"The days are long, but the years are short."

It has been 11 months, 29 days, 17 hours, and 35 minutes since I first became a mother. And it has been 11 months, 9 days, 17 hours, and 35 minutes of me, hoping and wishing my little guy grows stronger faster.

"The days are long, but the years are short."

I'm not sure who coined this phrase, but I heard it from a friend on Facebook. I couldn't stop nodding. There is never been a phrase so fitting to the life of a parent.

A year ago this time, I was getting ready to sleep, taking picture of my puppy son Twilight with my newly acquired Panasonic Lumix camera, the one with micro four-third lens that came from Japan. This was before the tsunami.

A year later, much time has passed, many things has happened. And the little fetus in my tummy has come to this world, growing strong and tall, and brought us so much joy and happiness.

And I do remember counting the seconds. Every day, it seemed like an lifetime to me. I longed for the day he becomes more alert, I longed for the day when he can turn, can sit up, can crawl, can stand, can walk. I just can't wait for him to grow up. Yet this 11 months, 29 days, 17 hours, and now 45 minutes have passed in a blink of an eye. A very wise friend once told me, "Kids grow up too fast, so just enjoy every second now, both good and bad." And it can't be more true! I very much love the little boy in front of my eyes, but I also miss the soft little baby in my arms.

Happy Birthday my little guy. It has been the best year of my life with many moments disguised as the worst time. It has been the year with most laughter and probably most tears, yet the bittersweet moments all turned into unforgettable memories. Most importantly, it has been the year when we became a family, a happy family of four.

Thank you for coming to our lives. Mommy and Daddy will forever love you.

Happy Birthday Coltrane.

Speaking (English or Chinese) Like a True Mom

As we have now moved to the suburb and CC started pronouncing his first word, “dada dada”, people have started to ask me about if I will teach him Chinese.

“Yes and no.” I said. With Woz, our main communication language is English, since Woz only knows a few words of Chinese. Therefore, I seem to talk to CC in English most of the time as well. But once in a while, with words we all know together, we then all speak in Chinese.

Having spent my teenage years in the US, I have seen this movie way too many times. Parents insist the children learn Chinese or even Taiwanese, so they only strictly speak to the kids in those languages. Somehow the kids just ended up replying in English anyway. Parents also spend time commuting and sending the kids to weekend Chinese schools, so the little ones now have two sets of schools and homework. So instead of running outdoors and going to parks and museums and zoos and loving to learn from anything and everything, they learn to hate learning…at least Chinese. No, I really don’t want to send CC to Chinese weekend schools, if I can help it (or unless he requested it himself.)
I don’t remember who I heard it from, but a few months ago someone told me, “You should teach him to love to learn. If they love to learn, they will be able to learn what they love and be good at it. They will also keep improving themselves throughout their lives.”

What a wise advice!

In this world of Tiger Moms, I am not so sure if my son will be able to beat 95% of his schoolmates in getting more than 1600 on their SATs (Do they still take SAT? You know what I mean.) How do you beat perfection? You can’t. But a person can be unique. A person can be loving, fun, interesting, responsible (personally, financially, and socially), generous, and most importantly, understands oneself. I think having these common values will take my little CC much further in life than getting perfect scores on SAT/MCAT/LSAT, or be able to speak Chinese.

Sixth Month as a Mom

Happy 6 months birthday to CC!!

I’m not sure why, but back when CC was younger and I was struggling with CC’s fussiness, I’ve always told myself, “It’ll be a lot better when he gets to be 6 months!” Probably because I was so looking forward to a baby who has strong enough neck control and can also interact with me. Now at 6 month-old, CC is way more than just “better”!

My little guy has the cutest smile in the whole world. With his big brown eyes and puffy cheeks, he looks more like a cartoon monkey than a human baby! Did I say I think he’s the cutest baby in the world?!

Six months, marks a tremendous milestone for everyone in this family.

