Mission Bottle Basics

My advice to all breastfeeding Moms: Don't let Baby survive completely on the breast. Alternate between bottle and breast so that you won't have this problem we are now faced with...

Moms-to-be have heard horror stories of how hospitals give the bottle to newborns, only to have them reject Mom's breast later on because it is much easier sucking the milk out of a bottle than from a breast. And much has been written about nipple confusion where baby doesn't know how to suckle at the breast because bottle suckling requires a different technique. But alas, I was not warned about the reverse -- breast affinity leading to bottle rejection.

Lionel and I have his workplace's Christmas dinner to attend this coming Friday. We have no intention to bring Gaby, just as we believe they have no intention to have a bawling infant at the nice restaurant. My Mum and Sis are here to take care of Gaby in her parents' absence. They can feed her expressed milk or formula in my absence. The plan sounded simple enough when we signed up for the dinner before Gaby was born.

But Gaby, as we have recently found out, absolutely refuses to take the bottle now that she has grown so accustomed to fresh milk from the warm pliable tenderness of Mummy's nehs.

Gaby had earlier been on the pacifier and bottle from the time she was in neonatal care shortly after birth, and even when we brought her home in her second week of life. However, so well was she putting on weight that the visiting midwife told us to do away with formula supplementation. And at the same time, I was getting more confident of my milk supply and proficient in breastfeeding, so Gaby stopped taking the bottle.

Since then, Gaby has had a good month without the bottle or the pacifier.

It was till we started making day trips and thought handling a bottle with expressed milk might be easier than breastfeeding in public when we returned Gaby to her bottle. It was then we found out that Gaby would retaliate with all her might, and volume, against any introduction of an imitation teat into her mouth.

With all our manufacturing wonders today, why couldn't they shape bottle teats they way nature moulded breasts, thought I. The answer came pretty immediately after the question arose. Such teats won't just be bought by parents of newborns for their newborns. They'd be a regular item in www.xxx.com kind of websites and dodgy shops I am sure. Come to think of it, I may just be able to find a pair of fake breasts at one of those kinky outlets.

Anyway, how how? I lamented. How can I go for my Christmas dinner when my baby insists that I have to be present at all her 2-3 hourly feeds? How how will she survive when the time comes for her to wean off my tired nehs? How would she survive if I am suddenly taken away from her? Aiyo Gaby, you'd have to go on the drip.

These concerns kicked off Mission Bottle Basics to get Gaby to reacquire the survival skills of a baby in these modern times.

Goal: Replicating this taken-for-granted act

The best part about this difficult mission for me is that I, the Mum with the smell and the voice Gaby can identify,  have been advised by books and midwives not to be the one to deliver the bottle. Gaby would be confused as to why Mum's nehs were there but tasted like rubber.

So that has left Lionel, my Mum and Sis the arduous and ear-piercing task of getting Gaby reaccustomed to the bottle. I hear her angry screams and pleading cries while I take that time as my break. In fact, as I write this entry, my Sis is trying to bottlefeed Gaby.

We celebrate tiny achievements.

• Achievement 1a (5 days ago): Dad holding the pacifier in Gaby's mouth, and her not crying
• Achievement 1b: Gaby keeping the pacifier in her mouth herself, even if it is for just half a minute

• Acheivement 2a (yesterday): Dad getting Gaby to accept the pacifier first, and then quickly switching it over to the bottle when Gaby's caught off guard
• Achievement 2b: Gaby having the bottle teat in her mouth without crying, even if she is not sucking
• Achievement 2c: Gaby sucking clumsily at the bottle, but not swallowing the milk
• Acheivement 2d (just today): An unsuspecting sleepy Gaby finishing 15ml from the bottle fed by my Sis

Friday's dinner is four days away. Will we be able to accomplish this mission by then? Stay tuned.

Update:  We went ahead bravely for dinner and Gaby finally drank half a bottle of milk out of hungry desperation just before we returned home. However, we have not been able to replicate that miracle since.

Random Assortment of Photos

Nehspray on Gaby's face

And her bath toy that has an uncanny resemblance to her

Gaby's very own supermarket loyalty card

Gaby in her different moods with Grandma

Gawking time with Dad

What happens when you ask Uncle Jo to take care of Gaby

Gaby on her playgym

My sleeping angel

Short arms that don't go past her head

Winter has Arrived...

White Christmas coming right up!

You can tell whose cars haven't been moving...

Well-salted roads

No more BBQ

Braving the snow to bring Gaby to the pediatrician

How Gaby spends her 'mun yue' (first month birthday)

My China apple all bundled up

Neh-Spray

This entry is dedicated to all mothers past, now and future who have breastfed, who are breastfeeding and who will one day. You have my utmost sympathies and admiration.

My life these days

I thought with Gaby out of my belly, the problem I had with tossing and turning in bed to comfortably balance the weight of my heavy middle section would disappear. Well, that problem did go away, but a new problem arose -- Heavy *nehs that gravitate to the side I lie on.

One night, Gaby slept through 6 full hours. Any exhausted mother would have gladly enjoyed the same length of uninterrupted sleep. Unfortunately for me, I woke up at the third hour because my nehs were calling out to me. They were engorged -- hard and painful. And because I like sleeping on my side, that meant that either neh would be squashed against the bed in any of my favourite two positions.

Furthermore, while sleeping, Gaby expresses air in a variety of pigeon-coo to baby-dinosaur sounds that are grossly loud relative to her tiny body. Cute as they are, these sounds keep me alert for the next moment when they would grow into an unmistakable loud cry to summon the nehs.

Having been flat-chested my whole life, I never thought my two mosquitoes on a wall, as my mother would matter-of-factly call them, would be able to bulk up enough to contain sufficient to sustain life. Afterall, my Mum (where the flat-chest gene came from) did say she "couldn't" breastfeed. Of course, she did come from the era when women were pulled from the domestic realm into the work force, and formula milk was all the marketing rage and practical solution before Medela breastpumps got so popular.

Anyway, to my very pleasant surprise, my nehs are currently producing enough such that Gaby is putting on more weight per week than the average babe. At just 22 days, she put on 300g from the previous week. (The expected weekly weight gain at this stage according to the midwife is 150-200g.) Gaby's now 4.08kg.

Protecting Mummy's modesty

Not to my excitement though is how these new assets have grown so heavy that even a bumpity bus ride makes it bouncingly painful wearing them.

The first day I returned from the hospital, stood in front of the mirror and gawked at the nehs in their full glory, they felt like strangers to me. New breasts, I called them. Each was turgid and symmetrically round (a neh usually has a natural sag that gives it an asymmetrical natural look) -- as if I had had some surgical enhancements made to them.

What a journey the nehs have brought Lionel and I. In the early hospital stay days, the colostrum (thick yellowish liquid high in protein, fat and antibodies that comes in the first few days after delivery) I produced was extremely scarce. So precious was it that Lionel had his face close to my neh with full concentration to collect every single drop for Gaby using a syringe. Collections were in single digit millilitres. Even 2ml was an accomplishment!

Syringes used to collect colostrum

Now, the milk comes so generously it has become a bane requiring breast pads lest they shoot an unwitting passerby with Nehspray.

The speed at which hormones work amazes me no end. Just the sound of Gaby's cry near feeding time sends my nehs leaking. The right one is particularly troublesome, and even shoots a fine spray. I would say its current projectile range is around 10cm. Even without Gaby's cry, should she oversleep, the nehs would start tingling, granting me some grace time to get my tissue and pads in position, before the shooting begins.

My bosom buddies -- breast pads

Gaby with Nehspray on her cheek

I am almost certain that Nature had engorged breasts planned for a reason. The infant's suck is akin to a snake's venom. It is both the poison that causes the pain, and the antidote to relieve it. This is probably Nature's cruel but necessary means to secure nourishment for a helpless baby from a severely fatigued mother. As Nature has it, I only like my nehs the way I best like my fruit juices -- freshly squeezed.

All that said, breastfeeding is an arduous task. It is back breaking, sleep depriving, pain causing and hence requires a lot of determination. That is why with my new motherhood have I found a new admiration for all breastfeeding mothers. I hope Gaby's nutritious diet with antibodies that no formula milk can ever replace, and I, can last at least 6 months.

*Neh neh aka. Nehs are understood most affectionately by most Singaporeans and Malaysians as breasts in the dialect Hokkien.

My New Fascination

Dear all,

Thank you for your patience with my updates, and for sharing our joy with the birth of Gaby.

Both Lionel and I have been busy trying to journal Gaby's entry into our life. The moments come and go so fast! And I really want to have my journey recorded because the learning and discoveries we make with our firstborn is always a once in a lifetime experience. And it is always humbling to return to these memories years later...

While I am more of a words, details and emotions auto-/biographer, Lionel's the photo journalist. So to get updates on what's going on in our lives, you have both my blog and Lionel's Phanfare photo website.

Here are some of my favourite and latest visual captures of our two-week-old darling:

Eyelashes!

That's most of the view I get when I'm breastfeeding her. I am so fascinated that she has eyelashes at such an early age. I keep showing them off to my Mum. However, her eyelashes are nothing compared to those of her ang moh counterparts here -- they have those flip-flap doll-like or liondance lion kind of eyelashes!

Showing some neck

Most of the time, babies are pretty neckless with their lack of head support and all that lovable layers of fat.

Whenever Gaby is awake, in a fussing mode, and I am exhausted, I just can't wait to finish breastfeeding her and putting her back to sleep. But when she's asleep, I enjoy just staring at her and all is forgotten. I find it impossible to resist the urge to kiss her lightly on her cheek, and by so doing, recklessly risk waking her up. It is so hard to let sleeping dogs lie.

Going-out gear

We've started bringing Gaby out! She had her first outing when she was 13 days old. It was a Saturday and Daddy was around. So we could afford the muscle to bring her 4-wheel-drive-solid pram down the stairs. And among the three of us (the other Mum included), we had enough arms to manage supermarket shopping, a pram and a crying baby.

Gaby enjoyed the outing. Well, actually Gaby's mum enjoyed the outing more. It wasn't until we walked out of the apartment that I realised I so badly needed to get some fresh air after a week in hospital and a week at home.

On Sunday, Lionel and I took Gaby out for a walk in the hilly foresty area opposite our home. We were trying a new route and Lionel ended up pramming her uphill for what seemed like a long time, and over lots of bumpity rocks, twigs and earth. Gaby probably had nightmares of motion sickness last night.

And finally, how can I not leave you with this? It is tempting and instinctive to only put up all the positive bits in public, but blogging, and any piece of recount (especially of motherhood) I believe, should always include the good, the bad and the ugly.

Double dose

Stinking the house down and every bit nonchalent about it

Finally!!!

Guess who's FINALLY arrived?

VITAL STATISTICS (for uncles and aunties to buy 4D)

Name: Heng Kaili Gaby
DOB: 31 October 2010
Time of Birth: 04:55 PM

Weight at Birth: 3380 g
Height/Length at Birth: 50 cm

More pictures to come once Mummy and Gaby are more presentable, and Daddy has more time to upload photos...

Prepared & Waiting...

Pregnancy supplements - Omega 3, Multivits, Iron+folic acid, and my thyroxine hormones

Gaby's car seat and bath tub awaiting...

Labour positions for the early stages

Hospital bag all packed

And the list of last-minute items that can't be put into the bag just yet..

My Husband -- the Boy, the Man and the Daddy

More about the man in my life cum reason why I'm in Zurich housewiving and waddling about with a baby in my belly...

Before I came along, Lionel's first love -- his food

(That's my Mummy in the background in her batik housecoat, pullover T-shirt and hotel slippers to keep warm.)

Sunday lunch -- Laksa made from Prima Deli mixes sent with love from Lionel's mum. Fishballs bought from an Asian supermarket here. Luckily Lionel is quite indiscriminate about the quality of his fishballs. Anything round and  mildly fishy counts as fishball. Yellow mee? Nope, that's spaghetti. No quail eggs here (they are deadly overpriced) but a nice chicken egg in each bowl, and a few prawns.

I came out of the shower one night to find Lionel watching "I Am Legend". And this was one of those suspenseful scary-music scenes where a monster was about to jump out from somewhere in the dark. I didn't manage to catch a picture of him peeking at the screen through his fingers though. Observe how tensed his arms are next to his macho fearless built. ;p

Ah.. the Daddy of a man sterilising Gaby's milk bottles and the breast pump parts -- a project I got him started on because Sundays can get really slow moving here if there was no activity of the day.

Lionel ma man set up our first fireplace fire! It's officially autumn in Zurich now. Daily temperatures hover  around 7 degrees these days and our central heating isn't doing much of a good job.

On the right is our very first stash of firewood. We rented a Mobility car over the weekend to buy this two crates of about 20kg of small logs and larger logs. It was quite an experience trying to ask the sales people where the firewood was kept. "Feuerholz" I tried -- a literal translation of fire+wood. Three helpful counter staff directed me to charcoal. Well, we eventually got hold of our firewood. Upon reading up on the englishforum.ch later on, I found out firewood is called "brennholz" -- burning wood.

It was both our first time setting up a fireplace. With completely no scouting experience, Lionel built the fire with the help of WikiHow and other useful internet sites. It's amazing what kind of help and advice you can get off the net nowadays. We natives of tropical weather even needed help getting the safety latch off our BIC lighter.

http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Safety-Band-from-a-Bic-Lighter

Anyway, our fire didn't last more than an hour. Better luck next time.

The morning after...

Mum and I

My mum arrived last Wednesday morning. I was so excited about her coming because her presence would change my daily routine and provide much needed company now that I've stopped my German language classes and am in the waiting phase for Gaby to pop.

So what have we two women eligible for priority seats on trains (one senior citizen and one heavily pregnant) been up to? Speaking of giving up seats for the elderly and the pregnant, this is something I have been meaning to mention for a while: Singaporeans are not as bad as the Swiss when it comes to being a caring society. Here, not only do most people not offer their seats to either one of us, the sitters can confidently look you in the eye. In Singapore, at least there is some sense of social guilt (aka. paiseh-ness) and sitters would pretend to be asleep, or at least avert their gaze.

Yesternight, we three gallavanters (Lionel included) went to watch a Cirque du Soleil show, Varekai.

Lionel discovered 50% off tickets while browsing the German newspapers at the gynae

The tram was extremely crowded (like the buses and trains at peak hour in Singapore). One lady, whom I guesstimated was about my mum's age, offered me her seat. I felt so paiseh, but she insisted and I thanked her profusely. Alas, I think she wasn't Swiss (her English wasn't Swiss accented).

These social observations make me reflect, as an educator, on why there still is a place for Moral Education in schools -- as archaic, laughable, and top down many of us think it is. That is partly where norms of a caring society and civic mindedness are established because an individual in such an education system would realise the same message, and hence standards and expectations, are being conveyed to his peers as well.

Anyway, back to Mummy and me. It's so nice to be mummied all over again before I have to do the mummying myself.

Mum has been a busy lawyer running her own sole proprieter firm for the past twenty years. While she is officially retired now, she was going to the office tidying affairs up till the day she left for Zurich. Thus I think it is interesting to document aspects of this sharp transition into housewife/grandmother/retirement-hood as it happens.

In the past week, Mum, who belongs to the generation of computer-internet migrants, has been learning how to operate on my small red laptop. She's learning how to use Gmail (more effectively), check the remnants of her work e-mail, read The Straits Times ePaper, watch episodes of Desperate Housewives and play DVDs on the computer. 

She has also been:

• learning the bus routes to the many supermarkets here (decent Coop, disappointing Coop, Migros with butcher, Migros sans butcher, Asian supermarket, Turkish shop with the only oranges that are edible by our standards), 
• learning the niche of each supermarket (like how the most value-for-money eggs come from Denner, best half-baked bread comes from Migros and how salted butter can only be found in Coop), 
• and developing an applicable affinity with marketing techniques used to modify housewife behaviour (e.g. Aktion = sale, meats based on price/kg, 15% discounts on Saturdays, vouchers offering more customer points etc.)

We signed up for a 45Franc/year library membership at the equivalent of our Clementi Central. With that membership, I can borrow up to 25 items at a time. And these items include English books, children books and games, CDs and DVDs!!!! The DVD part really called loudly out to us. On  our first day at the library itself, even before registering a membership, Mum plonked a chair next to the DVD shelf and selected 8 DVDs with English options. Since the titles were in German, she relied on who was starring in the movie to make her choice. (Names afterall don't get Germanfied.) So we've got Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Michelle Pfeiffer with us right now.

But alas, upon checking out did we find out that while we can hold the books for a month, the DVDs are due in a week and are non-renewable. Mum had chosen so many "in case I went into labour" and she had nothing to do and didn't know how to get to the library. Anyhow, this circumstance gave her another home activity: reading the English synopses of the movies online so she could prioritise which shows to watch first.

Mum has also been finding a rationale everyday to reason why Gaby should come each night.

• Because she (my mum) has safely arrived already
• Because the house is in order
• Because I have finished packing my hospital delivery bag
• Because she has learnt how to go to the supermarket already
• Because she has learnt how to operate all the machines in the home already
• Because we watched Varekai with all its thrilling theatrics that would excite Gaby

As you can see, most of the reasons hinge on Gaby arriving when everything is in order. Oh well, Gaby, let's see if you're going to do that or if this is just wishful thinking on our part.

And every dinner, she makes sure we cook more so that there is at least one portion left over for her lunch the next day should I go into labour that night.

Besides reading the ePapers, checking her mail, watching Desperate Housewives, enjoying one of our 8 DVD movies with me, cooking red/green bean soups on my special daughterly request, and calling my Dad and her friends, there still is quite a bit of time as a housewife/housegrandma. So she busies herself and finds miscellenous things to do, like this:

Sweeping and collecting leaves off the balcony in her housecoat

I don't suppose any of her clients is going to be viewing my blog and seeing their lawyer in this very unglamourous outfit and position. ;p

37 weeks and waiting...

When are you coming Gaby?

(Sketch courtesy of my talented sister, Cuiwen. Colours added by Lion Daddy.)

What's in a Name?

Dear Gaby,

Today marks the 37th week that you have been growing in Mummy's belly. You are officially full-term now and if I start getting contractions and signs of labour, the hospital isn't going to worry.

From the sonogram last week, you were a pretty average and healthy 2.5kg. Mummy's belly has gone all ugly from you stretching my skin as you get bigger. Now, my belly looks like a canvas with an abstract painting of tongues of fire. But alas, I think you will make the battle scars of pregnancy all worth it.

Dad and I have been spending some time on your name. For someone who is not particularly sentimental or into rituals and symbols, I never thought I would be fussing over the meaning of your name. To my surprise, I found myself shooting out emails to friends who have a better grasp of the Chinese language to check whether the characters I chose for your name convey what they are intended to.

So now, what's in a name? Afterall, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Let's start with "Gaby". 

Unfortunately, you were not named after some commendable personality. Dad and I are avid followers of this American drama series, Desperate Housewives. One of the leading characters is called Gabrielle, and is frequently called Gaby. So that's how it started.

But deciding on "Gaby" took a while because it needed self-convincing and a lot of "personalisation" to make the name "ours". To begin with, "Gaby" isn't quite a popular name in Singapore, nor is it popular among Daddy's relatives as we came to find out when they asked about what we had in mind for you. Furthermore, it sounds incomplete and improper, because it is seen to be a truncated form of "Gabrielle" or "Gabriella". Gaby has the potential to sound too babyish, or too bimbotic as well. 

Why we still went ahead to stick on with "Gaby":

• For the lack of any other pleasing alternatives, we were referring to you as Gaby for a good while from the time we the gynae spotted three lines on the sonogram and told us we were expecting a girl. Thus when we had time to rethink your name after the less than favorable responses came from Dad's family, we found it even harder to find a replacement, because it was hard to change the name that we had grown so accustomed to, and had so much affection associated with.
• From the Singaporean kiasu perspective: The "g" in Gaby would put you in the first half of the class register. Having read some research done in classrooms, and my own experience as a teacher, I have found that teachers call on names higher up in the class register more often. I think that that would give you a slight advantage at school, especially in a Singaporean classroom where we still have 30 to over 40 pupils.
• Why extend your name to a Gabrielle or Gabriella, which both sound distinctively Latino -- a culture far from ours -- when in the end, most people will call you Gaby? Besides, Mummy isn't very fond of girl names that end with an -ah at the end. With no offence to people already called these names, the -ah's in names like Anna, Adrianna, Luana, Julia, Sonia and Sophia make them more palatable and predictable as feminine names.
• "Gaby" is a name that is slightly confusing because it is androgynous -- it could have been short for Gabriel, a boy's name, too. Mummy, in her own quirky sociological way of thinking, likes that kind of uncertainty and fluidness. People aren't going to be quite sure about whether you're male or female, until they see a sex marker, or you in person. I like that because there are so many unconscious gender expectations we have once we know the sex of someone, and keeping that a mystery for a while gives people more time to figure you out as a person first, before understanding you as a girl, or a woman.
• Gaby is short and phonetically easily pronounced by people of any culture. We are afterall living in a very globalised world these days. Just look at Daddy and Mummy's families. Uncle Jo is studying in the US, Aunty Cui is in Australia, Mummy studied briefly in California too, while Dad did his Degree and Masters in the US, and now we're in Zurich while he does his PhD. We have cousins and friends who have made their homes in so many parts of the world as well. So since you are going to be exposed to many cultures, we want to make sure that your name doesn't get horribly mangled by speakers of other languages, and that you do not have to go around correcting people on how to pronounce or spell your name.
• Mummy believes that if you grow up to be a nice girl, "Gaby" will become a much more popular name simply because people associate the name with someone nice. Right now, for the lack of exposure to people of that name in Singapore, "Gaby" is just not immediately popular.
• The process and rationale behind choosing your name, is also partly how Mummy hopes your life can turn out: down to earth and fuss free, not having your sex come in the way of your decision making and those made for you, self-defining and confident of being different.

As you can see, most of these thoughts come from Mummy. There hasn't been very much use of the pronoun "we" to include Daddy in this description of how we came to settle on your name. Daddy, the much more practical person that he is, doesn't care so much about what goes into your name, as much as what goes into your cot and room, and which breastpump to get for Mummy. 

(Mummy was pleasantly surprised to find that Dad had done some research and printed out some application forms on childcare for you already. There is a crazy waiting list here in Zurich for childcare, but we hope to get you some exposure to other children and caretakers before you get back to Singapore.)

Now, for your Chinese name. The characters chosen are again, not going to be who you are as much as they are the aspirations Mummy have for you.

 慨立 

kăi lì

A similar rationale was used in ensuring that the phonetics of your Chinese name are pronounceable. That meant that I was avoiding sounds like qi, qin, ci, jing, xi, xing, xiu etc., which non-Chinese speakers have difficulty figuring out how to pronounce, and even when they do know, find it hard to shape their mouth correctly to make an accurate sound. Furthermore, your Daddy speaks no Chinese.

Kai Li also has an English-sounding equivalent, Kylie, which is also a name made popular by singer Kylie Minogue. We did not have so much trouble getting approval for your Chinese name, especially from your Nek Nek, because it is definitely way more feminine sounding, and less uncommon. Daddy, too, took to "Kai Li" way faster than he did with "Gaby".

And well, if you never grow to like "Gaby" the way we have, you can always choose to use the safer "Kai Li".

So after figuring out the sound of your Chinese name, Mummy had to choose the characters.

慨 (kăi) comes from 慷慨大方 (kāng kǎi dà fāng) -- which means generous. This is one of your Daddy's strongest personality traits. It is this generosity of not just resources, but of heart, that makes him both so likable and happy. Daddy is always willing to give. He takes care of his friends and even people he doesn't know very well. He is also not quick to judge, and doesn't bear grudges.

立 (lì) is taken from 独立 (dú lì) -- independence. As what Mummy's Chinese advisors have told her, 立 has never been traditionally used for female names since independence is not a classically desired attribute of a female, especially not in Chinese culture. But independence, for Mummy, doesn't mean being all feminist and independent of men. The independence I hope for you is that of your mind and life. I hope you will be able to confidently choose your own paths in life without being excessively subjected to peer pressure or mass culture. While there still are societal norms that are worth abiding by, we let many less consequential ones limit us needlessly.

Dear Gaby, even before you are born, there are so many hopes and dreams for you. I hope, too, that I will not crush you with these aspirations I have for you. Imposing her desires on us is what my own mother has made sure she never did, and I hope I can give you that gift as well. If I ever do get stifling, promise me you'll gently let me know.

Love,

Your Mummy

Gaby Rocks My World (or well, the globe of a belly)

This very short video is dedicated to the amusement of my never-been-pregnant readers.

( I had to add in some semblance of music to hide my heavy breathing.)

I had initially intended to take a video of Gaby hiccuping. Unfortunately, the lighting was poor and the movements too subtle for my Nokia camera phone to pick up. However, Gaby decided to surprise the recording with one of her very sudden and violent movements -- which is quite characteristic of her behaviour these couple of weeks.

The ultrasound last week indicated that she is a healthy mid-range 2.06kg baby for 33 weeks. She refused to show her face during the twenty minute session with the sonogrammer (if that's what they are called), so I do not have any nice new sonogram pictures to put up. So sad. =/ The first disappointment from Gaby.

Oh, and I just realised that my Countdown to Parenthood ticker-widget box on the right of my blog is suddenly showing a rotating picture of a baby -- upside down! I guess this is when Gaby's expected to be in her kick off position. I sense that she probably is because the hiccup movements are constantly in the lower left part of my globe these days. I cross my fingers and toes hoping she will cooperate so we can have a natural birth...

And while I am at this entry, here's a visual update on my globe:

37 inches and counting (Courtesy of IKEA)

Car Rental

A good piece of advice from the pregnancy books Lionel and I use for toilet reading suggest that we take a trial drive to the hospital prior to D-Day. With that in mind, Lionel booked a car last Saturday morning to give the route a try. Of course, we couldn't just go to the hospital and back, could we?

So he took a 4 hour booking and we planned to do the hospital drive, to IKEA (for the umpteenth time) to get Gaby's changing table, and to the hypermart, Coop, located in the same warehousy kind of area of Dietlikon.

Mobility Car-Sharing

Mobility is a massive car sharing company here that has stations all over Zurich with one to a few cars in each station. The closest one to us, with just one car, is but a five minute walk from our home. Even then, there are another three within a couple of bus stops. While Mobility carries several sizes and models of cars, all their cars are red. (So you probably do not want to get a red car here in Zurich, just as how we won't get a white Mercedes in Singapore because it screams out "Taxi!")

With his university, Lionel got a three-month free membership with Mobility. However, he had to get his Singapore driver's license converted to a Swiss one before he could take up this membership.

Getting a Swiss Driver's License

Besides an eye test that had really funky components to them, there was no other test we had to take. (Both of us decided to convert our license because we have to do it within a year of our arrival, otherwise, we would have to take the local test to get a Swiss license.)
It cost us each:

• 12 francs for the eye test
• About 3 francs worth of stamps to send in documents when they came ping-ponging back at us
• 30 francs to the Kreisburo (the office in-charge of each neighbourhood) for a useless piece of certification which was still not what the driving office wanted
• 85 francs for the administration's paperwork

That totals up to 130 francs for each of our license.

Oh, and they seized our Singapore licenses upon our application, returning them by normal (not even registered) mail only when our new Swiss license comes. And see what they stickered to my Singapore license?

Singapore license above, Swiss license below

Pardon the digression, and back to the car rental.

I am amazed at the technology this company uses. The car is just left sitting in a Mobility labelled parking lot. alongside other normal car lots. There is no office or personnel taking care of it. How then do you collect and drop keys off? Ah, this is where that red sticker on the bottom of the windscreen is for.

Lionel flashes his university matriculation card in front of what looks like a sticker -- and Tadaa! The car unlocks itself. This is the same mechanism used to lock the car as well.

Next, we enter the reasonably clean car and a screen from the rearview mirror unfolds downwards:

Here, information about our booking and journey is shown. When the engine starts, the screen automatically folds back under the mirror, so that you do not get a chance to fiddle with it while driving.

So here we are, sitting in the car. I am taking in the feeling of being in a car again after some nine weeks of being carless while Lionel, in his usual engineer-mode efficient chop-chop self, is immediately fumbling around, looking for the car key. The glove compartment? The side pockets at the door? Under the hand brake? Nope, nope and nope.

Then Lionel suddenly feels around the steering wheel, and realises there is no key hole for the engine.

Hehe... that's when I *very I'm-so-proud-of-myself-ly* spot the "Start button" beneath the radio and aircon controls.

Seriously, you press this button and the engine starts up sans the "ee hee hee sputter sputter" sound. Very clean, very efficient. The quiet and inconspicuous engine start-up proved really face-saving when our engine died because Lionel was getting used to handling a manual car all over again.

It was so nerve-wrecking for Lionel getting us from one point to another initially. There were so many things to be alert to:

• As mentioned, the car we rented was a manual one. And it is hard to remember to press on, half release, the clutch when moving off, changing gear, and braking.
• Cars here are left-hand drive so besides the change in driver's perspective, one also has to get used to the roads being mirror image in orientation.
• We have never driven or travelled much here. The tram routes are slightly different from the car roads. So it is like driving in a whole new terrain.
• When crossing some junctions, you need to look out for trams coming from in front or behind you. They always get priority no matter what colour your traffic light flashes you.
• The lanes here are super narrow! Trams can past you with just a pen's length allowance.
• The traffic lights are super high up. I think they were made for child or short drivers, because you had to lean forward and squint up to keep an eye on the changing lights.

Traffic lights directly above the windscreen

By the time we arrived at IKEA, Lionel emerged from the car with two triumphant dark grey patches of armpit sweat on his fitting T-shirt. (Did I mention Lionel has lost his paunch here with all the expensive outside food and hence the healthy homecooked food we've been having? So now he has moved one belt hole back and he can wear his tighter fitting T-shirts again. Ooh, I like.....!)

I am so glad I was not the one driving. I would have probably got my 130-franc driving license revoked after knocking someone down at the crossing, crashing backwards when my engine dies while moving off a slope, scraping the car on a tram, mounting eight curbs as I make my turns with poor spatial judgment, turning into a lane and finding myself facing another car head-on twice or thrice, not moving off when the light turns green, lose my way for three out of the 4 hours, and have two trams crash into me.

Anyhow, guess how much our very well-planned 4 hours and 23km cost us? Just 30 Francs! And no add-ons like petrol or insurance!

We were pleasantly surprised, and now we think we may not get a car here in the end. Afterall, on weekdays, it is way easier for Lionel to take a single tram that gets him from our home to his office in under 20 minutes.  And the Clementi Central equivalent for my grocery shopping is just three bus stops away, with the return bus stopping right in front of our doorstep. So if it is just weekends that we MAY want a car, then there is no point sinking money into the purchase of a car (even if they can be three times cheaper than in Singapore), to pay a monthly carpark rental fee, and to pay for the car's regular maintenance.

We're going to rent a car again perhaps in two week's time to do the hospital route once more. This time, Lionel can focus on the route instead of the driving, and do without the sweat.