Preparing Baby Claire 1st year Birthday Party

It is going to be one year ever since our little baby came to our world. To us, time really flies. When we were looking at the photos taken during this past one year when preparing her birthday montage, there was a gush of feeling that came over us.."oh mine...see how much Claire has grown and developed". I even mentioned "Claire looks pretty fat when she was younger, no wonder his uncle said she looked like Hao Shao Wen, the famous shaolin monk kid actor". Now, she looks much more like a girl (refer to the 2nd pic). At least, some passerby asked "She is a girl rite?", not "Is she a boy?" :P

Papa Justin has volunteered to take up the task to create the montage. Can't wait to see how it looks like. Aren't you are excited as me too?

So what are we preparing for the party?

A checklist of items:

• e-invitation
• Banner. This took me some time. I have to cut and copy from her favorite characters from Baby TV.
• programme with activities
• Cakes, cupcakes, buffet, special plates, cups for kids
• Decorations
• Present Wish-list (Since some of our friends asked for a wish-list)
• Claire Video + surprise babytv clips
• Venue @ Bukit Batok CSC, Children Party Room. Initially, we booked a chalet at Aloha Changi. We decided to change venue due to inaccessibility and ...lots of mosquitos which we don't think it will be good for the kids
• Kids' goodie bags
• Play mat, coloring materials for kids
• Music

We wanted to make it a Baby TV theme however, the lack of decorations may be an issue. Thus, we will made do of whatever we have. We will include characters from Hippa Hippa Hey, and characters from Baby Hood.

This is the invitation card created for our relatives and close friends. A friend mentioned that it as so cute. It seemed that Claire was the one inviting them. :)

This is the programme outline. We hope the party will be full of fun for the families and kids. The wonderful thing about this venue is that kids are able to run to the indoor playground next door to have some physical activities.

And..nothing forgetting the cute little things like cupcakes. The rainbow cupcakes from Hey Cupcakes are so cute and yummy for kids. We bet they will love them. Claire can't wait to take a big mouthful of it. :P 

Last but not least.....the Kids Goodie Bags! Pretty simple stuff. A sneak preview into one of the items, the hand clappers! Claire loves it and started clapping with it :)

3 more days to go! :) 

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

Chicken Stew Recipe for our Xmas Dinner 2013

Jingle Bells. Jingle Bells. Jingle All the Way. Yes, Xmas is here! It is our Claire's first Xmas. We bought her a shaker from Bintan when we had our couplehood vacation at Angsana Bintan last week. This resort is really highly recommended if you love clean and beautiful beaches, quiet and relaxing environment with really good massages and spa.

Before I start chatting about our vacation, let us share a great recipe for your family Xmas dinner. It is really a yummy dinner for your little ones too.

Adapted from Annabel Karmel's Easy One Pot Chicken, we adjusted the portion to fit enough for 6 Avent VIA cups for freezing, a portion for Baby Claire and 2 adult portions for us for Xmas Eve Dinner.

Ingredients:

1. 2 tbsp olive oil/ cooking oil
2. 1 onion (around 100g)
3. 2 boneless chicken breast, cut into chunks
4. 6 pieces of small drumlets (For adults)
5. 1 carrot, cut into small bite-size 
6. 200g of sweet potato, 200g of potato, all peeled, and chopped into cubes
7. 1 small apple, peeled, and chopped into cubes
8. 400-500ml of chicken stock (depending how watery do you want the soup to be but at least must be able to cover the pot of ingredients)
9. 80 g of frozen peas

Here are the following steps.

	You can also put in the drumlets here or later.

This cup of chicken stew looks so colorful, full of flavor and definitely very appetizing! Have fun cooking :)

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

Chicken Biscuits for your Baby

A couple of weeks back, I had this urge to cook some healthy snacks for Baby Claire.

Happily, I googled online and found poached chicken balls from Annabel Karmel and adapted from it to make chicken biscuits.

These were a bit overcooked. I didn't managed to take pictures of the biscuits that she had today which were better well done. Remember to remove any burnt sides before your baby snacks on them :)

Look at how she was immersed with her new snack.

These chicken biscuits became her top favorite snack and I encourage mummies to try it out.

Recipe:

• olive oil 
• 1 cup ground chicken (Steamed and blended into almost puree form)
• 1/3 cup fresh bread crumbs 
• 1/4 sweet apple, peeled and coarsely grated 
• 3 Tbs. freshly grated Parmesan cheese 
• 1/4 tsp. fresh thyme leaves 
• Some home-made chicken stock to make it taste better (hee hee, I don't remember how much i put, don't put too much else it will become too watery and you may need to put more flour)
• 2 table spoon of plain flour (not in her original recipe)

How to cook?

