Meera: 4.5 years

There's been so much going on that I have sadly neglected to update any of Meera's progress. And there are lots of updates!
This year Meera started kindergarten. And she loves it! Aside from the first day where she cried when we dropped her of it has been pretty smooth. Being the rule follower that she is, she has adapted quite well to kindy. As far as academics go, she is way ahead in English (as expected) but a bit behind in Chinese (again as expected). But socially she is having no problems adjusting.
I also became pregnant late last year and that has brought about a few changes in her life. Pregnancy was quite difficult for me but I never let on that I was pregnant to her. As far as she knew... I was not well. (for 9 months!) So she had to learn to be even more independent. She was quite understanding whenever I told her I was not up to doing stuff and was even quite helpful. Luckily my mom came over and spent the afternoons with her.
Right now her typical routine is:
7.00 am: Wake-up. Get ready for school.
8.00 am: Leave for school
12.30 pm: Come home from school
1.00 pm: Lunch
3.00 pm: Nap
5.30pm: Wake up
7.00 pm: Dinner
10.00 pm: Bedtime

She is quite independent now. Most mornings, she can pretty much get herself ready dressed and ready for school (I just have to help her with the zipper). Breakfast is also a lot faster now that I give her toast with butter. It used to take her a really long time to eat but now I cut her toast into 9 squares and she eats it up within 15 minutes! Needless to say we don't have a hard time in the mornings (fingers crossed it remains that way).

So far she has handled the addition of a new sister better than I had hoped. I have heard of so many cases where there's jealousy and stuff but till now Meera seems okay. I try to give her as much time as I can and I carefully choose my words whenever I tell her to be quiet or careful around the baby. As far as Meera is concerned I'm actually spending more time with her now than during my pregnancy (I was so tired I hardly did anything with her).

Misha: 6 weeks

So its been 2 weeks of figuring out how to deal with a baby (again). So far its been better than I expected. In fact I think it was a lot harder with Meera (especially emotionally). I only had a few emotional episodes. One in particular was 2 days after the lady left. I called Jing and he said he might be back late and I just melted. It was a tough day especially since Misha hardly slept. But other than that things have been not too bad.

I got the Baby Whisperer book and  I'm trying to follow the EASY method. Based on that I'll be blogging in that order.

E for Eating
So far breastfeeding is going well. No supply issues that I can see. However I have yet to notice any growth spurt on Misha's part. Supposedly they will need to feed like every 2 hours or more. Or they will feed for a longer duration but so far I've not noticed anything like that.
I looked at the logs I kept of Meera and it seems like I feed a lot less now. Which I put down to a few factors. Misha feeds a lot better, She doesn't need much comfort sucking and I am not always assuming that she is hungry. The last factor is mainly I think from past experience where every time Meera cried I used to think she was hungry. I know better now. 
I'm trying to put her on a 3 hour schedule so right now she has about 7 feeds a day (which usually includes 1 bottle of milk which I pump for). I am still contemplating if I should give formula once in a while given the difficulty we had switching Meera to formula. But for now I think I'll take my chances.

A for Activity
Right now there isn't much activity. Most days her awake time is a bath or just sitting in her bouncer. I want to start doing tummy time more regularly but with her reflux its a bit hard to time. She's hungry as soon as she wakes and I can't do it so soon after a feed so it's a bit hard to fit in. I do try to put her on my chest so at least that gives her some opportunity to exercise her neck muscles.

S for Sleep
As expected this area is where I am struggling with the most. I can't seem to time her naps properly and bedtime has not been smooth. Typically we need to rock, shh and pat to get her to sleep. Even then it can take a few attempts before she settles.
She does sleep during the night (thankfully) but its usually around midnight (or later) before she settles down. Needless to say I am starting to get tired (literally) of this. I figure there's no point in trying to regulate anything now since this whole month is going to be very disruptive with visitors and the wedding. So we'll try to set things right in November. By then she'll be closer to 3 months so that may also help.

