Salute!!

I have the luxury of staying at home with the Mrs and Isaac for the last 4 days and it will be 5 including today. Besides the weekend, we had a Public Holiday on Monday and I am currently on 2 days MC so in total I will be spending 5 whole days with them.

During these few days I learned that Isaac can be so hard to handle and it will really drain you off your energy (from playing and carrying him) and ideas (from thinking of what to do with him next). He has just turned 10 months and now that he is able to almost run in his walker he can really be a handful. He will go all around the house and start pulling things away from their original place or picking them up and then throwing them all over the floor. He will also be opening and closing the cupboards and drawers. He knows how to protest by screaming too.

He has gotten cheekier these days too. It is almost like he knows what he is NOT supposed to do but he still wants to do it anyway and in front of you too. Take for example he will pick something up and he will turn around and look at you and flash his cheeky “mischievous’ smile before throwing the item away. When we tell him ‘No’ he will smile wider or laugh sometimes. We will then pick up the item and put it back to its original place he will repeat the whole routine again.

Isaac and his infamous smile!!

Why the experience you may ask since I have spent days with Isaac before but to me it is a little different this time round because in the past when I am not working it is usually on weekends and we are usually out. The Mrs dislikes staying at home on weekends so you can imagine how she feels now having to bed rest. Hence when we’re out Isaac will be distracted with the surroundings. This time however the Mrs is not going anywhere so we had to remain indoor most of the time.

I am now an Uncle because my Sister had given birth to a healthy and lovely baby, Cate last week. She was having a little problem with breastfeeding Cate and also trying to establish her eating and sleeping routine. By now I imagine things are much better with them.

Lovely Cate!!

I met up with Mike yesterday when we collected our cars from the workshop together and had a quick meal with him. He was telling me how he understands that it is very hard for Kat to handle Kaitlin alone so he gave up more of his ‘me’ time in order to help with taking care of their girl. They had recently hired a maid but she is only charged with the household chores and the two of them alone will handle Kaitlin so this means no more meeting up with his regular kakis for breakfasts on Sundays.

After these few days I am now in a position to advise them that what they are experiencing now is really quite minor. Yes they may have to suffer the lack of sleep in the night since their girls are still infants but to me infants are really much easier to handle since all they do are eat, shit and sleep. I remembered I had quite a bit of ‘me’ time when Isaac was still an infant because he sleeps for 2 to 3 hours straight before it is feeding time and while he slept I was able to play some games on my Xbox. For the record it has been more than 3 months now since I last played any games after having completed GTA4.

I was trying to explain to Mike that between the Mrs, myself, Ani and my parents we are already tired from handling him hence I can’t imagine how are they going to do it on their own months down the road.

It is also through this experience that I can understand a little better what a Stay At Home Mum has to go through on a daily basis. Hats off and salute to you all SAHM. I dare not say I completely understand because I had help from everyone here and there is only just Isaac. Some of you ladies are taking care of more than a toddler and with minimum help.

So if any of your husbands give you crap about them having to work hard outside so they deserve more ‘me’ time or respect then I ask you to dare them to take up the challenge of staying at home alone and care for your kids for a couple of days while you take a break. I am positive they will see you in a different light after their little experience, read nightmare. I know I have. In fact I feel kind of sorry for Ani and was even discussing with the Mrs that we will give her a raise once the twins are out. God knows she deserves it.

So for you new parents or parents-to-be, know this; the infant stage is really just the beginning of worse things to come.

Never seen before, Fierce Isaac!!!!

Muahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Home

A little update on the Mrs and the Twins. They have all been discharged from the hospital as of 14th of this month, last Tuesday after spending a total of 12 days there.

The Mrs couldn’t have been happier and she was waiting impatiently for me to bring her home while I was running around between Dr N’s clinic and the hospital cashier making payments and settling bills.

The entire episode cost us a little over $7,000 and my MediSave covered about $5,000 of it so I paid cash for the remainder. Although being out of the hospital is good for the Mrs it is not entirely easier on the money because she has to be on this injection every other day and only a nurse can administer it for her. The medicine is about $700 for 9 doses which is equivalent to 3 weeks and then there is also the nurse’s fee which was at a staggering high of $80 per trip but the Mrs bargained with her and finally we got it down to $40. So this means we need to spend a little over $1,000 every 3 weeks on this injection alone.

