Balik Kay Ell

Alhamdulillah, we arrived at my mum's house in Damansara safe and sound around 5.30 p.m. Although there was a slight drizzle before we started on our journey, the weather was kind - no rain, a bit cloudy, a few sunny spots but not too hot - perfect for travelling with kids over a 444km distance.

Sofiyyah was an angel - she spent most of the trip sleeping. Even the few times she was awake there was hardly any sound from her, let alone a cry, but her eyes were open to take in the different scenery. Despite this being her first trip in the SUV, she settled into it very well - must be a familiar sensation from all my driving during pregnancy. Even Nu'man's horseplay didn't bother her.

My brother apparently has been really busy. He had installed a ceiling fan and new lights in the guest room where I usually stay, bought a new sofa bed for the kids' playroom, and a new HDTV. The existing TV set has been moved downstairs "so the boys can easily play video games" - which they are happily doing now.

As for me, it's back to the familiar Confinement regime - already agreed for Kak Yam to come in first thing Saturday morning for my massage. I've got a hot water bottle behind my back, and no more fried fish or chicken in my meals.

I'll be spending 2 weeks here, which means the boys get an extra week off school. I hope it doesn't mean they'll miss much from kindergarten - especially as they've got tests immediately after we arrive back in Alor Setar!

Half-way through...

Tomorrow I hit the mid-way mark of my confinement. Officially, it ends on 18th June. Which means it's 20 more days before I can be free to go (almost) anywhere I like and eat (almost) anything I desire. However, that also happens to be the end of the 2-week school holidays, which starts next weekend. My sons are really looking forward to spending their holidays in Damansara or Shah Alam, and I know my siblings and parents would love to have them there.

So as a compromise, I'll be leaving for KL on the 9th of June, just after Sofiyyah gets her 1-month jab & check-up. It'll probably mean that the boys get an extended school break, just so that I get to do a few of my own stuff in and around KL after my confinement is over. So here's my wishlist:

1. Toy Story 3 opens at the cinema on 17th June. I would love to bring the boys to watch it as their first bona fide cinema experience, maybe on the first Monday of school to celebrate my freedom.
2. Secret Recipe's Blackforest Cheesecake. The one time I had it was a week before I delivered. As everyone else at the table was sharing/sampling food, I passed it around when I was halfway through the slice although I really wanted it all to myself. It never came back. So this will be a solo trip for me, downed with a nice caramel latte.
3. Meet up with my Coachee at KLCC to prepare for her assessment in July. I could probably squeeze in a shopping trip while I'm there.
   

That'll also be a good time to start my EBM regime with my brand new Medela Harmony breastpump. Yes, after all the BPA horror stories, and comparing prices through various online stores, I've switched allegiance from Avent to Medela. It will also help that the bottles are different sizes so they do not get mixed up with Aiesyah's 4 oz bottles (she's still not giving them up, and refuses to share - big baby!). I got quite a good deal from The Baby Loft, which includes 4 extra bottles, a cooler bag and a sleek Citystyle bag to carry it all in. In fact, the Citystyle is so sleek I could pass it off as a normal handbag!

Confinement in Kedah

Since I blogged quite extensively about my confinement regime after my third child, Aiesyah, I thought I'd do the same for this birth. This time, I'm spending the 40-day period in Alor Setar with my mother-in-law, so I get to sample Kedah-style 'pantang bersalin' for a change.

It certainly is a change from my previous experiences. Number one item is the food. I'm not complaining - it's a lot tastier than the typical Kelantanese offering. Although Mak would certainly not approve of all the frying and sauteing that goes into the food preparation!

A main feature in the menu seems to be 'ikan talang kering'. I'm a bit skeptical about the exact benefits of eating salty preserved fish as part of post-natal recovery, but it seems to be the staple confinement food here. The first week, even at the hospital, I would be served a small portion of this fish that has been fried (I can hear my mother gasping in horror!) with ginger and onion. Sometimes it would be 'masak asam' - similar to the fried variety but with a sourish gravy. Even the soup and vegetables I can tell have been cooked with some oil in it.

Cik Dah came up to Alor Setar with Mak on the third day and stayed on till the weekend, so during that time I was served with the more familiar menu of chinese herbal soups, 'sambal lada benar' and 'ulam'. And my favourite red dates drink! I also had my 'mandi teresak', which thankfully has become part of the current regime (I was so missing it before Cik Dah arrived). But now that she's gone back to Damansara, the Kedahan menu has returned.

The discipline of applying all the oils and wraps are also missing, in the sense that it's mostly up to me to decide whether to put them on or not. Whereas Mak was very strict about making sure I always have the 'barut'/bengkung' on, and that someone (usually Cik Dah, if not the masseuse) always applies 'minyak panas' on my legs and back before I go to bed and after I shower, there doesn't seem to be an urgency to do that in this household (saya sendiri pun malu nak mintak orang tolong - kalau dengan mak atau suami sendiri senang sikit nak mengada2). I suppose since MIL had C-sections for all 3 deliveries, the only 'pantang' she could observe was regarding the food.

It wasn't until the baby was already a week old that I had a massage. Hubby's aunt, Mak Chak, had recommended a lady called Mak Lang who had performed similar 'urut & tungku' services for her daughters during their confinement. She would only come in after my stitches healed. Well, I don't think they healed completely after just seven days, but my legs were starting to feel half-dead so I insisted that she come. So she did, for three days.

Mak Lang brought a set of oils, jamu and 'bedak boros' - a form of 'bedak sejuk' that looks and smells like kurma paste - that I apply all over my body after my bath. We started off the day with a massage, then tungku, after which I take my shower. Unlike my previous masseuses, she did not help me put on the bengkung. In fact she didn't even mention it once. Luckily I managed to put it on myself. On days or nights when I feel a bit lazy, I just use an elastic tummy wrap.

I need to engage her again after the 20th day, maybe for another 3 days. I've finished the bedak boros (only enough for 5 applications), and now using Losyen Yusmira (a 3-in-1 consisting of lime juice, citronella extract and ginger essence) instead. Less of a mess, I think.

Can't Sleep

It must be the latte.

Confinement officially over as of Saturday 17 Nov 2007!

To celebrate (kononnya) I dropped by the Petronas station at Mutiara Damansara in the afternoon, on the pretext of getting some refreshment for Nuaim. Yeah, right. Actually I couldn't decide on sweet (Dunkin Donuts) or savoury (Burger King) so I asked my hensem boy to choose. Of course he picked the sweet stuff. I got him those little round doughnuts, and a blueberry jam-filled beauty for myself to go with the mocha swirl latte.

I know it ain't no Starbucks (of which I am not really a big fan, truth be told), but after 40 days of abstinence, coffee never tasted so good...

And so here I am, wide awake at 2.45 a.m, planning my next caffeine fix. An affogato, maybe?

Revelations

I have discovered a few things during this Confinement (read: self-imposed house arrest):

1. If ever you are planning to become a parent, or even grandparent in the near future, do not invest in any crystal/porcelain/glass filigree decorative items. If you do already have them, make sure you store them away in a lockable cupboard or room. Duct tape only lasts for a couple of weeks. Ain't no mountain too high for two gutsy boys to climb either.
2. Boys, at any age, love hi-tech gadgets. Especially laptops, digital cameras and PDA phones with stylus and QWERTY keypads. Don't even try fooling them with the plastic toy versions. Or any old model that doesn't have a working 2.5" LCD screen.
3. Boys, at any age, love to pretend they're Michael Schumacher - no, make that Lewis Hamilton.
4. The current crop of animated films like Madagascar, Over The Hedge etc may look like they're meant for kids, with all the cute animals and stuff - but they're not. Kids don't get their American jokes, the characters all have grown-up issues and idiosyncrasies and the only thing they pick up is how to behave like a rabid squirrel or a saltwater-spitting giraffe. And lemurs are scary.
5. Newborn baby girls are just as clingy and needy as their firstborn brothers. Well, maybe a notch lower.
6. Denial of the truth is the only acceptable logic for a 3-year-old.
7. Scolding doesn't work. Neither does punishing, reasoning, screaming, ignoring or giving in to their demands. NOTHING WORKS. Just pray and hope they grow out of it.
8. Women should really indulge in their pre-natal food cravings, even during labour. I had cheesecake 4 hours before giving birth to Nu'man and was perfectly happy for months later. But now all I can think of is Spaghetti Carbonara and Caramel Latte.

