Suzette's Parenting and Breastfeeding Blog

I wrote about my crazy shopping spree on eBay before, and that was before I received my goods. To save shipping cost, I shipped those from US to my colleague’s house and she brought them with her when we met in Beijing early this month. Those from the UK, I shipped to my cousin’s house in London. He will be back to KL in 2 weeks time.

I’ve gone crazy bought so many items and didn’t realise that I am giving my cousin burden to bring them back! I found a good deal of 33 lot thriller books, with only RM280 (average RM8.5 per book). After that was delivered to his house, I think he got scared with the amount. Hey, books are not light, and he always travel very light. I told him not to bring them back, and I hope he doesn’t, otherwise I’d feel really awful for what I’ve done to him!

Apart from the 33 lot of thriller books, I’ve also got the following sent to his house:
- 3 more thrillers
- Chronicles of Narnia set of 7 books
- 4 paperback children story books with matching audio CDs
- Roald Dahl 10 classics on 27 CD set (which didn’t arrive, still tracking where it has gone!)

As for those items from the USA… Well, I started with the Focus of Family’s Audio Drama on Chronicles of Narnia — 19 CDs. It took me a long while with many lost bids before I finally got a very good deal.

Here are some snapshot of the brand new audio drama - lovely stuff.

Apart from this box set, she brought the followings for me — 1 luggage full!
- Lot of 24 Children’s Music Sing Along CDs
- 8 box sets of audio books (mostly thrillers)
- 3 hardcover books

I guess the books will take me at least a couple of years to finish reading/listening! I’m obsessed of books, I know… cannot resist, have to control myself.

In the ’shopping’ process, I’ve stumbled upon an eBay seller, with very reasonable shipping fee, and I’ve bought so many sets of audio books from them. The most recent one was a lot of 24 children audio books, which I believe will arrive very soon. This retailer’s eBay store is Can’t Go Wrong Here. Very good service, fast communication. Highly recommended!

I now start to believe the locked wrist that I suffered for 14 months a couple of years ago was linked to the usage of Avent Isis.

I refused to believe in that, when I was still a heavy user, while I was still breastfeeding Ian.

It started to develop when Ian was nearly 2 months old. I suffered so much, couldn’t even lift up an empty plate, lost the chance of bonding with my son, as I couldn’t carry him since he was a baby.

I’ve seen many doctors and finally decided to leave it. After I stopped BFG, it somewhat healed by itself. But I still didn’t associate AI with it, though MIL always suggests that.

I only started to believe in it, in the recent trips. After giving birth to Isabel, as my sister bought me the electronic pump Medela PIS, I’ve been using that even for overseas trips. Only for the last 3 (Redang, Beijing, BKK) I decided not to bring the pump and not to transport milk home, so I brought my old AI.

On the last day of Redang, I started to feel my right wrist’s pain. But I had a solid 1 week break before I used AI again in BJ. Between BJ and BKK, I had less than a week at home ground. BJ – felt the pain already, and in BKK – terrible pain.

It can’t be linked to carrying babies wrongly, as commented by one of the doctors previously. I don’t have my baby with me!

It can’t be linked to washing clothes, as I have a maid now and I don’t do laundry! (Ya, one lady doc concluded that before – can’t believe it!)

After all, maybe the uncertified doctor – my MIL, is right about the usage of AI. Whilst it gives good yields, need to use in caution.

I’ve decided for the rest of the trips this year, I will stick to my PIS, though it is a pain paying for the batteries (12 x AA sized). I can’t use the adaptors due to different voltage as it doesn’t covert.

Yesterday morning, the whole family set to go to Bentong to visit SIL BF family’s durian orchard.

This is the first time in my life I stepped into a durian orchard. The orchard was on a 3 acres hill, needed a little uphill walk. There are so many nice species, and I was told the good ones are rare and they normally reserve for family instead of selling.

