Offensive Posts

Hari ni tiba-tiba terfikir.

Dulu I joined those parenting groups. Niat nak menimba ilmu. Tapi bila dah tengok orang kutuk sana-sini, rasa macam kita ni mak yang tak sempurna. Kalau bagi susu formula tu macam dah teruk sangat la sebab tak usaha. Padahal diorang tak tau pun macam mana kita struggle nak bagi anak susu ibu. Kira bersyukur sangat anak kita dapat colostrum tu walaupun tak dapat nak susukan sampai 2 tahun. Dan bersyukur kita masih dapat bagi susu dekat anak kita walaupun bukan dari badan kita sendiri. Dia dapat jugak khasiat, dia tak kelaparan, dia membesar dengan sihat jugak macam anak orang lain.

Kalau bagi vaksin pun salah. Sebab dah terikut-ikut sangat apa yang kerajaan suruh buat. Kalau bawak pegi doktor pun tak betul. Sebab percaya sangat diorang, sedangkan diorang tu nak buat duit je. Macam-macam lah yang kita buat, serba tak kena.

So lama-lama rasa macam, tiap kali bukak je group mesti terasa. Mesti kecik hati. Padahal benda tu tak ditujukan kepada kita secara personal. Tapi tetap jugak kecik hati. Delete group satu-satu. Tak membantu pun. Ilmu yang dapat dekat situ boleh je cari kat Ms Google atau lebih baik lagi refer terus pada yang pakar.

So terfikir pulak harini. Kita terasa bila diorang cakap benda2 tu. walaupun tak tuju kat kita. habis bila kita cakap macam2 dekat blog, dekat twitter, dekat facebook, kita tak tau siapa yang terasa dengan kita.

Rasa takut pulak.

Ada jugak yang kata "I don't take responsibility for how you feel about what I say". Tapi bila fikir bab dosa pahala... Bayangkan kalau 10 orang terasa tiap2 kali kita post something dekat these social media websites. Bayangkan.

This serves as a reminder to myself to think a hundred times before posting something next time.

To anyone out there who reads my blog, anyone I've hurt or offended with any of my entries or with any posts I've published, be it here or in any of the websites I frequent, saya minta maaf dari hujung rambut sampai hujung kaki. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive this flawed human being who sometimes slips when she gets too emotional or stressed out. If there ever comes a time when I intentionally or unintentionally post something hurtful or offensive, please leave a reminder. Help me become a better person.

Thank you.

Of Parenting

It's not easy, let me tell you.

Not that I don't love it. I do, don't get me wrong. It's worth it to wake up early everyday, having her smile sweetly at me and say "Hi sayang! Hi Mama!".

To have to rush here and there in the morning to make her breakfast, get her bathed and comfy and playing ball on demand or letting her watch her favourite shows, if only to have her run up to me, put her little arms around my neck and give me a huge wet kiss on the lips.

The stressful moments are forgotten at one simple smile or word or hug (or ''ag!" as she would say it).

But it's not easy.

There are times when I feel like I'm going to drop to the floor at the end of each day. Times when Epol walks in the door only to have me hand Hana over immediately before he can even recuperate from work.

Times when we argue over how to discipline, how to feed her, how to cook for her. I have my ways and he has his. She's too young to be disciplined. If we don't discipline her now, she's going to get spoiled. She can't eat those cookies, she won't be able to sleep later. Yes but she deserves a treat every now and then.

There are times when we can't seem to agree on anything.

And yet it's the most fulfilling thing I've ever done.

There are days when I can't wait to have my mother babysit her so I can concentrate on my studies.

And yet I miss her 5 minutes after she leaves the house with daddy.

Maybe it's the hugs she gave me before she left, or those kisses, or the way she kissed my hand after 'salam-ing' it, or that flying kiss she sent my way right before entering the lifts. Perhaps it's even the adorable way she says "Bye bye Mama!" repeatedly. But I miss her.

Still, it's not easy.

Hitting a Brick Wall

I have to say this.

I hate where I am, academically. I had a chance for something big but I blew it and now I'm stuck at square one, unable to progress anywhere.

People always say that when you're a postgraduate, you have to fend for yourself, nobody is gonna help you if you don't help yourselves. Your supervisor is there but you have to do everything. They're just there to observe.

I disagree. I say that if we were so capable of producing research papers on our own, why would we even need to enroll in a university? Why pay thousands each semester just to do everything on our own?

I don't think supervisors should sit back and wait for our progress. I think they should check, be concerned, yell if they have to.

Why need universities if that's what PG is all about? Suffice to have a board that's in charge of going through these papers. Just send it in, present and that's it. Pay a submission fee.

Supervisors get paid to lead and help and assist in any way they can. Why leave students hanging in the wind with no direction to go?

At this point in time, I want nothing more than to just cry, cry and cry. And quit. Time is running out and I just wanna run off and forget I even had this stupid idea in the first place.

On the precipice

I've gotten asked so many times when we're giving Hana a little brother or sister.

So far, my answers have ranged from "Ada rezeki nanti ada lah" to "I'm not ready to go into the labour room again" to "Hana's not ready to share my attention".

Honestly, I really want another baby. I want it so bad. But then I look at myself. The way I can be, the things I feel and do. I look at my capabilities. I'm always on the precipice. Always almost falling. I struggle with even this one beautiful, lovable baby.

And I know that for now, I'm not able. Mentally, I'm too weak.

I survived!