Feeding
Yes, our favorite topic. So after the battle of the bottles in the last two months, he is now happily taking bottle at daycare and at home. But as 6 mo looms around the corner, we decided to break him into formula and solids at 5.5 month. We first started with the popular Similac fussiness and gassy formula. Unfortunately, it makes him more gassy! Not only that, it smells and taste like rotten fish! Who would want to drink that?! Not me, and certainly not Mr. CC! Instead of giving him 3 4-oz bottles of breastmilk daily for daycare, I made 3 bottles of 1:3 formula:breastmilk. So instead of drinking all 12oz, he ended up drinking only 9oz! Well, I might as well just give him 9oz of pure breastmilk then! So that was a defeat. What’s worse is, since we mix formula with breastmilk, we can no longer keep the breastmilk! Very wasteful. So we went and search for another formula. Well, we heard Enfamil is even worse tasting, but Gerber’s Good Start is decent. So we went and bought 8 tiny glasses of Good Start, and did a tasting testing ourselves first.  Hmm…actually decent enough that I would drink it! However, Mr. CC somehow still prefers his breastmilk, so we struggled a little more. Finally, I decided to give him one bottle of pure formula early in the morning. If he drinks it, good. If not, he’ll be hungry enough to drink the 9oz of breastmilk in the later meals. No verdict yet, but at least we won’t be wasting breastmilk!

So that’s the story of formula. I still hope to migrate to not pumping at all during work hours.

Next, the story of solids. We purchased Earth’s Best Whole Grain Rice Cereal with Apple. The first try I mixed it with cold breastmilk from the fridge and it ended with a disastrous puke. But every baby love cereal!! Well, not Mr. CC…until the second try, when we really warmed up the sweet formula. This time, he was all chilled and laid back, sitting on his lamb chair, opening his mouth when the spoon is near, like the King of Persia! The next few tries are not exactly so successful, but definitely better than formula.

School Activities
I never thought someone so tiny has so much to do at school! In the 2 months in school/daycare, CC has already made some incredible art works! He finger painted his brother Twilight, made some cutsie foot prints, and foot mold!

Less Than 99.99% Mommy

After breastfeeding exclusive for 5.5 months, CC had formula for the first time. He usually takes 4-oz of breast milk only at any given feeding from the bottle during the day. So now, I changed the content to 1-oz formula, 3-oz breast milk (25% formula). Surprisingly, for someone who is always super picky, he took it well. However, he seems to stop at 3-oz, instead of finishing the whole 4-oz. Needless to say, I felt cheated! “Could’ve just given you the 3-oz of breast milk instead of wasting .75-oz of breast milk and .25-oz of formula!” I think he would’ve taken all 4-oz of breast milk, if it were all BM.


And yes, when you’ve been hauling a bag of contraptions day-in and day-out to work, and pump diligently only to get 9-oz daily, you do nickel and dime the baby.


Part of me was really happy he took formula so easily (trust me, it smelled gross!) Part of me felt slightly guilty of depriving him 25% of his god-given rights to natural nutrients.
The societal pressure on Moms to breastfeed is acting up subconsciously, even for someone with strong self-will like me.


Coincidentally, I was reading an article on Golden Gate Mother’s Group magazine, about why we think breastfeeding should be easy, and what Moms wished someone had told them before they started the whole process. One of the most common sentiment was, “I wish someone has told me, while breastfeeding is invaluable, it is NOT at any cost.”


Note the key words here, “Not at any cost.”


I have mommy friends who stressed over breastfeeding for weeks until they finally gave up, full of guilt. I also have mommy friends who are so desperate they were willing to buy other people’s breast milk! To think feeding your baby someone’s bodily fluid! Yuck! Why do we think it’s better than formulated nutrients?


It is absolutely scary.


What people don’t tell you is, the journey of breastfeeding is tough. Exclusively breastfeeding makes it even worse. Our society has always given parents a lot of pressure in every possible way. But this one, breastfeeding, it’s all Moms’. We feel, short of allowing the baby to eat us away for 6 months 100%, we are being bad mothers.


Motherhood is NOT measured by how much you breastfed.


I know the WHO and AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) promote exclusively breastfed up till 6 months, and continues to breast feed until 1.5 years. In a perfect world, that would be everyone’s dream. But I have a feeling that these guidelines are written by people who are either non-Moms, Moms who don’t work, or Moms who just had an easy time breastfeeding.


Let me start from the top.


Your “suffering” starts at day 1. After the work of labor or c-section, you are immediately told to hold and feed your baby. And most importantly, “Make sure he has a good latch and make sure he’s swallowing!” What does that suppose to mean? If you think 3 hours of breastfeeding class can teach you how to do it perfectly, you are WRONG! We were lucky to have stayed in the hospital for 4 days, and therefore had numerous nurses teaching us the correct latching method. But not everyone has that “luxury”.


