educational activities with Big Z this week. you know, the 'it's school holidays, let's do something fun and educational with the kids' sort of activities. sad to say, i've done nothing of the sort. no clever crafts, no educational experiments. if at all, the most we've done together is care for Baby Z.
like this morning. daily routine ... get her bath ready, nurse her a bit, then wait for her to poo, clean her up, then give her a nice thorough bath. all was well until i felt this strange warm sensation on my legs. she dozed off on me while drinking and decided to poo more than necessary! that warm sensation was her poo. the diaper could only hold in so much, leaving the rest flowing out of the diaper, through her onesie, through her blanket and onto my pants!! it was a mess, needless to say. but fear not. Big Z was quick to offer his assistance. it was tissues (granted, not quite passed to me, more like thrown to me in all haste and panic), the bin, the towel and then his signature singing to Baby Z. to soothe her, he says. though really, she was all calm and soothed. it was the Mummy who needed the calming and the soothing. haha ... after the whole chaos, i bathed her, dressed her, wrapped her in another blankie and then had my own express shower. while in the shower, i heard her making a fuss - she hates having her hands all wrapped up. i got out of the shower, Big Z said he's making her feel better coz he sang to her already. ahh .. but of course. the instant i picked her up, cradling her in my arms, she went into her slumber. this was 2 hours ago ... she's still fast asleep now.

so, in this 2 weeks of Big Z's holidays, if nothing at all, he can always say he learn to help calm Mummy down by throwing tissues and the bin and the towel when his adik made a mess. he can also say he drew many more versions of his Island of Sodor. yes, drawing those much-loved trains on their island he still does a lot of. i just haven't had the time to scan and save them.

his next school break will be in June. this time, i'm already aware of it though, so he won't be the keen student facing his school's locked gate come the holidays. ;-)

Zayaan ...

is one month old today

makes the fussiest of fuss and noisiest of noise everytime she stretches, yawns and/or passes wind

drinks A LOT!

eagerly 'grabs' hold of the bottle when she sees it

is fast filling up her 'new baby' onesies and sleepsuits

can sleep for hours in her Daddy's arms

doesn't mind having a bath or a wipe-down, but hates the putting on clothes part

smiles in her sleep mostly; but even so, a very quick smirk of a smile

is starting to develop her own character and doesn't look all that identical to Zarif as I had initially thought

.............................................

and this, 5 years ago (well, almost), was Zarif 'grabbing' his bottle ... but much earlier, at 4 days old.

3 weeks on ...

... or 22 days to be exact.
That's how old Baby Z is.

:: this is her at 2 weeks-plus ::

Let's do a lil progress report of sorts on her now, shall we?
While she's generally known as Baby Z and/or Lil Z (esp in text messages), most call her Zayaan. My dad, my brother and his wife call her Atiya. The Daddy calls her Zai and I occasionally call her Tia. It's not like it really matters what we call her at this stage, I suppose. Even with her eyes wide open and staring at us while we call out her name(s), she does nothing more than just continue staring at us with her deep-set eyes and her little pout. :-)

At her last check-up (at 2-weeks old), she had already gained all of 0.23kg. Woo-hoo! Am not sure myself how good or bad such a weight-gain is, but according to her paed, she's growing well, so that's good news on our part then. I'm guessing she's put on more weight since the check-up.

Speaking of weight-gain, I really am reminded (not particularly to my fondness though) how tiring feeding an infant can get. And by feeding, I'm referring solely to the motherly act of breastfeeding. It's only been 3 weeks, and already I'm wondering how much longer I should be nursing her. Part of me, a rather big part of me let's say, is conscious of the fact that I kind of over-nursed my firstborn. Big Z was through and through a mommy's-milk-boy for a good 2 1/2 years!! Was it tiring? Oooh yeah! Will I want to nurse Baby Z just as long? I'm saying a great big "NO!!!". I'm making it my very own self-appointed duty to see that she takes both her Mummy's goodness and that of formula milk. Almost immediately, she accepted formula milk, which was such a relief. I know, I know ... some of you moms reading this may well be shaking your heads in disapproval, but at the end of the day, I know I DO NOT want to repeat what I did with Big Z. Big Z has turned out healthy and active a 4 year old, for which I'm truly thankful ... Alhamdulillah ... but, it's the personal physical issues which I'm not quite willing to go through a second time. The part where my 'milk-hubs' are almost always at his disposal, regardless of where we may be. This means that going out to malls, to a friend's or family member's house, in the car even ... when he cries and demands a feed, I simply had to oblige. Sure, it helps a great deal in that there is no need for bottles, no need for searching the supermarket shelves for the right formula milk, no need for packing enough supply each time we leave the house. Sure too, there's all the health benefits and extra closeness and bonding between mother and child, but seriously, SEE-RIOUS-LEEE, it does get a bit too invasive almost (though 'invasive' may seem too cruel a word, in this context).

Tell me there's at least one of you out there who share my thoughts on breastfeeding ... that while on the one hand we acknowledge and accept all the positives that come with it, there's also the negatives which in some ways outweigh the positives and as a result, draw us to limit the nursing and increase the formula intake instead. Yes? No? Anyone of you? Anyone at all share my sentiment here? Otherwise, I shall just quietly deal with my bad mothering where feeding my child is concerned.

