The average person who looks at me will assume I’m Chinese. A more nuanced person might see that I actually look a bit Vietnamese. And when most people see my last name, they will know for sure that I am Chinese, at least partly. When others who are familiar with Vietnamese middle names see my first, middle, and last names, they will then know for sure that I must be Chinese-Vietnamese. That would be a very educated (and accurate) guess.

A few years ago, when I shared information with my wider team about my YouTube channel and Instagram handle for Yvonne meets Food, I scored a lot of new followers and subscribers on both platforms. A large number of my colleagues regularly look at my Instagram content every day. So when I was having a 1:1 chat with a colleague I don’t chat with much (and doesn’t follow me on Instagram), as she asked to speak about specific work related items, I was a little surprised when she ended the call with, “Hey! I haven’t forgotten about your food channel! Don’t forget to send me your chicken chow mein recipe! It’s my absolute favorite Chinese dish!”

The call ended so quickly that I barely had a chance to even respond to that other than nodding and saying bye. But it was such an annoying way to end. Here goes a White colleague stereotyping me regarding how I look and just assuming that all my content must be stereotypical Chinese dishes she’s aware of… like chicken chow mein, something I never order and cannot even remember the last time I ate. Why don’t I also just share with her my family’s top-secret recipes for General Tso’s chicken and beef with broccoli (hint: our family never made those dishes, much less ordered them at restaurants!). Maybe she will feel like she knows me and my culture even better then!

It would be nice if in 2024, I could chat with people who are from a culture different than mine and hope that they don’t stick me in a box, whether it’s regarding personality or food I eat/make, based on a white-gaze stereotype that they’ve contrived in their heads and need confirmation is actually “true.” I don’t exist to confirm harmful racial stereotypes other people have.

Chris and I were pushing the baby in her stroller on Saturday afternoon in Inwood, and a mom passed us on the street and marveled at how cute Kaia was. “Enjoy it and soak in every minute!” she said, smiling. “It goes by so, so fast! I have two babies, and they are 16 and 18 now, just like that! It was like it was just yesterday! Where did my babies go??”

She’s right. It’s totally nuts. Kaia is already 32 weeks old, almost at her eight-month birthday. I was so proud of her yesterday when I presented steak to her. She had a big hunk she was sucking and chewing on, and after biting off two large pieces, she gagged a little on the first and spit it out with some coaching. She didn’t gag at all with the second piece, moved it around her mouth, tried to chew, and then eventually spit it out.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous watching her with that piece of steak in her mouth, which I knew she would not be able to swallow as it was without more chewing. I kept my exaggerated model of chewing and spitting out to show her what to do, and she seemed to get it. She’s catching on really fast. She still doesn’t have any teeth yet, but given how hard her gums are, I have a feeling a tooth is going to break out any day now.

It is work to teach her the basics of survival: how to chew, spit out, move food around her mouth. But these moments are the ones I live for. Watching her grow and evolve is the greatest gift I’ve ever had. Not a day has gone by when I have not given thanks for having her, especially when I know so many others who have struggled to conceive and still do not have their miracle baby. It easily could have been the case that I never even had a child. Every day, I feel like time is passing too quickly, like I don’t have enough time in a day to do everything I want. Something always seems like it needs to get done or fixed or cleaned. Or I have to pump or clean pump parts or do something else chore-like. Sometimes, I just want to sit and hold her and admire our little family, and that’s it. I guess this is what it’s like to be a working mom — never feeling like you have enough time for everything and always feeling like you could be doing more, for yourself, your baby, and your home.

I had my first therapy session since about two weeks before the baby was born. At that point, I was feeling pretty good about everything and optimistic about how the baby’s birth was going to go. My therapist had been a great support to me over the course of the last year. I started seeing her after I had completed the IVF stimulations and was feeling a lot of uncertainty. Since then, she has been a solid outlet for me to sort through my thoughts, vent, and just be vulnerable without judgment. But today, I kind of got the sense that she was judging me. I get that it is her goal, and well, job, to guard my mental health. But she reminded me of what I had said to her months ago about breast-feeding: I told her that I was going to try my best to breast-feed and make this work because that was what I ultimately wanted. But if it did not work, then I was not going to kill myself over it, and I would formula feed in the way that it made the most sense, so with the type of formula that best fit my baby and my own beliefs. That is to say, there was no way in hell I was going to feed my baby with corn syrup laced formula.

