Random Note for Noah 1

Dear Noah,

While you were enjoying a relaxing bath last night, you got scared and freaked out when I turned on the tub faucet. It was the  first time I've seen you get scared over something.  It was also the cutest thing ever : )....until the next cute thing happens.

Love,
Mom

Here comes the baby....posts

I've been meaning to start blogging again about having a baby so that I could look back later on and remember what happened, how I felt, and the baby's small milestones.  But now three months later I'm just getting started!  Oh where to begin...

I guess we'll start the moment I met Mr. Noah Han Shin...the little alien that grew inside my belly for 9 months...the little version of my Joe...the tiny love of my life.  From that moment on, as cliche as this sounds, nothing was ever the same.  How did I know this?  First, I cried...and when does that ever happen?  Second, I realized that I was actually gave birth to a baby....and how long had I been saying that I would never give birth? Third, our family went from two to three.  It's been just Joe and I for eight years.  We've grown accustomed to our ways...dining out, sleeping in, frying up bacon at one in the morning. Goodbye old life.  Hello parenthood!

Despite the overwhelming joy I felt the instant I laid eyes on him, the next 7 weeks was an uphill battle from breastfeeding issues, the baby blues, and sleep deprivation.  And despite all the advice, baby books, and classes, there was nothing that could have prepared me for being a mom.

The biggest challenge from that first month was breastfeeding.  Having read what an ideal breastfeeding scenarios were online, I figured that it was such a natural thing that it would just happen.  But nothing happened as planned and I soon realized how unprepared I was to breastfeed.  I ended up having a c-section (homie's head was too big =), which delayed my milk from "coming in".  Even though Noah latched on fairly easily, he wasn't getting any milk and lost 10% of his weight while we were still at the hospital.  He was given formula at the hospital while I desperately tried to keep him latched.  At one point, he sucked so hard from hunger that flesh from inside my left nipped came out (sorry if that was tmi!).  Luckily, I was still on pain meds from my c-section so I didn't feel anything but I imagine it would have been really painful. 

A week passed and he was still formula fed.  At this point, he refused to latch even after my milk finally did come in.  Every time he was fed with a bottle, I felt like a failure from not being able to breastfeed my own child.  Although friends reassured me that there's absolutely nothing wrong with formula fed babies, I still felt down about it and cried often.  After a very hard day of trying to breastfeed and finally throwing in the towel with a bottle of formula, I found myself breaking down and crying uncontrollably.  How could being a mother be so damn depressing?  But a magical thing happened.  I looked down at Noah and saw a huge smile...the first smile I saw from him.  It was as if he was telling me that everything is going to be A-ok.

Thankfully, I had a strong support system from my husband, friends, and especially my mom who cheered me on and encouraged me to not give up. My mom would squirt milk with a syringe into Noah's mouth as I tried to get him to latch on again to trick him into thinking that he was getting alot of milk from me.  After a few days of this, Noah finally started latching without being tricked and we were able to reduce his formula intake to just 2 ounces per day.  Hooray!

But my celebration was short lived.  Once he re-learned how to nurse and once I stopped needing pain medication, all the pains and soreness from breastfeeding kicked in.  Noah's dependency to my nipple to soothe him from everything also started.  He couldn't sleep without nursing and used my nipple as a pacifier...and I found myself wishing that I just kept formula feeding.  I also asked myself why I wanted to breastfeed so badly.  It hurt so much and I hadn't yet felt that connection that I had read about from breastfeeding moms.  The baby blues intensified especially during growth spurts when Noah wanted to eat every hour.  I often questioned my abilities about being a good mom and at times even found myself resenting my own baby.  How horrible is that?  

After lots of "googling", posting on online forums, countless pep talks with family and friends, and meeting with a lactation consultant, Noah and I finally got into a nice of groove of things.  My nipples started to toughen up and I no longer dreaded the next feeding time.  By week 6, I felt that magical connection that others had described about nursing your baby.  I couldn't get enough of cuddling and playing with my little bub and felt so much joy from knowing that I caused that milk wasted look of satisfaction from his face. 

Moral of this post - It truly does take a village to raise a child.  I couldn't have gotten through this breastfeeding hurdle without our village of love from friends and family...and because I had such a great support system, I promised myself that I would try to do the same to anyone that needed help with it later on.  So feel free to ask if you have any questions!  I'm no expert but I do know that it helps to talk about these things with someone that can relate.   

Next up....Noah's milestones!  Or maybe a labor story? Who knows =)

Air Head Moments: Pump and Dump

I'm by no means a stupid person...but once in a while (though more often that I would like), I end up having these Homer Simpson "Doh!" moments. Let's just point the blame to me being somewhat of a FOB ok?

So here go...

For a while now I always had the assumption that the term Pump and Dump meant that moms feel like they have to take a dump (poo) after pumping. Pump...and Dump! So I told one of my friends who then corrected me.

[Oh it doesn't mean that?]


Doh!

10 Things Asian Girls Like To Do On Facebook

Guilty as charged...I've done pretty much most of these.

1. Take webcam pictures with maybe a couple of other girlfriends. Make sure faces are
right up against the camera, head tilted down slightly so that eyes appear bigger than they are. Don’t forget to throw up the peace sign or make a kissy face

2. Post status updates on how awesome their boyfriend is for buying them a gift or sending them flowers.

3. Post pictures of her and her friends doing multiple poses at the same venue. Photoshoot!!

4. On the same token, an Asian girl will most likely have an album with pictures of just her in it titled “simply me” or “just me”

5. Post pictures of food. Pictures are either ones that she cooked, ate at a fancy restaurant, or food from a popular food truck. She looks like she eats ALL THE TIME…but she’s skinny as hell!

