Own Time Own Target

E has been very health conscious and even checking up on me from time to time.

So I was unperturbed when he asked for my current height and weight, which I knew he must be checking my BMI again.



Out with a result of 21.


Based on the guidelines of Singapore Health Promotion Board for adults:

BMI (kg/m2) for Adults	Health Risk
27.5 and above	High Risk
23 – 27.4	Moderate Risk
18.5 – 22.9	Low Risk (healthy range)
Below 18.5	Risk of nutritional deficiency diseases and osteoporosis

"Whoa! Very good leh!"

"Ehm, yeah, ok...."
"What do you mean VERY GOOD LEH"
"What were you expecting" as I crooked an eyebrow.

"Er, em, you know, you've just given birth and so, ah, good lor." as he pretended to be busy with something.

"Hmmm..."

I wonder if this is supposed to be a complement or he was seeing me no up...

Labels: to Sweat

The lack of post has been obvious and the reason equally so, thus nothing to add there. (that's about as much of an apology that any one's gonna get! :-p )

The current sad state of affairs plus the fact that I dont seem to possess the required sustained brain juice and any meaningful pockets of time required to do anything had me thinking...

Multi-tasking is NOT working.

I mean, I used to be able to have a number of mostly unrelated things going on simultaneously during any work hour:
- Working on at least 1 reports on my pc
- have ideas constructed/ organised in my head for at least another 1-2 reports
- 1 or 2 or 3 msn conversations
- an eye on the stock market
- music streaming
- an eye checking if anybody's approaching my desk (hehe)
- planning what to have for lunch
- sipping coffee/ tea

But now I just dont seem to be able to call up the processing power to do all these at the same time anymore.

Is it a case of diminished brain power through lack of sleep or dead brain cells?

Or is it simply because Multi-tasking is no longer worth it?

Ok, fine, multitasking is a misnomer. Because a person is unable to do several things that require similar cognitive power, he is simply switching from one task to another, while losing miliseconds for the connections to rewire everytime he switches. Imagine a task like counting beans, even if you are organised and have your beans painstakingly separated by 10s, 100s, and 1000s; everytime you have your attention diverted, you will need to reassess how many you've counted/ organised (nearest 10s/ 100s/1000s)before you can continue again.

Is the task switching thus counter-productive?
Is it possible for a person to be a uni-tasker?

I know there are those who say they see meaning of multitasking in the first place for those whom I've had this conversation with... you know who you are

But imagine:
- Driving without the radio on, and handphones off. You are driving.
- Talking on the phone, and stopping where you are. You are talking.
- Having a meal and not talking to your companion. You are eating.
etc etc

Not multitasking in these circumstances is just weird, because they are so ingrained in us.

Unfortunately, the discussion is moot for me.

I am just plain exhausted, uni or multi tasking.

Labels: to Read Think

a long hard cry

on hind sight, i guess it was long overdue

partly triggered or rather the straw that broke the camel's back came last night when I visited Baby V. Where I realised that after 5 weeks, her discharge is not going to be as soon as I had foolishly expected...

I had thought based on past experience that a premie baby would be discharged by the time she hits 2kg. Unfortunately in the euphoria of her recent good weight gains, I had forgotten/ neglected to factor in the requirement for her to learn to bottle feed well before being allowed to discharge.

It should have been a simple DUH moment... but

Add that to my recent witnessing of another (much bigger) baby gagging and coughing and crying when a nurse installed a new feeding tube, and my realisation that Baby V will have to have her next feeding tube through her nose (instead of mouth currently) so that her mouth will be free when suckling.

THEN i understood that another baby born on the same day as Baby V who started at a lower birth weight of 1.2kg+ (vs her 1.35kg) is now 2.2kg (vs her 1.8kg)... probably because his parents carried him unfailingly everyday for an hour and his mom had so much milk that the nurses told her not bring any more to the hospital...

and the walls came crashing down.

That it is not going to end soon, the isolation and loneliness of being tethered to a pump at home 24/7, the resentment of my life suspended in animation vs E being free to pursue his tri dreams where so much time is spent in training over 5-6 days in a week, pity for my elder kids, anger over my inability to carry Baby V to full term ... ... ... mixing extreme sustained fatigue over 5 weeks (s0 far and counting) with all the anger, resentment, pity, hurt... everything just came rushing through and buried me...

argh.

a long. hard. cry.

the first where i learned that a cry does not only make your eyes puffy and nose blocked, but your EARS blocked too...

well, like i said, long in coming and while it is the first I suspect will not be the last.

sigh.

hopefully the next one will not block my ears

Labels: to Despair

Baby V was born weighing 1350gm, and shrink (they say it is normal) to 1130gm at the lowest in the week after birth.



Since then, she has been gaining weight (mostly) steadily between 4gm (a Singapore 20 cents coin weighs 4.5gm) and 45gm (a 4-finger bar of kit kat) a day... with an average of about 20-ish gm a day so far.

It seems so little and insignificant, but every gram counts. 1800gm until she is able to be taken off the feeding tube to be bottle fed (below that, sucking may consume more energy than what she is able to take by mouth) and 2000gm to being discharged.

She is 1762 today. Just 238gm to coming home...

Life at home is fragmented, revolving around the milk-expressing schedule which is once every 3 hours.

That means that 24 hours a day is divided into 8 periods of 3 hours each.

For every period, at least 1 hour is devoted to milk-expression. Less than 2 hours is then used for sleeping, eating, shower, housework, checking email/ work, washing/ sanitizing milk-expression pumps and bottles, monitoring stock market, watching some TV, racing through a few pages of newspaper/ book, tending to my 2 elder kids etc, what ever the priority of the time is.

That means that the most sleep per session I get is less than 2 hours a time, and most days i get no more than 6-7 hours in 3-4 sessions.

yawn~*

Baby V had moved from NICU to Special Care Nursery (SCN) when she no longer needed oxygen supplement via CPAP.

She's looking much better, having slowly been filling out over the last few weeks.

Her fingers no longer looks like wrinkled dried chillis, and looks like fresh chilli now.

When they look like plump little sausages, she'll be ready to come home... :)

I visited Baby V for the first time since my discharge from KK.

Her weight then was 1160 gm, having shrunk after delivery, per normal expectations.

Her fingers were so long... then it hit me that it was because she was so skinny that she doesn't have the chubby fingers of other new borns

Her eyes were huge... and it hit me again that it was because her face was too thin.

Even though I had long comforted myself that Baby V is in a much better position than other smaller babies, it still hurts to see her so small compared to full-term babies...

I had to lean into E as tears flooded my eyes...

Labels: to Despair