Then comes day 3-4, when your milk really starts to “come in”. “What? You mean the baby wasn’t drinking milk in the last couple days?” No, it was colostrum, aka liquid gold. But now when your milk really starts to come in, you will feel the engorgement. Best way to describe it is having two lead-feel-alike half balls bolted on your chest, making it hard even to breath. Yah, it was that good.


Then you go home, and the hard work has just started. You feed around the clock, every 2 hours. You feed for 15 minutes each side, diligently writing the feeding time down, and then burp for another 10 minutes, diaper him afterwards because most likely he’s soiled during the feeding, put him to sleep, and repeat after another hour or so. Good times.


Then at 3 weeks, you were told to introduce bottles and start pumping. But of course you have no idea how often to pump and when to pump. So now instead of just feeding him and getting it done in 30 minutes, you now have to pump while he’s a sleep. And let’s not forget bottle/nipple washing and sterilization. Your life revolve around your little man’s oral intake.


Then you say, “Oh, I’m not going back to work yet, so I’ll just do bottles once a week. At most twice.” Well…at 6 weeks post-partum, halfway through your maternity leave, you realized your baby now completely refuse bottles. Who was it that told you they’ll have nipple confusion and will prefer bottle instead of you?!!!


So you stress over the bottle feeding, have him throw fits when someone else tries to feed him, and have him looking at you with those big puppy eyes, pleading to have you instead of the bottle. Meanwhile, your pumping schedule is now all wrong, your milk ducts start to clog up, when you’re not feeding him you are trying to get the clogs out. Your life now is full of hot showers, hand-expression, cabbage leaves, peppermint, and lots and lots of PAIN. So much pain you almost wish to just stop breastfeeding altogether.


But he is still not taking the bottle, so that will mean he will starve…You now wish you never started breastfeeding and just went straight to formula.


Then, finally, you had to go back to work. He goes to daycare/nanny, it took him few days to learn to eat from the bottle, and he lost some weight in the meanwhile. It pains you to part with him every morning, it pains you even more to see him at the evening, looking much thinner. All the while, every day you carry an extra bag to work, just so you can pump at work. And hopefully your work place has a fridge to keep those precious yummies.


In a few weeks, your little man is now happily eating from the bottle. In fact, he’s eating A LOT from the bottles. More than you can pump at work. You start to dip into the freezer stash, and wished you had pump more during when you had over-supply problem. Every day your little man is eating more than you can pump. Every day you try to count calories but this time you want to hit 3000 Cal/day. Every day you see the digits on the scale goes down when you’re on it, but not necessary go up when your little man’s on it. Where did it all go???


Now at 2 weeks short of 6 months, you gave in. Yes that was me. I marched into BabiesRUs, spending money on food for CC for the first time. And for the first time in his life, he is no longer 99.99% Mommy.


Again, this journey was very very very challenging.


At any given time, I always tell myself, “Just one more day.” And the one more day has come to be 5.5 months. It probably will continue to go on for a few more days, weeks, or (do I dare to say it?!!) months. But now I have the comfort of knowing, even if I just vanished tomorrow, CC will not starve. He may not be 99.99% Mommy any longer physically, he will always be 100% the love of my life.


And that, is priceless, even more so than a few ounces of liquid gold.


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P.S. For all the Moms-to-be, I beg of you, PLEASE do not stress yourself over breastfeeding. Do what you can, go one day at a time. And remember, it is perfectly okay to do formula!!

Blessed

Today, I got my major dose of reality check.

I was searching for formulas and I came across this blog site: http://wwwourunexpectedjourney.blogspot.com/

At first I was just reading without much thought. I mean, it was just a blog site of a mom of three. Then, I realized it's a mom of a Down Syndrome baby boy.

I always have a soft spot in my heart for people with DS, and their families.

From a young age of a few months until I was 4, I had a nanny across the street from my house. Every day I would go over to her house while my parents go to work. She was my favorite nanny and I am pretty sure I was her favorite baby too. She, has a daughter with DS. Her name means "beautiful", and she is truly a very sweet and beautiful girl (and now lady). She was always very sweet to me, and she "protects" me when her brothers teased me. SHe was an older sister I never had.

