4 month breastfeeding award

A little late to award this to myself:

I think now I’m ok to bring baby out without bringing a backup bottle of milk. After all, on the weekends, I just breastfeed at home without the use of bottles, and sometimes without additional pumping afterward due to the lack of time. 

4 month is a milestone. Baby Audrey can now flip easily from back to front. That day she even did a front to back making a complete roll through. I even caught her doing a little aeroplane post when she was prone. 

However poor Audrey came down with a bad virus and fever yesterday with a lot of runny nose and cough. I really feel bad that I could not make her get better any faster even though I tried to increase the frequency of feedings.

Poor baby.

Went to the doc on her 4 month birthday, not flu, not RSV virus, so just have to wait till her fever passes.

The kiddos

This was Sophie and Olivia.

And now this is sophie and Audrey.

And Olivia and Audrey.

Time flies!

Breastfeeding 3 mths

Who knew that I lived to survive another day of breastfeeding?!

Baby Tilly found her hand!

Baby Tilly has discovered her right hand!

She is examining it and turning it around, controlling it slowly.

Breastfeeding 2 months

Masterchef Singapore

Daddy has found a way to stream sg tv, so lately we have been watching masterchef Singapore. Not supposed to have so much screen time, but I also need to keep my sanity. 

Now they are inspired to cook! We made chocolate cupcakes last weekend (which was a little failure because we added sour skittles at the end, otherwise it would have been fine), and vanilla cupcakes fhis weekend.

Here’s the recipe for choc cupcakes:

https://www.marthastewart.com/337010/chocolate-cupcakes

Here’s the recipe for vanilla cupcakes:

https://www.livewellbakeoften.com/vanilla-cupcakes/

Breast milk bags

After nearly 2 months of relentless breastfeeding, pumping, stuffing myself with herbal capsules and tinctures, soups, I have finally created my first breast milk bags of BREASTMILK! What!!?! The milkless Ellie who only used breastmilk bags for the 2 babies previously for food purées is actually using them for their actual purpose this time!

I have stopped supplementing with formula since 2 weeks ago, although I may still supplement with my own milk. Wow. And even if success may be short lived, at least I had it good for a while.

Although she punched my breasts and made me think of giving up and going to exclusive pumping again, and now she spits up after bf from reflux, but still fresh is best. So I will persevere on.

Breastfeeding 1 month

Not an easy road and still with supplementation but I’m proud to award myself...

Baby Tilly is 1 month old!

No matter whether I am having fun or not, time flies. Baby Audrey Tilly is 1 month old today!

How different does she look from her day-old photo?

Quite different I think. Doesn’t look beat up anymore.

Today, we managed to walk to Trader Joe’s which is about 0.7 miles away. It took us about 20minutes to get there. I bought some frozen food and Popeyes for lunch. By the time I was walking back, I felt my sciatic nerves are saying hello to me again. Urghz. Gotta exercise more to strengthen all the muscles.

Baby aud is not v good with sleeping at night. She wakes up all the time. We have resorted to using the swing so that we can get some rest. Even for a third time parent, we don’t have a game plan to fight the sleeping problem. 

Yesterday the Tsui sisters helped to make the Ang Ku Kueh for baby’s birthday. They were a great help!

Can you see Olivia’s chubby fingers working away at the mould?

I am using this recipe below. Although I used 500g mung beans but still 100g sugar and it was still sweet enough. 

Family outing as party of 5

We went out 2 Times on Sunday. I consider that an amazing feat because I’m only 2 weeks post partum. 

The first time was in the morning to accompany dd to a haircut at the plaza near our home. We rushed out after feeding baby. The girls were cooperative so it was a success!

The girls were engrossed peeking into the dance studio and that bought me some time.

The second time was to have dinner at Habit Burger. Don’t know what to eat anymore so that was a quick fix! Again we rushed out after feeding baby.

She slept through both times - lucky!

First day of first grade

For the soph. Sophie went with dd and mm the day before school started to check her class.

I couldn’t go because I was only 5 days postpartum. 