1. Add the cooked chicken, bread crumbs, apple, Parmesan, and thyme into the blender or processor. Process until well-combined. 
2. Brush some oliver oil onto the oven tray. Put a tablespoon (or more if you want bigger biscuits) of the mixture onto the tray.
3. Heat oven to 180 degree Celsius and bake for around 6-10 mins. Anyway, the chicken is already cooked so we need not worry whether the meat is uncooked. It is best that you check the biscuits after 5 mins. If you realized that they had become yellow and a bit black at the corner, it is time to take it out :)

How to refreeze and reheat?

I let the chicken biscuits to cool down before I put them on a zip lock bag and into my freezer :) Whenever you wish to give your baby a tasty snack, take them out from the freezer and pop into the oven or toaster. Today, we used toaster to heat it up, for around 8-10 mins to ensure that they were really heated up.

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

Baby Claire snacking begins!

Baby Claire started snacking only recently and we encouraged her to try to hold the snack herself. At first, she was reluctant. Her mouth would just open WIDE and wait for us to feed her, refusing to handle the snack. She is 11th month-old and I felt that we may have started her a bit late in handling food with her tiny hands and fingers.

Thus these few days we have started giving her snacks of a size that she can better handle herself. I am also really glad that my mother-in-law don't mind the mess. She is the one who encourages Claire to snack herself and said that we can clean up the mess afterwards :)

 So far, Baby Claire have fed herself white bread, banana, biscuits, and today a big cucumber.

Just look at the how good she is with the cucumber.

A week ago, I also created some baked chicken biscuits as snacks as well. However, we didn't let her grab it herself and just fed her directly. She loves it. I will write a quick recipe on it on my next blog post when I am able to capture a picture of the chicken biscuits tomorrow. :)

Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie

Sleep Training Baby Claire using CIO by Gina Ford

This blog post may help new parents who wish to try out Cry It Out (CIO) method for baby sleep training.

Disclaimer:  I am not an expert in sleep training and everything written here is based on my own experience. Every baby is different and thus some may take longer or shorter time to succeed in this training.

Before I go into the details (This is going to be a long post). Ask yourself why are you using this method? Is your baby waking up several times at night, wanting you to soothe her to sleep? Is your baby waking up several times at night wanting you to help her to put back on her pacifier? Do you need to hold and rock your baby for some time before she sleep? If above sound familiar, the CIO method may be a way to address them. However different parents have their own way of getting their baby to sleep. Some believe that it is natural for babies to be rocked to sleep. :)

Sadly, both of us lacked of the energy to do the above after a tired day at work. Neither would my in-law too. I was also afraid that they will be worn out after a long period of time. Thus, after deep considerations, we decided to try out this method.

Before you try this out, you have to ensure that your baby is not crying due to hunger, need diaper change, or is sick. Most importantly, you cannot be faint-hearted.

Being new parents, we were excited to see our very first baby. At the hospital, she was so so tiny and we held her for a pretty long time, sometimes more than an hr before she dozed off. She slept very soundly and peacefully.

When we returned home, Baby Claire had problem getting to sleep at night, and so I had breastfed and held her to sleep. This was really dangerous because there was an incident when I nearly dozed off and dropped her from my arm..oh gosh! When she was a month plus old, due to her insistent crying and refusal to sleep alone, we even let her slept side by side with us even though we had a cot. We placed her on our bed, and I sang and patted her till she slept. Her sleep time was around 11.30p.m or 12.30a.m...Justin Papa and I were really truly exhausted. Imagine what if we were to turn and flatten her.

To be honest, I didn't knew that sleep training and building routines were so important. I never had these ideas in my head that I could have read up on these and be more prepared before Baby Claire was born. I was much more into pre-natal stuff instead.

Thus, when Baby Claire was about 3 months plus, I began to google online about challenges of why babies cannot sleep earlier or on their own at night. There were tons of information but the most important finding was about building a good routine for the baby. Many experts and mummies online mentioned that babies love routines and they are good at following them. Please view my earlier blog post on setting routines for your baby.

