A quick update.

Guess what?! I have mastered the art of sleeping through my baby’s cries!

Nah. I’m joking, but fatigue had me so bad, I heard the cries but simply didn’t have the strength to even pull myself out from bed. I guess all that late nights, intermittent sleep and stress has overwhelmed me this morning that I just slept and slept. I did crawl outta bed for an hr for my massage (my mum screamed at me like 10 times before I struggled to wake cos the massage lady is here, only to doze off during the massage), and promptly after.. Collapsed in bed again.

It was as though I lost all control of my brain and couldn’t stay awake at all. Truth is, I am equally sleepy now.

Jerry’s fussing has grown bad to worse, and I am thinking if he is experiencing a growth spurt, since he’s into his 3rd week now. He barely slept last night crying every 30mins or so that der & me were soooo tempted to send him to kkh a&e just to be sure nothing is wrong. It was also triggered by the fact that he vomited all his milk yesterday afternoon after I fed him. Major heartache. We didn’t in the end cos he wasn’t running a temperature.

Anyway, I swear when I measured his height yesterday, he seemed to have grown 4-5cm! How much do babies actually grow daily? He looks so different now from the newborn shoot that we did when he is 6 days old. I want to go get a baby scale to measure my baby weight.. Heh. Am kidding.

His little feet seemed longer too, but I didnt measure it previously, so here’s one taken today for the record – 7cm long! Sent it to der earlier while he was out for a haircut and guess what?! He asked if I measured his ‘ku ku jiao’ as well. Hmmm.. Looks like my hubby is quite perverted. Warning! Beware of my husband!

Here’s a picture of my baby today!

His cheeks are getting fatter and chubbier, and his face longer? He has daddy’s lips though, fat lips (haha!). He is sleeping here like a praying mantis, and I also realized his brows are getting more and more defined. =)

While drifting between my naps and struggling to be awake this morning, I heard the hubby being really hands on with the baby, and he has taken to feeding the baby abd putting him off to bed. He’s more hands on. I like! =)

The hardest bit of everything? I guess it’s handling my mum. I think she has contributed to a lot of stress on my end, and has attributed every darn thing to my fault or that something that I have done wrong, like she is forever right! Doesn’t help that she is screaming in the house like forever even though I have told her NOT to scream because it affects the baby.

She likes to do things her way. Like how my baby cot has turned into an empty cot and my Jerry is now REJECTING sleeping in the cot. My mum likes to leave him on the living room sofa to sleep. Even when the environment is too hot and he has since developed heat rash, my mum insisted that he is happy there. I think it contributes to the fact that it’s easier for her to keep an eye on him but seriously, when I talk to her in the kitchen and she cannot hear me (she has the radio on in the kitchen), I dont see how she could hear the baby at all. Many times, it is me who found the baby fussing while I’m in my room and she is totally totally oblivious to the baby cries (until it becomes really loud). Now, I have no idea how to put Jerry back in the cot because he cries every time I try. Still, der and me is going to try still. The living room is bad because the tv is there and my brother watches the tv all the time! And yup, I’m the no-tv for baby type of mum (for now!).

The sad, empty cot.

She likes to attribute every damn blame on me. Like how Jerry vomited yesterday and she decided to pour away all the breast milk in the chiller because she said it’s NOT fresh. For goodness sake, the milk is barely a day old, and I had to scream back at her and rebutted that if it’s not fresh, then it’s her fridge being too full hence it’s not cold enough!

And then when she feeds the milk, she doesn’t record and when I ask her, she said she cannot remember when is the last feed, how much she feed etc because there are just so much on her hands and then when the baby cries, she just stuff more milk!! I look at the amount of milk Jerry had to drink and wonder if he has a stomach problem because he is too full. But the stubborn old lady is like a mule. She likes to do things HER way even though it’s my baby!

All my milk bottles are labelled with the date and time, so the chilled milk always follows the FIFO rule (first in first out), but my mum always tell me she cannot read cos of her bad eyesight. Never mind that, so I always arrange the bottles nicely so that the one outside is the oldest, but every time I open the fridge, the bottles all changes position and when I enquired, she said she never touch.. I think she did while she remove the items that she needs to cook and forget about it. Thing is, when she is done feeding, she washes the bottles (without removing the label written with marker) and throws it in for sterilizing with the rest of all the baby stuff, and when I asked about it, she screams at me and said she didn’t have the time to ‘jagar’ so much and take care of the details. I thought it was basic – if you didn’t remove the labels, then sterilizing = futile since the tape and the ink is not “clean” for baby, isn’t it?

Sigh. It’s a war zone out here. She acts like she knows best but truth is, she says so long the baby cries, just feed. -_-”

She bathes the baby every day, so the other day, I taught her how to clean the baby’s mouth with a gauze, something that I learnt at the classes and in the hospital, but guess what? Initially, she told me no need to clean at all, but when I told her breastfed babies don’t need but formula fed babies have to (my Jerry was on formula for a couple of days), she went ok. Today, she scolded me for NOT cleaning the baby’s mouth and I went, thought you would do it since you bathe him every day? well, apparently not, so mummy here gets blamed. anyway, not a biggie here since Jerry is now on full breast milk, but it just didn’t feel good to be blamed on something like that. Besides, I am not allowed to bathe the baby at this point in time anyway, since I cannot touch ‘raw’ (un-boiled) water. I have much comments on her method of bathing the baby but I shall keep my mouth shut on that.

I have much more to rant, between our differences, between the way things are done, and many more conflicts that happens on a daily basis, but I guess there’s nothing much I could do.

Thing is, she runs the household here.. It’s not even my own place so I cannot call the shots. Also, I can only control this much, because 3 months later when I’m back to work.. I wouldn’t be able to hawk over every thing and ensure that she does it my way. I shall attribute it to generation gap. It happens between almost all new mothers and their mothers so I’m no exception. So yeah, end of rant. Just wanted to get it off my chest.

Meanwhile, I need to strategize and see what are the more important things for Jerry and ensure that is done right by my mum, everything else is secondary, until the day I can afford (to be a sahm) and am the main care giver in my own place (2013 cone quick!!), then I shall call the shots, where I set my own rules. For now, I guess my focus would be a healthy, happy baby.

My brother printed a huge picture of my son and I have placed it on top of my mirror in my room. Makes my day every time I open my eyes when I wake.

Question for mummies out there, is there any way to stop a leaking breast other than expressing the milk? It’s giving me loads of frustration because every time I bathe, it drips all over and I feel like I’m having a milk bath instead. Guess the warm water stimulated the “let-down” effect..

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