SAHM Survival Guide

(No helper, mum-centric edition)

I thought I would compile a list of things I found were essential during these 4 months of paid and 6 plus months of unpaid maternity leave, for your reference in case you were thinking of taking a similar or longer time off with your child (two more months!). I have caveated above that this is mum-centric, so if you are looking for proper activities involving your child, i.e. not of the taking long bus rides and going to the supermarket variety, ask Google again.

1.       Supportive Husband

I have mentioned many times that I have no illusions about marriage, in particular with regard to how helpful husbands are around the house – so what may constitute “support” to me may not be to you. If you have a husband who cooks and does the dishes and cleans the house, good for you!

Jon really did put in his best to help out by washing FBC’s milk bottles and doing the dishes occasionally. While his other efforts at housework sometimes resulted in more work and consequently more nagging from me, I think he deserves an A+ for effort, patience and emotional support. Also for being as chill about being a parent to FBC as I am, and for never denying me sashimi although it’s expensive and I’m not working.

2.       Someone to leave your child with while you do your own thing for a few hours

Much thanks to my mother and my in-laws. I went to the gym mostly, and once to the dentist to get my wisdom tooth removed. Whatever floats your boat. 

3.       Part-time help

No further explanation needed as to why this is essential, although I still do all the laundry and most baby-related things myself, as well as cook. I have done the floors myself in the weeks she couldn’t make it – it is doable, but annoying because babies will insist on trying to get at the vacuum cleaner and when they can’t because you have imprisoned them in their cots, the resulting ruckus is even louder than the vacuum cleaner. Zzzz.

4.       Books

I purchased a Kindle from yoursingaporeimporters.com just before I started my maternity leave, which was about one to two weeks before FBC’s arrival (it was actually medical leave as my gynae decided that I needed to stop being so active due to my amniotic fluid index readings getting progressively lower). You can also purchase Amazon gift cards at a premium from them, which helps with buying books if you’re not big on VPN and anonymous browsing and whatnot.

Because of this, I have read an astonishing number of books in the past year – my Kindle home screen puts the number of items on my Kindle at 89, so taking in to account the fact that I like to download samples of books, as well as some classics Jon downloaded, I would put the total number of books I’ve read at about 40. While this has been useful in keeping my mind active and my grammar from going down the drain, I can’t say that most of what I’ve read has been the most intellectually stimulating. I’m also on a Kindle fast because reading too many books on it has made me unable to properly focus when I’m reading paperbacks, and I’ve got Kate Atkinson’s latest novel, A God In Ruins, and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere sitting on my bedside table, both of which I would like to read properly.

Some authors I liked were:

• Elizabeth George – The Inspector Lynley series. Not all of the series is well-written. I picked and chose based on reviews. Also (spoiler alert), Helen dies and I wasn’t interested in reading about Helen dying because I liked her too much. The books I enjoyed included: A Great Deliverance, Well-Schooled In Murder and In The Presence Of The Enemy.
•  Fannie Flagg – I first read Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle-Stop Café more than 10 years ago. Her books in general are easy to read, heart-warming and filled with interesting characters. Welcome To The World, Baby Girl! And The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion are good too.
• Liane Moriarty – I read The Husband’s Secret in paperback on our babymoon. It was okay, and I saw the secret from a mile away. The book of hers which I really enjoyed was What Alice Forgot, which is apparently being made into a movie. Jon says I only enjoyed the book because Alice forgot everything after falling off her bike at a spin class.
• James Herriot – I would consider All Creatures Great And Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful and All Things Wise and Wonderful proper Literature and perhaps best read in paperback. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
• Gary D. Schimidt – Excellent Young Adult Fiction. I read Okay For Now and The Wednesday Wars.
• Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game (also a young adult book). Creeped me out and kept me awake, but the ending was totally un-creepy and very nice.  

5.       TV

Ah, TV. If you haven’t switched to Starhub, please do so.

Cooking/ food shows

•  Bake With Anna Olson and Fresh With Anna Olson. Anna Olson must be one of the most boring TV cooks ever, but she does have pretty good tips, especially on the former show. Her recipe ideas on the latter aren’t bad either.
• Giada At Home and Everyday Italian. Giada de Laurentiis has a big head and sometimes I wonder if she can really cook, but she is so neat when she cooks, and her gestures are so compact. It’s quite therapeutic watching her, really. Plus her shows are good for gleaning ideas for dinner.
• Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Home Cooking. Gordon Ramsay cooking in his own kitchen (I hope it’s his own!), with appearances by his kids. Need I say more?
• The Great British Bake-Off. Season 4 was meh, but I am really enjoying Season 5 (BBC Entertainment is lagging, I know, but what can we do?)
•  Any show Nigella hosts. Because Nigella. Personally I find she uses a lot of fat, e.g. butter and cream in her cooking so I don’t really like her recipes, but. See previous sentence. 

    

     Korean dramas (dramafire.com)

• The Producers – best Korean drama I’ve watched so far this year. Good writing, believable characters and plot. And Cha Tae Hyun,
• The Time We Were Not In Love. Because Ha Ji Won (!!!!). I know this show has its fair share of detractors, but it’s not over yet and so far I am enjoying the story because Ha Ji Won and Lee Jin Wook are doing a great job portraying characters who are REAL and NORMAL.
• Cheongdamdong Scandal. Couldn’t commit to it, but because it was SO long, every time I needed something to watch when I was doing a bit of ironing or feeling lonely whilst cooking dinner, it would be showing when I turned on the TV to Channel 820 for a good 2 months or so. It’s not half bad, and based on what I’ve read online, it is particularly satisfying watching the evil mother-in-law’s comeuppance. You could consider watching it if you are really bored.

***

I'm probably giving SAHMs a bad name (too free, becoming auntie, etc.), but hey, we all deal with staying at home in our own ways. 

As to activities with FBC, besides lots of singing and peek-a-boo-ing, I have taken many bus rides and walks with him to meet friends for lunch and to the supermarket, and we have enjoyed them all. I will miss the feeling of having him close to me, small and snug, exploring the world from his carrier. It is these moments I treasure the most of all, and I hope he does too, even if all he remembers of these times is the feeling of being loved and cherished, and security in a world he is only just coming to know.  

True Believer

FBC has just expressed his displeasure at The Economist's view that euthanasia should be legalised by ripping the cover and front page of that particular issue of said magazine into shreds and leaving the draft from the ceiling fan to scatter them around the living room.

Jon finds this behaviour endearing, and speaks fondly of FBC "nesting". I find it a nuisance, which should be unsurprising to you because guess who has to clean up FBC's "nests"? 

***

P asked me at dinner last night whether I she3 de2 go back to work (do excuse the ungrammaticalness of that last phrase and word, there is sometimes no better way to put things). I answered with a resounding YES. When he said that his wife felt sad leaving their 7-month old and returning to work, I told him that maybe she should have taken two more months off, because I have found for myself that the marginal utility of being a SAHM* reaches zero around the ninth month (just about equal to the period of gestation!); beyond that, the law of diminishing returns sets in.

*I refer, in this regard, to the pleasure the SAHM derives from being a SAHM.

This article had its day of shares on Facebook recently, which led to a friend pointing out (and I may be paraphrasing her response a bit too simplistically) that most mothers in this day and age, especially in Singapore, have a choice as to whether to stay at home to look after the kids or go back to work, so perhaps SAHMs should complain a little less about being un/ under-appreciated. After all, it was YOUR CHOICE. While I agreed in general with her point (and "Liked" her Facebook post on this to indicate my agreement, hardee-ha-ha), I did caveat that it would be nice to be shown some appreciation now and then. True appreciation, which to me would take the form of rinsing beer bottles after you're done and taking them downstairs to be recycled, or doing the dishes without being asked after meals, for instance. 

Then again, that's life for you - marriage and raising a child was never going to be a bed of roses; it may sound tragic but I have ren4 ming4, i.e. resigned myself to my fate, and can finally start counting down the days (weeks! Two-and-a-half months!) before I return to work (it wouldn't have made sense to countdown before now, there were just too many days). 

Was choosing the SAHM path, even if it's only until FBC turns one, a good choice for me? After ten months of ups and downs I honestly don't know, but I do think it was probably the best choice for our family at the time, and therefore the best choice for me ("best" being different from "good"). And while I haven't gone batsh*t crazy from being a SAHM (yet! And hopefully when the law of diminishing SAHM returns dictates that it's time to begin my descent into batsh*t crazydom, it will be time for me to return to work), I have learnt in these 10 plus months or so that temperamentally, I am definitely not suited to SAHM life. I think I could do it long-term if push came to shove and I didn't have a choice, but firstly I don't think I believe enough in the modern SAHM model to be one (point one of the Huffington Post article sums this up very well). As I'm typing this, FBC is standing in his cot dropping his empty milk bottle to the ground and bouncing up and down making noises for me to pick it up so he can repeat it. And if you follow my Facebook and Instagram feeds, I'm always thinking about what to cook for dinner, proceeding to cook dinner even if it means leaving FBC unattended to "nest" in the living room, or watching Korean dramas - sometimes with FBC. Which is a big No-no.

Or maybe, and I know this is what people may secretly think, I am just lazy, selfish, and unwilling to make sacrifices so that my child can have the best. To my credit, though, when FBC chuckled loudly when L put his arm around Ha Ji Won in episode two (three?) of The Time We Were Not In Love on the pretext of reaching for her mouse to help her find something on her computer, I immediately turned off my laptop in horror, told him that he must not do such things to girls next time, and persisted with singing him to sleep*.

*Which takes anything from 15-20 minutes. Sometimes I just lie down next to him and sing both of us to sleep. I must've sung Be Thou My Vision, and all four verses at that, about a hundred times in the past 10 months. Coming in a close second is probably My Beloved Is Mine, And I Am His.

People say over and over again that you should bring up your children in the best way for your family and beliefs - and then proceed to give you all sorts of unsolicited advice about what is the best way, usually based on what they believe in. Sometimes, of course, being suckers for pain and perfection, we solicit advice ourselves, usually from parenting articles with clickbait titles. No matter how lax I may seem about things, in the long run, the pressure I would put on myself to be someone I'm not would probably be unhealthy for the family, especially my relationship with Jon.

Also, nice as it is to see your child's smile first thing in the morning and witness his "achievements", the latest being discovering that he can climb onto the sofa and coffee table unassisted (not sure how I feel about this, but so long as FBC can clamber back down in a civilised manner, I suppose it's still okay to leave him unattended?*), there is, for me, a limit to the pleasure such things bring. 

*Just to clarify, I am being tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure there are many mothers out there, including my own, who appreciate my sense of humour in this regard.

I hope, when I go back to work, that I will continue growing and maturing as a person and as a Christian, so that I will be able to show FBC (and our subsequent child(ren)) what it means to be a mature, God-fearing person. And I hope and pray that I will be able to be there for him/ them whenever they need a listening ear, a hug, or just someone to watch TV or a movie with.

***

FBC fell out of his Ikea high chair recently because I neglected to buckle him in and he managed to stand up and then decided that it would be interesting to explore the kitchen floor, which he is usually not allowed to crawl on. My first thought was Wah lau, so mafan. Need to go hospital anot? After he'd stopped bawling and gotten over the initial shock, I rang a doctor friend who told me to just monitor him for signs of lethargy (ugh, first time ever that I was worried he was napping) and/ or vomiting. After ringing said doctor friend, I decided to ask Google what other parents did when their kids fell off high chairs, and came across a blog post where a mum said she cried her eyes out because she felt so bad when her 10/11-month old rolled off his Ikea changing table (only slightly higher than the Ikea high chair). You can imagine how bad that made me feel. 

I am sharing this in case some other mother has like me asked Google the same thing, and if you are that other mother and Google directed you to my blog, the fact that your child fell from his/ her high chair/ changing table/ wherever and/ or the fact that you don't feel flustered, just an overwhelming sense of troublesomeness, doesn't make you a bad or uncaring mother. That being said, every fall is different, and I think FBC actually landed on his side first. So please, get your kid to A&E if you can see that something is really wrong.  

***

FBC has, in the time I've taken to write this, managed to drag an entire pack of Stage 4 Pampers from underneath his changing table and to the living room (amongst other monkey-like 10-month old behaviour). I leave you now to clear up another nest, and will hopefully be back in this space soon to share some things I've cooked lately. 

Treasure

It's been a while, but I did say I wouldn't blog unless I really had the feels about something and wanted to write about it. It took me some time to recover from looking after FBC, after which I fell into a sort of disgruntled-I-want-to-go-back-to-work-NOW funk where I felt unappreciated, and funnily enough, overworked (the irony of that is not lost on me). And it was then that I realised that looking after a baby is kind of like any other job, in that it is possible to get burnt out. The only problem, of course, is that one cannot take leave or quit.

***

I've been thinking lately about what I've learnt these past almost ten months of looking after FBC. Topping that list at this point in time is probably the fact that I've come to see how much he is his own person, and should be given the space and freedom to develop accordingly. As I told R, I feel like having a child is like welcoming a new friend into your life and getting to know them, except that you gave birth to that friend. And there is the very pressing issue of deciding when one's child should be disciplined. When they can't really communicate with you, it's not easy to decide when they're being truly naughty, or just being babies. I hope that with God's help we've been doing a decent job of this so far. . . But in any event, FBC won't remember any unwarranted spankings he received at this age, will he?

Coming a close second and third respectively would be levelling up on cooking skills, and inculcating the discipline and determination to get housework done. No kidding.

***

Last night, at a friend's wedding dinner, I misunderstood something another friend was trying to tell me, and I inadvertently brought up something which would have been better left unsaid. I felt really bad as soon as the words left my mouth and I realised that that wasn't what he was trying to talk to me about, and I felt terrible all the way home and when I woke up this morning. I remember how it feels to hear things you're probably better off not hearing, knowing things which cannot then be unknown (sort of like the plot of Gone Girl, or any of Gillian Flynn's three books. It's just not possible to read them with the same excitement again). I don't like the feeling of knowing that I've upset someone, or put a damper on what should have been a fun, carefree night of after-partying.

After I'd apologised and thought about it some more, I remembered when I found out something about Jon from someone else which I would definitely have been better off not knowing. It used to matter so much, and was something I felt so insecure about for days and months and years, but in light of our three years or so of marriage and our almost ten months with FBC, it had become insignificant, something I couldn't unknow but not something I kept knowing, either. It's like accepting that this thing happened and will always be a part of one of the people you love most in the world, but it's no longer part of your definition of them. 

I shouldn't have said what I said, and I definitely know what it's like to hold on to things one should have let go of long ago. But as things cannot be unsaid and facts cannot be unknown, I hope that we will in time come to see how little some things matter and live past them, finally grasping the contentment and joy our immaturity momentarily, inevitably, prevents us from reaching.