Rice Dumpling

I went to Serene's place to learn to make rice dumpling from her mum. I only wrapped 4 of them which took me about 45 minutes and I gave up....I even brought the 4 of them back to cook at my home in case all the ingredient drop out from the leaves during the cooking. Hehehe...luckily, all were "well-wrapped" and the end result looks like ....



Hahaha.. I guessed I really don't have the talent to do it. However, the rice dumplings still taste very yummy despite of the look.

Kudos to Serene's Mum!! ^^

What?!

I woke up this morning and realised that her pants were wet!!

Yes!! Shannon wetted the bed!!! -.- ' @#$^&*

She had been potty trained since 2 years old. She NEVER once wetted the bed and I thought I was one of the fortunate mummies who didnt have to clean up pee mess. -.-

Well, she is still sleeping with her wet clothes as she was crying when I picked her up from the floor. Right! She fell down from the bed and luckily she was not hurt as it was kind of slow fall?? I questioned her when I touched her pants and asked scolded her why she wetted her pants and why she never go to the potty. She started to cry and J said let her sleep awhile more before waking up her to change for school!

I am worrying now. Will there be 2nd episode? 3rd episode blah blah blah

Arrrgghhhh, I really hate to clean up the pee mess... :(

Present For Shannon, Toy for Mummy

Last Sunday, I brought Shannon to visit her Grandpa and Grandma.
We took feeder bus followed by MRT and alighted at Tiong Bahru Station. We went to buy a cake for my FIL as his birthday is on 5th Jan. At the same time, I got myself more shoes from PedalWorks. After collecting the AngPao Packet for spending $30, we took a cab to Grandpa's house.

Grandma was not at home and Grandpa was busy spraying new paint for his furnitures because they are moving to a new house in 2 more months. Anyway, my FIL took out a present for Shannon.





Then Shannon started to play with it but I believe this present is too tough for Shannon and I started to help her. However, I couldn't find any "instruction/assemble" details in the box. ~.~ Therefore, I tried to fix it by looking at the pictures on the box.

And TADA... I made it!



Then, we put one AA battery in and it was successful! However, the flaw of this Creative Bricks is the power is not really strong enought to turn all the wheels.

Ramblings

Last night, Shannon couldn't sleep well due to coughing. She was having slight cough on Friday night but it was kept under control with some left-over cough syrup. However, the cough became bad after we came back from my FIL's place. I believe that the cough got worse after she ate some prawn crackers and chocolates at my FIL's place. I brought her to see the doctor this morning and I took the chance to ask the doctor for more medicine for the pain on my left calf.

"Sigh"

Life has been kind of "sway" to me since November 08. Stressful work was one of them. Lots of things are new to me and I have to learn and pick up fast but that is not the worse. The worst is that my health has been giving me problems too. I took about 3 weeks to recover from the bad cough in November. After recovering, Shannon fell sick. After she recovered, I sprained my neck and took about few days to recover. When I thought everything is over, I overstrained my left calf which caused me to limp badly on some days. It took about another 2 weeks to get better and insomnia set in due to the work stress last week and caused me to have throat ulcer. Just when the sore throat was getting better, the pain on my left calf came back again. You say sway or not?

However, despite my health issues, I made a point to bring Shannon out during weekends to meet my friends up and sometimes to J's family's gathering. I have been bringing her to the swimming pool (which she loves) with my friends' kids for the past 3 Saturdays. I am still looking for the perfect timing and the perfect company to bring her to the Zoo, Bird Park, and Science Center etc.

As usual, family members had been a great help during these tough periods especially during the pain on my right calf. Well, you have to admit that mother's love is the greatest love of all. Nobody can love you like they do. She helped me to feed Shannon and bathed her when I needed to work late despite the fact that she had been taking care of my niece and cooking for the whole family. She helped me to bring Shannon to childcare even though she had to bring my niece along and my sis helped me to bring her back home to minimize my walking when my calf is painful. I took cab almost everyday for the past 2 weeks as I really do not want to strain it further due to walking. My father had been nagging at me about going out on weekends which he felt I should have rest at home instead.

I dare not visit the Chinese Sinseh for my painful calf as other people, even the doctors said that they might use acupuncture on my calf or poke a needle into some veins and let some blood out. It's a joke right. After going thru 3 full cycles of Fresh IVF which added up about 6 months of self injections and countless of blood drawings and I am still afraid of needles! Sometimes I wonder how did I go thru the past few IVF? However, I seriously need to consider going to Chinese sinseh if my calf doesn't get any better.

Sounds unbelievable on how "sway" I am right. Well, I don't blame you cos you are not the only one who is doubtful about it. One of the reasons for not updating my blog so often for the past few weeks is "there are way too much of grumbling and complaints". In fact, I cried a few times over it because I just felt so helpless about being so "sway". I even got my mum to cook mee sua with 2 hard boil eggs which believed that it will change one's luck. It's just that I haven got time to go down to pray at the GuanYin temples.

Anyway, it's the beginning of 2009, I really hope everything will go smoothly from now onwards. I really want my life to be back to normal asap.

Sway

After I had finished typing the previous post, I realised that Shannon was running a fever. I went to the fridge and search for any fever medicine and I was really lucky to find one. I fed her with the medicine and we went to sleep.

Yesterday, she woke up with mild fever and I brought her to see a doctor. Doctor said her throat was slightly red that might have caused the fever. After seeing a doctor, we took a cab down to my office to sign some document which required to be done asap. However, I only get to bring her home at 5pm as there were just too many works that need immediate attention. While we were on the cab, she fell asleep. Her fever gradually climb up to 39.8 and I had to wake her up at 645pm to feed her fever medicine. Her fever subsided slight at the time of 9pm. As she had a late nap, she only fell asleep at around 12am.

This morning, I woke up with STIFF NECK!!! Must be Shannon who had caused it. She loved to squeeze near me when she is sleeping especially in the morning. After breakfast, I took some Chinese pills and I hope that the pain will go away soon. As for Shannon, her fever again climbed up to 39.5 this morning. I fed her medicine immediately after her milk but still her fever is still there at 12pm. I have to keep an eye on her before the next episode of febrile fits strike.

I was really perplexed about my life here. There are so many works to be done in the office. My cough is still not fully recovered yet and now I am having stiff neck! I really need to finished the work here as soon as possible but kept on delayed by my own sickness and now Shannon is having fever. I felt so f^&^%$ sway loh. Another issues is my back, I am having backache on and off especially when I am sitting on the floor. When I sit on the floor awhile and tried to get up to walk, I couldn't straighten my back immediately. I am only in early 30s and my backache strike me like nobody business. I am thinking of going for acupuncture to treat my backache soon. I don't have backache problem before I had Shannon or even during pregnancy and I am getting it now. How my life is going to be with all the constant backache and stiff neck... T.T

Busy ME

Yup... I am very busy, busy till I have no time or rather no mood to update my blog. I am still helping my MIL with some company dispute issue. Although we had settled the most important part but the ongoing ones are a headache and needs much more time to finish. The whole office was in a mess, all the documents were not properly filed. In other words, we had to re-set up the office again which is much more tedious than setting up a new company. pffffff

I am not sure when I will be back blogging. I have to take a break.. I am really too stressed and too tired to do anything after work. I am even too lazy to bring Shannon out on weekends... Poor baby has to attend childcare everyday from 9am - 7pm and stay at home on weekends. Once awhile, she will still cry to go back "home"which she will describe as "only france", "home where daddy is"... I will just ask her to tell her daddy because I am not in position to say anything or do anything except "work" and "work"... Of cos, I learned alot of things during this period but I still miss the life in France. I am supposed to be enjoying my life now...hahaha

One Word

TIRED!!!

I am feeling so tired after 4 days of work! The flu bugs had caught me on Tuesday following by a bad cough on Thursday. I went to visit a doctor yesterday and was really shocked to be charged $36 for the consultation and 4 kinds of medicines. Nah.. the medicines given were not any different from my family doctor I used to visit. I took a look at the consultation fees pasted on the table and realised that I was charged higher because I went into the clinic at 9pm. Wah! In another word, if I had gone in 10minutes earlier, I would have been charged cheaper!!!

Anyway, almost all the family members were down with cough and flu. I wanted to sleep earlier since Sunday but always ended up sleeping around 12am. Shannon is still going strong and I hope she doesn't get the virus from any of us.

She cried on Wednesday and Thursday when I left her in the childcare. She told me that she doesn't want to go to school and wanted to change school! But she looked happy and said she love school whenever we picked her up in the evening. The time table stated that the kids should be having indoor/outdoor activies between 520-6pm, drawing between 6-7pm. However, I saw them watching TV everyday when I pick her up around 6-7pm. Would you raise your concern if you were me?

One of My Days

On normal days, I wake up between 730-745am in the morning, take a light breakfast before making milk for Shannon. At about 8am, I will wake Shannon up, getting her to drink the bottle of milk. After her milk, she will pee and I will help her to clean her face, brush her teeth, change her clothes and tie her hair. This will usually take up about half an hour depending on how co-operative she is. After which, I will change my clothes and do a quick make up before leaving the house.

Then, we will slowly stroll to her childcare centre. Sometimes it takes up to 20 minutes to reach her childcare centre as she walks very slowly. Luckily, I
do not have to reach the office at specific timing. When we almost reach the childcare centre, she will start telling me that she doesn't want to go to school. Today she told me she wants to go to another school. It's only her third day there! She reluctantly followed me to the door and cried for me after I left today.

I will walk for another 5 minutes to the bus-stop to wait for a bus to take me to the MRT station which costs me $0.71. Then I will take a MRT and alight at the 12th station which costs me $1.29. I will THEN need to take another bus and alight at the 8th stop for $0.31 and walk another 15 minutes to the building I am working. Most of the time, I will reach the office around 1030am which means half my morning is gone. :(

Anyway, you see the difference on the transport fees? It is $2.31 for 1.5hr ride on public transport vs $15 for 0.5hr ride taxi fares (off peak)!!!

I will usually ask the office colleague to buy lunch for me and I will just take 15 minutes to eat and start working again. Then I will leave the office at 5pm-520pm in order to pick Shannon up before 7pm. The childcare centres in Singapore will charge $1.00 per minute for being late when picking kids up. Then we will stroll back and reach home about 7pm-720pm.

I will then let Shannon take her dinner with the help of my mum while I go for my shower. After my dinner, I will bring Shannon for a shower although the childcare centre bathed her once in the early afternoon. I realised that the childcare centre did not do a good job showering her. I still can feel dirt at her pee area when I shower her in the evening. Yesterday, I saw red patches which looked like rashes on her body and arm areas as well. Poor girl have to go through all these because I have no time to take care of her in the day.

The rest of the night will be watching tv programmes or reading newspaper or entertaining her. I did try to go to bed at 10pm but she will refuse to be in the room as long as someone is in the living room and we always end up sleeping around 12am.

Sigh, I am missing my life in France again....

Back In Singapore

Ooooo..finally we survived thru the 12 hours flight!!!

Saturday was quite a rush morning as the plane from Bordeaux - Paris was delayed for about 1 hr. We checked in immediately at SQ counter when we reached Paris and went for a breakfast at MacDonald. If I have double checked the time, I wouldn't want to take any breakfast at all. J told me it was 1130am when he finished his burger and I have to rush again.

Daddy broke down with tears when he said goodbye at the Departure Area. Shannon gave J a big hug and a big kiss, asking J to take care of himself and drive slowly, and then she dragged my hand and proceeded to the Hall. I brought Shannon to the Boarding Area and heard the announcement on the SQ flight will be delayed for 1 hour. I was like @#$%^&* because we can spend another half an hour with Daddy if I we are informed 10 minutes earlier.

The flight took off 1 hour later and Shannon fell asleep right away. However, she only slept for half and hour and started to watch the kids movies in the plane. We did some coloring, sticker pasting, singing etc on the plane. She managed to sleep another 3 hrs before reaching Singapore. I only managed to watch 2 movies and had some cat nap. The tedious part was bringing her to the toilet because we failed to get the 2 seater seats. We did tried to change to 2 seaters at the check in counter but the staffs are unwilling to help at all. Thus, I tried my best to cut down the toilet visiting by "synchronizing" my pee pee time with her. We went to the toilet for 4 times altogether in the 12 hours flight. Not bad huh! ;p

We reached Singapore at 8am. While I was getting some duty free liquor, I heard some baggage announcement for Shannon Lee. I walked to the baggage area and realized that one of the luggages will be delayed and only arrived on Monday. Luckily, we have bought a travel insurance and thus we will be compensated with some cash ;p

After collecting the luggage, we went for breakfast at the food court at the Airport. Shannon was having good times with her yiyi-s and gugu-s while I was enjoying my fishball noodles. I went to my MIL house in the morning as Shannon's gugu-s are going back to Australia in the evening. After lunch, I went back to my mum's place and unpacked my luggage. I felt so giddy and took a 2 hours nap as well.

After nap, we started to webcam with Daddy. Hmm... Shannon was just too busy for her Daddy. I think Daddy must be sad... hehehe.. Whenever I asked her whether she wants to go home or see daddy, her answer will be

No.. He's too far away... I wan stay Yiyi's house. :S

Anyway, we had an early night on Saturday. Lights was off before 11pm! ;p

My New Blog Header

Due to boredom, I decided to change the header of my blog. Anyway, the old header is about 2 years old. ;p

3 out of 4 photos in the header were taken by Dawn's hubby, Boomer! Recently he is addicted to photography. Well, I find that he had the potential to become a professional photographer!!!




One day, I am going to grab him and ask him to do a portfolio for Shannon. Hope you don't mind, Dawn! :D

Another Failed IVF

Yup.. it failed again...

We went for the blood test this morning and confirmed that it was NEGATIVE in the afternoon.
Well, I was quite prepared for the results as there wasn't any pregnancy symptoms at all. Moreover, the pregnancy test kits i used the past days all reflected negative too... I also had some spotting going on from Thursday.

Thanks for all the encouragements and support you guys have given me. I think this will be the last try on IVF. It was really a torturous TTC journey for me having going thru all those injections and Egg Retrieval and especially all the emotional stress. Maybe, we should just be contented to have one precious Shannon...

THE ONE & ONLY HOPE

J phoned the biologist this morning and was told that the last embryo did not survived to be cyro-preserved. Now we can only pin our hope on the embryo that is transferred into my uterus yesterday.

I am having bad rashes mostly on lower part of my body recently. I told the doctor that it might be allergy caused by the estrodiol pills I am taking but she said it was impossible. I really do not know how what had caused the rashes other than that. I am also having a really bad cough after taking some pineapple (which said to be helping implantation) last night. Well, things are not really going smoothly for me.

Anyway, I will be having another Progesterone Injection tomorrow "OUCH" and I will need to go back to the fertility clinic on Saturday to do a blood test to check on my Progesterone and Estrogen Level.

10 more days before the HCG blood test. Let's just keep our finger crossed hoping the miracle happens to us again.

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IVF - One Blastocycts Embryo Transferred

I had one Blastocycts Embryo Transferred this afternoon. If I am not wrong, only 2 out of 9 embryos survived thru the stage of blastocycts. We will need to call back tomorrow to see how the last one is going. If it survives, it will be cyropreserve (frozen). Hopefully, the one in my uterus now is the BEST embryo and make me a mummy again. I will be having my blood test on 2 Aug to confirm whether it is successful. Wish Me Lots of Lucks! :)

IVF - 9 out of 10 Embryos still growing

J phoned the biologist this morning and was told that 9 out of 10 embryos were still growing well. J requested to do the transfer today but the biologist still suggests doing it on Tuesday instead. Before J could finished the sentences on reminding her that our 9 embryos were dead last time while trying to do 5 days transfer, the biologist cut him off and told him that she knew and they had new "equipment" this time and they are doing 5 days transfer most of the time recently. So we will be calling back on Tuesday and most probably do the transfer that day!

IVF - 10 Embryos Fertilized

J called the Biologist this morning and was informed that 10 out of 12 embryos were fertilized. The biologist suggested that we can wait for 4-5 days to do blastocycts transfer but I was reluctant this time due to the last experience. I do not really want to go thru the Egg Retrieval again as it was really painful. Last time, we tried to get 9 embryos to blastocycts, most of them were growing well on the 4th day but all were died on the 5th day!! I do not want to take the risk again although I am risking myself for having twins instead. However, we will call the biologist tomorrow for further instructions.

Shannon had been crying to go to Damien house these 2 days. I said NO this morning and she went to push a chair from the dining table. She said she wanted to get the keys and open the door!!! Thus I brought her over while Serene asked me go home to take more rest. Shannon stayed happily at Damien's house till 6pm and I felt really blessed to have such a helpful friend. :)

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IVF - Egg Retrieval

Today is the Egg Retrieval Day. Luckily, Serene (Damian's Mummy) helped us to take care of Shannon for the day. I have also arranged Irene (Avril's Mummy) to help me fetch them to Creche. Anyway, I brought her to her place at 6am and went to the fertility clinic.

We did the Admission of Hospital and waited 1.5hr my turn to do Egg Retrieval. During the waiting, J went to provide his sperm sample for the eggs. I changed and went in to the operating theatre while J waited outside. I was knocked out by anesthesia soon after.

They successfully retrieved 12 eggs from my ovaries. I was feeling very cramp-y after the Egg Retrieval. I was discharged at noon and went home straight away. J went to work at 130pm after sending me back home while I slept for the day. I was kind of regret that I din ask him to take leave because it was simply painful. The pain was something like menstruation cramp but worse then it. The process of retrieving the eggs out of my bodies has created some wind inside my tummy which makes it even painful. At some moment, I had dizzy spells while I was enduring the pain. Luckily, Serene helped me to take care of Shannon till 9pm. I coaxed her to sleep right around 10pm while I waited J to come back from work as I need to take the Progesterone Injection. Damn... the needle was thick and long but this time the injection was not as painful as the one I had few days ago. I kind of force J to confirm/see the IM injection site for the information on the website and he finally admitted that he might have hit the wrong place for the last injection. T.T

We will be calling back on Saturday morning to check how many embryos have survived and will be transferring 2 embryos either on Sunday or Monday!!