6. Profess her love for a celebrity on face book. “OMFG, Bradley Cooper can speak French!! Drooooool”

7. Makes sure that her facebook persona is perfect. Perfect boyfriend, perfect job, perfect clothes, awesome friends, and makes sure to untag any incriminating and non-cute pictures of herself

8. Jumps on the wagon with her boyfriend's sports team and post status updates of how awesome or bad they are doing during a game. “ WTF EAGLES!! SMH” . Next year with a new boyfriend "WTF REDSKINS!! SMH"

9. Has a drunken status update accidentally left on facebook for an hour on a Saturday night. If you check the next day, she’s realized it doesn’t go with her perfect facebook persona and immediately deletes it.

10. “Likes” pages such as Gilt, Allure, and any other fashion related page.

10b. Proclaim on facebook that she's fat and that she needs to go on a diet. Then post pics of food...then checks in at the local gym..then posts more pics of food.

10c. Never a debbie downer. Something fun is always going on. "I found my favorite candy!". "Next vacay booked! Woohoo!" "Having an awesome hair day. That is all".

10d. Almost every Asian girl has a hater and will passively call out her hater via status update. SOmething like "haters can hate. I'm fab and you know it". "Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind".

Taking some advice from Sugar

Blogging is something that enjoy. It's fun for me to write about an experience...check my stats and comments to see if at the very least, I've provided someone something to do for 5 minutes on their otherwise monotonous day. Maybe I've made you laugh, maybe I've angered you, and maybe you're even judging me through my posts. No matter that your reaction may be, I held your attention even for just 5 minutes...and for someone who sits in front of the computer analyzing excel spreadsheets and grinding out slide decks, yet yearns to have more people interaction and be more creative, well, that's pretty freakin cool.

However....
1) My long work days and a long commute home leaves me little to no time to keep this thing up 2) I honestly don't do alot of interesting things to even blog about
3) As much as I wanted to originally have a bargain/fashion/relationship blog, I'm constantly questioning whether my posts are PC or even something of interest to others.

And hence, my less than one post a month isn't exactly going to take this blog to some top 10 blog list.

But is that really my ultimate goal? Perhaps the most interesting blogs that I subscribe to were started by people who simply wanted to get their ideas out there...no matter how random...how un-interesting...how completely un-PC. In the words of Sugar by the Rompus, Write like a MotherF*@&er and I intend to do just that.

One blog post a day either here or my wedding blog is my goal. I think I need to give myself the time to do at least one thing I enjoy everyday...

Couponing Adventure: Saving on Gas!

Who hasn't gotten reeled in by that Extreme Couponing show on TLC? I certainly have...and after seeing the first show, I urged Joe to subscribe us to the Sunday paper so we can take advantage of all the deals. I began cutting and organizing coupons for a good four weeks straight and then that's when I got tired of it and stopped. The wake-up call to get back into it was a trip to Tarjay that ran me up $170 coupon-less. What was I buying?! Why did it cost me so much?! And unloading the measly three plastic bags into the house made me feel really bad about wasting so much money.

So I got back in with a new strategy - take it slow and focus on one store first. Naturally, I chose CVS because well, that's where Joe works and if I ever made a mistake in using a coupon, we still had his employee discount to fall back on. I began looking out for deals for things that I always use like this:

which I use at least once a week (totally NOT working though!).

Most recently, CVS began a partnership with BP and Shell that if you spend up to $30 on certain products (the list of products rotates weekly), you get a $10 Shell or BP card. Since I buy my stuff from CVS anyway, I figured I might as well take advantage - which I did last night. My "savings", though not quite Extreme Couponing-esque, I thought was still pretty good. Using only a few coupons (I think I only had 4) and store sales, the retail price for my purchases was about $90 and I paid only $50 plus got a $10 gas card, an extra $2 of CVS Extra Bucks that I can use towards future purchases, and received another coupon that was good for $10 off $50 purchase next time. So in all, I really spent only $38 for a $90 worth of stuff that we use anyway (toilet paper, toothpaste, kleenex, laundry detergent, etc.).

Already feeling pretty good about myself, I went home and started to reorganize my coupon book. As I started looking through some of the current grocery store circular, I stumbled upon a Giant gas promotion that they're doing with Shell stations. Basically, they give you 1 point her $1 spent at Giant and each 100 pts can be redeemed for $0.10 cents off / gallon at the pump. They also run deals where if you buy 7, 6, or 3 items from a list (this week the list is pretty good - strawberries, clementines, mushrooms, salad kits, paper towels, etc.), you get 200 pts which means $0.2 off / gallon of gas. The limit is pretty high (like 2200 pts redeemed at once) so you could in theory get up to $2.20 off/gallon. So starting today, I'm going to plan carefully to combine the CVS gas card promo and the Giant gas card promo. The goal for this week - earn 600 pts at giant by buying from their 200 pts list and use that to get $0.6 off / gallon. If I fill up at my local shell at $3.89/gallon, I would pay $62.24 retail. With my accumulated deals ($10 CVS Shell card and $0.6 off/ gallon from Giant), I would pay only $42.64 for a full 16 gallon tank.

Not bad at all....

Actually, it's pretty sad that i think $42.64 is not bad for a full tank of gas. I knew I should have bought that hybrid!

Today I noticed that I've Taken Over...

2/3 of the walk-in closet.

SUCCESS!!

that is all =)