Double Happiness

OK, for those of you following this blog, Yvonne currently has A LOT to say. Unfortunately, she is currently unable to write on this blog because there is no internet access at the hospital.

WHAT??!! yeah, you read me right, Yvonne has been admiteed last Monday because she was feeling premature contractions. Mummy is OK and currently enjoying a little break from work, as you can see below.

Yvonne upon admission at the hospital:

After just a few days, she already can’t stand the food:

Yvonne being monitored:

Mummy and babies are all OK so far although there are some concern that Yvonne’s cervical length is short. If I understood the bio correctly, the cervix is the tight lower portion of the uterus, in contact with the vagina, that keeps the babies’ waterbags from falling. The cervical length was 2.3cm upon admission, which was already considered short. The Doctor told us a good length should be around 3cm. A Friend of ours however (Hi Ziyun!) told us that 2.3cm is actually acceptable for a twin pregnancy, so in the end we didn’t worry much and Yvonne has been enjoying her stay, confident that she’ll get out in no time.

My PMP, a COWON A2 is serving her very well during these days with nothing to do. She’s watched the entire Grey’s Anatomy season 1 and 2, and now she needs more. I’ll give her season 3 too but it is ongoing. I’ll probably get her some seasons of CSI and Desperate Housewives later .

This morning a new scan was done to monitor the cervical length again. To our dismay, the length was found to be only 1.1 cm in length. That’s it, now we are worried :/. It still doesn’t mean that she’s about to deliver though, but the risk has increased. Because of that, it is unlikely that she’ll be coming home anytime soon now. In fact, she may well be staying at the hospital untill she delivers. We don’t really care though, right now, we are only hoping that the babies can stay inside at least another 3-4 weeks. A panel of doctors are due to check her case tomorrow. We’ll know more then, and so will you dear readers.

Oh, and despite this setback, we’ve manage to take our weekly pictures to update the pregnancy progress, be sure to check them out!

Cheers,
Tim!

It’s been a while since my last update. Life has been treating me quite well with the recent return of my best friend, Huijun aka Tabi, from Holland! Have been catching up quite a fair bit. Firstly we met on Friday 9 Feb and she introduced me to a fantastic roti prata store at Blk 3 St George Road where we had a hearty breakfast. It’s one of the best prata I’ve eaten, especially the cheese prata. Must bring Tim’s parents there to try when they’re here in July. For the record, it opens daily till about 8pm. After the prata, we went downtown to Tangs Orchard and spent 4 hours just on the ground floor checking out cosmetics. Here’s where Tabi bought me a Chanel Blanc Illuminator (or what we call the ‘miracle white powder’) to help me further my cause of being a Glam Mum. After that we sat down to rest at MacDonald’s for coffee and dessert and chitchatted for 2 hours! Time simply flew by and the next thing we knew, we were late for our dinner appointment. For dinner we met up with old university friends Dejun, Xueling, Huili & Peiyun for dinner at Oishi Wisma. It was really really fun catching up and we had many a laugh over really silly jokes.

The second gathering with Tabi was for a buffet lunch at AquaMarine at Marina Mandarin with Lydia. The day began with Lydia coming around to fetch us in her Toyota, it’s such a comfort to be chauffeured around, especially with my bulging belly and the intense Singapore mid-day heat. The food selection at AquaMarine was quite amazing – from local cuisine, Hong Kong dimsum, western salads to a chocolate fountain. We stayed there from 12.30pm to 4pm and really ate our fill while reminiscing about the past when our stomachs could really handle much more! The food was enough to last me through dinner, together with an ice mocha vanilla decaf from Coffee Club.

The third gathering was with the whole gang for a Crepe Party – everyone was able to make it except John and Leewai. This time, Tim found a new way of entertaining the guys by inviting them to a few rounds of computer games in the study while we girls do our ‘girly girly’ talk. Baby Chloe and Asha have grown much bigger (and cuter!!) since I last saw them. It’s amazing how fast they grow! Jingyi came along with some floormats and Yen with a bag of baby girl clothes and shoes. Having these hand-me-downs is great! This treasury of goodies shall be handed down to Meiying and subsequently Lydia, Huijun, Ziyun… who knows? Luckily baby clothes don’t go out of fashion!

On the pregnancy front, we had our first hands-on session at Mdm Wong’s birth class yesterday. We learnt how to hold and bathe baby (paying particular attention to how to wash the head, eyes, ears, naval, hands and privates), how to soothe crying baby (have to understand what the different cries mean), how to burp baby (not stroke but hit gently with capped hands), how to swaddle baby, how to put on a diaper, how to fold the clothe nappies. All very exciting and fun to do on a plastic baby doll… I bet in real life it will be a nightmare, especially knowing after doing one, you got to do the other.

Another key learning is that we should watch over the confinement lady and maid to ensure that they are not doing something dangerous to our newborns (ie: what they have learnt from their years of experience but are not scientific). It will not be easy to correct a confinement lady given that she will inevitably have a ‘I know more than you’ attitude. Perhaps Tim is a better person to manage this kind of situation – he can be the ‘I’m a westerner and I don’t buy all these crap and I don’t wish you to use your traditional methods on my children’ kind of father. As I’m a Chinese, it’s much harder for me to denounce all these Chinese beliefs. Plus if I’m still recovering from the birth, I may not have the energy for any confrontation. Best is to leave it to Tim =)

It was my 29th birthday on 29 January. Wow… 2007 is my last year being a twenty-something! Looking back, this decade has seen so many milestones in my life – graduation, flying as an SQ Girl, moving into market research, marriage, buying our first home and pregnancy… with Motherhood lurking just around the corner. Looking back, I’m glad the years of my twenties had been so colourful because at no other time can you just live your dreams without too much concerns. The twenties is truly the time you can just live for yourself, explore and experience life. It’s the time you start to earn your own keep, decide how to spend or save, experience different jobs and different lifestyles… without worrying that a wrong step would mean your family who depend on you would suffer. Everyone deserves to have their bit of fun during his twenties because after that, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with parenthood – for those who opt to go the Family Way. And in retrospect, I had a great time during my twenties and will not live to regret as I move into the next chapter of my life where I will be forced to grow up quite quickly.

For my birthday this year, my friends and family have all been very considerate and pampered me with practical gifts. My parents and bro gave me angpaos, my colleagues gave me Tangs vouchers, Lydia gave me an angpao plus a luxurious showergal, Tim brought me on a shopping spree to buy about $200 worth of maternity clothes so I have some fitting clothes to wear finally. So when Jingyi and Ziyun asked me what I wish to have, I told them “Inouvi cosmetics”. Something self-indulgent, a want rather than a need, would be nice… Tim surprised me by giving me a maternity tee that I didn’t choose for myself. It’s a white tee with picture of a baby wearing a boxing glove, saying “WHO DARES TO CALL MUM FAT?” Yes, that’s my husband, the Funny Guy.

We went for our second detailed scan on the morning of my birthday. Babies are really active and keep kicking and changing positions. Ah-boy weights about 950g and ah-girl about 948g. Both are “huge for 25 weeks”, says my gynae. They still have plenty of amniotic fluid to move around and will only be in a more constrained position in the 34th week. That’s when we can tell whether natural birth is a possibility. Whether natural birth or c-section is safer for twin delivery is debatable because, as my gynae explained, even if both babies are in a heads-down position, once the first baby comes out, the environment inside the womb is different and baby no. 2 may slip to a position that is not possible for natural delivery. In this case an emergency c-section would be performed and all emergencies carry a higher risk than elected operations. While for singleton delivery, natural is safer, for multiple birth the risks are different.

The thing about c-section birth is that Tim can’t be in the operating theater with me and will miss the experience of being there when his kids come into this world. This is a great disadvantage of delivering in KK Hospital. We can opt for KKH’s “Premier package” and Tim will be able to be present. The delivery package is $600 more which is probably worth paying for so that Tim can be there to witness the once-in-a-lifetime moment and to be my morale support. The bigger problem with that is that you can’t downgrade to class C if the babies require NICU at birth (touch wood!!). The rate per baby per day is $480 for Premier compared to $95 for Class C.  Even Special Care Nursery differs a lot, $245 compared to $46. When you multiply it by two, the difference becomes quite substantial. Our Medisave certainly is not enough to cover it. I shall not worry about it right now, will wait till 34th week to make the arrangements.