Last year, they came to my wedding banquet in Taiwan. It meant a lot to me.

A year ago when I was pregnant with CC and was going through all the genetic testing, I knew I would never be able to keep the baby if he were to have DS. Not because of any prejudice, but because I didn't think (and still don't) I am strong enough to raise a baby so special. I do have full respect for any parents who choose to take on that challenge in life.

Amidst all the complains about how CC is not sleeping through the night still at 5.5 months and how he posed such a challenge of taking bottles, today, I had a hard case of reality check. If those are the only "issues" we're having with CC, we are truly blessed. Life could be a lot more challenging and there are people smiling and marching forward, even with those challenges.

Fifth Month as a Mom

I am quite ashamed. Although I have all the excuses in the world, I definitely have been less than diligent in keeping CC’s journal alive. Actually, come to think of it, this is MY journal which CC has hijacked!

Back to the subject.

Here is the 5th month as a mom.

Daycare


After the fiasco of resisting bottles, looking like poor orphan when Mommy leaves every morning, and eventual first illness, we have definitely turned a new page when it comes to daycare now. CC got a new primary teacher (Yoohoo! we secretly didn’t love the first one.) who absolutely adores him! All the other teachers love hanging with him as well! More importantly, he is enjoying daycare so much, sometimes I think he cries in protest on our drive home! Unfortunately, we may only be at the daycare for three more months…But that’s another topic.

Sleep Training and Battle of the Bottles


One of the most dreaded event in my life. Not because of anything else, but the need to have him “cry it out”. Part of me knows his cry is nothing but words of protest and not psychological trauma, it was still the hardest 45 minutes (or however long) in my life. But, such training wasn’t without any benefit. While he has yet to be sleeping through the night every night (and this is most likely because his demand for milk is surpassing my ability to supply him), he has learned to drink from the bottle very well. We no longer have a starving baby in school! We have also learned to decipher his “words” a little better. Well, money very well spent.

New Job


Well, this is “Fifth month as a MOM”, not “Fifth month as a baby”, right?! Yes, New job. I started a new job with a 4.5 mo. Busy? Most definitely. Crazy? Just ever so slightly. Mistake? Of course not. While I understand my new duty as a Mom and would do everything to play this role well, I also understand I am first and foremost, an individual. I’ve been wanting a new job, something in product marketing, for the last two years. This is my dream-come-true and therefore I will work extra hard to keep it a reality. Yes people have sarcastically teased about how nutty I was to do so, but what else is more important than being happy?! So now one months into the job, I am, still undoubtedly, very content with my choice.

First Family Cold

Picture from: toniyammine.posterous.com

Today, marks the last day of the first family cold in the Wozniak family.

Or I’d like to think so.

Last week, with CC as patient zero in this family, we all got sick. None of our symptoms are completely alike, but the misery was mutual. In addition to the aches and sneezes and coughs, Papa Woz and Mama Woz also had to be up every hour to care for Baby Woz. It was miserable.

It’s the fastest we’ve ever consumed saline, Kleenex, and hot ginger tea.

So, today, as the last day of Chinese Tiger year, we would like to get rid of all these nasty bugs. And start the wonderful Rabbit year with sound and healthy body!

It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

“It takes a village to raise a child.” Something I’ve heard ever since I before I was pregnant.

While you’re the one with the child, someone else always have some suggestion or advice for you. Sometimes they are your parents, sometimes they are your friends, sometimes they are non-parents themselves. They mean well, and they really do, but inevitable judgments are passed on along with the well intentions.

It is especially apparent now CC is sick with his first cold.

People blamed the daycare…and I do too. But while blaming the daycare, they also are criticizing my decision in sending him to daycare. Do I have a choice? Yes I do. You always have a choice in life. But it’s a matter of it’s a reasonable choice.

I don’t want to coup him up at home with a nanny, because I do want him to be socialized as early as possible, given he is most likely going to be an only child. I also don’t trust any one single person to tend to him without any other watchful eyes. I mean, I don’t even trust myself alone with him!

I don’t want to be a stay-at-home Mom. I know, it’s again, choice. But being home for the 3 months during maternity leave made me realize I am very ill-suited for such a life. For the sanity of everyone in the family, this is not an option.

