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The day I almost fainted by the kerbside (with a baby and two bags of groceries)

September 30, 2013

Today started as it always did on a Monday. Kids woke up, had breakfast, left for kindy. I did what I always do too: had breakfast, chatted with the kids for a bit, prepped them for school, and bused all three of them there. For many months now, I have been taking Nat along; we spend time together walking in the mall and learning at the supermarket, pet shop and departmental store at Nex for a good fifteen minutes every day before we head home for a nap and lunch.

So Nat and I headed to the supermarket today because I wanted to make aglio olio and chicken soup for dinner. There was nothing left in the fridge, so I grabbed a pack of celery, baby carrots, chicken, wild rocket, some tomatoes and two packets of instant spaghetti. On my way to the bus stop, I grabbed lunch for the maid, Nat and myself at Food Republic.

We hopped on the bus after waiting for 5 minutes and this was when it started: an excruciatingly stabbing-belly-aching-knotted-feeling kind of pain that told me I needed to find a toilet immediately or else. Nat had just fallen asleep on the Beco and I was carrying close to 3kg worth of groceries in weight, plus two styrofoam packs of hot food.

I got down the bus (couldn’t sit anyway) and decided I needed to flag a taxi that could blast me home quick. I was writhing in pain and perspiring profusely. I felt the knees go weak and the ankles on the brink of giving way.

There was no cab in sight; it was lunch time. I waited and waited and waited, all the while feeling like I was going to faint from the pain. It was either that or be totally humiliated by the kerbside sh**ting in my pants with a baby and two bags of groceries. No way were these options options, so I prayed and prayed that a taxi would appear right before my eyes.

When it finally did after God-knows-how-bloody-long, I was all pale and weak (I caught a glimpse of myself on the rearview mirror, yes I did). The taxi zoomed us home and I literally threw everything down (except Nat, of course) and found my place of relief.

Thank God.

This is my most embarrassing post yet. But this needs to be up, nonetheless. Oh, the things I go through for the kids.

Family life as we know it I can't categorise such entries The darndest kid quotes and antics

Poop! goes my kiddos

July 12, 2013

6.52 am.

I was jolted from my sleep by a horrid stench so bad I was gasping for breath. For a moment there, I thought a rat died in one of the corners of the room ten times over.

I looked at Nat who was next to me. He was sound asleep. I looked at Ben – sound asleep. Becks was deep in sleep too. I felt all three foreheads – no temperature. Nobody’s sick. Nobody’s barfed.

Then I started to crawl on all fours sniffing them like a dog. And found the source of the sour, stinky stench.

Two bums.

Nat and Becks HAD POOPED IN THEIR SLEEP.

Had to make a split second decision to wake them up and clear the air, and be physically and mentally prepared for two cranky kids throughout the day, or let them sleep while we all suffocate in this rotting odour of digested broccoli, pineapple rice, prawns, apples, oranges and milk. It’s a disgusting thought to continue letting them sleep with poop stuck to their backsides, but at least I would have well-rested kids.

I chose the former, and let’s just say it has been a drama-filled day since 7 am when the helper and I woke the kids up to wash their bums.

What can I say? Shit happens.

poop-2024794_640

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Adieu FTWM, Hello SAHM

February 8, 2013

I will miss having my own personal space to organise and breathe in.

I will miss being notified by sms of how much money is going into my bank account every month and being able to claim medical, dental and personal development expenses.

I will miss the mindless chatter at the pantry, and the much needed intellectual stimulation from wise colleagues every functioning adult needs.

I will miss the piping hot (mock) fish noodles soup from the vegetarian stall and my milo orr siu dai see [sow peng] (milo with no condensed milk, a bit of sugar, evaporated milk, and a few ice cubes), something only the drinks stall aunty can make for me with perfection.

I will miss pigging out on chocolates with my neighbour.

I will miss seeing 17 and 18-year-olds going “wassup!” with me and then furiously taking down notes whenever I start talking.

I will miss the friends I’ve made over almost a decade (7 years is a long time!) whose encouragement and love never fail to make me feel like sunshine on thunderstorm days. Over the years, I’ve worked with the most dedicated and committed people I’ve ever met and this is what makes leaving this place so hard.

Staying home with you people has gotta be more worthwhile than all these, yes?

Kao Kids

 

*FTWM: Full-time working Mom; SAHM: Stay-at-home Mom

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Maybe baby? Thoughts on the new Parenthood Package

January 24, 2013

So the government unveiled a $2 billion package to boost our country’s low fertility rate. The latest measures are the third round of enhancements to the Marriage and Parenthood Package, covering areas such as assisted reproduction, healthcare, priority in housing, more childcare subsidies for the middle-income and paternity leave. The Baby Bonus cash gift is now up by S$2,000 per birth, up to the fourth child and every newborn will have a CPF Medisave account with a grant of S$3,000 to support healthcare costs.

