Benefits of breastfeeding

I think the realisation has dawned upon me that with a full time job, three kids under the age of 5 and a house to upkeep, that time is definitely not on my side! Hence this blog has been somewhat neglected lately :p However I told myself today that I will post something, so here goes.

Helene will be exactly 3 months old tomorrow, and for the first time in 3 kids, I am glad to say that she is a fully breastfed baby. Practice makes perfect, as they say :) With Hannah it was a total failure as she did not latch directly at all. So after two months of pumping, my supply of milk became less and less and that was it. With Heidi was a little better, she was semi-breastfed until about 5 months. I even managed to pump at work once during the day. You can read about my breastfeeding experience with Heidi here.

Now with Helene, it's definitely an easier and more enjoying experience. Of course, in the early weeks I had sore, cracked nipples and even a milk blister (something I never had before), but overcoming all those things, I'm glad I persevered. My milk supply now is more or less established, even though it is still low compared to some other mummies. I am quite envious of those who have thousands of ounces of breastmilk stocked up in the freezer, but so far my supply has been sufficient for Helene, without having to top up with formula, so I hope to make this last until she is at least 6 months old. Now I pump at least 4 times a day, twice at work, at night and another time either middle of the night or early morning. To cut a long story short, here are my top 6 benefits of breastfeeding.

1. Bonding with baby - There are no words to properly describe the warm fuzzy feeling you get with a little person nuzzled close to you, and knowing that you have what she needs to nourish and comfort her. Helene absolutely refuses the bottle of pumped milk which I try to feed her, and always prefers her milk direct from its source :) Initially I thought it was going to be a problem with her nanny, but surprisingly she drinks quite willingly from the bottle when her nanny feeds her - but only her nanny, not even her daddy or grandma. We left her with Ah Mah for a few hours the other day when we had a lunch appointment, and apparently it took her 4 times feeding to finish her bottle of milk.

2. Best food for baby - I am hardly an expert on nutrition, but I have read enough articles to know that breastmilk is the best food for baby, so I am going to try to provide her with it as much and as long as possible.

3. Weight-loss secret - I had no urut lady this time, but I could fit into my jeans by Helene's full moon and I could wear all my pre-pregnancy clothes by the time I got back to work. As of now, I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight and hope to lose another 5 kg by the end of my breastfeeding journey, fingers crossed!

4. Eating without guilt - I try to eat healthily, but since I don't need to diet (which I tried to do after my last 2 pregnancies), I can eat almost anything without having to feel guilty :) Also, I am quite lazy when it comes to drinking water, but since breastfeeding requires me to drink more liquid to produce more, I can finish a whole jug of plain water just in the office. The up-side of this also is that I can enjoy all the Milo and bubble milk tea I want, since I also find them to be my milk-boosters :)

5. Saves a lot of $$$ - Hubby is pretty pleased that he doesn't need to fork out hundreds of ringgit a month to buy formula since breastmilk is free! (he just needs to feed me well lol) We had bought a can of formula for the early days while waiting for my milk to kick in, and there is still more than half left in that same can. Hubby had also ambitiously stocked up formula, thinking that it would be the same situation as Hannah and Heidi, but now Heidi is drinking it, so as not to go to waste ;)

6. Convenient when going out - There is enough to carry with diapers, wet wipes, extra clothes and the other kids' stuff, so it's a welcome change not having to carry bottles, thermos, milk powder etc in addition to all of that. I just need my nursing cover, so Helene has fresh supply of milk, anytime, anywhere :)

Okay, now for pictures of happy Helene!

Loving those dimples!

Birthday cupcakes for Hubby

In the span of 2 months, from 8 April to 8 June, we celebrate 4 birthdays in our family - Heidi on 8 April, Helene on 23 April, Hannah on 26 May and Hubby on 8 June. Since we could not go out much with little Helene, and I had no time to buy any gifts, I decided to make him some cupcakes with my cupcake maker. I had subscribed to Tesco online shopping which actually makes grocery shopping really convenient. I have so far tried it once and they deliver right up to your doorstep. No more parking, queueing and having to lug all the bags up to your house.

So anyway, I bought all the ingredients from the website (together with some other stuff), and made my cupcakes late night on 7 June 2014 once everyone had slept. Hubby and the 2 older girls were sleeping upstairs so they could not hear me, which was good since I wanted it to be a surprise :) I had done a trial run a few days earlier, so this time I adjusted slightly the measurements for the eggs and water. The "Happy Birthday" sign was recycled from a previous birthday and I had extra candles, also from someone's previous birthday.

This was the result which I was quite pleased with:

Hubby was pleasantly surprised as well and said that this was the best birthday gift he had received :). Hannah and Heidi were also extremely excited, but they were more interested in eating the cupcakes! I was glad they tasted yummy too!

And then it was photo time. First was Hubby with his 3 princesses:

Then it was all of us. So this was the first time we got a nice family photo of the 5 of us:

And then it was time to sing the birthday song! Heidi was happily clapping along :)

After that, time to blow out the candles! Of course, Hannah and Heidi helped too :)

Happy birthday dearest Hubby! You are the best Hubby and Daddy to all of us and we love you very much! Here's to many more birthdays in the years to come!

