My Come Back to P-Latte and the Active World

Okay, i know I have been away for the longest time.

A lot of my friends asked if pregnancy was stressful and if child birth was painful, well they were, just a little. But seriously they were really just appetizers when compared to what I went through (like any other parents) AFTER the baby is born. I barely survived juggling among work, house chores and baby sitting, especially in the first 6 months.

I am still struggling but things are getting better, everyday, one bit at a time.

Now that baby Charles is 8-month old, I think I should do something for myself, like start taking care of my own personal hygiene - I have not trim my eyebrows (eyebush?) for 8 months and sometimes not brushing my teeth until end of the day; AND taking care of my health.

First thing I did to resume my healthy and active lifestyle was to invest in a Baby Jogger, so that I can get some workout while spending quality time with Baby Charles!

This fierce looking stroller is monstrous especially when it passes by other 'normal' strollers in the mall. Its 16" back wheels (which are as big as the rim on my Honda Jazz) need to be inflated just like bicycle wheels, and it comes with heavy duty suspension springs too. We went for "test drive" over the National Day weekend in Botanic Gardens and Charles felt so comfy in his private vehicle, he felt asleep shortly after we started jogging. It's such an irony that I drive such a small car, but the stroller we use are so huge!

Look out for me and Charles-in-BabyJogger at parks from now on! YAY!!!!

My Little Prince has arrived!

My baby boy, Charles, has finally arrived on 3rd Dec 2008.

I was rather proud of myself, though my doctor never belived I could do it, that I was able to go thru natural delivery without epidural.  Looking back at my delivery experience, I think the body awareness I gained thru exercise and Pilates definitely helped in the process.

This was because during labour, the midwife kept asking me to relax, or else the baby wouldn't be able to come thru the birth canal. But seriously I was in so much pain that my whole body was totally tensed up (in fact I was grasping the bed rail so hard with my shivering fingers that the whole bed was shaking). So I figured I had to isolate and relax the muscles in my lower body while allowing the upper body to tense up to help me cope with the labour pain. At the actual delivery, I used "lateral breathing" to fully enlarge my lungs with as much oxygen from the mask as possible to generate energy to push, so voila, it took us only 20 minutes to deliver the baby. 

Newly into motherhood, I am quite overwhelmed with all the childcare chores and lack of sleep. But I look forward to resume my exercise regime and Pilates training after my body recovered. At the mean time, I do lots of side stretch like modified mermaid and spine stretch in between feeding time to let go of all the muscle tension build up from long period of sitting.

Toxic Chemical in Infant's & Children's Feeding Products

A year ago while I was looking for a gift for my baby niece in-law, a doctor friend strongly recommended me to buy a special feeding bottle. The special thing about this bottle was that it does not contain the chemical "bisphenol-A" (雙酚A in chinese or BPA in short) .


Okay, that was the first time I heard about this chemical. I read the brochure and roughly know that it is harmful to health. That's about it.


Now that I am pregnant, I start to pay more attention to the quality and safety of baby products (the melamine milk scandal just make me more paranoid). When I did my baby-stuff shopping in HK (where prices are generally 20% cheaper than S'pore), I realised BPA-free products have come into the mainstream market. Parents are careful in picking up only BPA-free bottles, sippy cups, eating utensils and even toys. A shop owner told me that BPA is a big topic among parents not only in HK, but in Taiwan (click here for a chinese news articleon BPA), Korea and Japan as well.


So why is there little awareness of BPA in Singapore? I asked my friends, the most "kiasu/ 怕輸" full-time-baby-sitting mothers (who only buy the most expensive and best quality products for their babies) about it, none of them heard about such issue.


According to Bisphenol-A Free, BPA is a "hormone-disrupting chemical considered to be potentially harmful to human health and the environment. It has been known that scratched and worn polycarbonate feeding bottles will leach this chemical into liquids."

As usual, depending on who is funding the research, there are conflicting research datas that either support the claim that BPA is toxic or it is not harmful to human health.


While FDA and European authorities are being rather fiddle-minded over the issue, Canada government is a little more decisive and it officially puts BPA under the toxic chemical list.

Though the controversy continues, I am not going wait for few decades for the scientists to be sure and I rather be kiasu to stick to the safe side. Why risk exposing my baby to any known potential harm?!

Luckily I found this excellent "Z Recommends" that gives a comprehensive Report on BPA in Children's Feeding Products. This comes in really handy to help me purchase BPA-free milk pumps, milk bottles, utensils and toys etc for my little prince. I am glad that the expensive Combi training cups that I bought from HK are safe to be used.