Suzette's Parenting and Breastfeeding Blog

Alright, enough talks about what fails breastfeeding. It is time to be more positive thinking, and I’m going to share with you what makes it successful.

Here is a list of things that I’d rate them ‘must do’. There are just so many things that you could do to help the success and I am going to list down only these prominent ones. If you think I miss out any important ones, please highlight in comment?

Before Baby’s Arrival
Mixing With The Right People
It is important to listen and learn from people who have successfully breastfed their children, instead of listening to the advice from people who failed or never tried breastfeeding. I guess this is common sense, but unfortunately there aren’t many people around us did this!

If you do not know of anyone who have successfully breastfed their kids, don’t despair. There are a number of breastfeeding community out there, with many members successful in breastfeeding. I made many new friends in MyMomsBest and we become blogging buddies now.

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I was about to write about this, but Mumsgather beats me first! In her post today, she shared with us how her kids made new vocabs.

On top of her kids’ “onner” (switch) and “moredest” (most), I’d also like to share with you a new word created by Ian.

Few days ago when I drove him under a highway flyover, he thought it was the monorail. I corrected him and told him that is a highway, is for cars, hence he cannot see train on it.

Few minutes later, he asked me, “Mama, where is the shortway?”

As there was a delay, I didn’t see the linkage. I asked him what he meant by that, and he said:
“Neh, the train goes on a shortway like that like that” (with hands gesture)

After a few seconds only it registered. He took ’short’ as the opposite of ‘high’. So, if cars use ‘highway’, the train uses ’shortway’, i.e. railway!

Recently I have been approached by friends and relatives on many questions related to breastfeeding. I then realized that I’ve ignored this topic completely in my blog - which I originally intended to do! So, I’m going to revive this mission. Hope these breastfeeding posts can help moms to be.

I have met so many mothers who failed to breastfeed their children, and the core reasons are mostly similar. Now, whenever I heard of new moms who failed in breastfeeding, without having to meet them I can nearly guess their reasons correctly. The reasons can’t run away from the followings.

Delay In First Feed
Many moms were told that they don’t have much milk during the first few days, which happened to be true. Instead of breastfeeding frequently to stimulate milk production, they took the wrong step by supplementing with infant formula. As a result of it, the mothers’ breasts would not produce milk. The effect is like chicken and egg. Without stimulation, no milk. No milk, supplement.

Supplements
Many fear of insufficient milk, without knowing the correct way to judge whether Continue Reading »

Forgot to blog about this, maybe I am numb to this already?

Yes, another re-org in my department. This is a smaller scale re-org, though many departments have their own ‘mini reorg’. It is considered smaller scale coz the big/overall organization is not affected.

In my department, there are currently 12 persons including the head of department. It will be down to 10 persons. So, 2 researchers have to go.

Looking at the new structure, I think I might be able to get one safely, almost designed for me. But then, we better not to be that sure. Like Chinese saying: 半路杀出个程咬金 (half way some prominent enemy appear!)…

The department will ‘dissolve’ in a couple of weeks’ time, and we will all need to apply for the new jobs again. In fact, these jobs are not just opened for people currently in the department, but open to everyone. So, my competitors can still be someone unexpected. But then, if there is nothing unexpected happened, I most probably can get one of them. Not to worry - that’s what I told myself so far. Wish me luck.

Read Problogger’s post yesterday on The Google Page Rank Pendulum Swing…. Again. It is confirmed that the last PR update (or ‘downdate’, as teased by some bloggers), was based on penalizing link selling activities.

Quoting Problogger here:

This latest furore has all been about the selling of links and is a warning shot to bloggers and webmasters who engage in the practice. Of course not everyone who sells links has been hit (there’s no way Google will get everyone) but it’s a sign of what Google are continuing to crack down on.

Now, it is our choice whether to:

I guess the decision will really depend on whether one site’s incoming traffic has been affected by the PR so far. Lower PR is likely to have a site being listed much behind many other sites in Google’s search result, hence less likely to drive new visitors based on content.

We’ll wait and see how. I’m not keen to stop selling link yet, and will let TextLink rest here for a while until further decision is made. However, I do worry that the advertisers will stop buying links from TextLink or blogs like ours as a result of this. Anyway, again, we shall wait and see first…