When arrived, we saw many collected durians piled up on the ground already. SIL BF’s uncle helped us to open all the durians as we ate on the spot. While we were eating, there were more durians dropped from surrounding areas. Children went out to collect them, and we ate immediately. A very fun experience!

Collected Durians

Durian Opening

Collecting Durians

We had so much of good species to eat, include Musang (猫山), Udang Merah (红虾), Bamboo/Kaki Buluh (竹脚), etc. To them, 88 or D24 are low grades of all already, though I still quite like them. Musang is the highest grade, and is very rare. There was only 1 available, and I didn’t manage to eat coz I was busy plucking the mangoesteen!

The green one is not ripen, but the brownish one is ripened.

Manggis are plucked with this tool.

A whole bunch of nice mangosteen.

They call this a male manggis, coz there is a big one. If all are small sized, it is considered a female. I’ve never know about it, coz I never liked Mangosteen.

Hey! I never liked it, but when it is eaten fresh from the tree, the taste is just too good to decline. Hmm…. yummy, I still miss the fresh taste - the best taste is really freshly plucked from the tree. Slurpy!

There was one tiny incident when I was enjoying our durian feast. When auntie Y passed me the best of the Udang Merah, the moment I tried to remove the seed from the shell, there was a VERY BIG WORM!!!! Look! The size of the worm was even bigger than my little finger! Gross…

Apparently this was the only worm we encountered that day. How lucky I was huh!

Eating 88 fresh…

This is the famous Musang

This is the bamboo durian (kaki buluh)

Can you tell which is Musang and which is D24 durian tree?

Ian - walking with his auntie (hehehe, yes that little girl, just 2 years older than him, is his auntie)

I think the best way of picking up a new language is to be dump into that country and forced to use it everyday.

Anyway, that is of course a hard way, got to struggle in the beginning, especially if people don’t speak English at all in those countries. Some of them are like Japan, German, France, Thailand, China, etc.

I learnt China from my family and also from primary school. School started to teach English from standard 3, but only really used English after I graduated and offically started work.

In uni, I also learnt Japanese language, coz it was regarded as the most easily scored subject.

There are quite a lot of language courses USA. I think those that are popular are French course, German course, and Chinese course.

As for me, I’d really want to complete my Japanese course, but DH asked a good question — why do I need that? Ya, why do I need that? I don’t have Japanese friends, I don’t go to Japan, I don’t work in Japanese company… Why? Maybe a more useful language would be Thai?

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We breastfeeding moms are like factories, we also have our production index, that is called the MPI – Milk Production Index.
(This is actually not the official term, I think.)

MPI is very important for moms who pump/express their breastmilk, because we need to constantly monitor whether our MPI can meet our children’s milk demand or not. If it drops to a ‘dangerous’ level, then something needs to be done to boost it.

The issue is, in this ‘industry’, there is no standard way of measuring the MPI. But from my years of ‘hands-on experience’, I’ve come out with my own standard.

From observations through daily conversations with other BFG moms, MPI is often and commonly referred in amount (in fl oz) of yield per hour.

There are 2 ways to say this - per side, or by total of two sides. I tend to like the latter, coz to some people the production is not even for the two sides.

So, I’d take one day’s total ‘production’, divide by the total hours of ‘production’, to get the MPI. It works for mothers who express exclusively and for moms who feed direct and also express at work.

Example: The last direct feeding is at 6am, and the working mother pumps at 11am and 4pm with total yield of 20 fl oz on average daily. There are 10 hours between 6am and 4pm. So, I’ll say the MPI is 2 fl oz for every hour.

And you may ask me, what about those moms who feed directly? Well, they don’t need to measure MPI, it wouldn’t be a concern for them.

So, what is your MPI then? Mine is already dropped to a pathetic 0.67, less than half of my MPI 6 months ago. When traveling, MPI can drop to 0.5. I’m not worried coz Isabel is already on solid and the demand can be met even with this reduced MPI.

I think we should also use the same method to calculate MDI – Milk Demand Index. Hahaha!