Eunice @ 3 months

Eunice is approaching 4 months old. How time flies. I'm amazed sometimes on how fast baby grows. And if only I could record them down fast enough... :)

Eunice is already 6.25kg on her 13th week when we brought her to check on her running nose. When we went back again for her 3rd month vaccination, she has put on another 300gm in a week and she's 6.55kg! I was shocked that she actually put on so much and really wonder is my breastmilk full of fats. But well, every parents will be proud that their babies are chubby, so am I.... :)... At least that means she's growing well. Moreover Eunice is on breastmilk exclusively and Paed always told us that breastfed babies will not be obese.

1. Eunice can now smile and laugh to others. She's very good in that actually, esp. if you look funny. Hehehehe... Many ppl tried to make funny faces to her and without fail, she'll smile back to them. There's once when I brought her to church, ppl (age from 30 to 60 :P) were queuing up to make faces to her to make her smile/laugh. Dr Eddie commented that she's very joyful. :)... Even when I brought her to Dr Dan for 3rd month checkup, she also smiled at Dr Dan and Dr Dan actually commented that she's so happy to be out. :).. I'm really glad that Eunice is a cheerful baby - just like what her chinese name means.

2. Her neck got stronger on her 3rd month. We let her have her tummy time often esp. on the weekend to strengthen her neck muscle. Comparing to last month, she can now hold her head much higher. But she still gets tired quite fast. :)



3. She's trying to turn. You can see her putting her legs over but her body still cant turn over fully yet. She'll try a few times, got tired, catch her breath, and lie back to her back and relax. :). Sometimes, I will help her but just pushing her a bit and voila, she's on her tummy! But bbsitter warned me not to do it many times as it might cause her to be lazy and I might need to get up to turn her over during midnight... ooppss....


4. Eunice's motor skills has developed in her 3rd month. She started to grab things using her hands and she can hold it really tight and not letting go. We normally will put her down in her rocking chair in the study room, and give her a thin blanket or lampin for her to entertain herself. She'll grab it, pull it up to cover her eyes, pull it down to see the things around her, and continue for maybe 30 minutes. Sometimes she'll scream when she lost control and couldn't pull down the blanket / lampin which covered her whole face. Then we'll help. :P... It's quite funny seeing her behaving that way as if she's playing her own hide and seek.


5. We noticed Eunice loves guitar. Whenever EG plays guitar to her, she'll be all quiet, not moving, and just staring at her daddy playing the guitar. She could just sit there quietly and stare at EG playing for >30 minutes sometimes. Even though sometimes EG is not playing the song exactly, but he's sorting out the chords, she'll still just stare at her daddy. We also found that playing guitar to her helps to wind her down esp. at night as after listening for a while, she'll yawn.


6. Eunice is getting playful. Everytime when I pick her up from babysitter, the kakak who took care of her will always tell me that "dia kuat main...". I can imagine that. She will kick her legs and swings her arms excitedly when she got excited. Sometimes when I send her to bbsitter, when they come and pick her up, she already starts smiling at them. Well, at least I know she's happy there. :)

7. She's getting more and more alert of her surrounding. And she likes to hear people talking, as in conversing. Many times I notice she'll just stare at us when I talk to bbsitter while picking her up, or when I'm talking to my friends. And the funny thing is, she'll chuckle when we laugh over some jokes. :)... And she also gets distracted easily if I talk while feeding her. Many times when I was talking to EG while feeding her before sending her to bbsitter, she'll stop sucking, but still having my nipple in her mouth, and look up to see what we're talking. Ahh.. cute, but we had to stop our conversation to make sure she's drinking well. :)

We love to see her grow everyday. And we can somehow see her personality developing along the way. And EG thinks that she's going to be like me - clumsy and not-so-gentle type of girl. Well, I don't really mind as long as she's healthy and happy. That's all I want. :)

Finally... YES to Bottlefeeding!

5th June 2010 - A day to remember - I successfully bottlefed my little cutie pie!!

I was holding her, playing with her while waiting for EG to come and feed her. While playing with her, I just tried to put the bottle into her mouth and told her... "Hey baby, mummy feed u OK?"

To my surprise, she started sucking! Even EG was shocked. And both of us kept really really quiet while she's drinking, thinking she might suddenly "realise" that it's MUMMY feeding her... and she finished ~5oz of milk!

