Shouting down my better angels

The one thing worse than being sick and being away from your kids is to be reminded how sucky you are as a mother because you let it happen.

It doesn't matter that it was the best decision I could make. It didn't matter that I didn't like the decision at all. All that mattered was that it was apparently the wrong decision.

Apparently what I was supposed to do was to keep my children with me so that I didn't have to shuttle up and down. Never mind that it isn't just me who is unwell, it's Packrat. We should just all wear masks. Never mind that 2-year-olds don't like their parents donning masks and would take the opportunity to strip the mask off, at least they will be with me. But at what cost?

The danger that they may still inadvertently catch the bug from their father even if he is conscientiously masked. It just takes one droplet of virus to wreak even more havoc in my family.

It annoys me, it really does that I am judged, not by my elders but by some of my peers on how I should bring up my kids and protect my kids. I don't like that I'm away from them. I don't like that I felt so ill today I didn't see them for the whole day and couldn't even bring myself to go visit them. But I know that for their safety and health, they're better off not seeing Mommy for a few days than to be hugged and kissed by Mommy (which is all I want to do) and get infected with God knows what bug.

And the problem is she-who-dishes-out-all-this-criticism is someone that I can't tell to f*#k off and this holier than thou attitude is really getting old.

Yes, it is my fault my husband got sick because I don't make him take a bath the minute he gets home from work. Yes, it is my fault that I am ill because I don't pop enough vitamins down in the morning. Yes, it is my fault that the twins are away from us because I daren't risk having them in a small house with one flu blown flu case (H1N1 or not) and one half blown case.

So on days like that, not only do I have to suffer the effects of illness, guilt and separation pangs, I have to suffer the idiocy of mothers who think they are better and could do this better. If I were more cruel, I would wish her half the amount of crap I've gone through in the last month and see how she weathers through it. But I can't because that would be a nasty thing to do. Times like that, I wish my better angels could be shouted down. It would make things much easier.

Technorati Tags: twins, criticism, I am a bad mother

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It doesn't rain, it pours

When I lamented earlier on that I hadn't had the time to be really pregnant, I was referring to the first week long trip we were taking with them, the packing of all our earthly belongings and moving to a flat of our own, Packrat gestating a bacterial bug that would eventually lead him and the twins to have pneumonia. Once we weathered through all that, I felt that finally we could get a move on with things and I could eventually dedicate some time to the little muffin baking in the oven.

But life sure does like to hurl curve balls at us and it sure has an evil sense of humour.

Tuesday, Packrat tells me that he's got a scratchy throat. I do too so I think it's just something we got from our twins who had drippy noses. By that night, Packrat has a soaring fever and is so cold his teeth sound like they'd shatter from all chattering.

I order him to go to the doctor in the morning and obediently he does while I send the twins to school. There, I get a message from him that basically wrecks my day, probably the week and causes my heart to sink. "Doctor suspects H1N1. 6 days MC".

But I cannot panic because there are bigger things to think about. Containing it. Preventing the twins from getting it. Thankfully he'd been working late the two days before and had not seen much of the twins. Now, to get them away before we have a redux of the pneumonia thing.

That meant shipping all who were well off to the grandparents. Unfortunately, I wasn't on that list because I was coughing away and already had a low grade fever. So I'm in purgatory, sick but not ill. Sick enough to infect the twins, but needing to stay away from my husband because he could make me and the little muffin more ill.

I spend all of yesterday trying to nurse a sick man from a distance, washing my hands a million times over and needing hand lotion. I spend yesterday shuttling between my husband and my children and in between trying to catch naps so that I don't feel like I've been run over by a bull dozer. And even that, I have to do it in a separate room from Packrat. I've taken to sleeping on the floor in the twins' room. Much like if we had a huge fight and weren't talking to one another. It does seem that way. We hardly talk. We just acknowledge one another's presence and that's about it.

