Category Archives: Lessons

The Injuries pile up…

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After becoming a father, my game of golf has deteriorated beyond anything that I have experienced before. Both my wrist now has swollen up due to tendon inflamation…partly because I carried my kid wrongly in the first few months, and also due to the repetitive stress disorder on the computer keyboard (which is why I am trying to lay off blogging a bit), but in my line of work, I am spending easily 4 -5 hours on the computer typing proposals, reports, emails, messages etc. Either that or on my iPhone doing the same thing. Now my hands looks like they have elephantitis.

Of course, golf is out of the question until maybe next year. Or until I fix this darn thing. The traditional massage failed, since we’re dealing with tendon here and all those massages do is to make it worse.

A friend of mine recommended ozone treatment. Which is how they pump O3, ozone into your body. My immediate reaction to that is that, “isn’t ozone like poisonous and causes cancer??” it’s one of those alternative medicine, that in 25 years from now, will either be mainstream medical advances or one of those that kill people, like when they used X-ray on your feet back in the 1920s not knowing the hazardous effect on it. Or using ammonia on the teeth to make it clean, only for you to lose all your teeth by the time you hit 30.

So I don’t know if I’m ready to be a medical monkey and jump into this ozone treatment. But looking at the injuries piling up, I might be desperate to try any remedy at the moment.

There and Back Again

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We made our first road trip with Jet over the weekend. Desaru: 820 KM to and fro.

Jet is a pretty good traveller, he slept most of the way there and back, except for a few stops to clean his shit, otherwise, it was pretty good. I even had to make the trip from Horizon Hills to Desaru, literally cutting across Peninsular Malaysia, which took me about 1 hour plus, on the new Senai-Desaru Highway. Mum had a corporate outing, so it was basically me and the kid.

It sounds like fun, but it’s actually not. Because I’m driving. And he’s crying. And he’s sitting on a back facing car seat so I can’t see what’s happening with him. It was a good thing I stopped at a petrol station before hitting the highway to check. He was spitting out a bit and gurgling and I had to spend 15 minutes at the back of my car in a god forsaken petrol station in the middle of nowhere to comfort my kid. After soothing him a little, I put him back in the car seat, and bam, lights out. From there to Desaru, he was fast asleep.

I guess as Dads, we don’t get as much confidence as mum. Face it, we got nothing. We don’t have nipples, we don’t have a nice soothing voice, and we don’t have a chance in heck to soothe our kid at times. All we can do is carry him, say a prayer and hope it works. But when it does work, it’s like we have earned a badge, you know. That says “I handled my kid alone, and drove him 100 km across the country on my own, without Mum”.

The Greatest Con-Fine-Ment Lady

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As Chinese, there is a plethora of beliefs and tradition that we somehow adhere to. For some reason, the chinese especially seem to think our entire world and ‘chi’ or whatever the heck balances the spirituality of our essences can be knocked off balances by us walking wrongly, saying things wrongly, eating wrongly, watching the wrong shows and listening to the wrong songs. Among these practices, in what has become a Chinese institution is the everpresent: Confinement Lady program, or “Pui Yuet”, which means, “Companion for the month”.

The tradition is that after birth, the mother is a like a banged up gunny sack that, if left to her own devices, will wither and die, therefore the extreme need for this so called Confinement lady, who will be the expert companion to cook certain food and to take care of the baby. You don’t find this tradition in the west, where moms would generally be up and about a few days or a week after birth, while their eastern companions mope around the house eating gingery food, causing more jaundice for the baby, and having to go to the hospital again, and looking like they just survived a round with Manny Pacquaio for the boxing title.

Personally, I know the confinement lady is a grand con scheme. I mean, they definitely have some use, of course. Like how my dog has his use. But we got a confinement lady for RM3,800. That’s right. Because it was last minute, since the two previous CLs colluded to not turn up…one said she just doesn’t want to do (a month before our birth) and the other conveniently broke her arm (one day before birth). So we had to scour for a CL (due to the insistence of persistently traditional mothers and mother in law), and ended up at a beat up shack in Old Town, PJ, for this old lady called “Lan Che”. That’s LAN CHE, not Lao Che, the villain in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.

