Weight of the World

Evan is a worry wart. He worries about everything. He is the 'glass is half empty' kind of boy. He worried when we travelled without him, that the plane would crash. He worried when I was sick because I might be more sick when he lets on. Recently, his worries have become more concrete and it's been keeping him up at night.

We've been trying to encourage the twins to read the newspaper or watch bits of the news on television. Over the Chinese New Year, while out at lunch, Evan caught Channel News Asia on TV in the restaurant. While he couldn't hear anything, he could read that there had been an earthquake in Christchurch and Taiwan. He also saw glimpses of a documentary about the Paris attacks and something about the Zika virus. On top of that, he had read somewhere about MERS and Ebola. He knows there isn't a cure and that they die a horrible death and it's contagious.

His questions to me over the new year were whether Ebola existed in Singapore and what happens if we got Ebola in Singapore? Has there been anyone in Singapore that got infected by Ebola. I try and convince him we won't because we are not in the African continent.

"But what if...?" is his response.

I try many tactics.

I try to just hold him and explain to him the situation with just facts. We've managed to keep ourselves Ebola free very effectively.He wants to know if there is a cure. I tell him they're working hard on a vaccine and are almost there. "But no cure/ vaccine right now, right?" Sigh.

I try to use humour. No, you won't get MERS because you need a camel to sneeze on you. That got him to laugh but unfortunately, he knows that monkeys carry Ebola and there are monkeys all over Singapore and he knows it.

I try to explain to him that worrying about things didn't really work and often they made things worse. What would help him sleep and what would actually make things better if he could try and come up with solutions. In the short term, ways to help himself not worry about it (i.e. think through the facts - use logic) and in the long term, ways he could help other children and people who might worry about the same thing (i.e. we told him how scientists and researchers from other countries were trying to figure out the cure for Ebola). After all, he has said that he wants to be scientist.

I teach him to pray for God to take away his worries so that he doesn't need to think about them. He tells me God hasn't heard his prayers. I tell him that perhaps God wants him to do something about it because God's ways of answering prayers doesn't necessarily mean praying and the problem disappears!

When all else fails, I lie beside him at night and let him hold my hand tight while he tosses and turns till eventually he gives in to his tiredness.

I tell myself that it's not a bad thing that he worries because that means he's introspective and thinks about things. But it's hard to watch him struggle with these worries because he's a not yet 9 year old boy who has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

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The last time the oven bell dinged.

- This is actually a post from 5 years, 11 months and 1 day ago-
This is how old Muffin is today and it's part of the reason why I have my baby craving. But just re-looking this post also made me feel exhausted just thinking about it so I'll settle for being nostalgic rather that do anything about it.

So anyway, here's my account of what happened exactly 5 years and 11 months ago. 

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For everyone who was checking in to see if Muffin finally decided to show up, the wait ended yesterday. At 39 weeks 6 days at 1426 hrs.

So, how did we finally evict him? Well, he actually evicted himself. Perhaps because he knew the weekend was coming up. Perhaps he finally got clued in to the fact that his watery home was getting a bit too snug for him. Whatever it is, he chose yesterday to make an appearance.

And we only realised it by chance.

Early Friday morning, I woke up to pee. Naturally, since Muffin was exerting a great amount of pressure on my bladder. When I climbed back into bed, I suddenly realised that the usually active Muffin was not moving at all. 30 minutes of prodding and shaking my belly didn't seem to do anything to rouse him, causing me to imagine his umbilical cord strangling him and other horrors that I'd heard about. Massively panicking, I shook Packrat awake so that he could join me in the panicking.

He being a guy, jumped into action, ordered me out of bed to change and get to the hospital. It was the only way to know for sure. By then, I'd already felt some twitches from Muffin but I'd awakened a sleeping dragon in Packrat who insisted he wasn't going to rest easy till we put on the trace and ascertained Muffin's well-being.