So, I tried again during the weekend. And without fail, she's taking bottles from me very very positively. And she can drink really well now without throwing tantrum! Previously bottlefeeding her is always something that really stresses me out because she'll cry cry cry, and I can hear EG trying so hard to pacify her, and she'll continue to cry cry cry, and end up threw away some of my milk - my hard worked expressed milk. =.=

So, both me and EG are very happy with her "performance" last week. And I hope next week she'll continue to be an angel like this. :D

And from last weekend onwards, daddy got lazy to bottlefeeding his precious since mummy can do a good job too... hmm... =.=

Daddy & Daughter

EG loves to talk to his daughter. Since now Eunice can lift up her head quite steadily, we let her have her tummy time on her playgym often to further strengthen her neck muscle.

One day when EG was talking to his precious again, I thought it looked very cute and I took our camera and snapped a few pics. I was trying to get one clear picture but Eunice kept moving.

When I download the pictures last night, funnily the pictures can form a sequence of some form of story. I posted in facebook and put some funny captions. But here, I'll let your imagination go wild on what are the conversation between daddy & daughter. :)




I love the last pic the most. Eunice is smiling. It's so nice. As if she enjoys talking to her daddy so much. :)

I just love to see how this loving daddy spending time pampering his daughter. :)

Sleep Train Adventure II

Eunice is now 3 months old. Time really flies. But I always feel that she has been with us for really long...

We're spending a lot of time with her after work to catch up what we've lost while she's at babysitter and we're working. :)... And now we're better in "controlling" her and reading her signs to meet her needs - either she's hungry / wet diaper / sleepy / etc - to make her a happy baby. :)

However, sleeping her is still a challenge as she'll fuss before she sleeps though she's really sleepy. We tried to find all info in internet and found out babies need to wind down before they sleep, and the winding down process is the tough one that makes them fuss.

Babysitter taught us a way to let her sleep on her tummy during her naps. Eunice didn't like it before she went to babysitter but I dunno how they can make her like it again. :P... So we did that and she really sleeps very well.

We also noticed that we can sleep her easier at night during weekdays. Later we found out that if Eunice has enough naps, it'll be easier to sleep her at night as she's not over-tired. Besides that, we also found out this little pampered cutie pie needs air cond to sleep! Gosh.... even babysitter told us the same thing - she said Eunice will fuss and be restless if there's no aircond for her to sleep.

So, we moved her playpen from the living room to our study room so that we can on the 1HP aircond for her when she naps (instead of the 2HP aircond in the living room - save cost! :P). Besides, it's also more convenient for us as we can watch tv or do some housework while she's sleeping in the study room... EG is extra happy with this decision because he can surf net in the study room with air cond while his precious is taking her nap.

We recently bought Lampe Berger Eucalyptus essential oil to help Eunice with her running nose. And somehow she can sleep better now. Not sure if it's because of the oil, or because she had enough rest during day time. Also, we read that a 3 months old baby needs 10-11 hours of sleep at night. That means Eunice needs to sleep by 9pm till 7.30am the next day. So instead of sleeping her at 10.30pm+ previously, now we'll sleep her around 9.30pm to make sure she has enough sleep.

If she's in good mood, and no over simulation, and she's wind down, EG will be able to sleep her in 30 minutes, but it'll take longer for me because Eunice will look for my breasts for comfort... =.=. But we're trying to make this routine fix so that she'll get used to the time. So far it works well.

However, she still doesn't sleep through the night. She'll wake up 1-2 times for feed (that's still OK) but sometimes she'll wake up and starting talking / shouting - expecting ppl to play with her... that's hard on us... but thank God that it doesn't happen everyday (**pray hard**)...

Besides that, my electricity bill also almost went up double since we on it earlier for her to sleep earlier, and can't off it too early as if it's too hot, the cutie pie will wake up and complain and end up no one can sleep... =.=

Bottlefeed vs Breastfeed Part II

Follow up from the previous entry.

When we picked up Eunice from the babysitter few weeks ago, babysitter told us that every Monday, Eunice will protest whenever they bottlefeed her with breastmilk. But of course after a while she'll give in and drink on the following days. However, thinking about her crying for my breasts while feeling hungry breaks my heart.

So, I told EG we have to try to bottlefeed her during the weekends in the day time.

And so we did.

Initially, the little cutie pie will CRY~~~ but later on she'll suck on well. Then later we found out that she will only drink well when she's VERY HUNGRY. So, we always make sure that she's really hungry before we fed her in bottle. And also, everytime after her feed, she'll look at EG with her two big eyes - as if she got cheated big time. EG had to apologize to her many times and explain to her that bottlefeeding is to help her better when she goes babysitter on Monday.


