I'm a full-time mummy

I love reading books! I remember when I was about 11-12 years old, I used to hang out at my aunt's place after school (with my mum of course) and I'd be rummaging through my cousin's book drawers looking for books to read. Sometimes I even 'booknapped' some of her books back home and read it before secretly and quietly returning them back hehehe...

Of course I love reading printed copies of books but if you consider the environment, then I'm all for softcopy of course (which you can see based on my book reviews which nowadays are mostly done on softcopy versions)!

Anyway, since I still have some amount of US dollars left in my Paypal account, I decided to spend some on books! I'm so happy to be able to purchase the above books (total spent USD45.98 for 6 books).

Although some of them are abit costlier than other book retail sites, and some of the books are used and might not be in brand new condition, but the shipping charges is free (already cost into the books) and at least I know I did some charity at the same time I purchased these books because for every book purchased, Better World Books will donate 1 book to someone in need. Awesome huh? And btw, one of the books I bought came with the author's autograph too! Cool!

I don't earn any commission or anything from recommending you this site, just want to share in case you are a book lover like me. I'm definitely going to buy more books from them (after I finished reading the above books of course!)

It's been 1 and a half month since I started tandem nursing my 31 months old boy and 1.5 months old girl. Life with 2 kids is keeping me pretty busy, though I did an update on day 14 on my tandem nursing on how I was slowly getting used to tandem nursing, I'd like to blog down in more details on how I survive my aversion to tandem nursing.

During the first week itself, I was already feeling very depressed that I'm having this negative reactions whenever Ben comes asking for his nen-nen (that's what we call for our breastmilk).

I searched for more info on how other tandem nursing mothers cope with this (and even wondered am I the only one having this emotional battles?!). I even ordered the "Mothering Your Nursing Toddler" book in hope to find out more (by the time the book arrived, I'm on my way to feeling much much better already!). I read through blogs and websites of experienced tandem nursers and tried their approaches and add in some of my own.

Thank God, I'd like to report that I'm feeling much much better now.

If I could put in a percentage on my recovery to tandem nursing aversion right now, I'd like to say it's about 90% OK, the other 10% being those times when Ben had nightmare and I tried to nurse him back to sleep and Alyson suddenly woke and cried and wanted her share and I had to manoeuvre both of them to nurse which is pretty hard when they are both in sleeping state.

Bear in mind that the following are what works for me. Here it goes:

# 1: Think the worse!

As a Chinese, we like to have a party when our newborn turns 1 month old - we called it the full moon celebration. It is during then that we invite families and friends over to celebrate with us as our newborn turned 1 month old. For me, I make use of this celebration to survive through my negative feelings.

I think the worse! I imagined being drilled by friends and relatives on how stupid I am to try tandem nursing, I imagined people coming up to me and said 'I told you so! You're not capable to do this! Serves you right!'. I imagined myself crying and begging these people to stop the teasing and the mockery and to leave me alone.

After all those imaginary situations I cooked up in my head, I told myself, I will not let this come true. I need to get over this negativity in less than 1 month time. And I'm going to stand up tall during the full moon party and show to people I did it. I survived it and I'm capable of doing anything if I put my mind to it.

# 2 : Reminisce my past challenges

I also think back what challenges I encountered before and how I got past it. I breastfed Ben exclusively for the first 6 months despite people saying I should supplement with formula, and even when he started solids, he still continues breastfeeding, past 1 year, 1.5 year, 2 years, and then I got pregnant and Ben continues suckling even though I stopped producing breastmilk at my 5th month of pregnancy, all throughout the pregnancy.

So I told myself, I want to add tandem nursing to my list of challenges that I have overcome too!

# 3 : Distraction!

I got this tip from Dionna of Code Name: Mama via personal messages with her through Twitter. What I do is when I tandem nurse my kids, I distract myself by thinking other things. Or I'll just close my eyes and rest. But nowadays, I don't quite feel irritated when I nursed my kids at the same time and I'll try to use that opportunity to teach Ben to touch his baby sister gently (he's still getting used to having a baby sister)

If you are here to look for ideas and tips to overcome your tandem nursing aversion, I hope my approaches help, if not, I hope you will know that you are not alone in this situation and it happens to a lot of tandem nursing mothers as well.

So there you go, the above are the few things I do to survive through my tandem nursing aversion.