Please note that your baby should be already in a comfortable routine before you start sleep training. This is to ensure that he or she is not crying because of hunger. Also, your baby should be well and healthy when you try out this method. I tried out sleep training when Baby Claire was 5 to 6 months old and coincided with my 2 weeks leave. The good thing was that she was already in a routine which I started when she was 3 to 4 months old. Thus, I knew that she was definitely not hungry if she was crying.

Step 1: Assist your baby to sleep if she is sleeping at the wrong timing (If you have yet to set her into a routine.

You must first determine a set timing for your baby to fall asleep and stick to it. Next you must use all means to assist the baby. 

How to assist her? For me, it will be the current way that you are helping her to sleep. If you have been rocking her, cuddling her, giving her a pacifier, just continue the same way to assist her to sleep.

Step 2: Using the "Crying It Out" (CIO) method
 
This sounds scary right? Initially when I read about this "Crying It Out" (CIO) or also known as the Crying Down method, I was like "Oh mine...you mean let her cry and cry and cry till she sleep or vomit?"

After reading Gina Ford, "The Complete Sleep Guide", I realized that is not totally the case.  

You can go reassure your baby after she cries for 5 mins, then extend to 10 mins, and so on. However, reassurance has to be kept to the minimum (less than 5 mins) by patting on her chest, and say "shhh..". And one thing to note, do not talk to your baby too much or even hold her up. Keep things as quiet and simple as possible.

Detail step to the CIO method:

Day 1

1. After you have completed your bedtime routine (bath, milk feed, settling e.g singing lullaby, bedtime stories, etc), settle your baby in her cot when she shows signs of sleepiness and before she fall asleep. Kiss her goodnight and leave the room.
2. If she is still crying after 5 to 10 minutes, you can go into her room and reassure her by stroking her or say "ssh ssh" but she MUST NOT BE PICKED UP. Keep this reassurance to around 2 minutes and exit the room. Repeat this step till it is half an hour later, and the time between visit should then be increased by another 5-10 minutes, i.e. around 15 to 20 minutes before the reassurance.
3. Continue till your baby falls asleep. Baby Claire took around 45 minutes before she fell asleep. I guess she took longer than usual because previously we picked her up after letting her cry for 10 minutes. 
4. For Baby Claire, she did woke up in the middle of the night and we follow step 2 and 3 again. She took around 30 to 40 minutes before she did soothe herself to sleep.

Day 2

1. It is necessary for you to continue this training for her day-time naps as well. Wait at least 20 minutes before you check on your baby. Continue to keep the reassurance to a maximum of 2 minutes.
2. When your baby does not sleep and it is near her time to get up from bed, you can perhaps extend another 15 to 30 minutes of sleep time to her routine. Baby Claire started to get into the pattern and took a shorter 30 minutes of crying before she soothed herself to sleep.
3. When it comes to evening time, continue what you have done at Day1 where you complete your bedtime routine and settling. However, this time round, you can reassurance her by saying "ssh ssh" but do not stroke or touch her. 
4. If she is still crying after the first hour, the time between visit should be increased to 35-40 minutes. 
5. If she wakes up in the night, you should wait 45 minutes before checking on her. Do not speak or stroke her. Reduce the reassurance time to one minute. Baby Claire showed great improvements and only cried for 5-10 minutes before she soothe herself to sleep. YEAH!!! By the way, we were also trying to get her off her pacifier.

Day 3

1. According to the expert, Gina Ford, she mentioned that most babies will be able to soothe themselves to sleep after 20 minutes. Pretty true for us. Baby Claire took around 10-20 minutes of crying before going to sleep. I didn't even once went into the room to reassurance her. Woo Hoo! 
2. If your baby did not manage to soothe herself to sleep, or her training timing worsen. Start by timing your visits to 15 to 20 minutes of crying, and increase the interval till it is every 45 minutes. 

 This is a video of her when she was at her 3rd day of sleep training. :)

Personally, I feel that she is happier now because she is able to soothe herself to sleep. Ever since the training, she weaned off her pacifier too. :) However, there are certain days or nights where Baby Claire took longer time to sleep due to a few reasons like teething, separation anxiety, or maybe we let her sleep too much during her last evening nap, etc. So far, things still fall back into place.

It is also important that your caregivers practice the same routines and adopt the same methods to settle and allow your baby to learn how to soothe herself to sleep.