Later on, it gets easier and easier to bottlefeed Eunice. And EG the daddy also developed his skills to bottlefeed her better. He'll cool her down, sing to her, praise her saying she's a good and smart girl, and burp her in between if she can't drink well. Slowly, Eunice has developed trust over EG and now, she'd smile to EG after feed - at least that means she's happy and contented. :)


Everytime when EG feeds her, I will try to hide everywhere in the house so that she won't see me. Whenever she wakes up from her nap, I'll have to call EG to pick her up if she fusses and prepare the milk beforehand so that EG can feed her straight away, and she won't see me and she won't ask for my breasts.

One Sunday, we tried to bottlefeed her before we went church, but she didn't want to drink (guess she wasn't hungry yet). So fine. I wasn't very happy coz I didn't want to throw away my 4.5oz of precious breastmilk and I brought the bottle out in case she's hungry within an hour. And viola, the little one started to fuss when we're reaching church. And I thought since EG has been bottlefeeding her for the past few weekends, she should be more accustomed to bottle so I stuffed in the bottle for her and expect her to suck and drink.

BUT... she didn't! :(... She only sucked for 1 second, then pushed out the teat with her tongue, making some unhappy noise, then turned her face towards my breast. :(... In the end, I had no choice and let EG fed her with bottle in church while I went down to car park to bring up her stroller (and because of this he skipped his prayer meet) and the little monster finished all the milk!

So now because EG has been meeting her needs to feed her during weekends day time, Eunice has officially became a daddy's girl...

And I think Eunice misses her daddy very much on Monday because babysitter told me Eunice cried a lot on Monday... :( .. and asked if we keep holding her during weekends... :P

And her daddy misses her like crazy especially on Mondays since he has been feeding her during the weekend...

And mummy is very jealous because she can't bottlefeed her baby.... and she feels that Eunice is more attached to her daddy now.... hmm....

What can a 2 months old baby do?

Eunice is now 10 weeks old. Only 10 weeks old but EG and I felt that it has been so long that she is with us. :). She's growing so fast. We're observing many different things from her everyday and it never fails to excite us.

So what can Eunice do now?

1. She can smile now. It's the real smile... The previous smilings were only reflexes but now if you smile to her, she'll smile back. Sometimes she'll even laugh (with no sound) with mouth open big. It looks really cute because she has no teeth now.. :P... It just melts our hearts everytime and brightens our days. :)



2. She can do her baby talk. Since her 3rd weeks, I noticed she has vocabulary rather than just crying. Over the time, the vocabulary increases and now she can talk more to you. She can talk to you like she is trying to tell you something. Or when she's not very happy she'll talk like she's complaining about something. :). I bought a clip-on fan for her thinking we might be able to use it on stroller or car seat. While testing, I clipped it on playpen and tried on her and again, she got all excited looking at the LED light changing. The next thing we know is, she started talking to it. Huhuhu... Must be thinking the lights are responding to her. So cute right? :). But it's not cute when I try to sleep her and she starts to talk to me with her sweet sweet voice. It's a big NO-NO to respond to her as she'll think it's playing time. So I had to ignore her... so kesian, but still so cute... :)

3. She can focus now. She can focus on things and follow you when you walk around. We did an experiment on that. EG tried to walk around her playpen and her eyes followed him when he's walking. And she also looked at EG when he went upstair or came downstair. Guess now she's no more heavy short sighted but can see much clearer now. :)

4. She has fwens now. :). EG bought a very simple cot mobile for her in her first month but she didn't give any response to it then. But since last few weeks, she has been looking at them and when we turned the music on, she'll get all excited and her legs started to kick vigorously with her smiley face. In the morning I'll get her to talk to her friends while EG and I are getting ready to go work.

5. She can lift her head up for quite long now. Her neck is getting stronger. It's so much easier to burp her now. She will sit straight for you to burp her (as long as she's not sleeping :P) and the success rate for me to burp her now has increased to almost 95%! :)



6. She wants attention. She cannot sleep in the playpen for too long alone as she'll get bored. And she's start making noise. All you need to do is just to sit beside her playpen and talk to her. She'll be all happy again. :)

7. Now she doesn't want to lie in her playpen IF she's not sleepy. So now I really appreciate the rocking chair that EG's colleague gave us as a gift - which initially I thought it won't be much great use. I'm even thinking of getting a bumbo chair now but it costs a bomb for a small thing like that! :P