I do wish I can have my village here to raise this child for me. But my “village” is either in Kamloops, Canada, or Taipei, Taiwan. If there were any “one” person I would trust to care for CC alone, that’ll be my Mom, my aunts, and my sister-in-law. But, it’s all wishful thinking.

My last option is to send him to a daycare. Yes, I hate it. As a person who was an extremely timid and shy child, I would cry and cry and cry when going to a new school. So it pains me to say good-bye to CC every morning, especially when he is starting to have stranger and separation anxiety. I also hate it because it took me months to train him to take the bottle in preparation for daycare, and even then he’s not drinking much, and it pains me to see my child hungry. And then I hate it because he can hardly nap at daycare, being so sensitive to noises. And then I hate it because 3 days into daycare, he is now down with his first cold.

I hate it. There are times in this past week when I’m alone, at the verge of tears, wishing for my own Mom.

In this modern Western society, we are lucky to have doctors who aren’t filling us with chemicals, but told us, “No medicine needed, he’ll work it out himself.” But between the puking due to snot in throat and 101F fever, I wished I could give him something to make it all better, even if it’s me taking over all the discomfort. Wishful thinking did come true and now I’m down with it as well, making me the anti-viral factory to make him better faster. But it doesn’t remove the suffering from him completely. Every time I saline-drop him and using the nose-suction device on him, he is always screaming and fighting but looking so tiny and helpless at the same time. Even Twilight couldn’t stand it and comes by for moral support. Yet immediately afterwards, he would cling to me as if he has already forgotten I am the devil with the mean nose-sucking apparatus, sobbing and whimpering but finally with a cleared nasal passage. He forgives me instantly and is even grateful.

Talk about being brave, and talk about breaking your heart.

So we are here, 4 days into this nasty cold, our little village of 3 people and 1 dog, stayed brave and keep plugging along.

Fourth Month as a Mom

Battle of the Bottles
[3M6D] OMG! CC took bottle from me, the original milk vending machine! Yoohoo Horray! Lately we’ve been heading out a lot, so in the absence of bottle or myself when he’s in carseat, we give him his monkey binky, which shaped very similar to the bottle nipple. Maybe that helped him identify with the bottle nipple, he is now definitely happier with the bottle! :) We’ve also tried hard to keep up the habit over the Christmas holiday so our nanny won’t have to re-do the work all over again.

[3M2W1D] Another OMG moment! CC took the bottle from Mara this time without even as much as a whimper! As part of the new year resolution for  both myself and CC, we have decided to make bottle drinking as one of the item. And on first day of the year, he started to do so! It did take a lot of experimenting to get here though. We tried different bottles, different nipples, different apparatus, different positions, different background music/TV shows, different milk temperatures…You name it, we’ve tried it. Finally, we went back to the very first bottle we used, and it worked! So you can imagine how proud Mommy must feel to see it all come together! 2.5 months of stress and hard work has finally come to fruition. I must say, it’s better than any work recognition!
Although somehow I think CC was motivated by my promise of, “The sooner you take the bottle nicely, the sooner you’ll get to have all sorts of different yummies!” ;)

Sleep
[3M4D] Wow, did that just happen? On the night of Christmas Day, CC slept for 6 hours straight! A Christmas miracle!

[3M1W1D] Okay, I don’t want to jinx it, but this is the third day in the same week that CC has slept for close to 5-hr stretch! In fact, last night, he slept for a 5.5-hr session (9-230am), then another 5-hr session (3-8am)! And he didn’t even put up a fight during the night feeding! He just ate, burped, ate again, and sleep! Yay! We’re definitely going to strengthen his day routine and hopefully that’ll transfer to his night sleep pattern too.

[3M2W1D] Oh I probably jinxed it. He’s back to feeding every 2.5 hours at night! Although it could also be he’s cold, he peed, he has gas pain, or all of the above.

Sleeping Arrangement
[3M1W1D] We are trying to finalize the sleeping arrangement with CC. From the very beginning, we know it’s not realistic to do family bed. Simply because we already have a family bed situation going on with Twilight. And baby + puppy + two adults on the same bed, albeit king size bed, is just not a good idea. So we have had CC sleep in his own crib in our room during night time, and portable crib in livingroom during the day time for the first month.