Hope the above sharing is helpful. A disclaimer again, I am not an expert in sleep training but wrote this article due to many similar concerns expressed by my friends and colleagues. However, if you have any questions, you can feel free to put in your comments or post a question at http://www.facebook.com/deariebearmommie 

You can also buy the book from Amazon.  Click here: The Complete Sleep Guide For Contented Babies & Toddlers

Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie

Setting a routine for your baby is useful

Before Baby Claire was born, I was immersed on pre-natal stuff like what I should eat, listen, and what type of exercises would be useful for my delivery. I even took 10 lessons of pre-natal Pilates which I personally found it useful. However, I did not read anything about what would happen when baby is born.

Thus, when Baby Claire was not able to sleep at night, or only be able to sleep until it was 11.30p.m or 12.30a.m, we were concerned about why she slept so late at night. After searching on the web, most mommies and expert mentioned about setting a good and suitable routine is essential.

When I first started out, which was when Baby Claire was around 3-4 months, I tried using the Noob Mommy's schedule because it seems pretty simple to follow.

When trying out the above routine, I noticed that Baby Claire took a small nap at 7p.m or 7.30p.m at her bouncer after I bathed her (while I took my bathe). However, she woke up around half an hour or so. Back then, I was thinking was 7p.m her body's clock saying "I need to go to sleep". Thus, I also began to read up on how to catch your baby's sleepy cues e.g. rubbing her eyes, yawning, fussiness, etc.

While I was still trying out the above routine, I came across Gina Ford's The New Contented Little Baby Book, and noticed that her routines seem much more feasible for my baby and decided to try it out. Example of such routine would be the one below.

Now Baby Claire is 9 months and we pushed her sleeping time to 7.20 or 7.30p.m (Schedules will change according to the age of your baby). We bathed her at 7p.m and after which, we feed her milk and read her a short story before we put her down on her cot. She managed to soothe herself to sleep within 5 to 10 minutes with no crying and she managed to sleep til 6.15a.m or 7a.m.

This is now her current schedule which I deviate slightly from Gina Ford's schedule to fit into Claire's natural rhythm of sleep.

• 7a.m - Wake up and change of diaper and drink her milk
• 8a.m - Eat her cereal with fruits
• 9a.m - Bathe
• 9.15/9.30 a.m - Nap
• 10a.m - Wake up and play at her play mat
• 11.30a.m - Lunch
• 12.30p.m - Change diaper and nap
• 1.30p.m/2p.m - Wake up
• 2.30p.m - Drink milk
• 3p.m - Sometimes we will offer her a snack like banana, biscuits, etc
• 5p.m - Dinner
• 7p.m - Bathe, milk and a quick bedtime story and put on her cot to sleep
• 7.20p.m/7.30p.m - Dozed off. (When she was younger, she dozed off at 7p.m and her bath time was around 6.40p.m, Since she is now a bit older, maybe she doesn't sleep as much as before)

Do you know that we need to hold her, pat her and rock her to sleep with her pacifier when she was younger and we were truly exhausted till we tried out sleep training when she was around 5 to 6 months old which I will write in another blog post. :)

Another thing which I would like to share with you is that most babies, at least for my baby will become sleepy after 2.5 hours (2 hours when she was younger). She does not take long nap, which means that she is not able to sleep till 2p.m or 2.30p.m. Normally, she will only take 1 hr or 1.5 hr of nap. Thus, if she wakes up at 1.30p.m. Her next sleeping nap would be around 4p.m. I will change her diaper, a slow walk around my flat's corridor because we enjoyed the breeze, and then back at home. After which, I will feed her some water, and put her down on her cot. Sometimes, she will climb and stand up on her cot (By the way, she has started standing up. A major milestone for her :P) and move around. After 5 minutes or sometimes 10minutes, she will sit down and doze off to sleep.

How is setting a routine useful? Doesn't it seems too rigid?

Well, rigid comes with predictability and gives you better planning. E.g. if I know that Baby Claire's morning nap is around 9a.m or 9.30a.m, we can plan our outing and have her nap at our car while traveling or in her pram during her morning nap. However, it is recommended that babies have their long afternoon nap at home. In addition, a routine also guides your caregiver on when and what to do to make your baby comfortable, e.g. when to eat, sleep, bathe, etc.

This picture was taken when she fell asleep in her pram when we had an outing at a park. :)

So what's is your baby's routine?

Stay tuned for the next blog post on sleep training.

Join us at our facebook page too.

Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie

Baby Claire's first swim

We've finally bought our little Claire to swim yesterday morning at Singapore Polytechnic. It is pretty near my house and the good thing is that the pool at SP is chorine free. :)

Some of my friends asked "Why did you take so so long to bring Claire for her first swim"? Well, we felt she is so tiny, afraid wait she will catch a cold and also partly because the fortune teller said that we need to be careful of her and water when she is below 3 years old.