Just another week and I can finally get some personal space in a shopping complex somewhere.

Food Cravings

Someone went to J.Co Donuts and left a half-empty half-dozen pack lying temptingly on the kitchen table. I'd been reading about them week in week out and was dying to have a bite, but my concerns about some of its ingredients being prohibited by Confinement made me put the box into the fridge instead (manalah tau, ada yang cheese topping, tinggal kat luar nanti masam pulak).

Seriously, my food cravings are really strong nowadays. They're worse than pregnancy cravings! But then again, pre-natal food wishlists can be easily satisfied as long as they're reasonably within reach and nothing is exactly off-limits. And during the last pregnancy, I suffered virtually no aversions to anything, so I was able to wolf down burgers, cakes, soft-shell crabs and a whole lot of other stuff to my heart and tummy's content(s).

And this confinement, by contrast, is very limited in terms of the menu being offered - just different varieties of fish (selar, gelama, senangin) but all cooked the same manner. BORING!!!

Somehow I don't remember being so put off by it during the previous two episodes. The first one was by far the most interesting. As I had delivered Nuaim by C-section, ikan haruan featured quite prominently then. And it was cooked in a variety of ways too - grilled, steamed or made into soups with Chinese herbs (this was my favourite). A friend of mine had to eat live baby haruan during her confinement (eeuww!!). However, they're not your typical supermarket fish so unless I have to undergo another major surgery I'm not going to be feasting on this any time soon. I also remember taking a lot of ayam kampung (free-range organic chicken) then which strangely is absent this time round, the tough meat and higher price making it an uncommon dish to be served in our household.

I guess it can't be helped that this being the festive month of Syawal, the house is filled with raya cookies, cakes and chocolates. Normally I don't crave raya cookies but I'm dying to have something sweet to take away the fishy aftertaste. Thank goodness I have rediscovered the joys of breakfast cereals. Gan's mini market stocks a wide variety, some I've never even heard of (Kellogg's Mueslix, anyone? Pretty good too) but at least I wake up looking forward to something.

One thing that I did enjoy, though, was a glass of warm water mixed with honey after each meal. And not just any honey, but a lovely specimen that came all the way from Africa! Very refreshing, not as sugary sweet as the Australian honeys you get in the shops. But sadly between my brother and I we've finished it to the last drop so will have to wait another 50 days before Hubby comes home with some more (I hope he's reading this, HINT HINT!).

Hubby is also picking up some new culinary skills in Sudan, so I'm really looking forward to the foodtasting sessions. And maybe then we'll be able to start our own doughnut franchise, served with Malaysian-style kopi kampung!!!

Nocturnal Thoughts

I'm having trouble sleeping.

Since I started my confinement this has happened three or four times already, where I spend the night bloghopping or playing Sudoku online till the wee hours of the morning. In fact throughout the past week my earliest bedtime must've been 2 a.m. I don't know what keeps me awake - I think it's the heat. Somehow the days feel cooler. Maybe because at night the windows are closed to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and the room gets all stuffy. The jamu and heaty confinement diet must be really working this time round - I don't even use a blanket anymore.

Of course, I make up for the sleep during the day. Usually, after breakfast and barut perut, I'll breastfeed Aiesyah while lying down and that'll get me to slumberland in no time, all the way to lunch.

Last night and tonight I managed to go through all the blogs listed on Sentraal Station. And for some reason I felt the urge to find out what's happened to someone I knew from a long time ago, so I googled the name. I think it was something my husband said on his post about Allahyarham Shahrol. Something about maintaining Silaturrahim (close ties). Which I have to admit is something I'm not good at.

When I was in my first year at university, someone from my accommodation hall stated this observation about me: "You're a drifter. You don't have a specific group of friends you're particularly close to, but you move around."

I don't know whether he meant it in a positive or negative light, or whether it was just a statement of a fact, like 'the sun is round'. I remember thinking what made him say that, but I guess it must be true. I had different 'best friends' at different stages of my life. Throughout most of primary school, I had a close group of friends from the same class, then moved on to a new best friend in Standard 6. At the beginning of Form One, in the two weeks I spent at SMDU before I left for boarding school, I became close friends with another girl with whom I shared an avid interest in Acis of Gersang. I have not been in touch with them for a large number of years already.

And then in boarding school I made new friends, and as I moved through the different classes, dorms, debating teams and so on, so the number and personage of 'close friends' varied.

After leaving boarding school, I drifted apart from some of those cliques, and formed deeper friendships with others who were previously mere acquaintances. Studying in the UK opened up a whole new world of friendships. And now, as a career woman with a family of my own, I have drifted again.

I must say I never intended to stop being friends with anyone - except maybe with a couple because I was so hurt when they never replied my letters from boarding school (I was a homesick 13-year-old, okay? Over-emo at that time.) I always had the best intention to keep in touch after the parting, and I normally do keep up the correspondence for a couple of months, even sometimes up to a year, but fail miserably to sustain it. Out of sight, out of mind.

Oh yes, there are all those excuses. Work that takes me out of town, being married, etc etc etc. But that doesn't stop other people from maintaining their friendships. I think deep down I've actually created some emotional barrier that won't allow anyone to get too close for fear of being hurt. It gets lonely, though.

Would it be so difficult to pick up from where I left off? Can I still laugh at the same jokes, share the secrets, or have we become strangers amongst ourselves that we can only afford a polite greeting and the perfunctory Hari Raya SMS that is sent en masse to everyone in our address book?

Okay, I didn't actually see this post going into this direction, but since I've written it, here goes.

Bila dah boring tu...

...mula la buat kerja yang bukan-bukan.

Like actually doing work during my Maternity Leave. As in what-I-normally-do-at-the-office kind of work.

Yes, it's getting to me. Hubby's on his way back to Port Sudan, and hopefully this time when he says he'll finish by March 2008, he really will finish the job by then. Apparently things are slated to progress after a long hiatus - during which Hubby spent his time honing his swimming and fishing skills to advanced level in the Red Sea. I've been cajoling him to agree to a plan that the Boss and I devised that could keep him in KL for at least another month or two (after all, I had to leave in the middle of a job which is sorely lacking a Senior Engineer in my absence), but he had other ideas involving the desert landscape of North Africa and copious amounts of USD. Oh, and something to do with a metering skid. Dok kat KL pun bukannya dapat apa, bini pun tengah dalam pantang asyik kena marah je.

I got bored having no one to talk to or argue with. Well, most of my conversations with Hubby are (to my perspective, at least) one-sided anyway, which Hubby translates as nagging. Aiesyah sleeps most of the day, Nuaim is always cranky and demanding for impossible things, while Nu'man just wants me for my handphone or laptop. The books I bought earlier do not interest me anymore, I merely flip through them without actually reading anything.

So there I was, surrounded by Raya cookies I cannot eat, typing away at a Design Guideline that, based on the original schedule, I should submit by the end of this week for review. I doubt that I'll finish it in time though, and I doubt that my reviewers will be concerned by my tardiness. It's not as if anyone else actually has the time or resources to prepare their Guidelines. Well, for what it's worth, it keeps my mind on something. After all there's only so much Sudoku one can take in a day.

And I am wasting precious cyberspace with this meaningless drivel. Hey, at least it doesn't cost as much as a space mission.

Confinement Countdown

15 days down, 25 days to go.

It's gonna be a long one.

My Day-to-day Confinement Regime

7.15 a.m - Aiesyah wakes up for breakfast. If I'm lucky, she doesn't get up till 8.00 a.m.

7.30 a.m - I pester Hubby to go fetch the specially prepared air teresak (hot water boiled with some fragrant leaves and kaffir limes) for my morning bath. My daily outfit is a buttoned shirt (to aid in breastfeeding), a batik sarong and socks to prevent 'wind' from entering my feet.

7.45 a.m - Have breakfast myself, consisting of two slices of bread, hot Milo and a small glass of yellow-orange jamu. Cannot have eggs due to stitches.

8.00 a.m - Kak Yam, an Indonesian midwife, arrives for my daily urut (massage) and barut (abdominal wrap) session. Kak Yam is also the person who prepared the jamu, a traditional concoction of herbs, turmeric and other stuff designed to return the post-natal female form to pre-pregnancy bootyliciousness (one can hope). She uses a massage oil derived from young coconut, and after a good one hour rub she'll proceed to apply pilis (herbal paste) to my forehead. This helps to get rid of 'wind' and prevent darah putih (white blood cells?) from entering the head, thus causing headaches and poor vision (a bit too late where my vision is concerned). Apparently reading during post-natal confinement can bring the same effects, but that doesn't stop me.

Kak Yam will also apply a paste consisting of ground herbs, kaffir lime juice and I think ground limestone to my abdomen before wrapping it up in a bengkung/barut. The first layer barut is a piece of cloth, the same width as my abdomen, with strings on either side that are tied across my tummy. The second layer is a long piece of cloth, about 12 m long, that Kak Yam wraps and twists tightly over the first layer, from my buttocks way up to just under my chest. It works very much like a corset really, complete with the forcified erect posture and breathing difficulty.

I'm supposed to keep the second bengkung on till at least 8 p.m., while the first layer stays on till the next day. By the time I take it off, the paste has dried and flaked, and my skin feels all raw and itchy.

In the meantime, Cik Dah gives Aiesyah a waterbath and takes her sunbathing. The morning sun helps to prevent jaundice, and after the session Aiesyah comes back in looking red as a lobster.

10.00 a.m - Kak Yam packs up, and I get to read, play Sudoku and blog/websurf to my heart's content. Or I may just take a nap (depending on how much sleep I get the night before).

10.30 a.m - I take a mid-morning snack, usually some cream crackers and another cup of Milo, to make sure that I don't go too hungry and get any 'wind' trapped in my stomach.

1.00 p.m - Lunch for me consists of half a plate of rice, grilled ikan selar or ikan gelama, a vegetable dish (of the non-cooling variety) cooked with lots of garlic, ginger and no oil, a dry sambal made of black peppercorns and some ulam - typically bittergourd, pegaga, ulam raja and daun selom. I wash it all down with an infusion of dried Chinese red dates. This diet is supposed to restore blood circulation, prevent wind and help me produce breastmilk. Chinese radish apparently works too.






4.00 p.m - My tea-break consists again of crackers and a cup of hot Milo. If I'm good, I get some nice juicy orange slices too.

7.00 p.m - Dinner is served, consisting of a similar menu to lunch. Sometimes I get free-range organic chicken instead of fish, which is a nice change. Of course, it is either steamed, grilled or made into soup. Nothing fried or oily for me.

8.00 p.m - I get to take off the long wrap. Hooray, I can breathe again!

10.00 p.m - I get ready for bed, but so far I've been stayng up till almost midnight. Last night was worse - I couldn't sleep till after feeding Aiesyah at 3 a.m!

3.00 a.m - Aiesyah usually wakes up for a feed and a diaper change. I usually pester Hubby to do the latter for me, citing my confinement as an excuse. According to Malay custom, during the pantang period of 40-44 days, the new mother is supposed to restrict her movements. In some cases she's not even supposed to get out of bed in the first week!

So far Aiesyah hasn't caused too much trouble. She sleeps most of the day, getting up only to feed about three or four times or when her diaper gets too dirty for her. Sometimes she'll poo-poo away in her sleep but continues with her slumber. It makes for interesting noises during the night.

P/S I get a treat tonight - sira pisang!