Of Medicines and Ear Infections

In a way, am still thankful that I was spared till now. Some babies had ear infections when they were actually babies. My Yakee is already a sturdy two-year old, one that can even take medicines in teaspoons and not just drops.

But still, it has been a really trying two days since I deduced that he may have an ear infection. I should have thought of that immediately that Sunday night he winced when I was cleaning his ear. It's otitis externa, and am telling you, even the best wrinkle cream cannot possibly remove the wear and tear on Mommy for the past two days. Mostly, the exhaustion is on administering the medicines because he has to take paracetamol, decongestant, expectorant and antibiotics. And I have to make sure the ear drops actually get to pool in his ears and soften his impacted ear wax, which will be flushed this Saturday.

I don't even give him his regular vitamins anymore... to give him a rest from the droppers.

Son is experiencing diarrhea from the antibiotics and am paranoid to my wits' end because the last time he was given antibiotics, he ended up being too sensitive and succumbing to a bad gastroenteritis spell. One that landed him in the hospital for almost a week.

I cannot, will not, do not want that to happen again!

Proud to be a Breastfeeding Mom

There are some mothers who breastfed because they were told to do so. So they did it and that was that.

There are some mothers who breastfed because it's supposed to be the best and they want to be good mothers. So they did it and that was that.

There are some mothers who breastfed because they were stay-at-home Moms or were poor and felt they had no choice. So they did it and that was that.

And then there are some like us... not everyone of us started out fine, not everyone of us had the right support group, or the correct information, or the ideal birthing scenario or healthy baby. Not everyone of us was exclusively breastfeeding at first and some of us even had sores and infections and whatever else breast pain-related. Heck, some of us even had babies who refused to latch, period. But somehow, breastfeeding became a personal thing for us. We fell in love with it, its benefits, its rewards. So despite the initial discomfort and the exhaustion over being at the beck and bawl of a wee babe, we kept on. And we started reading up about it. And we started egging friends and family to do it. And we dressed for it. And we did it in public. And we can talk for hours on end about it. It's become part of our belief system, our lifestyle, our child's babyhood. And however way you shake us, and though we can respect other moms' decisions, a part of us will never, ever understand again how other moms can choose not to breastfeed.

Somehow, in the course of the conversion, breastfeeding has become as natural to us as breathing, eating, loving and mothering. Suggest to us that we stop cold turkey and we feel threatened, that we're being stripped of rights.

Any fertile woman, heck, even a teener, CAN technically become a mother by getting pregnant. And with modern medicine, giving birth isn't anymore the one-foot-in-the-grave thing that it used to be. But breastfeeding still remains to be as much of the motherly sacrifice as it was hundreds of years ago.

And thus, donated breastmilk can nothing be but pure love in milk bottles.

I'm blessed to be a Mom. I'm proud to be a breastfeeding mom.

Sick and Sick

First off, am down with allergic rhinitis. Must be the grass in the resort we stayed in that's giving me the sniffles. Sigh.

And though I should be sleeping, I am uploading pictures of our swimming party and is absolutely horrified of my flab. Should I reconsider Wii and ask hubs to buy wii accessories already? Or a gym membership? I don't want to go on a crash diet and it's not like am pigging out all the time. Heck, last weekend, I only ate one whole crab. Normally, i'd have consumed at least three that entire time.

Howell. Son woke up...

Uploading Pics

Thanks to many sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Pbase and Multiply, mothers everywhere get free online backup for their photos. And I always encourage fellow moms to be vigilant about this because I seriously cannot imagine losing pictures in case my hard disk crashes.

We took it a step further though. We have a paid Smugmug account. So I was kinda chagrined that Multiply is now offering their Premium account for like P800 only, but then again, it'd be such a hassle trasnferring all my files there. Plus, our Smugmug account also hosts my blog pics. It would be a bigger hassle changing all those URLs.

More Opps Please!

A friend wonderfully thought of me for an income opportunity requiring me to just write an advertorial for a certain product. It required me to submit my blog traffic statistics though and this blog didn't make the cut. So now am wondering if I should use some seo software soon to boost traffic in my blogs so that I will have more blogging opportunities as well. I really should be more entrepreneurial in my endeavos here at home to get some extra income for more spending money.

Sigh.

If only I can sell things!

Halloween Binge

Ugh.

We spent the long weekend at my in-laws and I binged again. I didn't eat a lot of the regular food but I ate half a gallon of ice cream the entire time we were there. If news of this reaches my SIL in Dubai, she just might send me some Kettlebells for "strength conditioning and permanent fat loss". Because really, though I am not yet round, I am very, very, very wide. It's just a matter of time before I become as round as siopao.

And it's the Holidays too. How do I deprive myself of food during the Holidays? What do I do with the rest of Snickers here at home? Ugh. Gluttony.

*~*

I did binge on veggie soup and veggie viands there. I hope the effort counts.

Proof of Motherhood

I was chatting with a friend the other day, whose daughter is my godchild and was running a fever. Aside from encouraging her to go to the doctor and discussing malady possibilities, I was also telling her that babies really get sick and though it's sad, it's how they naturally make themselves immune and healthier when they grow up.

Then we got to talking about our babies' bowel movements and I laughingly said that it's one of the surest proof of motherhood: that our happiness depends partly on our child's poop. Regular dirty diapers without the baby/child straining is such a priceless form of happiness, no Honeywell Barcode Scanner will ever register a cost to it. But Moms know that the price for that kind of happiness is our sanity... because since babies' systems are still developing, they will have days of straining and days of pooping lots of times on the same diet, and in this interim, a Mom will be gnashing her teeth, wondering what to do.

For a while, I stopped giving my son apples because he was getting constipated. But lately, the more apples he eats, the more times he poops. Sigh.

Maybe it gets better with the next child. I don't know yet.