“Lan Che” cost more than my junior IT consultants per month. And she doesn’t do anything very useful, except to cook. She’s at her irritating best when she would repeat her mantra EVERYTIME our kid cries: “He’s Hungry.” or “You don’t have enough milk.” to my wife and pointedly persist in feeding him formula milk or water and that my wife is as dry as the sahara.

Thankfully, my wife doesn’t have a very discreet husband. I’m the kind of guy whom your mother would think is very rude when dealing with older and wiser people. After two three times of this ridiculous “Not enough milk” nonsense, I let fly in my best retarded cantonese that she should just shut the hell up and cook, instead of distressing my wife. This so called companion for the month knows as much about breastfeeding as I know about African gerbils, and refuses to admit that there is actually milk coming out of a human breast and that breasts are not intended to be used as a handrest or a cupholder. I don’t like to sound like a know it all and not respect an elderly woman, but if you start cursing my wife and saying she doesn’t have milk, and that our baby is going to die everytime he cries because he’s starving to death, I am going to punch you in the face. Seriously. Get the hell out of my house, you useless confinement lady. My mom had to intervene just as I was about the get the cleaver and she going for the long bladed knife. Some measure of peace restored, I laid down the house rule that she should never interact directly with my wife on anything to do with breastfeeding or face my unreasonable wrath. So now, the Lan Che only touches the baby on two occasions: Clean his shit and bathe him, and we’re going to take that scope away slowly this week, as we’re doing it all ourselves. It’s the easiest RM3,800 she has ever earned in her life. But at least now, my wife is stress free and breastfeeding on demand. Sometimes, you just gotta stand up and take the fight to these so called experts.

I’ve heard about tragic stories of these confinement ladies out there, about how absolutely useless they are, and how much they cost, and what a mess they leave the house in, and how actually, it’s like a Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme: you don’t actually need these people parasiting your home after your kid is born. Half of them doesn’t know jack, and the only experience they have in raising kids is through the same methodology they raise their cats. Options are there, maybe get a midwife, or a maid, or someone with basic food skills and baby handling skills. Or someone in your family. Or maybe your border collie. Or at least someone half the price if I’m going to get such retarded service. RM3,800 is a total rip off. Plus the stupid ang pow. Why must I give you an ang pow when your service is slightly better than a discarded orange peel? Chinese tradition!

Now, of course, some advocates of confinement lady will definitely have their say, and since I’m just a Dad, and not a direct benefactor of the confinement lady’s services, my opinion generally doesn’t matter, and it won’t impact this great con of confinement ladies. My wife believe in them somewhat, so who am I to say anything else? I’m sure there are some very very good CLs out there, but unfortunately for us, we hired someone who was only as good as Ghollum in handling our child.

I’m quite confident that Lan Che is slowly poisoning my food with rat poison by this time, but I’ll just have to wing it for a few more weeks. Or maybe we’ll finish our battle when my mum isn’t around to intervene.

Cup Feeding, Nipple Confusion and Other Strange Phenomenon

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I always thought it was pretty straight forward bringing up a kid. Especially one who is 2 weeks old. After 16 days, I’ve come to the conclusion that my knowledge in bringing up a child is as good as my knowledge is telekinesis…which is only what I learnt by reading X-Men and watching Jean Gray fight with Emma Frost. I mean, the amount of info can sometimes be overwhelming.

This is the first time I’m coming across the term Nipple Confusion. Apparently, the kid has the ability to be confused over who belongs to which nipple. It makes sense…I suppose a plastic feel and a human feel is a little different. Unlike other GilaDads I don’t really have the inclination to do a practical test myself. But anyways, it goes that once a kid takes the plastic nipple from the bottle, he would shun the real one, because….it’s easier with the plastic one. All he needs to do is to suck and milk comes pouring down. It’s a lot harder with the real stuff apparently. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the requirement of the demand-supply arrangement between baby and breasts. So the the baby stop getting the real stuff, the real stuff stops producing, and we’re stuck in the realm of baby powder for the rest of the way.