So. What I've done now is to nurse her during most feeding times and then the rest of the time, she'll take the formula. Roughly, it's a 1-part formula feed, 2-parts mommy's goodness. And as mentioned earlier, she seems to take in the formula just as well as she does my milk, and is very comfortable with bottles too. With Big Z, not only did he only want my milk, he wanted it straight from the milk-hubs themselves! Would refuse all milk transfered into bottles. A real fuss-pot he was!

Feeding aside, I've tried my very best to do the whole confinement, pantang thing. Am very much still in the pantang period, but has to be said, I've broken the rules of pantang already. Not proud of it ... shame on me! I attended not one, but TWO birthday parties over the last weekend. One was Big Z's classmate's birthday party, his best friend's birthday, as it turns out, so I was pretty keen he (and I too .. haha!) attend. Just to make things 'easier', they live in the same condo as my inlaws, so after hanging out at the party a bit, I excused myself, left Big Z there and went up to rest and continue the pantang at my inlaws apartment unit. Not too bad la, yes? Hehe... And then on Sunday, I attended the other birthday party. This time, it was my nephew's birthday and was held at my parents', so I left my house and 'did' the pantang at my parents' that day. ;-)

While going out I have definitely done, though only to hospitals for follow-up check-ups and to both parents' and inlaws', I've been having my urut sessions daily (well, minus the weekends) and been making sure I take lots of water, have my socks on practically 24/7 and have the tightest of tight-eee-ness bengkung on for a good 7 hours daily. Hmm .. Fair enough, not good at all la. Only 7 hours a day??! What good will 7 hours do, right? But, I must say, it makes eating a whole lot trickier having this bengkung wrap you up. Am still nowhere close to a fine flat tummy and narrow hips, but according to the makcik urut, I've gone down quite a bit already since the first day she started urut-ing me, and I can already get into my pre-pregnancy jeans, so yey! Am happy for now. :-)

So it's 3 weeks down, another 2 weeks and a bit till the end of my confinement period. And then I shall be a free woman! A free mom! A free mom who's already worried and anxious about going out with her new baby for the first time. Well, I'm sure my first official post-confinement trip out with Zayaan will be with the Daddy and Big Z too, so I won't be on my own anyway. But regardless, I still see myself being the awkward 'new' mom out with new baby. It'll be going out with plenty more than just my little bits of things which normally sit in my handbags, plus a couple of trains for Big Z. Now, on top of those things and a couple of trains, there'll be diapers, a changing mat, wipes, plastic bags (for soiled diapers and wipes), bottles, this, that and then somemore. Oh dear. THAT - the lugging around a big heavy bag of all sorts of baby things, which if you don't pack, you'll be cursing at yourself for not being efficient enough at packing, and if you do pack, you'll only wonder why you even bothered packing something which really wasn't all that necessary to have a spot in the diaper bag. Ahh ... such joys of motherhood.

On that very apt note, I shall leave you with this.

A quick bit on Big Z.
He had a school trip to our Butterfly and Orchid Farm in Lake Gardens yesterday. Their current culture topic in school is on 'Plants and Insects', hence the visit to them parks. Anyway ... he not only came home saying it was much better than our zoo since he's very much taken a hatred to our zoo, simply because the toilets are too dirty and smelly (which i truly believe him), he also brought home a pot of orchids from the park. Apparently each child brought home one ... must applaud the orchid people for their extreme generosity there. Orchids aren't exactly cheap, are they? He was also very excited and proud to tell me what our national flower is. For those who aren't aware, like I was, our national flower could well be something we'd one day snack on, coz according to Big Z, "it's the hi-biscuits ... the Malaysia flower, Mummy. ... it's big and red and it's called the hi-biscuits. you know, like what we eat, like biscuits!". LOL.

the 1st week ...

She's just over a week old now. Can't believe it's been a week already.

Having her in our lives has changed things around quite a bit here at Big Lime. There's the obvious new resident in the house, the little cries (she has this kitten-like whispery sort of cry) when she's just waking up, the loud cries when she's too hungry and waiting for milk is pure torture on her part, the diaper-changing, rubbish bag throwing (bins are now emptied so frequently, I'd need to get more plastic bags very soon), bottle-washing, milk-expressing, crib-rocking, Big Z singing lullabies (as opposed to Thomas & Friends and/or My Chemical Romance songs!) and then some more. As tiring as my eyebags are proving this whole new change in daily routine is turning out to be, it's all equally fun and too-good-to-be-true sort of feeling.

Still very early days, but has to be said, looking after Baby Z is definitely less tiring than looking after Big Z as a baby. Big Z would just park himself on me throughout the day, leaving me with nothing else to do but to just hold on to him really. He'd wail each time I placed him in his cot, but so long as he's all snug in my arms or the Daddy's, he'd sleep well. Baby Z on the other hand, is much easier. Feed and burp her, cuddle her a bit, put her in her crib and she'll put herself to sleep soon after. Gives me the time to see to my laundry, lunch for myself and Big Z, and other bits of work around the house. Oh, and updating of blogs. :-) This easy pattern she's got herself into only applies during the day though. At night, it's a whole other story! Wakes up every other hour and after feeding, takes a lot of rocking and coaxing and pleading (by us parents) to get her to sleep. Not the most welcoming 'task' at 2am, 3am, 4am and 5am, I'd say. But last night, was the first manageable night. Woke up twice for feeds and a change and then went back to sleep but not so immediate as if during the day. Let's see what tonight brings us.

:: having her bit of morning sun by the window ::