The one silent moment I had to myself, when the weight of the situation finally hit me, I dissolve into tears because I'm tired. I feel like I've been running non stop just so that I remain on the same spot. If it's not one thing, it's another. And I feel alone. Who do I tell? Who can I talk to? No one. This is expected of me because I am a wife and a mother. No one's going to feel sorry for me and no one can take away my burdens. So what can I do? Suck it up, wash my face and put a big smile on my face for my children.

So where is the baby Muffin in all this? Muffin follows me where ever I go. Is exposed to whatever germs I get exposed to and eats what I have time to shovel down my throat in the midst of all the to-ing and fro-ing. How different is it from when I was expecting the twins? Very different. The twins were never ignored, even in-utero. But they had no one to compete with for attention. Muffin does and unfortunately, like Mommy, just needs to suck it up and take what it can get.


Technorati Tags: twins, H1N1, quarantine, pregnancy

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Spanner in the works

This post was written on the 7th of June. I've kept it until now because it's not kosher to say anything earlier than now.

Now that the mostly difficult first part is over and the difficult 2nd and 3rd part are to follow, here it is.
--------

A spanner in the works implies creating mayhem. That is what has happened this week. Something has occurred which has seriously created mayhem in our lives. Just as we were ready to move out. Just as we were getting used to the twins and their routines. Just as our finances were slowly beginning to make sense...

I get this feeling in me that something isn't quite right. It could have been easily put down to the heat of the day but something told me to take a pregnancy test. It came out negative though. So I really thought it was just the heat. 2 days later, I thought about it again. Period is late and I was dying to start running. Once again, a little voice in me tells me to test myself again. And that's when my jaw hit the ground, after double checking the instructions and the pictorial examples on the box.

2 lines.

"Oh no..." I intone.

Then I comb the house looking for Packrat who is with the twins, ask him to come up and toss him the stick muttering something like "Oh Crap!".

His reaction is like mine.



So why not the joy that more often than not accompanies such results? (Of course, that's assuming one is not an errant 17 year old).

1. We did not expect it. After all the trouble we went through to get pregnant the first time, we were quite sure this wasn't going to happen naturally.
2. Our lives were just about to start again. We were claiming our lives back by moving out. But with No. 3, that would mean, a more prolonged stay with the in laws, till the finances and the kid sort themselves out (which would get there first beats me)
3. What if it wasn't real? We've been surrounded lately by people who've lost their pregnancies early on. What if it were to happen to us? How would we cope? I remember the same fears with the pregnancy of the twins and it wasn't funny then either.
   
4. Linked to the 3, I don't feel sick. With the twins, from early on, I wanted to die. Throwing up 8 times a day tends to make one feel like dying is a better alternative. Anyway, because I didn't feel much, I was worried about 3. (This changed very rapidly though. I throw up almost as much as I did with the twins and at this point, between my 9th week visit to the doctor and my 12th week one, no weight was gained.)
   

So anyway, sufficed to say, it is a spanner thrown into the works. We're happy of course, but we need to sort out the reality that this pregnancy is going to exist in. And till then and till the pregnancy stabilises, it will be unreal and just scary.

Note to those breastfeeding out there...this happened the month I fully stopped breastfeeding. I was warned about this. But like I said, I didn't think it'd happen to us. But it seems that God has a sense of humour. And quite an ironic one at that.

-----

Things have settled down from that point. We've moved. The twins are manageable most of the time although I have lamented that I haven't really had the time to be pregnant, what with running after them, tending to them while they were ill and the general shenanigans that they get up to. I still worry about Baby No 3 but I realise that I ignore a lot of it most of the time because I just don't have time to think about it. Which could be a good thing.

When we do have time, we do marvel that this little bugger was a great surprise and so unexpected that, that in itself makes us chuckle. And it is good. We've managed to finally get to that point.


Technorati Tags: twins, pregnancy, breastfeeding, moving house

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Drawing the line

Since the pneumonia, we've been on a mission to try and help the twins regain the weight they've lost. Evan runs around after his bath, naked, screaming on top of his lungs "Skinny Monkey!" because that's what his grandfather calls him now that we can count his ribs quite easily. Baby J looks taller now probably because she's gone thinner again.