Muffin, being Muffin was fine. Thank God! But incidentally, the trace picked up the fact that I was having regular contractions every 10 minutes. Although the midwife and doctor (whom I felt extremely bad for, having been rudely awaken at 3 am to consult on my case) told us we could go home, Packrat asked the midwife to check if I were dilated. This was a bit of an issue with us because without dilation, Muffin was not going to be able to get out of me naturally. And up to that point, that had be not even a micro-milli-bit of dilation. Lo and behold, there was some dilation! Finally.

To us, that was a good thing and it was met with great relief as well as trepidation. It did mean that while the wait would finally be over, there really would be another child in the house to add to the frenzy of our household.

Despite being then counselled to stay on at the hospital, we decided to go home. For various reasons. One, we'd left suddenly in the middle of the night and our children would probably be distraught to wake up to find us NOT in our beds. Two, I'd heard from other mums that the worst place to labour was the hospital as it tended to either halt or retard labour.

In the ensuing hours, for the first time, the contractions got stronger and more intense rather than disappearing as they had tended to do in the past weeks. And because I was home, I basically had to distract myself from the mounting discomfort.

By the time Packrat came back to get me, it was painful enough for me to stop what I was doing. Thankfully, they only lasted about a minute or so and that was the only reason I got through them, knowing that they would only last a minute. Packrat needed lunch and half jokingly suggested we eat at the food court we stopped at. I suspect my 'evil' look is even more intense when I am in pain and that idea was not pursued seriously.

The staff in the labour ward were expecting me apparently, because when I showed up, they were like "Yes, you're Ondine. You're the one who requested to go home and you're the one who wants to be able to walk around". True, I had requested to be able to 'walk' my labour off and since the hospital only had one room with the wireless CTG machine, I had asked them to hold the room for me. And I guess they couldn't believe that I had opted to go home even when I was told NOT TO.

My hospital, unlike some others in Singapore is still a little bit conservative in its approach to delivery so there are no water tubs and birth stools. And I guess to them, I was somewhat of a maverick because I had requested to walk and more incredulous stares followed when I told them I didn't want an epidural and rejected all offers of gas. All I used was my sock of rice that we constantly asked the nurses to nuke in the microwave.

With my sock of rice, I walked, swayed and banged table tops my way through the contractions that were getting more intense as I dilated at warp speed. From the point of entry into hospital where I was dilated at 4 cm, it went to 6 cm in half an hour. By that point, I just wanted to lie down and rattle the rails of the bed as the contractions sent spasmodic pain down my back into my bum. My very cool Ob-gyn waltzed in and congratulated me for finally going into labour. He asked if I want him to break my water bag and I told him to give it a little bit more time since we weren't not in a hurry and Muffin seemed to be nonchalant about the fact that my every bit of my body was finally all working in cahoots to expel him from his watery hotel.

After he left, I decided for the last time to get up and try and walk around, somewhat still trying to justify to the nurses why I wanted the wireless CTG monitors on me. But when I did, I felt that I had actually sat on a huge water balloon that went "SQUISH" under me. Yes, the water bag that I'd told the doctor not to burst, burst quite dramatically on its own accord. Right onto my Mashi-Maru bedroom sleepers.

I'd read somewhere that bursting the waterbag was a "committment to labour" because it really would be the point of no return and it truly was. I shrieked in pain when the next contraction came. The water bag must have cushioned much of the intensity of it and since the bag had burst, I no longer had that buffer. At the same time, that elusive urge to 'bear down' was upon me and Packrat wasn't sure if I was conscious of the fact that I kept telling him that I needed to poop. Apparently, the sensations are identical.

The midwife chose that moment to plunge her fingers into me causing me to want to kick her in the face. Thankfully, the result also heralded the fact that it would be last time anyone unceremoniously did that to me. 10 cm and we were good to go. There was only one problem. The time that had lapsed between my Ob-gyn leaving and my severe need to take the biggest dump of my life was probably just enough time for him to have arrived at his clinic and start seeing patients again.

So despite the midwife telling me to push when I felt like it, I was screeching for the doctor and going mad with the idea that I had to bear with this pain because the doctor wasn't back yet. And it didn't occur to me to cross my legs either. When he finally returned, I was partially distracted by the fact that I was watching my doctor change out of his work shoes into the most unglamourous of yellow boots.

But that was where the real fun began.

He, in the calmest of voices, told me to push when I was ready. By that point, I was alternating between sobbing from the intensity of the discomfort and swearing like a banshee. Until I heard him very firmly tell me I was wasting my breath and should channel it toward pushing the baby out. He also warned me that I was going to feel some stinging because he remembered that not only was I anti-pain relief, I was anti-episiotomy and the only way around it was to administer a perineal massage to muscle that was already going to be stretched beyond belief.

My thoughts at that point I think bordered on "I don't care what is going on, I just want this extremely weird, burning sensation to STOP!" I'd clarify at this point that while it was painful in a way that being sliced is painful, there was the very real sensation of something very big and possibly alien like bursting forth from my very core. And despite that fact that I've run for so much of my life and pride myself in being physiologically aware of my body and its muscles, I really had no idea what I was doing or what muscles I needed to engage.

But since millions of women have go through it before me and have survived, I figured I would too. 3 pushes and his head was out. And these 3 pushes came almost one on top of another. Because of that, despite the fact that I wanted to be free from an episiotomy, the doctor had no choice but to do it. He said that Muffin was coming too fast for him to stretch the muscles out in time. Anyway, another half push and the shoulders were released and then another half push for the rest of him to come tumbling out.

The minute they put my steaming hot Muffin on me, I declared very loudly that I wasn't ever going to do this again. I think that broke the tension in the room quite a bit.

So that's how Muffin was born. Between my water bag bursting and him tumbling right out of me was the longest ten minutes of my life but in the grand scale of things, it was a mighty short labour and delivery.

Incidentally, Muffin's name is Dylan Josiah Tan.

And here are some souvenir shots from the birth that are totally inane.

My trusty heat sock.
    

 

The victim of my water bag bursting unexpectedly! My Mashi-Maru slippers. If you look very carefully, the right one, has a stain above the ear that Packrat, try as he may, could not get rid off.
















Presenting Baby Dylan, 30 minutes after delivery after his first feed.

















His very proud Big Sister who fawns over him like a doll. His Big brother however, is a bit worried about his position being usurped and is clinging on to Mommy for dear life.
















For all those totally freaked out by this post and are contemplating adoption and a hysterectomy, it really isn't as bad as I've made it out to be. It can't be all that bad since I really didn't have any drugs to do it. Maybe taking out the wisdom teeth are worse, since you can't do that without anaesthetic. So there, a means of comparison!

We followed up this blow by blow account with a spiritual perspective of the birth. So for those who want to read on, here it is.

This post is part of the ‘Birth Stories’ Blog Train hosted by Owls Well


If you would like to travel to the previous stops on this Blog Train and read more interesting birth stories, you can start with this one here with Prayerfull Mum, Danessa.

Danessa is a Stay-at-Home Mum to one precious princess. Read on to find out this mother's experience of giving birth that took place 5 years ago. Sometimes we got to be careful what we pray for ...

To read other exciting birth stories please click on the picture below.

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Respect the child's decision

- There are parts of this post that are spiritual in nature so consider yourself warned before you roll your eyes-

For the longest time, Jordan has been wanting to move schools. Initially, it was because she wasn't settled at her school. But even when she did settle and found her footing, she seemed to still have this inclination to move schools.

By then, we weren't so keen to do so because she had a group of friends that we liked and she could count on. She had strong teachers who were providing her good grounding. It was a good school with simple, decent and strong Christian values. There were no airs to it and we liked that very much.

Unfortunately, she kept picking on things like the girls beingnoisy and sometimes mean and the toilets being smelly and dirty. While we tried to assure her that she would face the exact situations in any other girls' school, she remained like a dog with a bone.

Since there was no dissuading her, we told her that it was then up to her to make it happen. We told her that we would submit her application for her but everything else would be up to her. She would need to

1. Provide consistently good results.

Her edict to herself as she worked towards the year-end examinations

2. Do whatever she felt necessary to get in.

3. Pray for God to open the door for her.

And then we left it. All I had to remember was to submit her results every semester. Jordan on the other hand, talked about it incessantly as if it were already going to happen. When we told her not to get her hopes up, she took it one step further and chose to write to the principal of the school. Jordan then convinced Grandma to drive her to the school and hand deliver the letter to the school office.

A day after her final term exams began, we heard from the school. They were offering her a place for next year. It was what we had been half hoping for for the last two years but thought was never going to happen. Once we got over all the hairs on our arms standing because we knew that it was by the Grace of God more than anything else, we were overwhelmed with nostalgia and reluctance. After all, her current school had done her no harm but in fact given her so much room to grow and develop as a person. And by taking her out, we were in some way hinting that it wasn't good enough for her. And by taking her out, we were throwing her into a brand new environment that she would need to get used to and make friends, all over again.

But the decision wasn't ours to make. That conflict was the hardest to bear. As parents, we are used to calling the shots for JED. But we had put the responsibility of her getting into her school of choice, into her hands. So it was only right to let her decide. We waited till her exams were over before we told her. In the ensuing days, Packrat and I went back and forth, weighing the merits of the new school but lamenting the loss of the her current school.

When we did tell her, we did so most dramatically. We pulled her out of school once her exams were over, took her to brunch and showed her the email. And as she read the email and chomped down on her buttered toast, a grin spread across her face, wide enough to split it. That was our answer enough. People asked if we would have pulled rank and demanded our preference over hers. That grin and the look on her face told us that we would be doing her and in the long term, ourselves a great disfavour, if we took that moment away from her. It was her moment. She did everything she could to get it and if we pulled it from under her feet, she would never trust us again.

                                 

Later on, I asked her what she thought were the reasons why she got into the school after such a long wait.

Her response was that
1. She had worked very hard and she had got herself some pretty good grades.
2. She had prayed. Very very hard.
3. She had written to the principal.

I asked her when she had prayed. In the words of those annoying click bait posts on FB, her answer blew me away.

Me: So, Jordan, when did you pray?
Jordan: Today, at recess.
Me: You prayed today, at recess that you would be able to move schools?
Jordan: Yes. And after recess, you came to pick me up and told me I got in.

Goosebumps.

So, with a heavy heart and trepidation on our part and an excited one on hers we're off on this new adventure, all because God heard the prayers of our 8 year old. May she always remember this as her first encounter of God's faithfulness to her.

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A Resurrection Egg Hunt

I recently learnt that in many developed countries that Easter is celebrated, children expect the Easter bunny to bring them presents. This year, the big uproar is because Disney had not produced enough Elsa and Anna dolls and mums were wailing about how their daughters would be so upset that the Easter bunny didn't bring them dolls from Frozen.

When I eventually picked up my eyeballs that had rolled so hard they fell out of my eyes, I decided that even though I had started a tradition of doing an Easter egg hunt with JED, I was going to make sure that it at least had something to do with Easter. And no way was I going to buy them Easter bunny gifts.

So this was my way of making slightly less pagan and commercialized and slightly more Christian.

---Somewhat Christian activity to follow--

How to make an Easter Egg Hunt about the Crucifixion and the Resurrection .

1. Find 12 empty plastic eggs. (It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be because I had procrastinated and the eggs sold out. I also discovered this morning that individually wrapped chocolate easter eggs sold out too!).

2. Print out the relevant verses and the reason for the little symbols. This was a great blog guide for them.

3. Play scavenger hunt in the middle of the night round the house looking for the items from the printed verses. We had to find
a. Some palm leaves
b. A piece of bread
c. Silver Coins
d. Guaze, purple marker and something to fashion a crown from. (The remnant palm leaves twisted into a ring)
e. Something to make a whip ( I settled for an old shoe strap)
f. Tooth picks to make a cross
g. Nails (The carpentry kind)
h. Cardboard to make a sign "This is the King of Jews"
i. Sponge and another tooth pick to make a spear.
j. Spices (Cinnamon. I could have sworn I had cloves and star anise somewhere but at midnight, the effort was too great)
k. A stone

It's true. There are only items for 11 eggs here. The 12th egg was meant to be empty. And a good thing we left it so because that was the one egg that Packrat hid so well that no one found it.

4. Hide them all over the garden together with some boiled and coloured quail eggs just to mix it up a little.

5. Send the troops out to look for the eggs with specific instructions that the boys were to look for the green eggs and the girls the yellow ones. They were told that it wasn't a competition. They had to work amongst themselves to find their eggs and work together to find the 12 special ones. It meant the girls told the boys where the green eggs were and the boys gave the girls the yellow ones they found. They kept coming together to count whether they had the 12 necessary eggs to end the hunt. We called off the hunt when it was obvious that the 12th egg had disappeared like the plane in the ocean.

6. Report the finds and open the eggs, trying to explain the symbolism behind the different eggs. There were funny responses like "the palm leaves were waved by Jesus to say Hi" and the tomb was empty because "Jesus escaped". But we discovered that amongst the 5 of them, they actually had quite a bit of the Resurrection story internalised.

So, that was that. The JED kids and cousins had a lot of fun, ate some and learnt a little about the day. That, in my book was a pretty good Friday.

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Capturing Faith

The one area that fascinates me with JED is their belief in God. I know their faith is actually a reflection of our faith because they aren't old enough to fully understand God yet but even then, their faith is touching.

We see snippets of it when one of them hurts themselves and the other two (or at least one of the older ones) would pray that 'God takes away the pain.'

They know how to pray for things that matter, like their school to remain open

Of course, we also see them use it for more mercenary purposes like "God, please bring me a pair of binoculars for my birthday."

Recently, there has been a great amount of concern expressed over Satan and how we will know it is Satan since he can take many forms. It took me a long time to explain to them, particularly Evan that while Satan was powerful, God was even more powerful and God was on our side.

He then drew a parallel to the Transformers. God was the leader of the Autobots and Satan was the leader of the Decepticons. Strangely apt.

 And then, there was Jordan who drew God. How wonderful that in all the bright colours and beauty, God was placed in the middle. They seemed to have pretty much hit the nail on its head.

I hope that JED will always have the faith of little children.

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Full Circle Blessings

Last August, I blogged about JED being prayer warriors  for their school, the same way I prayed 30 years ago to get into primary school. Just this week, we found out that, once again, God does hear the prayers of little children and their school will remain open long enough for Muffin to graduate from there. Of course, we still need to pray that they can find a permanent premise somewhere else but for now, they're safe.

To say I am thankful is an understatement. I am in awe. I am moved. And I am wowed that our prayers were indeed answered.

What am I thankful for:
1. Obviously, that Muffin can finish up kindergarten there without disruption. He loves the school so much. He asks to go everyday. He asks to ride the bus everyday. He now sings hymns and strings relatively complex observations although sometimes very garbled. In the last 2 months, he's managed to also overcome his immense dislike for sand. I give the school full credit for that.

2. I don't have to go through the stress of finding and then queuing for another school! As is, all the schools that I had looked at, the only thought that resounded in my head was that it wasn't the same and they all fell short. Now, extremely glad that I don't have to settle and close my eyes and pick something.

3. When I announced to the twins that God had heard their prayers and their school was going to stay open and Muffin could stay on in school there, the beam on their faces made my heart burst. And the realisation on their faces that they had played a part in petitioning God to keep the school open was humbling.

4. I am thankful for this because this will serve to them, as it did for me, as testament of God answering their prayers (especially in the face of all those times when they pray for things like getting a new toy and are disappointed that God didn't hear them). There is no better testament than having it happen in their own lives.

It's been a couple of days since we've heard the news and I haven't stopped being thankful, beaming and skipping because it is such great news. Now I now why my mother still remembers all those 30 years ago when I prayed and God answered my prayers.

Also linking to Mummy Moo's Thoughtful Tuesdays and Mum in the Making's Thankful Today
because it's really made me think and thankful!

  







Technorati Tags: JED, God, kindergarten, Singapore

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