Time

I got a message today from Aunty Cindy, wishing me and my family happy holidays. In the message, she told me that Pen was now in her first year of Uni. That message and thinking about how old Pen is now just makes me feel incredibly nostalgic, and also makes me just marvel at how all the time has passed. My two girls are now roughly the same age as Pen and Viv were, when I first met them back in 2009.

I first met Aunty Cindy, Uncle Bill, and their two girls when I went to London to study. They had lived in London for the longest time, and I had never met my Dad's cousin before that. Even after my Dad left, I'd meet up with them every once in a while, navigating the shitty TFL weekend transit links, to make my way to their place around the Finchley Road area. Once for a week, I even babysat Pen and Viv, when their nanny went back to the Caribbean for a vacation home.

My memories of my time spent with them over the 3 years come in little blips and blobs. Viv around 2 years old, covering herself with a sheet and pretending to be a ghost and running around, before smacking full force into a piano, and my incredulous response when Uncle Bill and Aunty Cindy just cracked up in laughter before consoling their upset child (I am now in this same school of parenting). Pen talking about how she wanted to buy a truck when she grew up, so she could transport her art work and supplies around easily. The two girls bamboozling me into reading them entire books at bedtime (when Uncle Bill came home, he said they usually only read a few pages). The feeling I had when I picked Pen up from school, waiting with all the nannies, and making sure I had adequate snacks (grapes) for the journey back to their home. Viv running Thomas the Tank Engine up all my arms and my head, until my hair got stuck wound tight around the train, and Aunty Cindy had to cut me free. Watching them brush their teeth, and then eating the toothpaste afterwards instead of gargling and spitting it out (I now see this with E of course, kids toothpaste and all that). 

My interactions with Pen and Viv were my first real meaningful interactions with children as an adult. Watching and learning from Uncle Bill and Aunty Cindy also provided frameworks for how I have ended up deciding to parent (largely chilled out, the kids will be fine). And at the same time all 4 of them provided an anchor for me in London as I learned how to become a young adult and navigate my own mental health. 

Since leaving London in 2012, I haven't seen the girls at all. A few years after that Aunty Cindy sent something that included a picture of the girls, and I stuck it up over my desk in Singapore. In 2017, Uncle Bill came to my wedding in in New York City, and a few years later Aunty Cindy came to visit NYC, and Jon and I met up for a meal with her then. Messages and emails go back and forth ever so often, but it wasn't until today that I really stopped and realised that 10 years has passed since I've been in London, and seen them all in person. I am grateful that Aunty Cindy always remembers to message, especially when I forget and feel like I'm in the thick of things.

Halloween Candy

For the last two years after Halloween, I've been getting obsessed with different types of candy. Last year it was Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, and this year it's Three Musketeers. It starts with me rummaging through E's substantial pile of junky treats and fishing out a few pieces, then devolves into me googling the aforementioned candy on Wikipedia (why? useless knowledge acquisition perhaps?) and then lastly scouring for the cheapest possible place to acquire more of the candy. Last year it was Walgreen's the day after Halloween for clearance Reeses Peanut Butter Pumpkins. This year it was Walmart, some two weeks after Halloween itself, for a small pack of two full-size bars of Three Musketeers, after slowly going through E's pile for tiny morsels. 

Halloween was fun this year. We all dressed up as a family with a theme. Jon was a bumblebee, E was a butterfly, M was a ladybug, my Mum was Autumn leaves, and I was a flower. This year I also got to partake in the spiked Apple cider that a neighbour was offering - and it was very good! Halloween is definitely one of my favourite holidays. 

Covid-19

About two weeks ago, we finally got striken with Covid-19. I had been sick a few days before (starting Tuesday), and tested negative on Wednesday. Regardless of my status, I started to feel ill on Wednesday and Thursday, and was starting to feel sort of better by Saturday. Sunday however, Jon woke up feeling ill and we tested ourselves + the girls, and boom, the tests were all positive. I was still feeling OK however, and wondered if my earlier bout was Covid-19 and I just hadn't known. I thought maybe the worst was over, and I was patient zero and had unknowingly spread it to my poor family. 