However, I felt that she might be very fearful of water like she is stepping on the sand at the park. Thus, I woke my hubby up and say "Let's bring her for her swim TODAY".

We put on her new pink swimwear and put her on a pink top and ready to go!

Glad that I decided to ask Papa Justin to take out her toy to let her play in hope to calm her down, and she did!

After 5 minutes letting her to play her toy while I move her around the pool, I slowly removed her toy and she seemed fine with it and then the fun began!

We played in the baby pool for around 30 minutes and I guess it was pretty not bad for her first swim. :) Happy that the weather was good with some sun. And you know what?? We were really lucky because after our swim, it began to pour. :)

P.S: Papa Justin did not go into the pool today because his thumb is still covered with stitches. :( 

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

How to prepare to grind brown rice powder for porridge

When Baby Claire was around 7 months old, I decided to let her try real brown rice beside brown rice cereal and mashed potato.

Cracking my head on how I can cook a brown rice porridge at the quickest time (we all know that it takes quite some time to cook a very soft brown rice porridge)  and at the same time to save  electricity. I read several blogs and websites recommending many different ways such as using slow cooker, using rice cooker, and grinding rice into powder before cooking.

Thus, I decided to try out using my rice cooker which has a rice porridge function. Since baby does not eat a lot, we cook around only 1/4 cup or less of rice and some water. Result? It doesn't turn out to be very good. Rice is still lumpy or hard (maybe I put too little water). Taste wise..erm..not very nice too. I felt that it is a waste of electricity too. Besides, I need to wait for some time for the rice cooker to complete the cooking which is sometimes a hindrance especially when we do impromptu outings to the parks, shopping malls, etc.

Then I decided to try grinding these rice. We have a Philips HR2118 Blender which also has a chopper function.

This blender really does it job, it took us like less than a few minutes to grind the rice into the consistency we wanted. I tried to cook the rice by putting around 1.5 to 2 tablespoon of rice and some water, and in less than 15 or 20 minutes, the brown rice porridge with some frozen mashed vegetables and fish is cooked. :)

We also grind spagetti and barley too. Really save our time cooking time. Below contains a picture of the grounded barley.

By the way, I created my very 1ST video on how to prepare stuff. In this video, it shows how to prepare the brown rice for grinding. Hopefully, it may be helpful to those who need this information. :)

Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie

Her current favourite song. Three Blind Mice.

Claire loves Mommie singing nursery rhymes to her. I sang to her everyday, even when I am back from work.


Here are a list of them.

1. Twinkle Little Star
2. itsy bitsy spider
3 Three Blind Mice (Her top favorite now)
4 old macdonald had a farm
5. row row row your boat (but i changed the lyrics to include seeing different animals along the stream, instead of life is but a dream)
6. and other nursery rhymes

All all these songs, Three Blind Mice is the only song which she will AUTOMATICALLY sing together with me. Take a look at this video! Hahahahaha, so cute.




Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie

How to make Baby Claire laugh Part 2.

On this typical afternoon, I decided to continue to blog what makes little Claire tickles.

Still remember my first part about how to make your baby giggle? If it doesn't work, what about the following?



4. Drumming with her

Back when she was 6 months ago, I realized that she loves to smack her green chair. So I drummed a few rhythm for her, and encouraged her to drum too. Too, she can't really drum to the beat, but she was truly amused by it. Currently, she is not into drumming, but smacking or hitting things with whatever is in her hands.

5. Blowing bubbles on her body

Baby Claire loves blowing bubbles at our hands, legs. Anywhere where she can grab and hold you. Dunno where did she learn this. I guess when she is younger, we also tried to blow bubbles on her belly and she picked it up! I feel that she is trying to make us giggle when she does that. You can just look at her expression. However it is a messy sight when she tries to be funny during lunch (*Just happened today) which I sternly told her no. If u are lucky to get bubbles from her, it shows that she really like you. :)

2. Playing peekaboo

These couple of weeks, Claire loves to play a little hide and seek with me hiding. I will then suprise her with "peekaboo" and she giggle over it.

I also chanced upon this slideshow if you want like to know what are some ways to make your babies giggle.

Linking up with Adora :)

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

Fun on our bed with Baby Claire

Just ended my 2 weeks leave and back to work this week. I've taken these days off so I can spend quality time with Baby Claire and at the same time giving my in-laws a good break. :)
Instead of talking about my usual routine at home, I prefer sharing what I love to do the MOST at home with little Claire on a typical day.
 