Marriage & Parenthood Package

Image from straitstimes.com

When I went, “Dang! Baby Nat missed the extra 2,000 bucks, and that money can get me a truckload of diapers man!”, people around me started telling me I should go have another baby.

They did the math for me. “You see, very good leh, $8,000 cash,  plus Medisave grant of 3k to support healthcare costs and one week of paid paternity leave for daddy. Go for number four lah! You already have three, might as well, right?”

If it wasn’t too socially embarrassing to roll on the floor laughing, I would.

In my mind, I’m thinking, “Siao ah!” [Loosely translated: Are you crazy? Get out of here!] Do you seriously think that for 8k I would want to go through pregnancy (and delivery) for the fourth time?

It costs about 2k to deliver a baby naturally and 4k by caesarean. It costs about 90 bucks per visit to the gynae for prenatal checkups.

It costs about $80 on the average for a visit to the pediatrician.

It costs about $600 to 1k to send one child to full-day childcare.

1 tin of formula milk costs about $30 for 900g and 1 pack of diapers costs $16 on the average. Multiply that by the number of children and the number of milk feeds and diaper changes each kid needs and you’ll get about $200 a month for a family with three kids like mine.

And if the kid wants to pick up a musical instrument, learn a sport, wear leotards and tutus, that’s gonna set you back by another 250 to 600 bucks a month.

Yes, it’s true we don’t have to send the kids for extra programmes. We can search for cheaper childcare alternatives. They don’t have to drink the expensive brands of formula milk. You might as well say the kiddo should be toilet trained from Day 1 so that completely eliminates the need to buy diapers.

But we all have hopes and dreams. We want to give our children the quality of life that will allow them to have a meaningful childhood, and not be caught in the rut of the humdrums and doldrums of life, so we will surely say yes to music, dance, drama and sports. We don’t want to queue up with over eighty sickly others in a polyclinic and waste two hours of our precious time when it can be better spent recuperating at home, so we go to a private doctor. We think the childcare we send them to is doing a great job and that we’re getting our money’s worth in terms of programmes, so there isn’t a need to pull our kids out and have them go through another round of adjustment at a cheaper alternative. In short, we want to have kids and still live comfortably.

But it’s not ALL about the money, really. If you’re a fly on my wall, you’ll see that my three very young children need a lot of love, attention and affirmation ALL THE TIME. They need my energy. They need my time. They need my presence. They need me. As it is, I live with mommy guilt most of the time. I wished I had more energy to understand my middle child. I wished I had more time with Ben to read him stories and then enter his world of vivid imagination and dwell there a little longer than I can. I wished I was the one feeding the baby his porridge at dinner time instead of the maid, but it’s just impossible every evening because I need to be with the older kids.

That is why I’ve made the decision to stay home, just so I can reduce the number of episodes of mommy guilt recurring and give them the best of my time and energy. They won’t be getting leftovers from Mama anymore. I am looking forward to having better work-life balance come next month, work now being taking care of the kids and teaching them at home.

I’m sure the enhanced Marriage and Parenthood Package will benefit many couples and families out there, and I hope that we can quickly and steadily increase our birth rates. I wished there could be more support for mothers that have decided to stay home though, or at least help the dual middle income families that fall through the cracks and consider them on a case-by-case basis. As for the Kaos, we ain’t getting any of the benefits this time round and I certainly will not go have another baby just so I can get those benefits. Well, if ever 8k allows me to duplicate myself, hmm, that may be a different story.

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May you find some comfort here

September 24, 2012

The blog’s been silent for a while because it has been difficult to write.

Someone dear has lost someone dear; and I am, in my own ways, grieving for her loss.

I think it’s just incredibly painful to say goodbye to someone whom you know you can love forever.

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To stay home or not, that’s the question

August 30, 2012

My husband knows never to broach the subject of staying home with the kids to me. Over the years, he’s seen me turn into an insane, angsty monster (I mean, mother) whenever I stayed home with them – whether it was with one, two or three kids. I would always be the one who took time off from work to take care of them when they were unwell. It has always been this way. The kids would never want anyone else, not even their father. And then there were those times I’d take time off to spend “more time” with them. But if you hung around us longer and see me spend “more time” with my kids, especially if it’s more than forty-eight hours, you’d actually hear me begging God and everyone else to let me go back to work.