Then Monday came around, and by late morning I was rapidly feeling terrible. By early afternoon, I wanted to go to the hospital because I felt so weak and in so much pain and discomfort from stomach issues, and I was throwing up repeatedly. Adding to my stress was that the girls were sick, and E was running high (or at least what felt to me like high) fevers at night, and I still had to take care of M as she woke up repeatedly screaming in the middle of the night. Finally on Wednesday mid-morning, I started to feel somewhat human again, and no longer dreaded being conscious and awake. Thursday, I think I brought the kids out for a short walk around the neighbourhood, and felt utterly drained afterwards. All I can say is, the experience sucked, and I am so very thankful that my Dad was with us the whole time AND had already gotten Covid-19 recently, and so he escaped getting infected this time and was able to help with the children, chores, and making food. 

Since then, my Dad and I (with the girls), visited Aunty WY and Uncle George in the D.C. area. We went from last week Tuesday to Saturday, and it was nice seeing them again after a few years. Lauren and Alex also swung by for dinner one night. It was a nice short trip, though I really did not enjoy having to share a room with M at night (as if taking care of her and her constant wakeups wasn't painful enough).

Today, E started her first day of Preschool. I wasn't able to get the cute photos and dress her up nicely because I had a migraine that started yesterday in the early evening, and E also woke up late because she had a stomachache in the wee hours (cue: blood curling screaming at 5am). So she went to school late, while I staggered around disoriented after a shitty night. 

Anyway after E and I got home from the park (her request before she went to school), we saw one of neighbours, Cathy, fixing her fence and coughing away. E saw this and said, "Oh! She has Covid". And I just burst out laughing.

Singapore - May to July 2022

For the last one and a half months, the girls and I have been back in Singapore. We flew off with Jon and my Mum on 15 May, and arrived on 17 May. It was the worst flight on my life to date, travelling with 2 children, and transiting in LAX. The girls took turns being cranky and upset, and as a result Jon and I got barely any rest during the flight(s), plus I still had to find ways to squeeze in pumping breastmilk/dealing with being engorged and in discomfort. Then trying to schlep all our luggage from the domestic terminal to the international terminal was another ordeal in itself. Luckily the LAX international terminal in itself was pleasant, and the TSA agents there were actually really nice (the best I've experienced so far). Still, it was a total of 25 hours of travelling time (not including the wait from when we left our house in St Louis), and it felt like every single minute of it. 

Anyway I arrived back to Singapore, and within 6 hours was promptly hit by one of the worst colds I've had in my life with a fever and chills. It was shit and I basically spent the whole week out of it, so Jon and I were unable to do many touristy things with the girls. In the end we at least managed to visit the SEA aquarium the Friday afternoon of the following week, just before Jon was due to fly off back home. Jon and I also managed to go out together briefly, without the girls, for lunch on Saturday, which was nice. But in general it was a pretty low key week.

After Jon left, I moved back to my parent's place with E. Before that we had been staying at Mama and Yeh Yeh's place (M had been long sent to the care of my parents and Merlina, because I had physically collapsed so spectacularly after arriving back in Singapore). It took a little time getting used to the schedule of my family again, and we sort of fell into my parent's usual routine:

Mondays are when my Dad has to bring Yeh Yeh and Rosie (their helper) to acupuncture in Toa Payoh. So E and I have been follwing them them, and usally go to the library to wait until my Dad has finished checking Yeh Yeh in, before we have lunch together. On Tuesdays, Ryan has art class so we all go for lunch (M included), and while Ryan has his art class at the Devan Nair Institute, M has a baby spa session where she floats about a small tub with an inflatable tube around her neck. Wednesdays/Thursdays/Fridays the past few weeks have been when E and I either go out for lunch with Uncle KL or Mama. Saturdays are when Ryan has swimming lessons at Clementi, so E and I wander around Clementi central having a snack or going to the library in the interrim, then we have lunch out with my parents. Lastly on Sundays, my Dad goes to church in the mornings, then has to take care of Yeh Yeh from lunch time to mid-afternoon, and so I usually try to follow him out with E when he goes out to buy lunch for all of us. When I have gone out with friends, it's generally been for dinners that start at either 7 or 7:30pm (which feels unfanthomably late to me as the mother of two young children), and after this upcoming weekened, I would have pretty much met everyone that I have aimed to meet. 

