I'm a full-time mummy

Welcome to the I Love Me! Carnival!

This post was written for inclusion in the I Love Me! Carnival hosted by Amy at Anktangle. This carnival is all about love of self, challenging you to lift yourself up, just for being you. Please read to the bottom to find a list of submissions from the other carnival participants.

For those of you who hopped over from the carnival, welcome and greetings from Malaysia, I hope you enjoy reading me bragging about myself (oh please bear with me... it's really rare that I self-complimented myself in public!!).

For my regular readers and visitors, hope you enjoy this post and do check out other participants' posts in this carnival if you're free!

Now what I love about me?

1. I quit my job to be a full-time mummy

Yeah! I kissed my beloved job goodbye back in June 2009 and became a SAHM since then. No regrets now that I look back at it. And I thank God for providing us with what we need since then.

2. I am a low maintenance kinda girl

Yeap again... no make-ups, no perfumes, no branded clothing, shoes, handbags, etc etc. Back when I was still working, I would spend money on books and magazines and the occasional clothing which I can wear both to work and for casual, but that's about it. No unnecessary spending. And now that I'm a SAHM, I get my books for FREE (since I get to review them hehehe...) and if I have to buy them, I use the money I earned from my blog.

3. I exclusively breastfed Benjamin for the first 6 months of his life

And by exclusive breastfed I meant totally on breastmilk and nothing else. No formula at all. With the rare couple of occasions where I was nagged by MIL to give Ben a few sips of water (during one of our very hot season). I am proud to be able to nourish my boy solely on my breastmilk alone!

4. I prepared Ben's solids myself

Other than the first small tin of rice cereal we bought to try out on Ben when he started solids, I prepared his solids myself. Steamed, mashed, minced, sliced all sorts of vegetables and fruits and prepared it for my boy. I wrote a post about Ben's solids and why I DIY his solids and you can read it at my old blog here.

5. I nursed my boy through my pregnancy!

Even though my breastmilk dried up during my 5th month of pregnancy, that doesn't seem to stop Ben from continue suckling from me. And now that my baby Alyson is born, Ben continues on breastfeeding (only prior to his afternoon naptime and bedtime) which makes up my next point which is...

6. I tandem nurse my 2.5 year old boy and baby

It is now almost 2 months that I tandem nursed my boy and my baby. Of course, during the initial few days, I was having emotional battles whenever I nursed Ben but slowly, I worked through this obstacle and am hoping it will completely go away soon.

7. I love my big eyes

Yeap, I admit it. I love them. I love that Ben inherits my big eyes. I hope Alyson does too. It's still too early to tell now. But yeah, my big eyes are one of my body parts which I'm proud of.

So there you go... the above lists are some of the things I can think of now that I love about myself!

Before I have kids, my waistline was the same, all the way since I was 17 years old...

And then I had Ben, and I gotta get a pregnancy jeans... which was fine cos it was extra small...

And then my waistline started expanding...

And few days back, when I had to go to the hospital for my postnatal check-up, I found myself with no pants to wear. The jeans I had in my closet stay stuck around my thighs, refusing to go up any higher... my hips apparently expanded thanks to these 2 fella...

So, during the recent weekend, hubby forced me to go shop for new jeans as I stood there holding my jeans, mourning over not being able to wear them anymore... After checking in and out a few stores, I finally bought 2 pair of jeans, 1 full length the other knee length.

And guess what are my jeans sizes now?

Sigh... what have my kids done to me?!

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.