Maternity Leave Coming to An End Soon

In three weeks' time, I'll be returning back to my work. I am already feeling a slight dread in my heart. Initially, I had felt that the life of a full-time mother is pretty monotaneous and predictable, always going through the same feeding, bathing baby, changing diaper, tucking baby to sleep routine. I'd probably feel more productive from accomplishing my work and obtain higher satisfaction from solving work challenges (Not that I'm an overly ambitious or high achiever type.) It's just that caring for the baby involves mainly manual tasks which do not require much brain work. Hence, I could imagine that my brain would have deteriorated as a result of being underutilised!

Now that my maternity leave is coming to an end, I suddenly wish that I could turn back time and re-live the past eight weeks and perhaps improve my baby care techniques further. How I wish I can have more time to bond with my baby and watch her little body grow and developing all her body movements and facial expressions. I've really come to enjoy breastfeeding, holding her little body close to mine and seeing how satisfied she is sucking for the milk. Now I can truly comprehend the wonders of breastfeeding, aside from the health benefits it brings to the baby, it is, without doubt, the most wonderful moments a mother can have with her child. Returning to work would mean giving up on breastfeeding as my work place does not have the facilities nor environment that support breastfeeding mothers, especially where expressing milk is concerned.

Hello, I'm back!

My blog has been dead for more than a month! Guess you would have known by now that motherhood has indeed consumed me. Since my last update was about my first week experience with baby Adele, I should give a brief update on Adele's progress from second week till now - 8th week!

The confinement period has certainly provided a much needed rest and aided in my speedy recuperation. The food is quite to my taste, unlike some who simply disliked confinement food due to the lack of variety and the heatiness caused to the body. Of course, it was also atributed to the fact that my mum, who was my "confinement lady" was creative and took extra efforts in planning my confinement dishes. Though I did enjoy my confinement, I very much looked forward to its end when I could get out of the house, meet people and do some shopping.
Adele has grown healthly in the first month with a weight increase of 1.3 kg from birth weight of 2.7 kg to 4 kg. This came as a surprise to me cos' she seems to have a small appetite and would sometime prefer sleep over a full feed.
Much to our delight, she is quite a well behaved and predictable baby, sleeping well at night and waking at every 3 hour interval for her feed. She loves water and enjoys taking her bath. Perhaps we can start her off with swimming lessons at an early age. It's so interesting to watch her after a bath cos' she will be so cheerful then and her eyes glancing around and her mouth making sounds such as "oohs.. ahs...". Into her 7th week, she has learnt to focus on our face and other close distant objects, and even respond to us with her little baby talk.