On 14 July, in a week's time, I'll be heading off to St Louis with my Dad and the girls. I'm not looking forward to the actual flight back, and am feeling a little anxious about leaving behind this new routine (routines are a salve for my generalised anxiety), but I am looking forward to being back in my own house. The temperature in St Louis however, has been insane the past week, hovering been about 100 to 110 Fahrenheit (which I don't even want to think about in terms of Celcius because it would then make the horror concrete), so I hoping that at least abates a little before we arrives back. Still haven't begun packing yet, but I don't think there will be much to pack. 

'Good' Friday

On Friday last week, while E was in school, I stayed at home with my Mum and did errands. Two of them entailed calling insurance twice, for two different matters. For the second call, which was more specifically regarding my prescriptions, I made it after I picked up E from school. So while E was outside playing on the lawn (and my Mum came out holding M), I paced around studying the growth of my plants while on hold on the phone. Somewhere during this time, I spotted my neighbour Mike, walking his granddog April, and I waved from afar. 

When I was done with the phone call, I glanced at an alert on my phone from KMOV that part of the I-64 East was closed downtown due to a fatal motorcycle accident, mentally shook my head and then put my phone away to continue hanging out with my family outside. It was a nice sunny day, and I was pleased that it seemed like majority of my plants had survived the winter. I was also happy that I had 'adulted' and finished a list of pesky chores that had been outstanding for a while.

That night I tried to go to bed early-ish as usual, but E was up making noise. Her noisemaking, coupled with the need to having to go out and yell at her (too tired and stretched thin for much gentle parenting nowadays unfortunately), made me sleep even later. Just as I came out of the bathroom and was prepared to turn off the lights, my phone lit up with a phone call from Ilse, and immediately my heart quickened. Like most friends, no one calls each other unless an emergency, or something bad has happened. 

I picked up the phone and Ilse told me Randy, our friend Jennifer's ex-husband, had passed away earlier in the day. On a motorcycle accident, on the highway. And I knew right away it was the news alert I had seen at 4pm. We were all in shock. Randy had just taken care of his son, A, for a week. Ilse and her husband Moises had hung out with him while Austin had a playdate with Leo. Ilse and I had been texted about how it had been for her hanging out with Randy, and we were all happy that he seemed to have been getting his shit together to be a good Dad to Austin. And now a week later, Randy was no more.

It's a very strange thing to be mourning the sudden, violent death of a friend's ex-husband. I had a (sort of) front seat to all the self-destructive behaviour that led to the split up between him and Jennifer. He was a huge mess, and I was pissed at his behaviour and its negative impact on Jennifer and A. I was also annoyed that Jennifer seemed to be taking it and enabling him, because she (understandably) did not want her family to be broken up. And this was complicated because on a personal level, self-destructive behaviour aside, Randy was the kind of person that Jon and I get along well with. Our biggest memory with him is watching meme videos (specifically Cat Vibing to Home Depot song) together after Christmas Dinner in 2020. At the same time he seemed on the mend, and of course Jennifer and A loved him dearly. Humans always have a chance to reform and turn things around, and it seemed like he was. 

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As a bystander and somewhat participant, I feel a bit like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, watching things at they unfolded before me. It all started last year with the motorcycle. In the latest iteration of a round of self-sabotaging behaviour (and to be fair, the only one I experienced), Randy decided to spend the money that they had saved for the down payment of a house on a motorcycle. 

More terrible behaviour soon followed, and I heard about it all as the marriage became more unsalvagable with every new thing. As Jennifer prepared to leave, Randy managed to fall off his newly purchased motorcycle and hurt himself slightly. We shook our heads and said that motorcycle would be the death of him. I told Lynne and Mike about it, because I hang out with Lynne and we frequently commiserate about things. Mike (which I why I mentioned him early), said something pithy about how dangerous motorcycles are, something along the lines of hoping he had good life insurance, which made me laugh at the time. 