2 months old

Baby Helene is 2 months old today and I am officially back to work after my maternity leave. I had actually given her to be looked after by the babysitter 2 weeks earlier, just for a few hours, so that she could familiarize herself with the new environment. So far, so good and the babysitter has managed to get her into a good routine.

At her 2 month checkup last Friday, she weighed 5.5kg, which the doctor said was perfect for her age. We do however find the rolls of fat on her arms and thighs super adorable (at this stage lol). She is fully on breastmilk, so I direct feed her during the night and weekends, and she has my pumped milk at the babysitter's.

She is a very smiley baby, just like Heidi, but most people say that her features are more like Hannah's. Her smiles are quite hard to get on camera though. She will smile plenty when we are not ready with the camera, and by the time we get out our phones/camera, the smiles will be gone. I did however manage to get a really nice one yesterday morning (mornings are the times when she is in the best mood).

Here are some more of her smiley expressions:

We also notice that she has funny habits when she is sleeping or about to sleep, particularly the way she puts her hand to her face.

Don't grow up too quickly, ok? Mummy and Daddy want to enjoy your babyhood :)

Hannah turns 5!

Little Helene looks a lot like Hannah when Hannah was born, so looking at her really reminds us of the day Hannah was born 5 years ago, and now we are celebrating her 5th birthday 5 years later ;)

Now that she is 5, she knew exactly what she wanted for her birthday cake and gave clear "instructions" to us on what to get. She said she wanted a Barbie doll princess cake with a rainbow coloured skirt and a diamond crown. We were very blessed to find a baker that could accommodate her exact request (it was a friend of Hubby's sister), and this was the result:

We just had a small celebration at my in law's place (as per her request again) as she wanted to celebrate with her cousins. The dress she is wearing was a present from Hubby's brother and his girlfriend, which she insisted on wearing at her party. Here she is in her new dress with some of her cousins:

Birthday girl with Mummy:

Heidi and her cousin Pei Zi; generally they tend to fight, so it was nice to get a "friendly" picture of them for once ;)

Food spread on the table, with the customary red birthday eggs:

Another picture of the cake, minus the diamond crown:

Mummy and her two girls (one more was sleeping):

And this was the highlight of the evening - the pinata! Hannah had told her father much earlier that she wanted a pinata for her birthday, but we totally forgot about it, until the afternoon before the party, she suddenly brought it up again. It was way too late to go and buy or order one, so Hubby had to DIY the pinata. So he somehow managed to put it together and we had a pinata! Bravo to Hubby for being able to pull this off at the very last minute!

Birthday girl got to take the first hit, and then all the other kids in turn.

Even Heidi had a turn, with Hubby's help and no blindfold as she didn't like it.

She was so excited, but I'm not very sure if she fully understood what all the excitement was about! Haha :)

Happy birthday to our dearest big girl and we hope that you will be a good example to your two little sisters. Mummy, Daddy, Heidi and Helene love you very much!

Heidi's 2nd birthday

This is quite a belated post, as Heidi turned 2 in early April. Better late than never! :) This year, we just had a small celebration with immediate family at Itallianies, Gurney Paragon. We prebooked the place and food, and the restaurant was nice enough to decorate the place with balloons, and also give us a free flow of ice lemon tea.

We took lots of photos, as expected, so I will just let the photos do the talking.

Of course the highlight of the evening was her birthday cake which was specially ordered for her from Jenni Cake House, complete with her favourite character Olaf from the Disney movie Frozen. We didn't expect the cake to turn out as nice as it did, so we were pleasantly surprised.

In keeping with the "frozen" theme, Hannah got her little sister a present...

It was a stuffed snowman! Heidi loved it :)

On her real birthday, which was a weekday, we had a simple dinner at TGIF, with some little cupcakes which she chose herself from one of the kiosks at the basement level of Gurney Paragon. It was just us and both sets of grandparents.

Heidi loves the water features at Gurney Paragon, which is why we kept going back there for her birthday!

Heidi with Nanna and Gong Gong:

Kiss from Ah Mah:

Her favourite show of the evening; look at her excitedly clapping her hands! :)

A few days earlier, my mum and dad also got her a special gift (Hannah got a similar one too for her birthday) - it was a Samsung kids tab.

Happy birthday our sweet Heidi! Lots of love from Daddy, Mummy, Hannah and now Helene too!

Helene's full moon

Time really flies - Helene is already one month old plus a few days, which means I have to go back to work really soon! Boo hoo...

So anyway, we were thinking of something different to give as full moon gifts this year, instead of just the usual KFC vouchers. I did some research, and found out about Justart, which prepares full moon packages, complete with red eggs and "ang ku", but the main item in the box are their delicious tarts. You can read about the various packages on their website or their Facebook page.

We chose a simple one with just 2 red eggs and 4 tarts, as none of us are big fans of ang ku. Justart also printed a thank you card, with Helene's picture on it (included in the package).

But we still had the vouchers to be given together with the box of tarts.

Baby Helene took some pictures with Mummy, Daddy and Heidi, as Hannah was in school. After that, we started distributing the boxes and vouchers to our family and friends. Helene enjoyed the car ride, even all the way to Bukit Mertajam. Since she is breastfeeding, it was quite easy, since I can just feed her anytime she got hungry.

Happy one month old Helene!