At this point in time we have no idea how long we have to continue with the jabs. Our next review is on the 4th of next month after we go through this extremely detailed scan which took about 2 hours the last time we did it. I believe Dr N will shed some light on the situation by then.

Being home does not mean the Mrs is able to go out and all. Instead she is to be rested in bed as well. Only difference is she will not be as bored since Isaac and I are there. Since Dr N is not sure if the bleeding will happen again we decided that it is best to stay with my parents so that while I am at work at least there will always be someone else at home instead of just Ani. So after checking with my parents all of us including Dino moved in with them.

Moving back in with one’s parents is not as easy as it sounds. Honestly when I heard that the Mrs is for discharged I was only too happy to think about the logistics involved. We are talking about moving the belongings of 2 adults, a maid, a baby and a dog.

Let’s not include the Mrs because besides the daily necessities like home wear and toiletries there is really not much for her since she is not going anywhere.

Dino is also easy since it is effectively only his leash, food, bowl and treats.

Ani is also easy since she has always kept 2 sets of her things. One set at my parents and another at our place so it is a matter of moving more stuffs from one place to another.

Baby is relative easy but since we will be there for the next 5 months at least we moved all his toys and diapers.

I guess the most difficult one would be me since besides the usual home wear and toiletries I still have to bring my work clothes and also going out clothes like the jeans, bermudas and t-shirts. Then there are also the work and going out shoes as well as my flip flops. I too have accessories such as my belts, cuff links and watches.

Then there are other must haves such as our laptops, all 3 of them, my Xbox 360 and also my DVD player along with my SCV decoder and my LCD TV for the bedroom. Luckily these days we can charge our PDA and iPhone using a USB cable and laptop otherwise we have to bring along the respective chargers.

Till date it took me about 6 trips back to my home to bring the items in batches and luckily my place is only 5 mins drive away from my parents’ place. So we started off with bringing over the immediate requirements and every other day Ani and I will head back to bring over the other stuffs.

The best part about all this is to try and fit all our things in a bedroom. The Mrs usually does all the packing and unpacking so while she is not so mobile now, we are living out of a suitcase for the time being. I know it bothers her a bit but I simply do not know where to begin.

Looks like this might turn out to be a rather long 5 months.

Suggestions??

The below post was actually drafted before the entire bleeding episode hence you can sense the entire tone and mood is a lot lighter. Since it has been drafted I decided to keep the post as it is.

Those of you who know me through this blog should also know that I prefer to open my Christmas presents on Boxing Day itself. Hence we only found out Isaac’s gender on 26th December last year!

This time round with the Twins, I am determined not to ruin the nice surprise but truth be told, it is a lot harder when compared to last time. The ‘problem’ does not lie with me. Since we found out we are having Twins, the main thought on our minds is whether we will get at least a girl in there and the Mrs is really dying to know.

I can literally sense her wavering resistance with each visit to the Gynae and each time she will be looking to me to change my mind. As cruel as it sounds, my stand still remains steadfast. Although I have to respect her wishes and if she really really really wants to know then I have to give in to her as well. Carrying the twins is tough as it is already without me causing her more sleepless nights by denying her wish to know the truth.

My logic for choosing not to know remains the same. What good will it do by knowing now? Of course if there is a girl in there we will be overjoyed but if they are both boys then there is really nothing we can do to change anything anyway. My main concern right now is for her to take good care of herself and the twins since as far as I know twins can be rather fragile even up till the later stages.

Of course choosing not to know has its disadvantages. And as some of you readers have guessed it, we will have problem with the names! As if coming up with a name for each gender is not challenging enough, we now have to torment ourselves by having to come up with 2 names for each gender.

If our naming experience with Isaac is anything to go by then I can say we are having 2 boys this time round as well. Why? Because we have relatively lesser problem with girls’ names compared to boys’ names. So the rule of the thumb is if you are prepared for one gender then God with his wicked sense of humour will reward you with the babies of the other gender.

For the English names we like the following:

Boys:

Hayden (only because this is a unisex name)

Girls:

Hayden
Hayley
Heidi
Emma
Kayla

I do like the following names but the Mrs is not too thrilled with them:

Fabian
Julian
Kyle
Blake
Gabriel

Kale

Even for the Chinese names we are also more of less set on girls’ names while nothing on the boys’. Since Isaac’s middle name is 天 we have decided to continue to use the middle name.