At work, I get to read the papers, check my fb account, poop in peace and chew my food during meal times. At work, I get to engage in intellectual conversations about issues concerning our society and the world at large. I do work that is meaningful and believe in what I do with all my heart. I receive little notes every now and then from people who tell me I’ve made an impact in their lives. I have colleagues who are caring and sincere, and most of all, genuine – unlike some of my friends who say they work in a place where office politics is rife and that they get backbitten on a daily basis.

Besides, I think my kids should go out there and interact with other children and play as much as they can in a happy environment for as long as it is possible. I mean, if they stayed home with a nanny, granny or helper, what would they do all day? Watch tv? At least at childcare, they get to learn and play in a protected environment with caring teachers. And when we all come home at the end of the day, we’ll get a healthy dose of one another and time spent would be indeed, quality time.

So this is what I subscribe to. Until lately when fatherkao asked me to consider staying home. And homeschool the kids.

It must have taken a lot of faith for him to even ask me to consider and for him to even think I will want to, and can, do it! Stay home, and homeschool the kids, all three of them? Hullo? Will I even survive the first day?

But I decided I will be open to the idea in the light of rising childcare fees and the fact that maybe, just maybe, this might be the best thing I can ever do for my children. So with that, fatherkao and I began a series of conversations for over three weeks, weighing pros and cons, and thinking ahead of ourselves. On my own, I thought about it every waking moment. I also checked out homeschooling curricula, spoke with friends who stayed home and those who stayed home and homeschooled their kids, worked out the finances, and prayed for wisdom.

I also had pros-and-cons “SAHM versus FTWM” matches in my head on a daily basis for the past few weeks.

“I won’t be able to get any me-time. No more pedicures, massages, foot rubs and facials.” FTWM 1, SAHM 0.

“Will my piles problem return? I won’t be able to have regular meals and then I’ll be probably constipated forever.” FTWM 2, SAHM 0.

“No more monthly paychecks! This means I won’t be able to buy things for myself whenever I feel like it! I have to *gasp* ask my husband for permission?” FTWM 3, SAHM 0.

“I’ll lose touch with the world and become an old hag with terrible hair, coarse skin and un-manicured nails. I won’t have the chance to wear pretty dresses, shoes and makeup! I won’t get to talk to adults about adult things and my brain will start vegetating for the lack of intellectual engagement!” FTWM 5, SAHM 0.

I could go through this all day and chock up at least a hundred points for the FTWM side, while the SAHM score remains at zero.

So, what is my final decision about staying home, you may ask. It seems obvious, isn’t it? That I’m not mentally prepared for it. That I’m not ready to make the sacrifice. In all honesty, I am still far from being prepared, mentally, emotionally and physically, but I do have an answer after a month of deliberation.

This is it:

If not now, then when? They are worth a try, come what come may. And so the journey begins next year.

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Finally, an FML post

August 15, 2012

There’s been so many times I’ve been tempted to write FML rants. Way too many times. Like when I have mommy guilt. Or when my daughter yanks my hair repeatedly when I’m already dropping so much hair post-partum. Or when the kids decide to throw tantrums / dump clothes in the toilet bowl / scatter gravel from the aquarium on every alternate tile in the living room / take a bunch of straws, forks, knives and spoons to play pick-up sticks / all of the above.

But often, I’ve decided that I shouldn’t and wouldn’t, simply because at the end of the day, they are still my darling angels and life’s good because I know I can love them forever; and all these FML moments are but fleeting and inconsequential in the grander scheme of things.

So no FML posts. Until now.

My friend, Yann (yannisms.com) recently shared that pregnancy and breastfeeding is the cure for many common woes that plague women. While that’s the fun part of having kids, I’m here to say that life’s not exactly a blast post-partum, especially if you’ve returned to work. Besides the constant rocky boobs at work, there’s the excessive hairloss and balding, the flabby tums that just wouldn’t go away and the super dark eye rings that will put any panda to shame. Add to that extreme fatigue. And lethargy. And three kids needing you every minute you’re home and I’m pretty sure you’ll be blasting the next person who comes to you to ask how you’re holding up.

My body is feeling some effects of extreme exhaustion three kids and five months post-partum. When my post-natal masseuse did a sports massage house call a month ago to help with fatherkao’s sport injury, she brought this diagnostic weighing machine that could predict a person’s age based on the amount of fats you had in your body. That stupid damn thing announced on its LCD display that I was four years older than my actual age, based on my fat and water composition, heart rate and BMI. Last week, when I went to see the TCM massage therapist whom I used to visit three years ago, she asked if I had just given birth after five seconds of kneading my back. She said that there was too much “dampness” in my body and likened it to an old woman’s! And yesterday, I woke up with a migraine, a sore right eye and sudden blurred vision. It was such a frightening ordeal; I’d thought I was gonna lose sight in that eye. I quickly made an appointment with my eye doctor and was even more terrified to hear him tell me that he’s glad I came immediately because my eye pressure has shot up way too high the acceptable level and I need to be on steriods to bring the pressure down. He was also puzzled that the pressure in my left was 11 while the one on my right was 31 (normal level is 21 and below)! And like every doctor who couldn’t provide a medical reason why it happened, it was quickly attributed to stress and exhaustion (and possibly inflammation).