Thankfully, they've been trying to make up for it by eating almost everything in sight. Evan more than Jordan, naturally. I've not quite come to terms with the fact that Evan, already larger, is less fussy about food so will eat more than Jordan and therefore put on weight much faster. But I've accepted it as fact. He loves his cod, his beef stew and all things good for him. Baby J hates the smell of cod and gags on beef however soft and tender it is.

So, when I'm at the supermarket, I always try and get the butcher to recommend the best cut of beef for Little Miss Fussy. I usually go to the NTUC Finest at Bukit Timah Plaza because the butchers there are polite, helpful and accomodating to my requests (I usually ask them to double mince the meat so as to lessen the chances of Little Miss Gaggy gagging).

Today, I tell the butcher my predicament and he recommends the tenderloin but claims that it'll probably be wasted on the non-discerning 2-year olds. True. He then recommends what he thinks is best for them. Veal. He tries to convince me by telling me that the calves were still on mothers' milk before they were slaughtered and they were only about six weeks old. He must have seen the look on my face because he also added "Yes, very cruel. But very good for your children."

I thanked him politely and walked off though.

Maybe it's just me, but there is no way I can wrap my head round the idea of offering to my children (babies themselves), 6 week old calves still on their mothers' milk, just so that my babies could grow up strong and healthy. There's just something cosmically wrong with that.


Technorati Tags: twins, food, veal

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Priceless drawer moments

My favourite Mastercard ad was the one where there was the little kid walking around with a box over his head and banging into things with Mastercard pronouncing it priceless.

I looked forward to the time where my kids would do the same thing and I would chuckle and laugh and have the cockles of my heart warm. No doubt they have been many cockle warming moments but I still wanted my own head over the box moment.

Now that we've moved and the twins are owners of many colourful Ikea drawers, they, as usual play with it in a manner that it was not meant to be played with. The first day we moved in, the biggest blue drawer was flung onto Baby J's new bed, chipping off part of the guard rail. And of course, rather than keep toys in the drawers, it is better to pour all the toys all over the floor and use the drawers to cover their heads and play peekaboo.

So, torn between my annoyance at having to pick up their toys and indulging in their growing sense of humour, I sat back and recorded these moments of sheer glee and amusement. The clearing up could come later. The "Where's Jordan?" and Evan's squeals are well... priceless.





Technorati Tags: twins, newtag

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Counting with Jordan

Apparently, the first step to number concept is to be able to verbalise the numbers. To be able to count out loud even if the child has no clue what 1 is or what 10 is. And how quickly they learn this affects how quickly they actually understand the actual concept behind it.

The twins like counting. They think it's funny. They also think they are just words. No "one to one" association where one item is associated one tag, so they skip along, are happy to miss out in-between numbers and chuckle when you correct them.




If you listen carefully, Jordan skips from 7 to 13 only because I catch her at 5. Usually she goes from 4 to 11 but can generally head into the late 20's before she moves on to something else.

It's amazing how much more conversant they have become and I'm beginning to wonder whether I be exposing them to the same opportunities in Chinese. Unfortunately, we have a logistical problem with that one. I'm the only one who speaks any sort of Chinese and anyone who knows me will know how laughable my attempts are. The KS parents around me have ominously warned me that I had better get my act together and send them to one of those Chinese enrichment programmes but in my mind two things weigh more heavily. 1. Money. 2. More chances of getting sick!

No thank you.


Technorati Tags: twins, learning to count

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Bad medicine

Thankfully the medicine ordeal is over and done with. I hope not to have to repeat it for a very long time. Some friends of ours who heard about the family being ill couldn't understand why the most stressful part of it, after the fever broke was to medicate the children 3 times a day.

Short of telling them rudely to go have children of their own, I videoed their reluctance, the desperation and their whining protests.



Technorati Tags: twins, medicine

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Put through the wringer

The twins are unsettled.