This post contains quite a number of headless photos.

(Okay, okay, before you decide to exit out of this post, it is NOT a grotesque post,

more like I actually had to trim off the upper body portion of the pictures shown in this post.)

Reason is due to my BFF being a very personal person (she doesn't even have a profile picture in her Facebook!) and I totally respect that principle of hers (cos I'm kinda like that too, only I masked my paranoia of being stalked by ermm.. showing more pictures of Ben? Theeheeeeheeee...)

So anyway, a bit intro on how she was so privileged (ehem ehem... sorry, can't resist bragging... it's the ego I tell you!) got to be my BFF...

She was just 4 days older than me, although I was quite often mistaken as the older one, thanks to us being vertically challenged by 3 inches difference.

We met at high school, were classmates together towards the last couple of our high school years. Sat near each other during classes. Hang out with our other friends after school, at McDonalds, doing revisions and sometimes playing UNO cards to pass the time.

At 16 years old during school holidays, we worked at the same departmental stores as part-time sales promoter to earn some spare cash for our own expenses when school holidays are over.

At 17 years old plus, she (and another close friend of ours then) accompanied me for my 1st date meeting with my hubby then PEN PAL.

At 18 years old, while waiting for our final exam results, we again worked at the same departmental store but we were under different clothing brands though still on the same floor. She even helped matchmake me with my hubby who is then starting to court me.

Then we drifted apart after we got our high school results, she continued on with her A levels and university and I went to a college, got my IT Diploma, jobless for a while, then worked part-time at a souvenir shop before finally managed to find a job in the IT line.

After about 4 years plus, our paths crossed again when I recommended her to my company (the subsidiary I'm working with happens to have a vacancy), she didn't get to work at the same subsidiary as mine (unit trust) but she was offered a post for the insurance subsidiary. Because the IT department were centralised under Group IT, we ended up working in the same office floor, in fact, her cubicle is just a table away from mine.

Those days were fun, at least we get to complain and share our work grouses. We go for our lunch together, go home often together (her house is about 20 minutes further than mine). We went to the company dinner together.

And then she left to another insurance company, while I left to join the banking industry (both of us still in IT line of course) but we still kept in touch, going out for drinks and chatting whenever we can (together with my hubby then boyfriend)

When my hubby's dad passed away in 2004, she attended the funeral wake even though she had to travel far, taking trains and carpooling with our friends who are going as well.

When my parents passed away in 2006 and 2007, she was there to support me too.

When I got married in Nov 2007, she attended my registration of marriage ceremony.

When I got pregnant in middle of 2008, we double dated (me with hubby, she with her boyfriend) and took a short 3D 2N trip to Cameron Highlands to celebrate my last holiday before Ben arrives. I was 5 months pregnant with Ben when we went for that fun holiday.

When her dad passed away in February 2010, no matter how we got nagged by my superstitious MIL (it was nearing Chinese New Year then and old folks have this superstitious crappy thinking that we should not attend functions like this before happy festival - bah humbug...), hubby and I made sure we attend the funeral wake and gave her the support she needed in times of sorrow.

And one time, after visiting a friend of hubby who recently gave birth (went to gave some advice to the new mum on breastfeeding matters), we went over to my BFF house and invited her along to join our dinner at a mall near her house. She gladly joins us (even though she gotta work the next day), then we walked around after dinner and hubby even managed to pester her to take Ben for a walk.

It was a nice sight to see her tagging along after with Ben, it's not often we get to see Ben getting so comfy with someone so quickly!

I just want to dedicate this post to my BFF,

thank you for being such a good and loyal friend to us.

It's nice to be able to have a BFF which you can talk to about anything and my BFF is a super good listener and we can just continue talking about stuff that happens long ago, kinda like we could just pick up where we left off long ago and resume chatting about the stuff as if it happens recently.

We wish you all the best in your life, be it work wise, family wise or relationship wise.

Read: 3 John 1:2 (NIV), Proverbs 18:24 (NIV), Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NIV)

** P.s: Go and settle down already girl! We want to see you holding hands with your little prince and/or princess soon!

Maybe our kids can continue to be BFF too! :D

Still and always will love you loads girl!

** FYI, this post was originally posted in Sept 2010 and I'm reposting this as an entry to the "The World's Greatest BFF" contest