Memorial Day weekend 2021, Jennifer and Austin drove with another friend of her's and a U-Haul trailer to Houston. I had made a big pile of cookies, per her request, for the trip. It was a mixture of chocolate chip cookies and double chocolate mint chip cookies. 

Finally, the accident which happened last Friday, now brings the whole story full circle. That motorcycle, really was the undoing of Randy. While on the I-64 by the Busch stadium, he hit a trailer being pulled by a truck and was flung off his motorcycle. I can only hope that he did not suffer. 

It probably speaks to how long my brain has atrophied as a stay at home mother that I cannot remember the exact literary device to describe the role of the motorcycle in all of this. And I cannot help but also wonder is it insensitive to even think about such a real human tragedy in literary terms. 

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Right after I got the call from Ilse, I left the bedroom and went downstairs to tell Jon. As we ran through different gamuts of emotions (mine undoubtedly containing a lot more shock and anger), we had a shot of whiskey. It was my first drink in more than a year. That night, both Jon and I slept terribly. It's hard for me to elucidate on quite how numb and how complicated all my emotions felt that night. 72 hours has elapsed since I received that call, and the constant thoughts and worrying about all 3 of the has finally receded into a dull worry.

The worst thing about any human tragedy like this is always the impact on the loved ones that have been left behind.

Fussy Baby

One of the best sensations in the world is feeling the hair on top of a baby's head rest against your cheek. Another one is seeing a baby smile contentedly as it drifts off to sleep after drinking it's fill of milk. Last night M was the fussiest she has ever been since she was born over 2 months ago, and so it was a trying night. Still, I am thankful for the little things, and thankful that overall she is far less fussy than E ever was.

World Events

One of my biggest memories during my first postpartum fog after the birth of E was sitting in front of the TV in my grandparent's dining room, watching the HK protestors storm the Legislative Council. It felt absolutely surreal to think of the world marching on and world history unfolding as I sat in my weird bubble/fog of postpartum depression. And yet there I sat, watching protestors climb over tables and lecterns, and spray painting things on the wooden paneling. All I could think of was, "Oh my goodness" and "WTF". 

When I first had a baby, it felt like the world immediately contracted to just me and whoever was in the house, even though logically I knew that was not the case. I felt like I was on an island, cut off from everything and helpless in the face of the world. Taking even a walk outside without the baby felt taboo, and verboten, even though my anxiety was screaming at me to literally just bolt out the door and get as far away as possible from my baby. Now I don't know how often this negative feeling is experienced by other new mothers, but that's how I felt then in 2019, and how I felt again recently just a few weeks ago.

Well last week I definitely experienced that weird feeling again about being postpartum, and world events. I was up at 1am pumping again after taking care of M, and that's when I found out Russia had invaded Ukraine. It didn't feel real, even though Putin had been sabre-rattling for quite a while prior. Unfortunately 5 days into the conflict, things have becoming more and more real to my addled mind. When I saw an article about a Ukrainian woman having to give birth in a subway while sheltering from bombing, my stress levels immediately went though the roof. 

Anyway all I can say is, Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself.

Schedule at 4 Weeks + 1 Day Old

My daily schedule currently looks like this:

10am - Wake up, pump, eat breakfast

Early afternoon - Lunch, go out (sometimes)

Mid afternoon - Quick walk around the neighbourhood, pump

5:30pm - Shower

6pm - Dinner (though the past few days, these have all inched later by 15 to 30 mins)

6:30pm - Pump

7pm - Go to bed

7:30pm - Switch off lights, try to sleep

11:30pm to 12:30am (time varies) - Get woken up by crying M, feed, put to sleep. Pump and eat. Go and lie down and try to sleep for an hour

2 hours from putting M down (repeats at 2 hour intervals, ex. 1am, 3am, 5am) - Get woken up by crying M, feed, put to sleep, change a diaper somewhere around 1 or 3am. Go back to sleep for a bit.