And you’d think it’s natural that a baby will naturally be able to suckle like an expert. Since you know, that’s their job scope right? I mean I watched Discovery Channel and see the piglets naturally flocking to the mama pig and suckling. Human babies? Nope. Not natural. Or maybe it’s my kid. He really takes a long time getting latched and suckling properly. Sometimes, our feed sessions goes into 1 hour and a half because half the time, the dude is getting agitated not getting the milk.

At times, it is impossible to breast feed…especially when Mom is already dead tired and deep in slumber and it’s my shift. I obviously don’t have the goods, so I have to depend on good old milk powder that cost so much $$$. Due to this nipple confusion mantra, I have to mix the milk in the bottle and pour it out into a small measurement cup and feed the kid through the cup.

You’d think it’s easy but IT’S NOT. Half the milk dribbles down his little chin and when he lunges forward at the cup like a black mamba attacking a panda, you end up spilling all over. Apparently he gets less confused over this nipple issue over time. 2 weeks is still a little short, so we’re cutting him slack, but after 2 months, I think the pacifier and the baby bottle will need to do the work already.

So, ends our second week as parents. He’s getting better, he’s growing, and most of all, he is crapping ABSOLUTELY alot. In fact, volume wise, he craps more than he weighs. I think.

Father Skills: Carrying the Baby

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Now, just to get it over with.

Dads have it easier than moms. We really do.

Moms job scope: bleed for years, then when conceived and finally the bleeding stops, end up with a bump to carry, and gain 15 – 20 kilos and suffer morning, evening and night sicknesses, bouts of vomit and incessant craving for food (which is not too bad). Then after a delivery (natural or cesarean, both are generally accompanied with anxiety and obvious pain, go through the struggles of nursing, breast feeding, waking up in the middle of the night to feed, breast engorgement and what not.

Guys? We just do the deed and we’re done.

Modern day father’s however has seen this scope expanded and now not only are we expected to be present to witness and record the birth of our kids, whether it comes naturally and through a host of bloody incisions in Cesarean.

Fathers of today needs to have some basic skills down pat, because we generally are pretty useless if you think about it. So there are a few skills to make ourselves relevant to the mom-child bonding that is now happening. The most basic one of these:

Carrying.

This might sound like the easiest thing in the world, but it generally strikes fear into a lot of rookie Dad’s heart, including myself. The fear is that you would suddenly lose balance of the baby and drop it like a rugby ball. It’s the same fear that haunts you when you carry a trayload of Coke and Burgers in MacDonald’s and weave through the busy MacDonald’s to your seat.

Believe it or not, it’s easier for us to carry the kid because we have bigger hands, and (hopefully) stronger than our wives — unless your wife is Serena Williams.

For the new born, there’s basically two simple rules, fearless fathers: Support the neck, and support the neck. Before you know it, you’ll be like this expert:

The most straightforward way to pick up the kid is sliding your big hands under the nape of his neck and with your other hands slide it under his butt. So, for instance, your right hand will be the “neck hand” and your left hand is your “butt hand”. Then lift. The kid should theoretically be in a swaddle that limits his hands, but even if not, this should be a fairly simple manueveur. So now, you have the kid facing you, and theoretically you can just carry him like this around, but you’ll really look awkward, like you’re carrying a pile of manure. What you need to to is to draw his butt nearer to your chest (if you are holding the butt with your left arm, tuck in your elbows). Then, you can slide your butt hand upwards along his spine so your butt hand is cradling the baby’s body and the butt hand is now supporting his neck. Now your “neck hand” is free of encumbrences and you can sidle to the classic form, where the baby’s head is now resting on the crook of your right elbow.

Transfering the baby to another person is best done in the neck/butt hand position, not the cradle position.

There you have it, your first rookie dad lesson.