8. She now knows day and night (i think :P)... She sleeps shorter period in the day time (max 1 to 1.5 hours), but at night she can sleep for 3-4 hours in a stretch. I think we're consider lucky that now from 7th weeks onwards, she can sleep from 11pm onwards till 3am for feed, and continue to sleep till I wake her up at 6.30am for feed again before sending to babysitter. But sometimes she's still a naughty girl and wants her daddy to hold her to sleep occasionally. It's not very easy when you need to carry AND WALK someone who's close to 6kg for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Pamper once a while is OK but I'm not making it a habit for her either since I think she knows her daddy is pampering her like crazy. :)

9. She's a smart girl now and she knows how to put her hand into her mouth! :P... I don't wear mittens for her unless she's sleeping. And at first she put her fist near her mouth and started licking her hand, and now she knows how to suck her thumb! It's so cute when I first saw it but of course I had to pull it out to make sure it doesn't become a habit for her. :)

EG can even observe that she's now developing her personality. But anyway, we're just so happy with her everyday though sometimes it's tiring. As time goes, we find that baby taking care is getting easier along the way. And to see this little one grows everyday, it just warms our heart everytime.

Parenthood is just so wonderful. :)

Breastfeed VS Bottlefeed

During my confinement, I have already introduced bottles to Eunice due to some unforeseen circumstances. I asked a Malay lady to come and do urut for me during my confinement every 2 days. The massage took about 1.5 hours to 2 hours. It definitely will clash with Eunice's feeding time. So, I usually pumped and get my MIL to bottlefeed Eunice when I did my massage. Sometimes, I also pumped for my MIL to bottlefeed Eunice before she sleeps so that I can have a break. :P

However, after pumping for a few days, I realised I'm getting less and less from pumping. Previously I could easily pump out 3-4oz, but later, I could only pump out 2.5oz max. I got panicked and then I have tried my best to direct latch Eunice as much as I can to re-establish my milk supply. When my massage sessions finished, I never pump anymore and I direct latched Eunice all the time.

When I brought Eunice back to Penang after confinement, for the 2 weeks I have been direct latching her all the while despite her growth spurt and demanding feeding hour (every hour OK!)... Nursing pillow was my good friend then.

I called up Eunice's babysitter to confirm on the date when we're sending her over, and things that I need to pack over. The conversation went on to discuss about her feeding.

BBSitter: "So, how many oz is she drinking now?"
Me: "I don't know wor..."
BBSitter: "You direct latch all the while? Have u introduced her bottle yet?"
Me: "Yah, I gave her bottle during confinement, she's OK..."
BBSitter: "Nevermind, you try to give her bottle again this week and see if she can take it.. but don't feed yourself, get someone else to feed her..."
Me: "OK!"

At that time, I never thought that it will be a problem as Eunice has been sucking hard everytime my MIL fed her last time. And even I fed her with bottles before when I had sore nipples and I pumped out to feed her through bottles. Though many said it'll cause nipple confusion or baby will associate bottles with mummy and reject nipples, thank God it didn't happen to me then. So, I never thought it will be a problem to bottle feed her.

Until when we defroze one of the stocked up express breastmilk (EBM) for her. EG tried to feed her when she started fussing for feed, and I was standing at the side looking. Eunice was pushing out the teat with her tongue and crying. I was shocked to see her behaving that way. I never thought that she'll reject bottle!

We smelled the milk. We thought it spoil as it has some milky smell while fresh EBM is odorless. So we threw away the first 5oz of milk which I collected so susah payah... We took down another 5oz to defroze and thinking of trying again the next day. In the meantime, I found out from internet that defroze EBM does have some milky smell comparing to fresh EBM. So, the milk was OK.

I tried to fed her once also and failed miserably. She's hungry but she refused to suck the bottle teat! And it has been war everytime. So we tried continuously everyday at least once to twice the week before we sent Eunice to babysitter. We tried many methods where I went upstair (I even went bathing so that she can't smell me) and EG trying to feed downstair, or he went upstair and I was hiding in the study room. EG even tried to feed in the guest room thinking maybe the master bedroom also has my smell. But this girl she just cried and cried, kept pushing out the teat with her tongue. EG tried to squeeze some milk into her mouth and she swallowed a bit and kept crying again.

She even pretended to sleep! Gosh... I heard EG telling her upstair "Eunice, please don't pretend that you're sleeping... it's not funny...".. But everytime, she won the battle as she will be crying so loud until EG worried that neighbours will be thinking we're abusing baby at home.

But one thing is, when she was crying, and when I picked her over from EG, she'll stop immediately, and when I lifted up my shirt, she showed her very cute anticipating face again and when she sucked, she sucked really really hard - she's really really hungry.