Ok so the title is a little bit dramatic, but here's the story:

On Tuesday (19/3), Epol came home from work early, pale, shaken and feverish, and upon arrival, dropped everything and went straight to the bathroom. It appeared that he had gotten a bad case of food poisoning.

I had Hana that day and so it began, taking care of a clingy baby and a sick husband at the same time. I was exhausted by the end of the day and the house was in the worse condition it had ever been (and believe me, my house has seen some bad times). Hana wouldn't go to sleep until almost 11.

The next day, I took Hana to my mom's and continued caring for the patient at home. His temperature rose to 39.7 degrees, which was pretty damn high, and we called my sister-in-law (who is a doctor), and she came over after work and declared that we should probably take him to the hospital.

So to cut a long story short, he was admitted for two nights, leaving me alone at home with Hana, for the first time ever.

Being a total wimp, I never thought I'd be able to survive even one, let alone TWO nights alone (albeit with the baby) in a house. But that night, when my sister asked me if I was gonna be okay and if we could make some kind of arrangement for Hana and I (possibly sleep over at my mom's), I actually replied that we were gonna be fine.

And we were.

I survived.

Barely. :P

Of the damned Red Tape and Compassion (or lack of)

Early Saturday morning, my grandmother fell and passed out in her bathroom. By our estimation, she had been on the floor for a few hours before my sister decided to check up on her and discovered what happened. 

She was sent to the hospital in an ambulance (which arrived TWO FRIGGIN HOURS AFTER THEY WERE CALLED), checked on by the orthopedic who was on-call, found out that it there was a small fracture on her hip that would eventually heal by itself, and she was discharged that same morning. 

I dropped by at about 10 to visit and arrived just in time to see my sisters struggling because my grandmother had fallen off the couch after she tried to adjust the position of her legs. Her injured hip was underneath, the leg stuck and unmovable and she was already in the weakest condition I had ever seen her. Her last coherent sentence was "Siapa jaga Hana?" when she saw that I was trying to help get her back up. 

We woke my dad up and my uncle arrived a few minutes later and still we couldn't get her back up. She complained that it hurt when we tried to lift her by her pits and we were too afraid to move her legs, particularly the injured one. In the end, we had to bring down a single mattress and maneuver her onto it. She still complained but I asked her to bear with the pain just for a little while. Her injured leg was burning hot and she seemed to run a fever. Upon taking her temperature, we discovered it at 39 degrees Celcius, very hot.

I called someone who worked in that hospital, and she made some inquiries  found out that my grandma was very much coherent and not in pain when she was at the emergency room. Upon finding out, though, that she now had a fever and wasn't lucid, she suggested taking her back to the hospital. 

So they made arrangements to admit her to the private section of this hospital instead of making her go through another 5 or 6 hours of emergency triage. My uncle went ahead to the hospital to make arrangements and get an ambulance to take her back there, since my grandmother is quite big sized and it's hard for us to get her off the floor onto a car and back out again when she was in so much pain and not responding to any questions or orders. 

The ambulance came, found out that she wasn't going through emergency and refused to take her. REFUSED. The reason? "We are from emergency and if we take her without admitting her to the emergency ward first, then we will get scolding from our superior". All the while, there was this old woman in front of them, weak, breathing heavily, clearly in a lot of pain. 

The problem was, they were there already, and were going to make their way back to the hospital anyway. Apparently, showing up with an empty ambulance is better than helping an injured old woman. 

I understand that they were bound by the red tape, but this is someone who really needed help. Where was the compassion? Where was the humanity? 

This is the second time I've heard of staff of this hospital refusing to help someone in need because of the red tape. 

But when it boils down to the basics, would it have made them feel better if my grandmother had died because of their red tape? Is it okay, as long as they don't get reprimanded by their superior?

Again. Where was the humanity and compassion? 

Hana: Duplo and Stringing Sentences

I've noticed for a while now that Hana has started to learn problem solving. For example, if she is trying to get someplace and the nearest route has been blocked by something, she will find another way to get there. 

Today, she was playing with her Duplos (well, not really duplo but a brandless substitute that looks like it. For the sake of making it easier for me to post, let's still call them duplos). She had managed to stack three of the four-notched (square) duplos together. In the first place, I didn't even know that she knew how to play  with them properly because she usually prefers to play with the bucket that comes with it, using it as a hat. She gives me the duplos to put together for her. 

But that's not why I was amazed. After she had stacked the fours, she picked up the twos. There were two of them. she stacked them together and proceeded to try and join them to the fours. She couldn't because her hands are a bit too small to join two big pieces together. So what does she do? She takes the stacked twos, tears them apart and proceeds to connect them, one by one onto the big stack. Problem solved. She looks up at me, notices that I was watching and smiled proudly.

And mama just watches with her mouth open and squeals. haha.

And then the other day, I discovered that she has started stringing words together to form sentences. Not as smoothly and eloquently as we do mind you, but she certainly tries. 

She was rolling around on the carpet, her head on a cushion and she forgot that she wasn't on a bouncy bed and tried bouncing but her head missed the cushion and she banged it on the (carpeted) floor. she ran to me crying "call daddy! daddy!". So i called. As soon as her dad picked up the phone and said hello, she said loudly while sobbing "sayang! baying datuh tadi!" (sayang, baring jatuh tadi). Her dad was like "whaatt?" And I repeated what she said, not quite believing it myself. 

And there you have it. My baby's growing up. 

She won't be a baby for much longer, will she?