Y for You (as in time for yourself)
Haven't had much of that! More like time for catching up on things. But overall I do feel like I'm able to  accomplish quite a bit. I cook most of the days (mainly cos there's quite a bit of leftover meat in the freezer from the confinement lady's time). Cleaning has taken a back seat though. But right now that isn't really a concern for me. I try to fit in time with Meera but that has been quite challenging since timing it with Misha's needs are a bit difficult. Hopefully over time I get the hang of things.

Family Trip to Port Dickson

Technically this was not a family trip since it was actually us going for a treasure hunt. Yup....us with 2 kids. And with Jing's colleague. Misha slept thru most of it.



But Meera was a champ. I prepared a little scavenger hunt to keep her occupied during the trip and she was fine till almost the end of it. We left home around 6 am and only reached the hotel at 2.30 pm so it was a long day for all of us!

We stayed at Lexis Port Dickson. A bit run down but overall clean. Jing took Meera to the pool and she had a really good time. Didn't have time to do much else but then there's not much to do anyway. We got a cot for Misha and she slept pretty well.

Misha: 4 weeks

Towards the end of the month I notice she is a lot more alert. It's not so difficult to wake her to feed. In fact there are days when she was awake for more than 3 hours. She also seems to be more aware of her surroundings. sometimes it looks as if she is looking at us and trying to communicate. :)

Breastfeeding
So far its going well. With the confinement lady around I pump and she feeds Misha. I was pumping around twice at night both sides and because of this I think I had more milk than Misha required. Generally she only feeds on one side but whenever I pumped I would do both sides. Because of this I now have quite a bit of milk stashed in the freezer. I figured better more than not enough. At least if my supply dips or she has a growth spurt I won't be overly stressed.

Towards the end of the month we stopped feeding every 2-2.5 hours and slowly lengthened it. But during the day she still needed to feed quite. I guess her stomach kinda got used to eating small frequent meals. I did notice that she could go to 4 hours at night so that was a positive sign.

Jaundice
Still jaundiced. I'm resigned to the fact that it will take time to clear. We had to go for a follow up at Putrajaya Hospital just to rule out any underlying conditions. They took more blood and urine sample but the results will take 2 weeks. However they seem to do this as a precautionary measure so not too worried about this. From our observations she seems to be doing better. Only her eyes are slightly yellow.

Sleeping
Still seems to not sleep well at night.

Confinement Lady
The aunty left on the 15th. (they only work for 28 days). And despite all my reservations and complaints I was truly sad to see her go. On the 12th day of postpartum, I got to eat a more varied diet so that definitely helped improve my view of her. :)

Although I still found her lacking compared to my previous ones, I've heard some are a lot worse. At least she was quite careful with all my kitchen things. I've heard horror stories of some of these ladies ruining things in the kitchen. I must say she was very careful with all my things and she also kept the kitchen very clean. Also whenever we did tell her to follow our way of doing things she was quite willing to comply (I of course we weren't very demanding either).

Meera
Meera went to Penang with my parents and only came back home on the 10th. She was away for almost a month! And I really missed having her around. She seemed to have grown so much while she was away.

at the barber

Full Moon 
We had her full moon celebration at Jing's parents' place on the 13th. As per tradition we had to shave her head. We decided to take her to the barber and get it done instead of doing it ourselves with a shaver. I was so much easier! I remember when we did it for Meera with the shaver she was screaming the whole time. Apparently the shaver works by pulling your hair and cutting it so it will hurt a bit. This time with the clipper it was relatively painless.

It was quite a long night. We only got home close to 1 a.m. Misha slept through most of it. We forgot to bring the bouncer but luckily Mahesh gave us a rocker for her full moon gift so she slept in that for most of the evening.

Introducing Misha Tioe

Another long overdue post....I'm not going to say much about the pregnancy. Except it was a lot worse than the first time. Morning sickness was bad (lost like 3 kgs the first trimester). Luckily it went away after that but I was sooo tired all the time. Luckily Meera was very understanding and didn't get extra clingy (I heard some kids sense these things and require more attention than before).

Delivery was faster than with Meera. No epidural and no vacuum. Went to the hospital at 5pm and baby was out by 9.30pm. I'll be recounting the whole story in Misha's scrapbook.