Here comes first day of school - still looking worried!

The Big Sisters

One seems to have developed a more independent and dependable mature role and the other is in constant flux about being big sister or baby.

Look at Sophie making funny faces at baby Aud. I’ve never seen her this expressive before. I think she thinks the baby is making faces at her but it’s really just the baby getting hungry.

Sisters from hell!

While she snoozes away...

Sophie’s first tooth drops out

Sophie’s first tooth has finally dropped out. Her adult front two tooth are already creeping up, but the stubborn kiddy teeth refuse to fall out. One of them is more wriggly than the other. But the adult tooth that has crept up more has the less wriggly baby tooth. Hopefully the other baby tooth will drop out by Friday if not we have to bring her to the dentist as it seems food is getting stuck between those teeth.

Nonetheless, exciting times! She said during Chinese yo-yo at summer camp, she felt that her tooth was super wriggly. So she went to the bathroom with her friend Alison. And then she yanked it out. Some part of the story was that she thought she was going to swallow it so she "tuigh(??)" it our. Means spitted.

When dd went to pick her up, the teachers were excitedly shouting 牙齿牙齿！which he didn’t understand...

I am super proud that she took charge of the situation herself and took care of her own teeth.

Reminded her to pack her tooth into the tooth box so the tooth fairy can collect it later tonight. Heehee.

Audrey Tilda Tsui

I’m alive!

Audrey Tilda Tsui was born on 8/10/18 at 3+pm and is 6lb 15ounces, 20 inches long.

She didn’t really cry that much after coming out, so here she is looking a little blue.

Much better after crying after some shots. Her cheeks are a little bruised from the ride down the birth canal.

That was a rough ride towards the end. The contractions were so strong. I went to the bathroom to have a last pee and then when I got back the contractions were so strong I said the baby was coming out. The nurse checked me and dilation was 7cm so have to wait some more. 

Suddenly I screamed she’s coming out because I felt the tearing. And they quickly called the emergency doctor (apparently the other 2 doctors are busy with surgery) and I felt the tearing again. And she came out with 3 pushes. Ouch.

And I’m still alive! Apparently there were options for the induction drug. I didn’t know. We went with the misoprostol because it’s supposed to soften the cervix and cause contractions vs. the pitocin that causes contractions only. But then I just read online that the frequent contractions from the misoprostol could have caused the uterus to rupture. Yikes. No wonder they immediately put me on the IV when my contractions were too frequent. I’m glad we didn’t increase the dosage after the first round.

The girls came by in the morning to visit and seems like they enjoy the baby. 

Mm looks super big next to baby Audrey. Suddenly I realized she’s not the baby I brought back from the hospital almost 4 years ago.

The girls enjoying the hospital jelly as usual.

We are almost done with the 2 days in the hospital and will be heading home tomorrow by lunch.

ATT coming soon live blog 8/10

8am: hospital called us at 1 am to come in for the induction! Unfortunately I didn’t listen to the wife and didn’t get any sleep thinking they would call us in the morning to let us sleep. Anyhow, we took our time and arrived at 2am. 

Things have seemed to gotten more advanced since we last visited and now they have a computer in the room where the friendly nurse, Naomi, asked us questions for about 30min. So we finally got settled in by 4am and dada got a dose of miso (meds) for the induction. After this we got 2 hours of sleep which was much needed. 

Now DD is awake and having much stronger contractions. Now the work day begins and we hope to complete the work day by 3pm :). Wish us luck

9am: DD contracting a lot and is very painful, so Labor is progressing. Naomi checked dilation and now she is 3cm dilated. 

950am: contractions are too frequent so nurse started DD on an IV drip

1230pm: IV helping to relieve pain from the contractions so DD can actually sleep a bit. Doctor and nurses are all busy with other patients so we are waiting until it calms down before DDs water bag is broken

130pm: doctor wilcox came to break DDs waterbag so things will be picking up soon. Praying that DD and Baby will be ok. Table is also being setup... baby on the way!

212pm: photo with DD during very strong contractions... getting closer to the finish line...