So he gave me some eye medication and ordered for a review tomorrow. And when I saw the medicine, I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry:

So yea, this is my first FML post.

*Update: After a series of tests and investigation, the doctor said that I’m having acute glaucoma, something called Possner-Schlossman Syndrome. Sounds serious, but he assured me the migraine and vision would improve when the eye pressure comes down.

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WWW:World without work

July 3, 2012

It’s been a crazy week.

I returned to work after being away for about four months. And it felt like I had amnesia for a while. I couldn’t remember my passwords. I forgot names of colleagues. I felt a great sense of disconnect with what I was supposed to do.

All these months of feeding and burping the baby, of blogging and reading mom blogs, of being comfortably at home have left me feeling like I don’t belong to this profession and place where I work.

I miss Nat. I miss his crying. I miss his laughing. I miss cuddling him.

I miss bossing my helper around and planning the dinner menu with a little bit more thought and love. I miss rolling up my sleeves to prepare breakfast for my children.

I miss being able to read and read, and then read some more. I miss checking my fb account every other minute. Every day, this week, I collapse in exhaustion after tucking my kids in bed. I don’t even have the strength to walk to the study and kiss my husband goodnight.

Work. With kids. This is what it has done to me. I feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

This would be very nice, tyvm.

I can't categorise such entries

Pain in the ass

May 30, 2012

I assure you this blog is still family-friendly.

Pardon the crude title of this post. But I really have some serious pain in my bottoms.

Last week proved to be a challenging one for the Kao family. First, Ben had gastric flu. A few days later, Becks had fever. Some sniffles and chesty cough followed. Then fatherkao had the sniffles too and didn’t feel very well himself. While this was all happening, our littlest baby’s nose started to run and he started having a bad, bad cough.

The construction downstairs hasn’t ended (are they building a palace in the flat or what?), so there were sick people in the house who couldn’t get any rest. It was noisy. And smoky (the workers downstairs were all chimneys needing their tobacco fix almost every hour). And dusty. We couldn’t really ventilate for fresh air. So I guess the viruses must have had a heyday mutating.

So when they finally attacked the last [wo]man standing, who already had many sleepless nights herself taking care of coughing children, she was knocked out flat for days. This time I fell really sick. My nose ran marathons and my cough was so phlegmy chesty, I was bummed out. And that was the reason for the bum issue.

Let me explain in detail. You see, after pushing three kids out from your v-box, things aren’t really the same again down south. Everything is stretched. Worse still, you get pathological swollen tissues and engorged blood veseels in your rectum because pressure from the fetus during pregnancy causes them to enlarge, and pushing the baby out with all your might (when the midwife yelled, “Push like you’re really angry!”, I got into the role and gave it my best, ok!) leads to increased intra-abdominal pressures. Simply put, do this three times (nine months of pregnancy, plus natural delivery, multiply by three) and you’ll get piles.

But piles have different grades, as I’ve learnt. Wikipedia says Grade 1, no prolapse. Grade 2, prolapse but will spontaneously reduce. Grade 3,  prolapse but can be manually reduced. Grade 4, hopeless! Prolapse and cannot be manually reduced. After the first delivery, I was at Grade 2. After the second and third, I was hovering between Grades 2 and 3.

This recent phlegmy chesty cough was so annoying. I coughed day and night. As with the coughing, incontinence was inevitable (bummer!). And the last I checked with Google under “Can excessive coughing cause hemorrhoids?”, the answer is a resounding yes. This evening, I had an inflammation. All the tissues were prolapsed. And I couldn’t manually reduce them. I was in great pain.

Congratulations, motherkao, you’ve reached the level called Grade 4 in the universe of piles.

Google also said when you’re at this grade, you need to seek. treatment. immediately.

So excuse me while I make an appointment with a doctor for stapled hemorrhoidectomy. Meanwhile, in case you didn’t understand a single word I’ve written, let me show you what it means to have pain in my ass.

You’re welcome.

Update: I’ve got my problem fixed. No fancy stunts; just good ol’ surgery done in twenty minutes at the specialist’s. I was sedated and the problematic piles were removed. Yay.