So this brings us up to date :)

2 weeks in and already there's so much to report.

Misha
This time round we were a lot faster naming her. Mostly due to the fact that everyone was nagging us to 'get to it'. Plus this time we weren't so occupied with hospital visits so we had more time to decide on her name.

Jaundice
Once again we are facing this situation. After the delivery I let my guard down a little since we didn't have to use the vacuum for her. But apparently other factors come into play. Seems like if the mother is blood type 'O' the chance of jaundice is higher. Go figure. And Misha is 'A+' so it lends itself to some sorts of ABO incompatibility issue.Needless to say we are more prepared this time. When we got discharged on day 2 she was already at 157 umol/L. So the following day we checked her levels again and had to admit her for phototherapy. After one night she got discharged but her levels are still on the high side 2 weeks on.

I've come to realise that as much as breastfeeding is good for the baby, it sucks for jaundice. The whole treatment plan for jaundice is hydration. So when your milk hasn't come in how to hydrate? All the breastfeeding advocates will tell you to just let the baby suck and suck but that actually doesn't work. They are so hung up on promoting breast milk that other options are not considered. Based on our previous experience I already prepared myself to give formula if necessary. Of course there is that small part of me that resists but I know my milk is no where near enough to hydrate her.

After countless visits to various doctors a few truths have emerged.
1. Its okay to give baby water (they normally discourage cos most people may go overboard)
2. Formula can be diluted. Contrary to all the advice you are given, in this instance its okay to dilute as much as 50%. (so if normally 1 scoop to 30 ml water, you can dilute with up to 45ml water)
3. Baby needs to be woken up every 2 hours if possible to feed. (this was really challenging cos she was so sleepy). We had to practically strip her down to her nappy, use wet cloth on her face. Even during the feed I had to constantly work at keeping her awake.

Breastfeeding
So far its been going ok. A lactation consultant came to see me during the hospital stay to give advice. Four years later and some things are familiar but some things are not. Initially she wasn't latching properly so I did have cracked nipples. Ideally after the baby unlatches your nipple shape should still be round. If it looks 'slanted' like the tip of a lipstick, then the latch is wrong. So once I saw that lipstick shape I knew I was in trouble. Unfortunately, although I knew it was wrong I couldn't seem to correct it. It took a few days and eventually it got better. Although I don't really know what changed. I did work on trying to position her better but in all honesty I don't know how it got better. I'm just thankful it did.
Misha does not seem to need much comfort sucking. I notice that she usually feeds for 10-15 minutes and after that she either stops or unlatches herself. Time will tell if this continues. Most advice say baby should suck for 20 minutes or so but she hardly ever does. I can only hope she is efficient at it. I do wonder if she's getting enough but I figure with me feeding her every 2-2.5 hours maybe that's all she can eat in one sitting. Once I space out the feedings then maybe it will be longer.

Sleeping
According to the confinement lady, she doesn't sleep so well in the night. There are times when she needs to be carried or held to sleep.  I read somewhere that babies born in the night tend to be active at night so maybe there's truth to that. Hopefully she gets it right in time...

Confinement Lady
We got a different lady this time. A bit disappointed with her. Overall she is okay but compared to our previous ones she's not as good. Initially I was so upset with her I even contemplated sending her back! I'm going to say it was hormonal (I'm allowed to use this excuse for the next few months). For 3 days I ate practically the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I vaguely remember my previous lady cooking fantastic food. This time round things are edible. Enough said.
Other things which were different: she only uses disposable diapers (no cloth diapers), she use the washing machine to wash all our clothes, food is served downstairs (previously I was upstairs the whole time...even food got sent upstairs).
Although they are mostly inconsequential things, we just feel a bit cheated. We're paying RM3700 this time (4 years ago it was RM2800) but getting less for it.
I just keep telling myself better someone than no one. Hopefully I can keep convincing myself till the end.

Meera
So far she's been great with the arrival of the baby. Of course it's hard to tell since she's living with my parents right now. She seems quite excited about the baby but then she only sees the baby once in a while when she comes to visit. It will be interesting (for lack of another word) when she comes home.