Boys:
天乐 (nothing to do with Louis Khoo)

Girls:

天恩

天敏

Sitting down and breaking the news to my colleagues, we had a fun time coming up with “names” that we definitely cannot use. Coincidentally they are mainly for boys. For the benefit of the non Chinese readers I have listed the meaning.

天才 (Genius – with a name like that we are only setting him up to fail)
天长 (Eternal)
天地 (Heaven and Earth)
天鹅 (Swan – again with a name like that she will be under a lot of pressure)
天父 (Heaven Father – nuff said)
天国 (Paradise; Heaven)
天堂 (Paradise; Heaven)
天花 (Smallpox)
天皇 (Imperial Emperor)
天空 (Sky – hmmmmm…… maybe?!?!)
天亮 (Daylight)
天黑 (Nightfall)
天氣 (Weather)
天上 (Celestial; Heaven)
天使 (Angel – hmmmm….. another maybe?!?!)
天涯 (Ends of Earth)
天桥 (Bridge)
天真 (Naïve; Innocent)
天主 (God)

Jokes aside, I am appealing to you readers once again to come up with names like you did the last time although we ended up using the one Godma picked. This time round it is easier because we do not need it to be 1 or 2 syllables but try and keep it at 3 maximum.

There is one condition though. We are trying to avoid naming the twins from names of the same alphabet which means you can skip “H” for now because if there is a girl we will use either Hayley or Heidi.

Like all the other “contests” and poll on this blog, the only prize the winner receives is bragging rights. This time though you get to name another child that is not one of your own. How cool is that!

Keep the suggestions coming!!

Hospitalised!

First of all we would like to thank each and every one of you who showed us so much love, support and concern during the past few days. Together you have set a record high for the number of comments received for a single post from readers alone. We really appreciate it and we honestly enjoyed reading all your prayers and well wishes very much. In fact it was perhaps the only highlight for the past few days.

I know you are all very anxious to know the outcome of our episode and also the well being of the twins and the Mrs. I’m sure you can understand the delay in updating this blog.

I do apologise for “making” you readers tear with the last post but I’m sure you know that it was never my intention and I honestly cannot remember any earlier post of mine that resulted in readers crying.

Anyway as with most life experiences there will always be good and bad news. The good news here is the twins and the Mrs are all doing fine. I like to think of it as the twins having heard their mummy’s cries in the A & E ward, hung on and stayed with mummy. Then there is of course your prayers. No matter what religion you are from I believed that your high being answered your prayers. Thanks again for that!

On Saturday evening Dr N came and finally removed the gauze in the Mrs and I was shocked to learn that about a metre of it was stuffed in her to add pressure to stop the bleeding. While he was pulling it out slowly our fingers were crossed that it will reveal minimum blood. True enough it had very little blood on it and better still after it was out there was no sign of any bleeding.

It has been another 2 days and by now we can safely say that the bleeding had stopped but to play it save Dr N wants to keep the Mrs in the hospital till she delivers, this is the bad news!!

The Mrs was so depressed when she heard the news that she was crying even till last night. Being in the hospital with her for the past 4 days I can fully understand her reluctance to stay for such a long period. Being bored is one thing but the main thing here is her missing Isaac. She hates the idea of missing out on his growing up such as his first steps, first word and birthday etc.

I remembered very clearly the dejected look on her when she was wheeled from the intensive care unit to the normal ward on Sunday night. I believed it was reality sinking in that she has to stay here for the next 4 months or so. She understands that it was for hers as well as the twins own good but it still did not proved to be easy.

Besides Isaac and boredom there is also the money issue. Based on a very brief calculation, a 4 month stay will cost over 20K. From this episode I also realized that all general health and life insurance policies do not cover pregnancy related matters. There are specific women only policies to tackle this kind of thing and although the Mrs bought one for herself, the coverage for hospital stay is only about 5K. So if you have to take away something from this experience of ours then go out there and invest a little more in such women policies before you plan to have your next kid. And if you are planning for IVF then all the more you should have this type of insurance in place since having multiple babies will have high chance of complications.

Secretly we are harbouring this little hope that Dr N will allow her home after another week or two. We derived this from what he said to her yesterday. He said that everything is looking up so far but he wants to keep her there for another week and then we take it from there. We like to interpret it as after another week or two and if everything remains status quo then maybe just maybe we can have her bed rest at home instead.