Because of this - not only I wasted so many oz of my EBM, I was also dead worry that if she will be able to be fed well in the babysitter's place though many told me not to worry as (1) the bbsitter is very experienced and they will spoon feed her (2) baby won't starve themselves. But the thought that she'll cry very loud until give up and give in to bottles since I can't suddenly appear to direct latch her breaks my heart.

Inside me I still couldn't understand why will full direct latching for 2 weeks caused her to reject bottles.

Thank God that my parents came visit on the weekend before I sent Eunice to babysitter. I got smarter and when I'm expressing the EBM, I kept extra 2oz for my mum to feed her rather than keep defrozing the stock up for babysitter. Again, I went upstair bathing when I let my mum feed her.

When I came out from the bathroom, surprisingly I don't hear any crying. I only heard my mum said... "Eunice guai... Eunice good girl... drink your milk..." I didn't even dare to come down or make any noise as I scared she'll smell me again and dun want to drink from bottle.

After 10 minutes, my mum called me and told me that my little girl has FINISHED the milk! I was SOOOOOOOO SURPRISED that I smsed EG straight away. The next day, we tried again with the frozen breastmilk to make sure she's not rejecting the frozen breastmilk now, and again, she finished them all. Gosh, I felt so relief after that. On the 3rd day, I got lazy... I was walking around the house when my mum was trying to feed her. And guess what, this little girl she is just too smart. She didn't cry this time, but she didn't want to drink as well... So I direct latched her again. But I'm already much relief that she's neither rejecting the bottles, nor the frozen EBM. At least now I know she'll be fed well @ babysitter's place.

True enough, when Eunice went to babysitter's place, she can drink 15oz a day with no problem. And now, it has been increased to almost 20oz a day! I have to work real hard in pumping the supply for her!

Anyway, I still couldn't understand why Eunice will associate EG with me and refused to take the bottle from him. And I finally experienced that babies are really very smart....!

PS: Daddy was devastated coz he can't feed his own daughter. But then, we'll try again in near future to get Daddy bottlefeed his cutie pie. :)

Eunice @ Babysitter

I have not been blogging for 2 weeks. No, not because Eunice is taking up all my time. It's mainly because I have been busy with my own stuff. :P

I have sent Eunice to her babysitter 1 week before I started working. When I sent her over, deep inside me I feel very relieved that finally someone is going to bathe her, clean her poo and feed her. I planned out my schedule for the whole week to make sure I do everything that I wanted to do for so long - hair cut, facial, massage, shopping, etc. I even went marketing and cooked nice dinner for EG.

However, when I got back to home, I miss my Eunice so much. I miss her making all the noise at home, miss her shouting at me asking for feed, miss her baby talking to me, miss her yawning sound, miss her direct latching on me, miss her banging her face on my breast when she's hungry, and miss looking at her sleeping in her playpen. How ironic it is.

I even smsed the babysitter a few times to make sure Eunice is doing OK there. I know the babysitter can take good care of her since there're so many good remarks from friends who sent their kids to her too, but I wonder if she fusses, or if she cries, will they entertain her like how we entertain her? I never like to see my baby cry because I want them to feel protected and contented. I read somewhere that it actually helps to build their self confidence.

To my surprise, my babysitter said Eunice has been an Angel there. She eats well, and can play her own and sleep by her own. That's a great news for me.

When we picked her up, they told me she can drink 2.5oz up to 3oz bihourly. And later on after a few days, they tried feeding her with 4oz also she can finish them. Gosh...! I didn't know my baby can drink SO MUCH...

The first night when she came back, she looked SO CONTENTED. I think she has been eating well and resting well there. And on that night, she actually sleeps on her own after I wiped her. That's such a surprise to me coz we used to have to carry her and rock her a bit in order to sleep her. And when I woke up in the midnight, I saw her playing herself and smiling to herself in her cot. That's just so cute. I wanted to play with her for the whole night but I didn't as I know it's a bad habit. I need to make sure she knows it's night time and she shouldn't be making too much noise. :)

After a week there, my baby's cheek got bigger and firmer. Carrying her horizontally might be a challenge now as not only she is heavier, but she also has grown longer. I tend to worry if she's being overfed, but after checking, I found out that babies who are drinking breastmilk will not be overfed since they poo almost after every feed.

Now that I'm back to office, I totally miss being with her esp. now she can start to look at you, baby talk with you and smile at you. That's so cute. I hope she'll grow up faster and her feeding time is less frequent, and we can bring this lil' cutie pie out to do more things together.