Lennox & Me

I've previously written about breastfeeding Lennox while he was at age 14 months ( see blogpost here ). It's hard to believe that Nox would turn 23 months in a few days, and his 2nd birthday is just around the corner! And yes i'm STILL breastfeeding! :) Currently i am breastfeeding both my newborn Sterling (he is 10 weeks old -- is he still considered newborn??? hmmmm) and Lennox. This blogpost is not meant to be about the pros of tandem breastfeeding (there are many other more reliable sources i used like kellymom.com  and the amazing FAQ ), but this is just my how i experienced it the last 2 months. Breastfeeding while pregnant When i found out i was pregnant, one of the first things i wondered is if i would continue breastfeeding Lennox. Many moms would choose to stop, which is totally understandable. After speaking to my midwife and my lactation consultant, i decided to just continue. They advised that there was no reason to stop if i felt good. As long as I wasn...

I have been relatively active on social media after the birth of our 2nd son, Sterling, but i just realised we haven't made it official on the blog yet. Say hello to Sterling! And coincidentally he turns 8 weeks old today :) Sterling at a couple of hours old Sterling at 5 days old Sterling at 6 weeks old (and my left eye :P) Isn't he just the cutest?! :) I'm one proud mama here :) Birth story I was 39 weeks & 1 day pregnant, it was a Monday and i was feeling good. I went with Lennox to the library to return some library books and let him run around for abit. I was also hungry so i decided to drop by the McDonald's for a quarter pounder meal (Lennox had a healthier sandwich :P) since i figured i wouldn't have the chance to after the baby comes. We continued to do some groceries then we headed home for a nap. At 15:15 i had my routine check up with my midwife. That day Diana was there (there are 4 rotating midwives that are assigned to me)....

Goodbye 2016, Hello 2017 We were all down with a cold so the Christmas and new year festivities were really kept to a minimum. Also because the fact that Jürgen's grandma passed away earlier in November, everything was pretty subdued with the Kloof family in Holland and Suriname. We basically just stayed home and had my mother-in-law stay with us and have a small celebration with 4 of us. On 30th December we received news about the EEG test which were HEARTBREAKING. The news was told me to over the phone by the doctor. Basically the doctor told us that it showed that Lennox did have epilepsy. Our whole world basically came crashing down. I ugly-cried and hugged Jürgen then immediately started researching on epilepsy. We still could not get an earlier appointment than 7 february with the child neurologist which drove me nuts (what the hell right?!). Things seemed to get better with Lennox and we got rid of the annoying cold. However, early morning on 11th january 2017 Le...

It finally took awhile to write things down but here it finally is. Most of my friends and family know that a week before Christmas 2016 on 17 December, that day was probably one of the worst days of my life. It was a day where i felt so helpless and for a fleeting second i thought i lost my baby boy Lennox. Warning: this is a long post!!! The day started off as any regular Saturday. Jürgen went off for taekwondo training around 10am and i spent the morning with Lennox playing and he usually takes a nap after lunch. He had a little cough since the night before but other than that he was his usual bubbly self the whole morning. Drowsy after a bath and lunch, i brought Lennox to bed and started breastfeeding as usual. He took awhile to totally nod off which was normal, but i noticed then that his whole body started to slightly shiver. I'm actually looking at texts that i sent to Jürgen at 1258pm that day; i told him about the shivering and that his teeth were chattering althoug...

It started out good enough. I had a really awesome pregnancy all 9 months with Lennox and the delivery also went pretty smoothly. I was prepared for the exhausting first couple of months. We were lucky with Lennox with many ways coz he was such a mild mannered newborn, he breastfed like a pro and was such a happy and easy baby almost all of the time. I even flew on my own with him when he was 7 months to Singapore (a 13-hour flight) and it was a breeze! He was happy to be passed around from one person to another while in Singapore and i managed to get some much needed rest with family in Singapore those 5 weeks. Even the flight back to Holland went well. The lady beside me proclaimed Lennox to be the 'best baby on any flight ever'. Man i was beaming. This kid is awesome. AND THEN SEPARATION ANXIETY STRUCK. We got home to the Netherlands and he took awhile to warm back to his papa. Cried when he saw Oma (my mother in law). Screamed when people looked at him when he was in ...

So this kid never ceases to amaze me. Well, maybe he's my kid so i feel proud at every single thing he does (like pooping, in the potty of course). But just after 13 months old, he started to use sign language to speak back to us (like one day it just clicked i think, just like him deciding that he wanted to walk and was done with crawling). He did the sign for 'eat' when I was prepping dinner and i was amazed! Yes baby, we are going to eat!! We started signing with him around 8 months old. J and I did a small 'baby sign language' class when he was around that age just to get used to it ourselves. I also learnt that sign language is just like any other language; the American Sign Language (ASL) is different from the Dutch. And the Malay sign language is probably different as well. To standardize things we decided to follow the Dutch sign language. Meaning i would still be speaking Malay to him, but use the Dutch sign. We went to Baby Gebaren in Almere and the t...

This sentence really irks me! Lennox is almost 14 months old and yes I'm breastfeeding him. I didn't think i would breastfeed this long; i was breastfed till about 7 months and many of my nephews and nieces were also breastfed till around the same time (below 1 year). So I never imagined that i would go past 1 year. I am a proponent of breastfeeding, but also a proponent of feeding your baby, whatever way that might be (formula, or breastmilk). What i notice here in Europe is that people stop breastfeeding much, much earlier. I usually get these 'when are you going to stop' questions from people here. Back in Asia it's quite a norm to still be breastfeeding around age 1 and nobody really thinks of it as 'taboo' even if you go past 1. I guess this post came up because recently i went to a party here in Holland with some of my husband's family, and when it came up that i was breastfeeding, a certain 'Aunt' was like, "ooooooh, Lennox still ge...