Thank God for growth!

We are really thankful for a number of developments over the past few weeks.  Firstly, Jan's appetite has returned!  More importantly, she has been gaining weight.  The strange thing is that Jan drinks less than babies her weight.  She is 7.25kg now and she drinks about 700-800+ml a day; but as long as she is gaining weight I'm not too bothered.  My theory is that she is very energy efficient, so don't need to drink much to get what she needs and even gain weight.  Somehow makes me think of the inverter air-cons....

Definitely a big thank God that Jan no longer wakes up every hour at night.  We stll have not figured out if it was a virus or bug that caused her running stools and discomforts.  However, we are glad that it has lost its impact on Jan's diet and night sleep.  In fact, Jan more or less sleep through to 7am! Really thankful for that, else pt would go crazy with the little sleep she was getting.  More sleep definitely put both of me and pt in better shape.  Jan's stools are still mucus-y though, and sometimes with traces of blood (was considering putting those pictures online, but uh-hmm....I guess you understand). 

Anyway, also thankful that she was able to switch quickly from a 3-hour schedule to a 4-hour schedule.  We noticed she was getting uninterested in feeding, and those feeding sessions were getting increasingly violent (haha....a bit exaggerated, but well, there's some truth in it.  a note when you interpret the word "violent" though, the victim was definitely not Jan).  It was great when we made the switch, the feedings got easier, and this new schedule also gave us more free time.

Lastly, we have also been able to give her the last feed earlier.  Last time we gave the feed at around 11pm, and by the time we finished washing up, it would easily been 1am.  We have since been able to bring the feeding forward to about 10pm.  The worry  of doing that was the baby would wake up in the middle of the night crying for food, but thank God she did not do that.

Well, that's my list of thanksgiving now, definitely look forward to more stuff to thank God for.

Do not worry??!

Jia-en turned 5 months this past week, and I think as much as she has grown, I have learnt much from my role as a parent.

I have grown to understand better why parents worry so much...well, more precisely, I have found that as a parent, there is so much to worry about!  Why is my child having runny stools?  Is there something terrible going on? Eeeks...there's even blood stains in the stools...  Are we teaching her a wrong value by attending to her when she cries?  Is she in some serious trouble when we deliberately don't attend to her when she cries?  These are just some questions that crosses my mind regularly.

Then I was reminded of God's command in Matthew 6:25....do not worry!!!

Becoming a parent really pushes me to trust God more...since now there's more things out of my control, and God does tell me not to worry.

Some updates...

Been a looooong time since the last post. Think have to be more diligent to blog a bit more... Well, not that I don't want to, but Jan has been waking up almost hourly from 3-7am for the past 2-3 weeks and I'm seriously deprived of good sleep! It's really challenging coz I'm always struggling to keep awake at work, especially during meetings. Find it hard to concentrate. Sigh... still praying hard for better nights to come!

Well, we are obviously trying to pin-point why Jan is waking up so often, esp so when she was already sleeping thru the night for a while. Here are some of our guesses:

1. Teething - She's been drooling a LOT since she was 4 mths old and tries to stuff ALL her fingers into her mouth to chew, even if the pacifier is there already...

2. Stomach discomfort - She's been having the runs for more than 10 days, with blood streaks and mucus in her yellow watery/ "pasty" poo (try not to visualise ok?). She'll sometimes wake up in the night crying and then let out a loud fart. Just saw a PD last Tues and she said she might have caught a stomach bug and gave her some probiotics (yakult equivalent). It's been a week since we saw the PD and Jan is not getting any better. Her feeding has been poor as well - only drinking slightly more than half of her normal intake. Going to see the PD again today to see what she says. Praying that it's nothing serious and clear off soon!

Nonetheless, she's still quite her usual self and gets super excited when we talk to her and squeals in delight when we sing. She's really quite fun to play with now and we simply love her laughter!

Oh ya, she's finally flipping! MF and I actually witnessed her first flip about 2 weeks ago and it was a tummy to back flip. Quite unusual coz babies normally do back to tummy first. We kinda figured that it's coz she hates to be on her tummy for too long and probably better if she learns to solve her own problem! Smart girl! :)

goo goo ga ga

Jan is one baby who can complain, wail and scream real loudly but coos so softly that we sometimes call it the "cat mewing". But recently, she has been responding back when we talk to her. She even attempted to sing along and smiles when we sing to her.... amazing!! On "good days", she will laugh quite audibly. Think she loves singing =)

Some "words" she can coo now:
- ah
- eh
- ngai
- ang guh
- uh
- er
- ai

There was once when she was crying and screaming away, I suddenly heard her say "mama". I thought I was hearing things but MF also heard it. So, I declare officially that she's saying mama first!! hahahahaha!!

Oh ya, we started her on the bumbo when she turned 4months! Borrowed from mama's friend, Sharon - she said this bumbo has been sat on by her 2 boys and another friend's son, well worth the investment!

Who do I look like???!? - Part II

The bo liao parents are at it again.... let's do a comparison using baby photos =)

n.b. the one on the left is papa, me centre, and mama on the right

The cutest baby!

Call me biased, but my baby Jan is the cutest! Haha....you don't expect anything else from the parent right?

Jan usually don't like to be placed on her tummy, but we the kiasu parents wanted her to learn how to turn over, and we heard that babies in this position have more opportunities to practice turning and exercise the necessary muscles, so....anyway, she will usually ruin our plans by protesting violently (now that I said it, I think a video of her protesting will actually be very interesting, though I fear that when she grows up she will condemn me for publicizing such embarrassing footages ). 

We learned that one way to overcome her protesting is to let her "climb" on top of a pillow, so her upper body is propped up and she can see more of her surroundings.

HOWEVER, even then, she would still protest if you leave her there long enough....or she would start sucking her fingers and fall asleep in that position...so much for wanting her to exercise...

Another unrelated thought: now that our blog is linked to facebook, I wonder how many more/less people are reading it...do post a "hi" on our blog if you can =)

See how my looks have changed!

You must have heard about how newborns take on different looks during the first few months of their lives. It is almost as if the babies could not decide which parent's features to take on, so they just try new combinations each month.

For us, it is hard to detect this change as we look at Jan everyday. So we decided to put together snapshots of her from every month and see if we can see the metamorphosis in action.

Jan indeed did change her looks! The five photos below show her growing from June (when she was born) till now.  In fact, she looked rather different at birth compared to how she looks now! 

However, comparing her looks from one month to the next, it is harder to tell where the changes occurred.  Can you "spot the difference"? =D