If it's the 5am or 6am feed - Pump and eat

6:30am - My Mum gets up and takes over responsibility for M; I go to sleep

Next week however, I need to send E to school at 8:30am on Tuesday and Friday, so that throws the schedule into disarray. And given that my anxiety is barely held at bay by this schedule, I'm really not looking forward to this change. Still, it's good that E's school has been able to take her now for Monday, Tuesday, and Friday until 3:30pm, which gives my Mum and I some respite at home. 

M turned 4 weeks yesterday, and will be 1 month old in 2 days on the 24th. 

Postpartum Songs

 After I first had E, the song that kept playing in my head was You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon. I was going through the throes of postpartum anxiety and depression without being aware of it, and something about the song just struck a chord in me. To me the song made me think of being a middle-aged adult, going through a midlife crisis, being dissatisfied and wondering wtf is going on with their life.

In contrast, the song that kept playing throughout my head during the labour and postpartum period of M, is Chop Suey! by System of a Down. The sheer anger, pain, and desperation in the song echo my current darkest emotions as I go through the whole rigmarole of postpartum whatsit yet again. At night when I can't sleep, because I need to take care of M (who is generally up every 1-2 hours), the biblical portion of the lyrics replay over and over in my head.

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Today my in-laws left STL. M is also 3 weeks old. Although my Mum is here, I can't help but feel anxious at the change. Thankfully I am mentally in a better place now than a week ago (which is when my in-laws were originally slated to leave), but I still have a long way to go before I feel comfortable in my own body again.

6 Days Postpartum

I gave birth to baby M at 12:43am, just past midnight on the 24th Jan. The induction was slow and hard, as my GERD acted up and I got a headache. Then right after delivering the placenta, I suffered a hemorrhage. At one point there were something like 12+ medical staff all running around the room doing things, and I lay there just resigned and depleted. Didn't get a chance to hold M until much later. The next day was hard too, as I had a bakri balloon and a catheter in me, and I was pretty miserable. I couldn't sit up without getting a headache after long, and I felt nauseous. 

Anyway, I was happy to be discharged in the late afternoon of 25th Jan after several blood tests came back OK. Except right before we were about to leave, we found out the hot water heater died and it was minus 10 degrees celcius that day. 

Today is now the 6th day of M's life. I am trying to take things day by day and not think too much. Been in contact with my psych, and at least I'm a lot more aware of my emotions and physical feelings now, vs my first birth with E. I'm a mess of hormones and disrupted sleep. Thank God for Jon and my in-laws who are here to help, especially with the first 2 weeks which are known to always be hellish. E provides some comfort too, though obviously she adds to everyone's exhaustion as well. 

Everyone else has gone out today, leaving just M and me at home. It feels kind of nice, because I don't feel great today and am relishing the momentary peace (though an hour later I might start to feel lonely).

39 Weeks 1 Day

I must have gotten a grand total of 2h combined sleep last night. It's currently just past 7am, and I'll probably try to go sleep again in a bit. Last night I couldn't sleep from combined anxiety, hormones, E having nightmares, and general pregnancy pains/discomfort. Luckily so far nights like this one have been relatively few and far between this time. 

I have an elective induction scheduled for today, but I'm worried it'll be postponed again (was meant to be yesterday evening). I'm both anxious and excited for baby M to come - and I'd really like to be able to have some deep rest again.

Nice Weather in Jan

For the past 2 days my in laws have been both dropping off and picking E up at school, because I've been too tired and having weird upper abdominal cramps. Currently 37 weeks and 5 days pregnant today. After lunch I went for a short walk with E, and mistakenly let her wear her rain boots, which of course kept falling off her feet. We ended up not making it very far (down to Lynne's yard), when I got tired from all the standing around waiting for E to fix her boots. Still, it was a nice day to be out even for a little bit - 12 degrees Celsius, sunny and no wind. I only wish I had more energy to bring E to the park or go for a longer walk.

37 Weeks

I am currently 37 weeks pregnant, and have never been this pregnant in my life before (E was born at 36 weeks and 5 days). Several things in my body hurt and are uncomfortable, but nothing beyond the unexpected. This week has been absurdly cold in STL, but with only the tiniest sprinkling of snow, and no additional snowfall in sight.