Claire is not exactly a baby who loves going to bed to sleep. Neither is she a fan of walking up. She will cry when she wake up from her sleep and I guess that's her way to say, "Hey, I am wake, where's everyone!??" since she is left in a room alone during her day time naps. 

Recently, we also find out that she fights sleeping at night. She will start crying when we put her down on her cot at night. Justin Papa thinks it is separation anxiety from Mommie. We tested it on Sunday night where Justin Papa carried her out from her cot, and was not able to pacify her until she saw me. And when he brought her back to her room, or somewhere out of sight of Mommie, she will start crying. Now, we are trying to find out ways on how to overcome this challenge. 

So in order to ease her anxiety, I will let her play with me on our bed when she wakes up from her nap. That's like a little playground where she learns to crawl, fall and recently sitting up. She dares to do a free fall, I mean really a hard fall and still smiling after doing that. Luckily, she is clever not to do it on her playmat. Else "bump"!

Here are some of the fun photos taken last week:

A short video on her having fun with me on our bed.

 

Did I mention that she loves to be tickled and to be sing to especially three blind mice? The picture below shows that she was singing together with me with this song. Hahahaha, I will share a video on the song on another blog post. Stay tuned!

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

How to make baby laugh Part 1

Little Claire is a sweet happy little baby but it is not that really easy to make her laugh when she is younger than 6 months. However our Justin Papa always managed to make her tickle. When she is 7 months and now going to be 9 months old, I found it pretty easy to make her laugh too. Below are some examples:

1. Singing twinkle little stair with BIG movements. I even did a slight change to the lyrics on the song.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star (use fingers)
How I wonder what you are. (Use both hands to touch her cheeks)
Up above the world so high (stretch both my hands up)
Like a diamond in the sky (use fingers to shape a diamond)
Twinkle, twinkle, little star (same as above)
How I wonder what you are! (clap hands)

When the red bright sun is gone, (Use fingers to shape a circle and move it from up to down)
When he nothing shines upon, (shake head and hand)
Then (emphasis the "then" to get her attention)...Claire, you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. (Same as above)
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, (Same as above)
How I wonder what you are! (Clap hands)

2. Falling on the bed

She loves to be scared. Falling into the bed is one of her most fav ticklish moments.



3. Put on a funny face and sound
This is Justin Papa's weapon. Never fails. He is truly "drama mama".



I'm not bad too. See how I did it this week.



And there's more.. Please stay tuned for Part 2. :)

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

Claire Delivery on the 30th of Dec 2012

On 30th Dec 2012, 12am, I began to feel a short intervals of pain. Being a first time pregnant women, I really wonder is this real? or a BX? Though I had taken those pre-natal courses but I wasn't sure. Thus, I decided to wait and try to go to sleep. However, I COULDN'T.

Between 12a.m to 4a.m, I was feel really uncomfortable, wondering is it coming? I googled *Gosh, google became my support* and try to find out whether am i in it now? However, pain became pretty unbearable and I kicked my husband, who was sleeping on the bed below. "Cannot, cannot, think it might be real". Justin was in shock, maybe because I kicked him damn hard. Or perhaps, he was too sleepy to accept this sudden news.

We immediately changed our clothes and brought our maternity bag. Fortunately we prepared this bag last weekend. This came too suddenly and 2 weeks early. I actually followed most of the guide at Babycenter website. I even had a birth plan too :P

When I reached the hospital, I was 4cm dilated. I was immediately given the epidural, and the pain became slowly manageable, and was injected something to help to speed the process however, i heard this might make the baby become less active. Time to time, a nurse will come in and check and adjust the dosage.

Less than 4 hours, I was ready to push! In the begnining, I pushed and pushed but hubby said, "Hey, you are doing the wrong way!, Don't use your throat to push, use your diagram!". Cos I was making a lot of noise through my throat, thus I focused my strength on the wrong place. After his enlightenment, I did the right way, and at 9.19a.m, Baby Claire was born :)




We were so so happy and that mommie did well.

Actually, we were hoping that she will arrive in 2013, but i guess she must be anxious to get out especially her umbilical cord got wrapped around her neck. I'm so glad she made it.

Overall, it was a pretty smooth delivery. Bear Bear (that's my hubby) booked me a single-bed room so I can peacefully try breastfeeding. So sweet :)

Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie