I'm a full-time mummy

Almost a year ago, I blogged about the top 10 things I wish I could do and one of them is: "To be more outspoken and confident", below is the excerpt:

"I was approached by this lady who said that she recognised me through Ben and asked whether I'm the lady from 'I'm a full-time mummy'. I had to be honest, I was a bit stunned at first (I'm really paranoid of people knowing too much details about me) and lots of scary thoughts was going through my mind then and I could only muster a weak smile and said 'Hi' back to the lady and gently shook her hand.

Hubby said I was acting kinda weird and that I didn't know how to handle my blog fans. I told him she's not my fan and that I'm not that popular and I think she's more popular than me! So, Farhana, if you're reading this post, please forgive me for my reactions when we met that day. I never intend to act all weird, it's just my nature to be really shy and paranoid. Hope you're not turned off or got freaked out with me..."

OK, to be honest, ever since that incident, I had prepped myself to be more confident and approachable when we are out and about. Sure, I'm nowhere near any celeb status at all and definitely don't dare to claim to be one, but I do feel it is important for me to be more confident and sociable so that I can be an example to my kids. I don't want them to shy away when people approached them.

Now back to my blog post today, just want to share a recent incident that left me feeling like a celeb even if it was just for a few seconds!

What happened was, hubby wanted to get some salted chicken sauce and me having lost my voice earlier yesterday morning (it was a series of events, from sore throat to itchy throat to mild cough to losing my voice) and I told hubby to bring Ben along so I can rest at home with Alyson and then I decided to tag along with Alyson to enjoy the shopping mall aircond.

Then midway driving, hubby changed the venue (from a very quiet and 5 minutes away shopping mall from our home to a shopping mall about 10 minutes away. Hubby brought Alyson along to shop for his stuff and snacks while I brought Ben to Toys R' Us (to let him play all the toys there hahaha..) and then we went to have our lunch at one of our favorite restaurants there.

After lunch, we took a short stroll at the ground floor while we headed back to the car park, hubby was walking with Ben while I was pushing Alyson in her stroller. We went through this section of Korean food booths and it was then I got tapped on my left shoulder. I turned around and saw this pretty young girl taking few steps back smiling at me. I was like 'Uhmmm... is she one of my ex colleagues or school mates or... what' and thoughts raced through my mind trying to figure out whether I have seen her before in my life and then i just smiled at her, shook my head and walked away.

We walked on until we were near the escalator going to lower ground and I got tapped again on my shoulder. I turned around and noticed the same girl smiling at me again. This time, before I could say or do anything, she asked me in Mandarin whether I was the blogger from ''I'm a full-time mummy' and it was at this instant that I realised, "Oh my, she is my blog fan! How rude of me to walk away!" 

I immediately nodded and gestured at my throat, trying to tell her I'm sorry, I can't talk because I lost my voice. She said she followed my blog and asked whether she can take a picture with us. I nodded and her friend (boyfriend? I don't know but if he is, kudos to him for letting and also following his girlfriend to chase me all the way from the Korean food booths to the escalator!) quickly snapped a picture of us together. I apologised again for having lost my voice and not able to talk to her before we parted off.

Oh wow! That is an awesome few seconds of me feeling like a celeb hahahah!

So, yes, I would like to apologize to my lovely blog fan again for not able to talk or stay longer with you guys. If I have my voice and we are not rushing to go back home (hubby needs to marinate his salted chicken for dinner later!), I would've love to find out more about you and take more pictures too.

Thank you for recognising me in a sea of faces and sorry, I don't mean to come off as rude (for not talking). I hope I don't scare you guys away! And, thank you for your support! It feels good to know that there are people out there who follows my blog and gives me motivation and discipline to blog properly as I know there are people out there who reads the stuff I wrote!

Dearest lovely melodious voice of mine,

I lost you on 1st July 2012.

It graduated from a sore throat to itchy throat to mild cough and finally losing you.. Okay, at the moment of typing this blog entry (1st July 2012 5pm), I have cracky frog-like croaks, I can muster up a few syllabus and soft whispers if I really really need to but that will put a strain to my already sand-papery throat.

Now back to why I said it is a torture for me to lose you...

#1: I cannot communicate to my children

And by communicating I actually meant scolding. Heh... I realised that without you, it is really hard to get the attention of my hyper active 3 year old boy. Normally I'll be calling out Ben's name every now and then to make sure he doesn't get into mischief and that he does what I told him to.

Now the sucky part of losing you is simple things like my boy asking me to see what he built with his Lego toys, normally I can just tell him 'Yes Ben, mummy is looking! Wow! That is amazing!' but this time I could only nod and mouthed out the words 'Wow!' and then give him a thumbs up signalling good job! Lucky for me, he gets the meaning of thumbs up and happily trotted off somewhere usually.

Now, the problem is when we went out earlier today, I was carrying Alyson and Ben tried pushing Alyson's stroller to follow daddy who wanted to go to the restroom for a while. You should've seen how pissed off I was trying to call Ben's name, trying to stop him from following daddy (hubby didn't realised Ben wanted to follow him, else he would've brought Ben along) and in the end, I just croaked out Ben's name and told him to stop. There are a few people nearby the restroom area looking at me weirdly, yes I know I have sexy frog-like croaks... sigh...

#2: I cannot communicate to my mother in law

Now, my MIL has hearing problems. And memory problems. She forgets things easily. I told her earlier this morning that I lost my voice and few hours later, she comes asking me stuff and when I tried to mouth out the words 'No voice' she doesn't get what I'm trying to say. Not only I have to try repeating that, I also have to sort of increase the volume of my dying voice since my MIL has hearing problems. Arghhh... torture!

#3: My husband laughing at my voice

and it is not helping with my attempts to stay happy...! Arghhh... right about now, in the whole house, he is the only one who could understand the words I mouthed off and everytime I mouthed off something, there is a smirk on his face! You can see how hard he tries to hold himself from laughing at my sexy-croaks..! Arghhhhh!!

Oh voice, please don't go away anymore.. it is really torturing to lose you!

Everyday without fail, I will read on mothers (new or going to be) posting questions or problems on which breast pumps to buy, what is wrong with their pumps as they are not able to pump a lot of their breastmilk (aka BM) or not enough volume or having engorgement so on and so forth.

And after reading all these, I will always think and said out loud in my mind "Why can't they consider or learn to express by hand?!"

Yes, I have my fair share of experience using the electric breast pumps back before I quit my job to be a SAHM. I was using the Medela mini electric breast pump which was a hand-me-down from 2 SILs few weeks before my maternity leave ended in preparation to stock up my BM so that Benjamin can have my EBM (aka expressed breastmilk) when I am at work.

When I went back to work, I used the Medela pump for about 1 week. It was noisy and cumbersome - everytime, I need to sterilise the pump all over and ensure that the battery is full and ready to be use at any time.

After a week, I learned to express my BM by hands. It is not easy of course but with practise, it can be done.

You don't need to attend courses to do it, just google "how to express breastmilk by hand" and you will get tons and tons of search results! Can't visualise it? YouTube it!

Back when I learned this, I only searched through websites and practise based on the diagrams on the website (I can't remember why I was not using YouTube!)

With a few practise and trials and errors (need to take note of the let-down!), it just simply eases up a lot of work! You don't need to lug around your breastpump when you express, you don't need to worry about no electric outlet to use, no worries about no batteries and sterilisation? What is there to sterilise except the containers to store your BM maybe?

I have psychoed and nagged a few mummy bloggers about the benefits of learning this and most of them just brushed me off saying they can rely on their electric pumps just fine. Sure, few weeks later, one of them told me they had to travel overseas by plane and her electric pump jammed in the flight due to air pressure and she had to resort to pumping with her own 2 hands. Another mummy had to go on-site and realised there's no electrical outlet and she ran out of batteries on her pump. So, what else? Hand express!

Personally I do feel happy knowing these new mums or mums-to-be plan to breastfeed their child, but before they go on and purchase a breast pump (or more as they realised some pumps are not right for them!), I do wish they could give hand expressing a try!

After all, other than the convenience, it helps a lot to express by hands as with your own fingers, you can actually feel which part of your breasts that are blocked or engorged and massaged it away.

As for efficiency of the output, my personal experience, when I use the Medela pump, I took about 20 minutes to pump 6oz of BM while it is 15 minutes for me to get the same amount using my own 2 hands. Much much more quieter, definitely convenient as no sterilisation, same output, faster, cheap (no need to buy pumps!) and even helps with engorgement and blocked ducts, why not?

So please new mums and/or mums-to-be, I hope you will at least go Google up how to express your BM by hand.

You might end up needing to fall back on your own bare hands one day!