Outwardly, they are still happy and they seem to enjoy their new digs. But I know something is not right with them.

There have been many more tantrums and about the tiniest things. I refused to give Baby J her pacifier after she woke up and she cried the entire morning. I refused to take Evan to the lift (his favourite thing in the world!) and he cried and whimpered the whole morning.

Then there's been the super glue effect. Where they're perpetually stuck on to me, somewhat koala like. No one can pry them off, not Daddy, not our helper, not Ah Ma. And while it is nice to feel needed, it is difficult for all parties involved. It also gets difficult when they go to school because the histronics are reminiscent of when they first started school. Tears, whimpering escalating into full on crying and screaming, red in the face and snotty in the nose.

I think it's a confluence of various factors.

The moving away from the only house they've known since birth. Their bout of pneumonia and the daily trauma of the inhaler and what to them was awful tasting antibiotics. Their being away from school for so long because they were first quarantined for coming back from an H1N1 infected country and then because of their pneumonia. Them turning two...

All this must seem like the world as they know it has collasped around them and they are scrambling for some sort of consistency.

I suspect they see me as their port/ harbour whatever in a storm and hence the koala effect.

Everyone tells me it'll pass. I know it will but I feel so sorry for them because they're not exactly articulate and the only weapon they have is their tears and their lungs. Which they have learnt to use exceptionally well.














Happier days in school.



Technorati Tags: twins, disruptions, acting up

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Vacation, Schmacation

Packrat's Facebook status says it all..."Packrat is all virused out".

Yup, that sums it up. The twins are better but not completely well. Jordan's spent the night gagging and wanting to throw up. We suspect there's much phlegm in her belly that is making her feel unwell because it's the same thing making me feel unwell.

Having nursed two children and a husband back to relative health, I am exhausted I cannot think. I feel unfulfilled and dull, lifeless and blah. I think I'm burnt out from cleaning up countless puddles of puke and mediating tantrums about everything and nothing. I have little energy to be annoyed with the twins when they act up. I just deal with what I can and ignore the rest.

Someone suggested I should go on a vacation to recover from all this. Sure. When? How? With what money? I picked up $50 the other day on the ground and was thrilled because it meant half a week's groceries. So with what money am I going to plan a vacation with? Monopoly money and perhaps stay on Mayfair if I don't get thrown into jail first.

Thankfully we've moved into our own digs. So I can be existentially angsty without having to put up any sort of front for my in laws. However, I suspect that may be part of the reason why my children act up so much. New environment. Let's see how much we can get away with here. For the first time since I've become a mother, I've contemplated the cane. Obviously I haven't used it. On principle, I am against it because I never got canned. Packrat has no such delusions. Thankfully for my children, I'm the one dealing with the tantrums and not him. But that means also that I've hit the brick wall and really need some sort of break which doesn't require more than sitting at the spa and getting kneaded like play doh.

Technorati Tags: twins, vacation

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Birthday madness

This is a long overdue birthday post but what with the moving and the illness, it's the fastest I could do.

With our birthdays a day apart, it was basically a week long celebration, only interrupted by the fact that Packrat was ill with what we now know was not H1N1 but pneumonia. Even then, there was much cake and candle blowing to be had.

Many people have told me that at this age, children can't quite be bothered about the gifts they get but are more fascinated with ripping the paper. True although I would like to ban wrapping paper soon as a gesture of environmental civic consciousness. Anyway, I think the same goes with cake.

Because I'm not keen on the twins having too much colouring and sugar, I limit the amount of cake they eat although now that they are in school and have monthly birthday celebrations, I suspect they get more cake than I would like. Anyway, cake is a novelty to them so at the beginning of the birthday week, cake ranked as high a thrill as blowing out the candles on the cake.

Unfortunately, the first cake they had, which was a mango cake, they did not like. I think I only realised recently that mango may not be naturally attractive to everyone. So there was Baby J making me open out my hand and carefully transferring every bit of cake from her plate into my hand and then commandingly tell me "Mommy, eat cake". And this was not because she was being generous.

