10 days into a 4 Pax family

Dear Reader,

It's been 10 days since God gave us the joy of having a new baby home and what a gift! :)

Lil'bro does not have a name yet, but he is growing. The first half of his life was spent between hospital and home. He was born on the 22nd of November and they spent 2 nights at the hospital, as Yukyin wanted as best as possible to breastfeed, Lil'bro was not allowed any formula supplement, but we might have done it wrong at first. Lil'bro was a bit hungry and after two days, he was suffering from jaundice. He had quite a yellow tint but they still allowed him to be discharged. On the other hand, Yukyin needed an extra day to recover as she did not eat on the delivery day and could not eat afterward at all, she lost too much blood and did not have the energy to put her back in shape, she was feeling dizzy and uneasy with food. On the next day, appetite came back and she started to eat and regain energy. So, by Saturday afternoon, they were both home. But, Lil'Bro appetite dropped and we started to be a bit worried. Yukyin did not have milk in yet, so we were a bit concerned.

On Monday, we brought him to the Medical Health Centre, they told us that he needs to go back to the hospital for further checking. Through those events, I became angry about how wasteful the government can be in some cases, devices to check jaundice there have a 30% variation in readings and at the end, we were asked to go back to the hospital... somehow, I am just thinking if we should not have all those checking done in one same place instead of running around. Anyway, we got to the hospital in the afternoon and Lil'Bro needed to stay in for the night. I was kind of heartbroken... I know that jaundice is common but it's just sad seeing that little guy half naked in a plastic box lit by a powerful lamp. Just a feeling of loneliness. Besides that, they needed to feed him formula, bottle after bottle... they had a fixed amount of milk he needed to eat so that he could flush toxines and other bad things responsible for his jaundice... After one day, he was sharp awake when we visited him... 8) At home he has always been a bit sleepy, there he wanted to eat... So, somehow, we were disagreeing with the hospital's way of doing things, but in the same time, they got him his appetite back.

Another night passed and lamps when out, he was in observation, his jaundice rates were back to lower readings and he could go home on holiday for a night :). So, since Wednesday night, he is back home and we got all tired again from lack of sleeping. Yukyin's milk quantity is a lot higher than before, so I think he can be breastfed from now on. He had a few hesitations at first asking for milk bottle, but Yukyin kept strong and got the message in his mind... "you can only be breastfed".

Now, it's been few days, we are still very tired, Yukyin makes most of the effort, getting up and feeding him through days and nights. There is just some things we will never being able to replace. I tried to keep my head cool down, I had some bad time at start, gave some angry stares at Yukyin, but I'll pray that I'll get my temper in check. Sorry for being such a bad husband. I admire the love you give us so much.

I'll probably tell more about Myrtille another time as she also did change to cope with the presence of her little brother.

Here are some pictures of him:
Thinking about Mum

Another one:
Fully Awake, staring at Dad

Thanks for reading.

The miracle of breastmilk!

Ok ok, it's early but we needed to have a deep look at this question and I wanted to share my findings on this holy topic...

It may not be really obvious, but I am Chinese... and there is always the saying about this or that Chinese Proverb... If you happen to be pregnant or if you will be the husband of somebody who will, you will find out that a lot of your friends will start to give you advices on whatever subject in your life, especially Chinese people, they will completely submerge you with advices on what to eat or drink, here is a short list:

-drink milk
-don't eat "cold" or raw (cold refers to cold type of food, like watermelon, etc... Chinese people separate food in two families, hot and cold food, I don't have an exact list, but it should be easily found on internet)
-eat dark green vegetables
-don't eat beef
-eat beef
-don't eat ...
-eat...

then come the don't:

-do not crouch
-do not do too much exercises,
-do not bend down...

and now the suspicious don't:

-do not hammer nail in the walls
-do not meet a newly born baby under 4 months age
-do not use scissors
-do not go to your friends weddings...

The list is huge... and start to really bugs us, because you will notice that some advices are contradictory, some are completely false, some might be true, some... are completely nonsense. But, I want to come back on the milk one, because it made me think about it twice. Yukyin is pouring milk into her stomach once a day with some bran cereals. The bran is there to help her digests because it contains a lot of fibers or I should say, it is pure fibers. Milk was there for her and the baby. The baby will need calcium and her mom said that the baby will take all the calcium from the mom's bones.

So, as a daily habit, she kept drinking milk. Until today.. or tomorrow as she will stop from tomorrow (today's too late). A vegetarian friend of mine told me that cow milk was no good, but she did not manage to explain why. But today, some friends sent us this video (you may want to know Cantonese...). In two words, it talks about milk drinking habit. A professor in the USA has done a lot of research and conclude that humans should not drink too much cow milk (note the TOO MUCH here...). He says that excess of cow milk increases the risk of cancer in human body (which has been statistically proved for prostate cancer) and that drinking too much cow milk will increase the quantity of calcium in bones joints, it may sound contradictory as everyone knows that milk is a great calcium source. In fact, bovine protein (which is contained in milk) will be somehow transformed into acid. The body will react to this acid by taking calcium from the bones... so it's a kind of vicious circle. Also, milk would be source of a lot of allergies or extreme immune reaction in some babies. Some babies have been reported to develop allergies to cow milk because the mother was drinking cow milk during the pregnancy...

A whole nightmare started for Yukyin as she found out about all this... the world were collapsing. Ok, adult people can find calcium in other things than milk, but what about babies? What can they drink? What can she drinks?

Easy answer: breastmilk!

People usually says that it hurts and all kind of other painful moment, or simply, it does not work. To find out more about it, I went onto internet to find out more about breastmilk and its composition compared to cow milk and soy milk.

Soy milk apparently does not have vitamin D and calcium (from wikipedia, other website states the contrary). Cow milk contains a lot of things good for health but it also contains some things... that are no good, exemple: lactoglobuline (in French), it's a substance that is not contained in human milk, this substance causes allergy to newly born child as it is stranger to our body. The intestinal system in a newborn needs around 100 days to be formed correctly and thus, may not be able to eliminate this kind of thing easily. It has too much proteins, a calf does not grow at the same speed as a human baby... Then, keep the cow milk for the calf...

To make it short, the best milk for a baby is the breastmilk... It contains everything the human babies needs to absorbs, its composition will change during the first three months of breast feeding to adapt to the baby's development need. Its composition will change during a single meal so that a baby will naturally feel full. There is too much to say, too much to discover, I can only invite you to look for breastmilk on wikipedia here.

When I read all this, I can only be astonished by how amazing our God's creation is. Everything seems to be so natural and perfect that you can't think that we are fruits of random evolution or unorganized explosions... God, I really want to thank you the way you made us.

So what does Yukyin can do to help her in taking care of our baby in her body??? we don't know yet, but we do know that cow milk is no good nor soy milk. Still need to investigate.