Speaking of home, I was in bed last night and it suddenly dawned on me that the house seemed emptier without the Mrs. Although Ani and Isaac were sleeping in the next room without the Mrs, the house just felt empty. Even the bed felt so empty and no, I am not trying to imply that you are fat Darling. Without the Mistress around the house just feels weird.

Currently we have worked out a schedule and system to allow the Mrs to enjoy a few hours with Isaac on a daily basis. With him around her mood has definitely been improving.

To end this on a lighter note below are a few pictures of our pride and joy, Isaac.

A little blury but you can see he weighs about 9.26kg now.

Not sure if the old folks will scold for letting Isaac sleep on hospital bed.

A little close up on our Plus Size baby.

Prayers!!

I am writing this post from the delivery suite at Mount Elizabeth (Mt. E) hospital as the Mrs lies in bed trying to get some shuteye. The feeling is so different when compared to 9 months back when we were eagerly anticipating Isaac's arrival.

See what happened was at 2am this morning the Mrs got woken up when she felt as if she had wet herself in bed. She checked immediately and found blood on herself as well as on the bed sheet. She went to the bathroom to investigate and once confirmed that she was bleeding she woke me up immediately.

Since it wasn’t too much blood then we thought we could wait till the morning before we rush down to see Dr N. However after about 10 minutes she felt that she was still bleeding and upon checking she confirmed that the amount is getting a little alarming. Her sanitary pad was soaked! We wasted no time in getting changed and headed for the A&E department at Mt E.

We did not utter a word to each other and I believed that was probably due to us preparing ourselves mentally for the worst case scenario. So many thoughts went through my mind. How was I going to remain strong for the both of us and continue to give her support and encouragement? How do I console her if something bad did happen to the twins? What had caused this bleeding? Did anything happen to her yesterday? Was it something she ate?

The drive to the hospital was eerily silent with the both of us deep in thoughts. Since I did not know how to reassure her with words at that point in time I can only place my hand on her thigh and gave her a reassuring pat.

I had the shock of my life and realized for the first time how serious the bleeding was once we arrived at the carpark of Mt. E. As soon as she stepped out of the car and stood up the blood started to gush out. She was literally dripping and within seconds a small pool of blood was formed on the floor between her legs. I told her to stand and lean against the car while I ran in and got the nurse to bring a wheelchair for her.

See the pool of blood? This was only after like 15 seconds!!

What happened next was about an hour of agonizing wait for Dr N to come and check on her. The lucky thing was he was performing a C Section just upstairs at about 2.30 in the morning so he was with us as soon as he was done. In the meantime we were left to contemplate the possibilities. The Mrs was crying non stop and I will never forget the words that she muttered to the twins continuously, “Babies please stay with mummy!”

What wouldn’t I trade for the safety of my wife and my two unborn children?

The next hour or so was the frantic fight by Dr N in trying to stop the bleeding. According to him the Mrs looked like she had lost about 800 – 900ml of blood already and the bleeding was coming from the lower of the 2 placentas.

The Mrs was a real trooper. She was jabbed, had both her hands on drip and so many things were going on at her private but she never once complained of any pain or discomfort although we could tell from her face it was really quite painful. I believed that she only wanted the nurses and Dr N to get on and do their best without any distraction from her.

What Dr N did was to insert some gauze into the Mrs to add pressure and stop the bleeding. Since the bleeding is internal we do not know for certain if it has stopped. In Dr N's own words, we're not out of the woods yet. We will probably only know for sure sometime tomorrow evening or Sunday morning. According to him we have to pray for two things now; 1 - the bleeding must stop and 2 - the Mrs must not get any infection. She was already given antibiotics to prevent infections but as for the bleeding, it is in God’s hands now.

Wanting to find out what was the worst scenario I asked Dr N if one or both the twins are in danger and he explained that should the bleeding continue, his priority will be to save the Mrs hence both the twins will have to be aborted!!! Both our hearts sank when we heard that.

Scans were made to check on the twins’ wellbeing and heartbeats and they were doing just fine. Seeing them kicking and moving in there I really hate to even consider the idea of having to abort them. It will be really tough to pull the plug on them when they are still behaving so well in there!

Once the Mrs had settled down and resting, I had to rush home to settle a few things and make a few calls to the family. My eyes will tear up each time I inform them that the twins are in danger and might not make it, just like my eyes are all teared up while typing this now.

In this dark hour, I hope you will include us in your prayers!!