IVF - HCG Triggers

This morning, we went to the fertility clinic for follow up on my IVF. Again, kenna poke 2 times during blood test. After so many poking, my left hand surrendered...the nurse couldn't draw any blood from my left hand even after several attempts of turning the needle left and right #%$#%&&*&%. Luckily, this time my right hand was co-operative or else I think they will draw the blood from my vein around my wrist.

My gynae was not around for some reasons and the other lady gynae took over. My appointment was at 930am and I waited for 1.5 hr for my turn. I did go up to the secretaries and check out when is my turn and the nurse told me the next one. However, I waited another 3 - 4 patients before my turn and those patients were not as early as me. The lady gynae must have skipped my turn to attend to her patients instead. The most frustrating part is she did not update me the growing process of the eggs. She just said: “We will trigger tonight and do Egg Retrieval on Thursday. Fine.. Really had no mood to check with her anything. After collecting some necessary documents and prescription from the secretaries, we went to MacDonald at La Teste to have our lunch.

After lunch, we proceed to the hospital to get more medicine for J. Since he will be casted till Aug 5, he will need the daily injection till then. Talking about him, he is walking on his injured leg now. Well, the doctor did say that he could start putting "some weight from this week, but he literally walks on it everyday. Nagging at him seems useless and hopefully everything will be okay for him.

At night, we realized that we forgot to ask the gynae which injection site we should do for the HCG triggers. According to the medicine instruction, we need it to inject on the buttock but I remembered that it can be done on the stomach area as well. Anyway, J did the injection on my buttock for safe sake. Damn, it was so painful... T.T I am glad that I had finished those injections but I still have to fear the long and fat needles for progesterone injection on my transfer date. T.T I wonder how I did it last time when I am trying to conceive Shannon. Maybe, I was really desperate for a baby last time....

What A Day...

First thing in the morning, I realized my left hand was painful when used at a certain angle. Then, I kind of sprained my neck when I was bending down picking some paper up. I took some bread and painkiller in the car while we were on the way to the fertility clinic. And when it was my turn for blood test, I kenna poked 2 times! They tried to draw blood from my right hand since my left hand still looked bruised after the last blood drawn. They failed and look at vein my right wrist; I shook my head and asked them to take it from my left hand instead. Oh well, it’s much painful than last week but I think it should be better than taking it from my right wrist???

Then I went to see my gynea and after examination, he told me that the follicles are growing well. There are about 6-7 follicles growing on each side of my ovaries, the follicles on the right side is bigger. Our next appointment will be on Saturday, another blood test and most probably Egg Retrieval will be between Wed to Friday. Egg Transfer will probably be the week after. Finally, we are at the middle of the IVF.

I pray miracle happen to ME again after going thru so much pain. Ohya.. my mood swings badly these few days and guessed it will going to be like tat till the end of IVF due to the 2 hormone injections I am going thru now. Poor Shannon and J having to endure my mood swing.

Mahjong & O-Ni

Shannon stayed in school from 830am - 1730am with Zavier, Avril & Damien today. Thus, we, mothers had a great day, gathering at Stephanie's House. First, we had deep fried carrot cake for breakfast. Then, I started to teach them how to make O-Ni (Yam Paste).



The O-Ni was quite successful except that it could be smoother. And they finally agreed that it was EASY...LOL



After the O-Ni, we started our Mahjong Session. It has been 2 years since I last played Mahjong. Actually I love playing Mahjong but most of my friends doesn't play. Moreover, I don't really have the time to play Mahjong after Shannon was born. Well, it was a nice gathering and I am looking forward to another one...LOL...

Arrgghh... Unbelievable

I was really happy that my throat was almost PAINLESS after visiting the doctor yesterday. However, the PAIN came back this afternoon!!! It was really a BAD one... For the last 2 weeks, the pain was on the right side near my throat and it was still bearable (except on some nights). But the pain today was terrible!! The pain shifted to the center of my throat and swallowing my saliva become a tough job. I don't feel like talking at all due to the pain.

I boiled some chinese herb (for throat) to drink, gurgled salt water hourly, drank a cup of honey, took a spoonful of Pi Pa Gao, took a few Strepsils and finally a panadol. Well.. nothing actually worked. T.T'

I called J about 9pm and asked him to come back right after work. Luckily, he is back around 10plus and I just left Shannon to him.

I just want to keep my mouth shut for now... -_-