Thursday Thirteen #9

13 things about having a BABY


As a relatively new mom... (okay so, LR is now turning two soon but it still felt like only yesterday that I was waddling around with a huge belly)...this is what I found out in the last year and more after the joyous arrival of LR:

1) A good night's sleep is but a distant memory. Though LR stopped waking up for night feedings since he was about seven or eight months old, he is a very light sleeper and jolts awake at the slightest sound. So thanks to noisy neighbors and howling dogs, I never did get a really good night's undisturbed sleep.

2) Despite their tiny size, trust me, babies have strong lungs. They scream and cry over the tiniest thing from wet diapers to hunger to the plain fun of making bumbling confused adults even more confused and frazzled.

3) Zero social life. Having a screaming infant in your arms most of your time at home (after work) is definitely not conducive to gossiping on the phone with your girlfriends and let's not even talk about going out for drinks and dinner with friends. Maybe it's just me but having to leave LR with the babysitter most of the day when I am at work, I would feel guilty if I leave him with the babysitter's just so I could go out to meet with my friends.

4) You have morphed into one of those irritating 'proud parents' who would gush non-stop about their precious little baby to anyone who has the misfortune to ask 'so, how is the baby?'.

5) Smooth skin and a sexy bikini figure is but an airbrush away (or alternatively, a lot of hard work involving exercise, diet and possibly plastic surgery) as pregnancy means stretch marks and unwanted weight gain which is not easy to get rid of.

6) No more 'travelling light' when going anywhere as I have learned the hard way when LR decides to mess up his shirt by spitting out his food, then proceeded to smear it everywhere, then poop and then, make a huge fuss. A trip to the mall with him means having to lug a backpack along (complete with spare diapers, tons of wet tissues, a few change of clothing, insect repellent, toiletries, toys, etc) and a stroller for when he refused to walk. LR needs a big luggage to himself whenever we go for a short two to three days' holiday elsewhere.

7) Baby spit and poop is no longer gross. Perhaps it's all those months of going around with baby spit on my clothes or the early months of having to change LR every hour because he was breastfed and has very loose stools. I am now immune to whatever gross stuff that comes out of a baby.

8) Worships the person who created wet wipes. Seriously, these are most probably the best thing ever created since sliced bread. Anyone with a drooling, spitting, pooping baby would understand the usefulness of wet wipes.

9) Everything revolves around the baby. As in, all plans from dinner parties to meetings to work obligations revolves around the baby's schedule (e.g. nap time, meal time, play time, etc).


10) Third party in our marriage. We are no longer two but three so our holidays are no longer like our honeymoon but are more like family vacations complete with screaming kid and frantic moments finding fun stuffs to distract the kid.


11) Realization that you are responsible for caring, nurturing and shaping the future of the tiny little person you brought into this world. Suddenly, you are no longer carefree with no responsibilities, everything you do have direct implications and impact on your child.


12) Having to cut down on swear words and bad habits so that baby do not pick it up. I have now started using 'shiish' or 'shooosh' or 'fishes' or 'dalmations' for a variety of safer, milder swear words ever since LR started repeating every word we say.


13) Inundated with unwanted nosy advises. Every nosy relative (especially grandparents) would give you a gadzillion of unwanted advises on how to raise the kid. My response: thanks but he's my son so I will raise him the way I think fit and not your way.






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Of rude FAT comments and insensitive people

Just the other day, I almost ended up with blood on my hands by pulling out the tongue and kicking the balls of an uncle for his discriminatory, insensitive remarks. The only thing that saved him was that the remarks were not said to my face but to a colleague of mine.
Of all the insensitive and rude remarks to make, the offending man actually told my colleague in a crowded elevator that, get this, she is fat.
This is how the conversation went:
"You are getting fatter by the day," the insensitive boor told my poor colleague.
Offended and hurt, she told him that considering she just had a baby, naturally she could not immediately bounce back to her former weight and size.
Being the insensitive jerk that he is, he pressed on and this time, dared to even mention me when I was not even in the darn elevator!
"Oh, you women always have some excuse or other about putting on weight. Just like my niece, she goes around with all that extra fat and claimed that she could not go on a diet just because she is breastfeeding. Utter nonsense is what I say. I don't see her losing any weight even after weaning off the baby. Women should take care of their bodies and lose all that ugly fat after having babies. But then, of course, it all depends on whether they have the will to lose the fat or not," he said in a self-righteous tone of voice while heavily implying that my colleague and me and all women in general who do not have supermodel figures obviously do not have any will to lose the extra inches.
At this juncture, my poor hurt colleague was about to scratch his eyes out and probably would have strangled him there and then except that there were too many witnesses around and him being a lot bigger and taller than her did not help matters.
This is not the first time this uncle of mine, whom I am not proud to be related to, have made such rude insensitive comments.
He had called me fat numerous times, even when I was pregnant.
A few months after I had my son, he actually came up to me and told me to my face that I am fat. When I replied huffily that I am not fat, it only served to make him affirm his statement by going on and on about my size.
"What do you mean you are not fat? Look at you! Look in the mirror, woman!"
Of course, I did not do anything at that time because this uncle of mine have the tendency to open his big insensitive mouth in public places where vengeful women like me could not do the necessary to silence him. What with plenty of witnesses hanging around, the situation is painful and embarrassing enough without me contributing a gory bloody crime scene to it.
This is one uncle I do not acknowledge and up till now, I have avoided him as best I could. He may be my father's brother but he is a downright pain in the neck and I do not want to end up a murderer.
The irony of it all is that my aunt, the woman married to him, is not supermodel thin. In fact, she is double my size and if I am fat, I do not know what she is in his view. I honestly felt sorry for her (to have such a boorish husband) and hoped that he does not mouth off at her over her weight every day. Since he is still alive today and they are still married, I can only assume that he dared not say anything about her weight to her for fear of her poisoning him or smothering him in his sleep!
My uncle is not the only insensitive, rude jerk who discriminates against people who are not reed thin.
I have come across many such people, including total strangers, who have the audacity to tell me to lose weight or that I should lay off the dessert.
I think it is extremely rude and in bad taste to comment about someone's weight and size. Just because they are on the underweight side does not mean they have the right to look down on those who wear double-digit sizes. Nor does it give them the right to tell us to lose weight or to cut down on our food or to make horridly discriminatory fat jokes and thought that it was okay and for our good.
People like these naturally assumed that we, the bigger and better group, have no self-control, that we are a lazy bunch who just eat, eat, eat and eat to get to the size we are and that we needed to be told that we should to do something to become the over-rated single-digit size of stick figures.
Staying in a country where most people are of single-digit sizes and double digits are considered obese, it is very difficult for me to go anywhere to shop for clothes. Often, I get disdainful stares from skinny promoters when I asked for bigger sizes of clothes. Always, I get directed to the 'big size women' boutique just because my size do not fit in with the norms of this country. At times, I do feel like an outcast from this size discriminatory treatment.
Despite all this, I have decided 'to hell with it all!' and continue to live life the way I want and who cares if all those stick figures out there continue to cast disdainful looks at me? As long as my husband do not care about the extra comfy padding for him to hug, as long as I am still as healthy as ever and is able to continue breastfeeding my son, the bony specimens of rude people out there can say whatever they want and it won't bother me at all!