Double Happiness

We attended this summer my sister’s wedding, below is THE highlight.

Warm congratulations to Noemie and Nicolas!

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.”

– Confucius

My parents recently contributed to a new webcam so we can communicate easily over the net (via Skype or Wengophone). The webcam is a Logitech Quickcam Fusion and it comes bundled with some stupid software to add overlays on top of the video, based on face dectection. Yvonne and I gave it a try, it was quite fun. Here are some shots of us below:

Here are a couple of videos from Celestine, you can see she is growing into a great girl too, just like her Bro.

Last week when we weighted them, Tristan was at 8.2 kg and Celestine at 7.6kg. Not bad for 5-monthers.

OK, so there hasn’t been many news around here lately. Hey what did you think, rising 2 kids is easy? Our (ok my) natural laziness has not helped of course .
So for the bulletin news:

• Tristan and Celestine are huge, and gorgeous, and incredibly smart (in other words: just like their dad!)
• Yvonne has managed to feed them almost EXCLUSIVELY on breast milk for 5 month!!!!

Tristan has just managed to turn BY HIMSELF so I’m posting below a couple of short video clips of his amazing feats.

We have no video of Celestine yet. Not because she is not an adorable little girl but she is more shy and we have no video where she is very excited. This will surely come soon

Hurray!!! The family is back together again!!!

Tristan was discharged from the hospital at 6pm, his jaundice level dropped significantly after the UV treatment. Although I still need to bring him to the clinic tomorrow for one more test, we are very sure he’s entirely out of trouble by now.

Yvonne was very happy today. Having her both babies home again was a great relieve and furthermore both babies managed to latch on properly. Now we can really start the feeding marathon .

Today was a little more relaxed than the days before and we could play with the babies more. At one point Célestine was hungry and I wanted to see if she would suckle the tip of my nose. She did and I thought it was all cute and lovely. Yvonne caught this bonding moment but was not at all amused: “Why do you think we sterilize all bottles and ustensils? For you to give your greasy, sweaty, dirty nose?”. Erm, my mistake, daddy needs to think twice before playing with his babies .

In the meantime, I’m looking around for a system that could let us share both our video and photos on this site. Joomla + Expose looks promising but it seems overkill to install Joomla just for a media viewer. I’ll continue searching for a while, if I can’t find anything cool, maybe I’ll build something myself…

The day is three quarter over; I can’t believe how fast time flies.

Today I registered the births at the French embassy. Both Tristan and Célestine have been officially added to our family booklet!

After that, I took Tristan to the clinic for his jaundice level to be tested. The bad news is that the level had risen to borderline the safety level. The doctor advised that we bring Tristan to the hospital for photo-therapy, just like we did Célestine the day before.

With that, Tristan and I went back home where Yvonne had the good news that Célestine was ready to be taken home. After our lunch, Yvonne, Tristan, and I took off to the hospital. Admitting Tristan was hard for Yvonne again because he likes to be carried and started crying the moment his cloth were taken off and he was put under the UV lights. Because Tristan’s jaundice was not so severe, we expect that he too will be back in a single day.

Célestine is now back home and I’ll have to take her to the clinic tomorrow again to monitor the jaundice level. She looks as adorable as ever, as the picture below testifies

Another great news, Yvonne has just extracted almost 50mL of milk from a single pumping session! I’m not sure how to describe the great feeling it gave her and me. She’s been working so hard: massaging her breast relentlessly, waking up for extraction in the middle of the night. It looks like the hard work is finally paying off! I don’t think anyone but new parents could understand what these 50mL mean. For those of you who do understand, I am attaching a photo below to show off .

My todo list seems to never shrink these days and I have no time to do what I must. We are overdue for our library books, I missed paying the telephone bill, etc. I gotta organize myself better than that

We are already starting to run low on sleep. The confinement lady has arrived and it is working out alright (for now anyway). Yvonne’s milk production has kicked in but the amount so far is too little to feed one baby, let alone feed two. We had no choice but to opt for mix feeding then: breast feeding and formula milk. We are keeping our fingers crossed that Yvonne’s supply will increase.

The lack of sleep, plus not being pregnant any more, plus caring for 2 babies all contribute to make Yvonne very emotional. She is both frustrated and disappointed that she has not enough milk. I’m guessing it must feels like she is failing her own babies, a thought which has caused her to cry in despair several times already. I’m really glad I could take some leave to be there for her. I’m doing my best to comfort and console her and hopefully she will become her joyful self again soon.

In the mediumly bad news department, Célestine had to be admitted to the hospital again for at least another 24 hours because her jaundice is getting quite severe. Every newborn experiences jaundice to some extent after birth. It usually resolves by itself unless there is a underlying problematic cause. In our case, this was another blow to Yvonne to have to “abandon” her, even just for a day, at the hospital. It is possible for mothers to stay at the hopistal overnight, but given we have 2 babies, it was not an option for us, and so we had to leave Célestine in the care of the nurses.

The good news from it is that it is now quieter at home for a day and Yvonne managed to take a good nap this afternoon, she needed it badly.

Before we part, I am posting below a picture of both twins that I took yesterday morning.

It’s official,

We have registered the babies’ birth today in Singapore. Their official names are:
Tristan Weile Groleau
Célestine Sixuan Groleau

Below are the chinese characters for the chinese names and their meaning:

Wei is nobility (of heart)
Le is happinness

Si is thoughtfulness
Xuan is victory

Edit: One extra fact to note: “victory” is Chinese is actually “KaiXuan”. The character “Kai” is the one that is used in Yvonne’s chinese name (KaiHong).

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be going to the French embassy to register the birth in the French system as well.

That’s it, the big day was today! Little Tristan and Little Célestine were born today at 7h28am and 7h29am respectively. Tristan weighted exactly 3kg at 51cm, while Célestine was 2.46kg at 46cm.

The day started early since we had to be at the hospital at 5h15am to check in. We intended to wake up at 4h30am but Xiao Bao thought it was a good idea to wake us up at 4h15 by meew-ing his heart out… He must have known something was going on .

The C-section happened without any complication, I was present in the operating theater, not so much to witness the birth but to provide support for Yvonne, as we both knew she would be scared. I didn’t see the babies being pulled out from her belly but when the action was taking place, we were looking at each other. It was a very emotional moment when Tristan’s first cry broke the silence. Yvonne cried of joy at that point, and I shed a quarter tear for good measure (because I’m a real man, and real men don’t cry ).

The rest of the day was spent at the hospital, sms-ing and calling friends and relatives to share the good news. We both expected that Yvonne would be exhausted after the surgery but she was surprisingly very energised and without much pain at all. Because of that, we could practice breast-feeding right away. That prooved very difficult and even as I left the hopistal for the day, we were still unsuccessful. Yvonne has not yet produced milk and Célestine refuses to latch on properly. We’ll persevere because we do want the babies to grow on breast-milk.

Yvonne’s family drop by as well around noon. All were very excited to meet the new members of the family.

The other highlights of the day were of course my first time carrying a baby. I was scared to break these fragile little things but after doing it a few times, it went quite naturally. I changed my first nappy as well. It felt very gross but I understand this will become routine soon enough.

Now the moment we’ve all been waiting for: photo time

In the operating theater

After the fact, Tristan is brought to his mom

After the fact, Célestine is brought to her mom

Done!, the 2 babies are out!

A proud Papa!

Here are some pics of Tristan:

Here are some pics of Célestine:

Happy grand-parents: