We rang in Y2K with wedding bells and bid farewell to the Noughties with the addition of a new member of the family.
And in between, found our true calling as practioners of medicine. Relocated several times, only to find ourselves back at the same place which has given us such immense personal and professional satisfaction.
Mustered enough courage to drive, a consequence of circumstances - more than a decade after obtaining my driver’s license, through legitimate means of course. No untoward incident if you exclude the one where I blew a tyre running over the sharp edge of a curb. Oops.
Foolish enough to believe I was in that sort of physical condition called for in scaling 2 unrestored sections of The Great Wall in winter. But I did, all 45kg of me plus my camera gear.
Spent a large portion of my waking hours (and paycheck, no less!) in the glare of the silver screen. Will remember the Noughties as the decade one movie franchise ruled us all - LOTR. Haven’t tingled with excitement of this magnitude since Return Of The King played.
Created an online presence by blogging and made some friends along the way. Don’t always have interesting things to say but some of you keep coming back anyway. Thank you 
Most of all, becoming a mother after years of nagging from concerned parties and unwanted speculation on my fertility! A most challenging role akin to an emotional roller coaster ride.
So long, Noughties. You’ve been good to us.
In my never-ending list of motherhood anxieties, flying with an infant ranks among the top 5. I see women traveling solo with their babies and wonder how they do it so effortlessly (AM, care to enlighten us?). You know, the sort that looks so damn good with child in one arm and diaper bag in another? That collapses/folds pushchair in one swift graceful motion without as much as breaking a sweat?
I know I’m not that woman so I had insisted for hubby to fly back from Kuching to accompany us on Allison’s maiden voyage across the South China Sea.
And she was such an angel! Which made my worries seem like a perfect waste of catecholamines. She pooped just before we left the house. Kept the cab driver waiting but oh this mummy was so relieved! Not looking forward to have her join the OTHER mile-high club. Strapped onto her carseat, she slept throughout the 90-minute flight.
Bless you, child!
Our lifestyle could be best-described as nomadic.
The last 14 years have seen a transcoastal excursion in our pursuit of training in medicine, a migration across seas to begin our careers as doctors and back in our quest to obtain our specialist qualifications.
3 hospitals and a baby later, we’re on the move again.
I look forward to returning to the place I felt I completely fit in. Many things would have changed in Kuching- for better (new malls!) or worse (heavier traffic!) - but I’m determined to enjoy myself. For starters we’ve already got ourselves a cosy place in a resort-style residence - a piece of suburbia living less than 10km from the city. I’ll be revisiting all my favourite food haunts, and maybe try to look up my previous hairstylist.
What will I miss about Seremban? Spinach noodles from Siang Kang, barbecued crabs, Kashmiri naan and poori from Curry Leaf, chicken rice from Choy Kee, egg tarts with a kaya-filled base from Min Kok, mushroom soup from Kensington…yeah, it’s all food!
It’s good to be finally going “home”.
How do you avoid motion blur with a bouncy baby?
Perhaps a milestone more significant than Allison’s new ability to hold her head level with her body when pulled to sitting - which prompted unrestrained celebratory woo hoos from me and an instant SMS to her daddy at work, and a delightful smile from the performer herself - is that we, a made-in-heaven pair of a sometimes-neurotic-mother and sometimes-challenging-kid, have made it to the 3-month mark, through trying times of indecipherable (hence inconsolable…no diagnosis how to treat?) crying, parent-seeking poo missile - in the middle of the night at that and spit-ups.
Today I am a somewhat more confident mother. It’s a steep learning curve, and I don’t think I have been pushed this hard in life - not even during those stressful times as a house officer or preparing for my postgraduate exams. A large part of it comes from anticipation of her needs, and meeting them before she even has a chance to wail her request or protest. There’s a faint semblance of a schedule - it takes a stretched imagination and a tonne of optimism to recognise it, but it’s there, some kind of order forming in our daily lives. Wake, feed, play, fuss, nap, wake, feed, play, fuss and fuss, play, nap, wake, feed…it’s at least irregularly regular, not regularly irregular.
Today she is definitely a more sociable creature. On good days, waking times aren’t announced with hungry cries. On good days, she entertains herself for an enchantingly long period in her cot while her mother, still in bed, peeps with half-opened eyes praying fervently that she’d go back to sleep, or at least not break into a cry. On good days she naps! She coos and razzes and squeals and hates to be left out of a conversation - how many times has she yelled to be included when mummy and daddy talk to each other? She flashes toothless grins that reduce us to pulp.
Today I am a 3-month-old mother with plenty of work in progress.
Today Allison is a 3-month-old baby, and I can’t wait to hear her utter her first word.
“Parenthood is an ideal guilt-generating business and labour often delivers the first volley…
…the ‘perfect’ parent has yet to see the light of the day
…there is no need to be ‘perfect’ or to follow any one script”
-the great Dr Benjamin Spock
My perfectionist trait has served me well at work, but I wonder if it’s turning me into an excessively neurotic and guilt-ridden mother.
I feel guilty when I’m upstairs spending time online while she’s downstairs with my FIL.
That I’m not buying her enough developmental toys. And when I do splurge on pricey activity gyms and crib mobiles, that I’m letting these inanimate objects substitute the best toy she can have - ME.
That I strap her into the infant seat when I should be holding her.
That she’s not on breastmilk exclusively, but enough about that already!
That I’m not training her to fall asleep on her own, setting her up for sleep problems in the years to come.
That I crave adult companionship and look forward to returning to work.
That I’ll have to leave her with a babysitter when I do, inevitably missing out on many “firsts” moments.
It’s a delicate balance between doing the right thing all the time and accepting some imperfections along the way. My siblings and I were raised by easy-going parents and there was ONLY one parenting book at home as far as I can remember (it was Spock, incidentally) - I have several! - and none of us turned out permanently scarred for life despite some honest parenting mistakes.
It’s time for some -pardon the oxymoron - SERIOUS fun!