Their own birthday cake with the family went down better because it was chocolate coated with a what was not a thin film of spit coming from two toddlers who hadn't quite yet perfected the art of extinguishing candles. By the time we got to the birthday celebration organised by Packrat and myself, all they wanted to do was to blow out the candles and the cake was left after a cursory lick to claim possession.















It was a pretty but simple chocolate cake with no preservatives and while tasting like Lana cake did not have the airs of the Lana cake shop staff. Because we had anticipated more people who were eventually kept home by various H1N1 related scares, we had more than half a cake left over. And tradition be damned that we had to blow out a brand new cake, we recycled the half eaten cake for the following night's birthday celebration with my parents.

So generally, all that I'm going to remember about the twins' second birthday was the abundance of cake and candle blowing. There was also the realisation that my two year old daughter was still too small to fit into a dress marked for 6 to 12 months, as seen in this gleeful Yakult drinking photo.






















And as I said, on the second day, there was chocolate cake. Jordan saw that it was good and was pleased with it. All thanks to Aunty YM!

Technorati Tags: twins, birthdays

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Mommy's day of hell

I haven't been blogging because it's been a week of sheer exhaustion, illness and hell. And to top it off, today's been one of those days that I wish I'd wake up from and realise it was all a bad nightmare, snuggle up to Packrat and go back to bed. Unfortunately, even before I went to bed last night, I knew this was a nightmare that wasn't going to go away when the sun came up. In fact, I was pretty sure that come morning, it would be worse.

Why?

The twins have been sick since Monday. Since they've started playschool, they've gotten sick about once a month, but have been getting better at it in the last couple of months, in that when they did get sick, they bounced back quite quickly. This time though, it didn't seem to be the case. In actual fact, it seemed that as time passed, they got worse. So much so that we took them to a paediatrician. I usually avoid seeing a paediatrician because they're expensive and I like my Family Physician very much and she costs half of what the paediatrician would charge on a good day. Anyway, we were at the paediatrician twice this week because both children had terrible wheezing and fever. At first, it was brocholitis (an infection of the small air ways in the lungs) and that was bad enough because we had to administer antibiotics and we are a family that is some what anti-antibiotics.

The problem was it didn't seem to make Baby J better. In fact, her fever seemed to follow a disturbing trend of spiking at night and requiring us to give a very uncooperative toddler her fever medicine in the middle of the night. And this morning, she just lay limp on her bed, not wanting to move.

That was really the straw that broke the Mommy's back. The Mommy's back was already feeling the strain last night when I had to endure and ignore Evan's hysterical and frantic cries for help as he was pinned down and forced to breathe through an inhaler. Evan, unlike Jordan was not felled by the fever but by the wheezing and coughing so bad he sounded like a lawn mower's engine trying to start.

So, a limp child and another one who sounded like his throat was suffocating himself was all I needed to decide, screw the expensive paeds clinic and just head straight to children's emergency at NUH.

Because of the fever, we found ourselves cooped up in a small cell of a room where the twins between the hours of 9 and 4 when we were holed up in there quickly acquired severe cabin fever. And the numerous tests they had to be put through, blood test, oxygen level test, blood pressure test, x-ray and the numerous cycles of Ventolin administered to reduce the boy's wheezing took an enormous toll on the twins.

Having said that, I am quite proud of them for being brave and enduring all the poking, prodding and cold stethescopes on their feverish bodies.

The result, after all that? Bronchial pneumonia with the possibility of it being brought about by mycoplasma. All not good news for little toddlers.

But we thank God for little things and I'm grateful that they were allowed to come home and I think they were immensely thankful too. Their first point of comfort, sitting on the couch with Papa and watching what to me was copious amounts of Hi-5.

The trauma of the day stayed with them though, with Evan yelling out in his sleep "Go home! Go home" and then yelling" No more! No more!" and Jordan sitting up in bed, screaming, flailing her arms and cowering in a corner at the imaginary X-ray technician who scared the beejeezus out of her yesterday.

