Solutions to our problems..

On Sunday, we went to Daveleen Confinement Center to check out their confinement packages. We can either stay in at their center or hire their confinement lady home for 28 days. We visited their center at SS4. It's a corner unit double story link house. The baby room is down stairs and there are 7 mothers staying there currently. They have another center at TTDI but it’s too far to travel there for hubby and ZY from Puchong if I really plan to stay in. So, at last, we decided to get their confinement lady to stay over at our place for 28 days instead.  Since it's quite a last minute decision to get a CL, the charges is higher i.e. RM3600. The herbs cost RM2000 including 2 post-natal massages.

We’ve also decided to send ZY and Mag to day care at their school starting from June or July until we get a new maid. So mom only needs to take care of my newborn once I resume to work in September. Good planning? Honestly, I’m just heart sick to send the children to day care, but I really don’t have any choice. A lot of people have been telling me that they’re old enough and they’ll be happy at day care with more friends to play with. I hope they’ll be happy. As for the CL, I hope I’ll get a very good one who is clean, can cook well and is good at handling baby.

Shattered hope? HOPE NOT!!

Just when I thought I've everything planned out for my 2 months confinement, I got a call from my maid who's having her holiday back home to say that she's diagnose with uterus cancer. My mind went blanked. This means she might not be coming back. I'm left with 8 weeks to deliver the baby. Seriously, I'm worried, no matter how much I tell myself that everything will be alright without her. I really got to write down what are the things that I'd need and needed to do before and after the baby arrives. I regretted canceling my booking with my friend's confinement lady earlier and wasted RM300 for booking fee. I really didn't expect this would happen. I thought this round I'd be able to rest my backbones well. I hated running up and down the stairs when I had ZY last time. All the walking really hurt my back and my wound a lot and having a dreadful time bending over to change ZY's nappy every 1-2 hours when she pee or poop in the middle of the night. After her big & small business, I'd to breastfeed her for another 30 to 45 minutes; followed by pumping out the extra milk to increase my milk production. I think what I'll do is to put all the necessary equipment for washing the baby breast pump in my room so I wouldn't have to run downstairs for cleaning. At least, I'll just need to run downstairs to do laundry and eat my food. If I'm staying in a condo, I wouldn't be so worry because I wouldn't need to walk so far to the kitchen and to the laundry area. My worst fear is that my mom will be over exhausted. Mom will have to cook and bath the baby for me during the confinement period. Even if I get a confinement lady, what happens after 1 month or when I've to go to work after 2 months? Mom will have to handle the baby all by herself. I'll be at work. When I come home, I'll be busy breast-feeding the baby, cleaning my breast pump, doing laundry and giving attention to ZY. Then I might also have to wake up several times to nurse the baby at night. I told ZY just now that kakak (the maid) called up and said she's sick. Do you think she'll come back here? She said no. So I said then who's going to help mommy to take care of baby? She said “me”. My heart melted.

Fears & worries...

End of July is just around the corner & I'm feeling more and more anxious & excited everyday. I haven't got a good breast pump, a black out curtain & I need to get my air-cond serviced too. Since I'm most probably going to breast feed for maybe about 2 years after I deliver, I definitely will need a very good breast pump. My experience with the old Pigeon pump was tiring. However, it was very convenient and I got used to it after awhile, despite complaining about my extremely tired fingers due to excessive pumping. The question now is whether I should go for manual or electric breast pump & single or double? Is electric pump very noisy? Prices of breast pumps are crazy nowadays. My concern is to find the breast pump not satisfactory after buying it and I'm not able to return it! Then my RM2K will just go wasted & I've to get another one or stick back to my old Pigeon manual pump which costs only RM200++. Although Medela has quite some good reviews, but I've used one single electric pump before & I wasn't satisfied at all with it. I'm not sure if it's due to the old motor or I just got very used to my comfortable manual Pigeon breast pump at that time. The price for Medela electric double pumps is RM1888 & for Avent is RM2200, which comes along with a travel bag & cooler pack, which was selling at Mother & Baby Expo 2011 at Midvalley last weekend. Sigh! That's crazy! Sign again! Who knows maybe when the time comes, I'll get one for myself despite the crazy price!