By the second month, we’ve noticed even though everyone tells you to let baby sleep in noisy, well-lit room during the day to establish his day/night pattern, it is just not working for the very sensitive CC! He wakes at every little noise or light, so we found ourselves tiptoeing like thieves in the house. And he is not getting good sleeps, which makes him more cranky at night! At which point, we moved him into the new spare room and sleep on the futon. At night, we also took down one side of his crib and side-cart it to our bed, so it’s easier on me after night feedings.

By the third month, we realized the side-carting is difficult on our backs to put him back to his crib, and it’s not really saving me any effort at night. So we put his crib back to how it was, but left it in our room still.

This month, we finally had all our guests gone, so now officially turning the guest room into CC’s nursery. We’ve moved the portable crib, as well as all his clothes and supplies into the room. We’re waiting for when his sleep pattern strengthens a bit more, then we will move his full-size crib down and have him sleep in his own room at night too. Hopefully that will happen by next month.

There’s an App for that
[3M1W1D] Yes, there is an iPhone App for just about anything. I keep track of CC’s feeding pattern for a good two months on Excel spreadsheet on a laptop on the night-stand. It got too tiring after a while and I have given up since. However, now we know he has an solid feeding pattern, we are actually more curious about his sleeping pattern. And with the lack of sleep at night, Woz and I sometimes wake up wondering, “Did he wake up at X time last night?” Well, there is an App for that! A friend we met at the baby play date told us about Baby Connect, which not only tracks baby’s eating, sleeping, and pooping/peeing pattern, it also tracks things such as vaccination, growth, medication!

What’s more, instead of having to graph out the growth curve ourselves, it does all the computation and graphing for us, and we can even see things online! Seriously baby data mining we have going on here! And the best part is, all for $4.99!

No more laptop by the bed emitting radiation to my brain while I sleep!

Back to Work
[3M2W] At exactly 3.5 months, Mommy went back to work for the first time. Leaving not-so-solid-bottle-drinker CC with the nanny for 6.5 hours. Although nanny said I can call to check on him, I was too nervous that I would hear baby screaming his guts out and therefore worry for the rest of the day.
So I didn’t. I looked at his pictures, I showed off his pictures, I talked about him, I tried to catch up with work…anything but worry about him. And I went home to a slightly struggled but happy baby. Absolutely love my little guy!

Life is Fair…Or Is It Unfair?

Picture from: http://www.intomobile.com/2010/09/23/poll-how-do-you-feel-about-tiered-pricing-is-it-fair/

At 3.5 months post partum, I have a body that makes CC proud to wear, “My Mom is out of your league” onesie. Oh correction, it was 2 months post partum. With my 50-lb weight gain during pregnancy, I was very lucky that not much of those 50-lbs landed on me.

But, when you gain some, you lose some…or is it the other way around?

After a relatively easy pregnancy (and I stress the word “relative”) and quick labor (c-section, he was out in 10 minutes), we fought the parenting battle every second of our lives since. It was the jaundice, the acid reflux, the gassiness, the battle of the bottles, and now, the je-ne-sais-quoi.

Really, I don’t know what’s going on.

He wakes easily (just as easily as 3.5 months ago), and then he either goes into a crying fit, or he doesn’t want to sleep. He has absolutely no patience for anything, and again goes into a crying fit. He still has gas problem, and goes into a crying fit for that too. I can think of a million possibilities of how his physical being is affecting him, but I just no longer feel that’s the case.

So why is it so unfair that we get such a fussy little guy? Is it to make up for all the cuteness and the “easy” pregnancy? In that sense, life is fair.

Truth is, I hate to think of myself as a failing mother this early on in my baby’s life. But it is very very hard not to. Especially when I’m such a scientist by training, especially when I believe for every reaction, there must be an action that triggered it. Is his "bad” (and I’m using this term very very loosely) behavior a reaction to anything I did? I thought about all of it so much that I grind my teeth at night and have tight jaw muscles when awake.

It’s hard not to think there is no relevance. It’s even harder to read and hear stories of all these wonderful babies around us, or people say, “He’ll grow out of it.” but you see no light at the end of the tunnel.

Regardless whether life is fair or unfair, I truly love CC, but I also truly wish I know what is going on.