Looking for a Good Confinement Lady

As I shared in my previous post about my bad experience with a confinement lady, I would like to also suggest some pointers for you to note when looking for a confinement lady.

What are some different types of confinement ladies?
There are 2 main categories.
1. Stay over
This is what the majority would do because most new parents are very tired and need a good night sleep. Hence the confinement lady would be the one feeding and changing the baby during the night feeds.
It is also easier to find stay over confinement ladies as many of them are Malaysians. They would prefer to stay over rather than looking for another place to stay. 

2. Day Confinement
These confinement ladies are mainly locals who prefers to return home after 6PM.
They will prepare for you lunch and dinner, and help you feed, bath, change the baby.

What are some things you can request a confinement lady do?
- Take care of newborn baby's needs. (Feeding, changing, bathing)
- Take care of mother's needs (3 meals, prepare drinks, tonic and bathing water)
- Do marketing for the ingredients of your meals
- Cleaning the house (depends on the size of the house)
- Washing of clothes of baby and mummy

What to take note?

1. Look for a Confinement Lady ONCE your gynae have confirmed that you are pregnant. Good CLs get booked very quickly.

2. Every CL has different terms and habits. Make sure you discuss the details with them before you confirm taking on their service. eg. whether she can clean the house, cook for your husband, go marketing etc.

3. Different CL are different in their pricing. Some confinement ladies will ask for more money if you request for her to cook for your husband. In my case, I paid the 2nd confinement lady extra to cook for me.

4. Every confinement lady has their specialty. Some CLs are great cooks and became famous because of that. Others may be well-known for being good at handling babies. Be clear on what is more important to you.

5. Check with the CLs what are the confinement food that they are good at preparing. As every dialect group has their own type of confinement food, do inform them what you like and check if they can prepare that for you.

6. Let the CLs known how you want her to take care of your baby. Some CLs get angry if your make requests because they think they are experienced.

7. Have a good chat with the confinement lady before confirming. Best is to meet up the person because this person is going to stay with you for a month. You won't want to regret it.

8. Hiring CLs through agencies will be more expensive, but you have security because you can change the CLs if you are not confortable with the one they arranged for you.

9. If you finally decide that you only need someone to prepare for you confinement food, you can consider alternatives like catering confinement food. It will be much cheaper as well.

10. Point number 10 is added by my wife. hahahaa...
Kaye: It is always better to hire a CL rather than getting your mother or MIL to help you do confinement. You will be terribly tired and the last thing you want to think about is your relationships with your mum or mil.

Hope this helps!
Do let me know if you can think of other pointers and I will add them in. :)

Have a happy and restful confinement!

I learnt how to swaddle my baby!

Cool! I have learnt how to swaddle my son! :)

Tadahhh....

Not bad yah? :DD
He seems to be really confortable being swaddled.


Just a few days ago. I think I swaddled him too tightly...

And his facial expression was....

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hahahahahahahahaa... My son is soooooo cute!!!
But even so, I was reluctant too re-swaddle him cause his expression was so funny!

:PP This is evil father in me.


And this is the swaddle done by my wife's confinement lady...

Don't you agree that I did a better job?

Muhahahahaha... I learnt from Youtube.

Very nice swaddle isn't it?


Here's another one. I was very inspired by him to swaddle my baby. ^^

I am loving my fatherhood!!
(*^_____^*)

Our gynaecologist clinic, Tow Yung Clinic

As I mentioned in my previous post, Dr Lim Teck Chye from Tow Yung clinic is my wife's Gynae. When I first found out that my wife was pregnant, I was pretty insistant of searching for a female gynae. :P

Like all good and sensitive husbands, we would all prefer the gynae to be female.
So I started searching online for good female gynaes. And after a few calls, we realised that ALLLLL the female gynaes were FULLY BOOKED. FULLY BOOKED!!!

Down and sad as I was, I spoke to some of my friends and started whining about how popular female gynaes were and that I should have called to book even earlier.
Surprisingly, many of my female friends told me that male gynaes are better even though my wife may be shy.

They gave me some reasonings on why male gynaes are better but what I remembered best was that guys are better decison makers. (which I absolutely agree ;PP) Should there be difficulties during delivery, male gynaes are stronger and quicker in deciding on the right steps to take. So with that in mind, I started looking around for male gynaes.

We come across some forums and read about Tow Yung Clinic which is located at Tanglin Shopping Centre (beside St Regis Hotel). Many commented that Dr Lim Teck Chye is a great gynae. It so happened that one of my friends has all her 4 kids delivered by Dr Lim and she has only good things to say about him.So we made our appointment and visited Dr Lim.

He was indeed a friendly and jovial person. Both my wife and I were very at ease with him. In fact, he was like a father figure, teaching us what to do next. I remember he always told me to "Bu" together with my wife in order to take care to her cause I am under weight.:)

We took up the package, so regardless of how many times you visit the clinic, the pricing will be the same. My wife's pregnancy was pretty smooth, so we didn't have to "maximise" it but just in case, taking up the package is always better.

The nurses at the clinic are also friendly and experienced. I was told that many of them have been working there for a many, many years.

Well, of course, my Baby Elric was safely delivered by Dr Lim into the world!

So... Thank you Dr Lim!!

Tow Yung Clinic 

Blk 19 Tanglin Rd S'pore Medical Centre #05-01 

Tanglin Shopping Centre Singapore 247909. 

Tel: 67374433

11 days of nightmares from a confinement lady

For Chinese, we have a tradition of hiring a confinement lady to take care of the new mum and the newborn baby. Her task is to handle the baby so that the mum can have a good rest after the birth trama. She will also have to cook and doing some cleaning. 

My wife's confinement lady came to our place on 2 Jan 2011. 

Once she unpacked her bag, she proceeded to the kitchen to familiarise herself and tidy up the place. I must say that she is very neat and tidy.

During dinner that day, she told me and Kaye that she was having a bit of sore throat and could not share the confinement food with my wife. Thinking that it is just a minor issue, we told her that she can cook separate dishes for me and herself. (Confinement food are very heaty.) Well unknowingly, we have just stepped into the beginning of our nightmare.

Once we knew that she was having sore throat, my wife provided her with lozenges, and Lo Han Guo to sooth the sore throat. However, her sore throat went on to develop into cough as she was unable to resist the temptation of eating chilli and sambai. She pushed the blame to me that because I ate chilli, I tempted her to eat too. I had to constantly remind her to take her medication every meal as she kept forgetting.

We were very worried that her cough and sore throat would affect our newborn baby, hence we bought face mask for her to use whenever she handles the baby. Yet again, she refused to put them on while handling the baby!

(@_@)" She was risking my baby's health!

Before confirming this confinement ladies, my wife told her that she was required to do marketing unless my mum or mum in law was available to help. Instead of doing so, she wanted me to run the errands to buy rice, sauce, bread and even vegetables. Her excuse was that she didn't know where the supermarket was. 

(=.=)" what an excuse...

Her third day of work, she told us that the bread was bought for us was going to expire and has about 6 pieces. Both Kaye and I did not want to waste the food, so told her that we would help to finish up bread.  After that incident, she took

the liberty to stop preparing breakfast and assumed that bread would be our breakfast from that on. Apparantly, my wife should be taking hot dishes even for breakfast.

(>.<)" she was just too lazy to prepare cereal for my wife. 

She saw that I have been waking up in the middle of night to feed Elric and assured us that we could just past the load to her. Yet one night, we were both awaken by Elric's cries at about 3am, while she was still snoring away in the room. Despite us liting up the room to feed, she woke up only after we were done with changing diaper for Elric.You know what's the best part? she asked me, "Oh... you mean the baby cried?"

My wife couldn't take it... and took pictures of what she did.^o^

start of feed... *snore*

during feed... *snore*

end of feed... still... *snore*

Isn't she amazing!??!!??

Both my wife and I were dumbfounded by her irresponsible behaviour but that was not all. On another occasion she left Elric topless and alone on the mobile changing station by the window side without even the safety buckle on. We were shocked by what we saw, I quickly swaddle him up as the wind from the window was very strong. When questioned her about this matter, she just said that she was sun bathing him and she would check on him every 5min. 

That was certainly a lie since she did not even notice me going into the room, swaddling up Elric and removing him from the window. Kaye then informed me that this confinement lady had previously warned her never to leave Elric unattended on the mobile changing station as it is very dangerous. What then was she doing??? 

Grrrrrr.....#*(>_<)*#

We were at our breaking point and spoke to the lady who made the referral. She finally managed to arrange another confinement lady for us. Honestly, we couldn't wait for her to leave. :(( So on the 11th day, we sent her off straight after breakfast. :p

We learnt the hard way how important a good confinement lady can be!

So in the next post, I will be sharing with you on choosing a good confinement lady. 

Thanks for bearing with my lengthy, whiny post! :p

Comic strip on Otousan and Elric

Decided to do up a simple comic strip on Elric and myself as my wife, Kaye took
some shots of me burping him. After the first few days of getting myself to be more involved in taking care of him, I felt so much more competent. The bonding between me and Elric are getting definitely strengthened each time I nursed him.

The Daddy's Boy

My little bundle of joy...

Elric on Day 2 in Otousan's arms :))

My wife carrying Elric (She didn't want to be shot cause she was still looking tired)

Did you see my baby's hair?? It's so bushy!! hahahaha... My lovely boy. 
Elric looking so fragile as though he is telling daddy to protect him. :))

The day I became Alphonse Otousan (Arrival of Elric)

It was on the last day of the year 2010, 31st December. My wife, Kaye, woke me up at around 5am and told me that she was bleeding. After making a call to our gynae, we rushed to Thomson Medical Centre. I was thrilled, nervous and at the same time worried for my wife as this is our first child.

Kaye was a brave mother-to-be, despite it was going to be her first delivery, she rejected epidural and suffered pain during labour, though the nurse repeatedly offered her epidural injection. She only allowed herself to be on oxygen mask during the last 30min of her delivery process.

The delivery was a very smooth one, once our gynae Dr Lim came in, it took just less than 15 min, 2 pushes and Elric was delivered. I was unable to witness the whole process of Elric's arrival as I was too focused on Kaye's condition, helping to put the oxygen mask on her. To be honest, I never felt so helpless before. Seeing her go through the pain and suffering but all I could do was to pray hard and have faith in our Lord.

I was filled with joy and excitement seeing the beautiful baby boy's first cry. He is a beautiful baby and GOSH so much hair for a newborn baby! I knew on that day, my life will never be the same again. I have become a father, Alphonse Otousan.:PP

Elric was brought back to us after 4 hours of queuing up for a bath

Elric was put back into his cubicle. Time for him to sleep.