There's also the continued annoyance of them having to use the inhaler every four hours and foul medicines that no one could possibily be fond of. But in the hope of making them better, we'll just bite the bullet and bear with the bloodcurdling screams of protest.

















Technorati Tags: twins, pneumonia, emergency room

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Displacement

Every night, when I get the twins to sleep, I tell them a story. It always starts with "Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Evan and a little girl named Jordan. They live in a big house with their... (the twins know to contribute names of people who live in the house)..." The story usually goes on to what they did that day. We never finish the story because they'll interrupt me and we'll go on to something else.

Well, they no longer live in a big house with their grandparents. We've moved.

We've moved to what essentially amounts to a large Jumbo flat (which was 2 flats knocked into one) but to the twins, they've moved into a shoe box and have no idea what to do with the fact that everywhere they go, there're walls to keep them in.

The first night Evan was here, I heard him at 5 in the morning clunking round the house in his slippers muttering "outside, outside, playground, outside". And today, they've been messing about in the house and keep asking for the television to be on and even then, they kept pacing up and down.

I feel irrationally guilty. Plucking them from their comfort zone where they had a back yard, oregano plants that they are able to identify, pluck at and sniff, a front porch to ride their little cars and being able to go in and out of the house as they pleased. I know everyone else does it, keep the todds entertained in our shoebox flats and I'm sure I'll figure out how to as well. But for now, the displacement and exhaustion from the last few months culminating in the move has just made me feel that I am incapable of doing anything stimulating with the kids apart from talk to them.

Am I happier here? I don't know yet. I probably am but right now, I'm still floored by the set up costs and the fact that all these costs are coming out from a pocket that doesn't run very deep. But something inside me today told me that everything will be fine and will work out great. So, I'm listening to that little voice because I'm too tired to argue with anyone or anything.

Technorati Tags: twins, moving house

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My new baby

For the last couple of months, I've had to learn a whole host of new things that I feel sure my brain wasn't equipped to handle. I learnt some basic HTML coding, I learnt what a web domain was and what web hosting was and how they were two different entities altogether. I've learnt how to install plugins, use Photoshop, read FAQs and forums on various but necessary applications. All because I got it into my head one day that I wanted to set up a web site. Not just a blog like this one but something a little bit more sophisticated and something with a little bit more reach.

Through my working years, the one thing I have realised about myself is that I'm happiest helping others. Not in the "assist the elderly across the street" type of way but in the "I'm happy to share information, help you get information, point you in the right direction" kind of way. A career test I did last year highlighted that point strongly and at the same time, it also highlighted that one of the jobs I was most suited for was to write. And about 2 months ago, I decided that since I spent so much time surfing and looking at other people's blogs and I would occasionally get mail asking about various things I blogged about that I was going to pull all that together and form a blog resource for moms.

The reasons behind that?

So that mums didn't have to trawl the forums for information and reviews about things they wanted to try.

So that mums who had an appetite for something more introspective and occasionally thought provoking than information based articles (which I have nothing against, by the way) had somewhere to go.

So that mums who wanted to know where other mums took their children when they were out of school had somewhere to refer to.

So that mums, who had something to share with other mums, had a platform to do so.

And most importantly among many other reasons, so that mums knew that they weren't alone in what they felt.

Anyway, myself and two other like-minded mums (Offsprings and Bottoms Up) decided that these were reasons enough to start this website- www.mums-a-musing.com.

The name says it all. If it's purely information you're looking for, you're better off looking at babycenter or one of those parenting websites. But if it's other mums' perspectives you want to hear, look no further.

We don't claim to know it all, we don't claim to be able to have it perfectly up and running. But it's there and we're hoping that you'll like it, link us, use it often and spread the word. The more mums we can reach, the more we can do, the more we can do, the more it'll benefit you and all the other mums out there. For once, a cycle that is not vicious at all. :)
















So, knock yourself out, have a visit around and let us know what you think.

Technorati Tags: parenting websites, Mums-a-musing

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