Well, what I said to her then still holds: I am trying my best to breast-feed and make this work. It is just not breast-feeding in the way that I had originally imagined. Breast-feeding includes nursing as well as feeding breastmilk via a bottle. A lot of people are not aware of this, and it seems really silly to me. If you are feeding breastmilk via a bottle, how is that not breast-feeding? Where the hell did that milk come from? I told her that when I first mentioned this to her, I specifically thought about breast-feeding directly on the breast. I honestly did not realize that exclusive pumping was a thing. I originally thought that women only pump milk when they were away from their children and needed to give them something to eat via a bottle. It’s because I had never meant a mom who exclusively pumped and was open about it. I was learning as I was going, and because I was lactating and had a decent supply at this point, I wanted to continue this for as long as possible. She pressed me and asked where this pressure was coming from: was it because of all the blogs or the news or the lactation consultant or even Chris? Yes, I am sure that the constant saying of “breast is best“ is probably pushing me along. I am also sure that everything I have heard from the news and all the lactation consultants is also pushing me along. But what I am most sure about is that I am putting all of the pressure on myself. I know that if I were to switch my baby to formula tomorrow and have it be exclusively formula, I would likely ignore any judgment from anyone and just do my thing. I know all of my friends would be supportive… I am not totally sure my family would be supportive but… well, whatever.  But the point is that all of the pressure that matters the most to me is the pressure that I have put on myself. I want this journey to work really badly. Exclusive pumping is tough as hell, and in someways, it is even harder than nursing because you spend so much time with an electric breast pump, an animate object, versus your own baby. So a lot of the struggle is mental. It’s also a physical struggle because you cannot physically be with your baby  and interacting with her in probably the way that you want to, which is feeding her from the breast. And some days are harder than others. But I am going to make this work for as long as possible, and I told her this. 

She kept on insisting to me that breastmilk was not that much better than formula other than the live antibodies. But I do not agree with that. The corn syrup argument holds. I am also not certain that my baby should be eating palm oil so early on in her life and clogging her arteries… Which are teeny tiny, should I add. And yes, there are many brands of formula in this country that have palm oil. It just doesn’t make sense to me how these companies decide to put all these random pieces of crap into infant formula. That makes me angry, and I should not be feeding my child something that makes me angry.

At the end of the day, she was probably grilling me because she wanted to make sure that I was certain about my chosen path, but I am. I need the support of the people around me, both in word and in action. And if there was anyone who is not going to support my decision, I did not need to have them in my life, and that included her. She said she would be supportive of whatever decision I made, and whatever decision I made, my baby would be happy on whatever I chose to feed her with, but I really didn’t feel supported during this conversation. And that made me sad given how supportive if she has been to date.

It must be my subconscious slowly building its anxiety level, greatly anticipating when I will be back at my parents’ house in San Francisco. That bleak place with an odd, eerie chill and a damp, musty vibe rarely has a positive effect on anyone.

I woke up this morning from an annoying dream. It could be characterized as “bad,” but it’s more annoying because it really encompasses, to me, how frustrating my family can be. I’m here in New York and suddenly my mom calls, and all she says is, “Did you hear that Ed died?”

First of all, assuming that Ed were actually still around, why the hell would anyone ever so casually ask you if you “heard” that your own brother DIED? There is something so wrong about that that I cannot even put it into words. Death is not casual. It is especially not casual when it is the death of an immediate family member.

It is really insane to think that nearly eight years ago, my brother died. Tomorrow will mark eight years since his funeral, since the day I stood up at a podium and gave a eulogy for him that I never wanted to write, a eulogy that gave subtle but pretty obvious hints at what he died from. When I think of going home, I am always reminded first and foremost that he is gone and that I will never see him ever again.

Surges in progesterone and estrogen, as well as the obvious HCG/pregnancy hormone, are to blame for pretty much every pregnancy symptom that exists, from moodiness, sore breasts, nausea, fatigue, dizziness, food aversions, etc. But what I wasn’t quite expecting while reading about pregnancy symptoms is that women also tend to experience more vivid dreams and nightmares as a result of being pregnant, particularly in the first and third trimesters. And this, in somehow and some way, can also be attributed to the surges in progesterone due to pregnancy.

Many women who had never really remembered their dreams prior to becoming pregnant report greater dream recall during pregnancy. They also say that there is an increase in nightmares that feel very, very real. Granted, I’ve always been a vivid dreamer who thinks her dreams are real as she’s experiencing them, but in the last few months, my dream recall has been relatively poor.

The dream I had last night was very much out of the normal range for me. I had a dream I was at the border of two countries… who the heck knows what countries. And we had an endless number of huge crates filled with tropical citrus. I was charged with illegally getting these citrus from one country to the next by smuggling them in and hiding them underneath some other legally recognized cargo. I was working with two other people, and we were mapping out the route we were going to take on the road, the excuses we’d make at the border check-point, what we’d show the border patrol agents, and approximately how much time this would take. It felt like a very high stress, high stakes endeavor, and the pressure was on.

Maybe in some ways, this does make sense for me to dream about from a pregnancy perspective because I have been experiencing cravings for grapefruit that I’ve never really gotten before. While I’ve always enjoyed grapefruit, it’s tasted even more delicious to me in the last couple weeks than ever before. I wonder what I will dream up next.