Category Archives: Health

Adverse reaction to skincare products

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I’ve never considered myself to have sensitive skin. I’ve always thought I had normal to oily skin, especially in my T-Zone area, where it tends to get very shiny about a few hours after I wash my face. When I got pregnant, I stopped using any retinol or beta hydroxy acid (BHA) products because they’re supposed to get into your blood stream, which could either affect your growing baby or your breast milk. So since 2021, I haven’t used any BHA products. Now that I’m close to fully weaning off of breastfeeding, I figured I could start using my BHA serums again. So I whipped out a Farmacy brand BHA serum this past weekend, and without thinking, I slathered it all over my face, neck, and chest. It’s been suggested that when you introduce a new skin product that has “powerful” ingredients, you should be conservative and test it on just a small patch of skin to ensure no adverse reactions. Well, I never had to do that before, so I clearly wasn’t going to do it this time. The next morning, I woke up feeling itchy and sore from my face down to my chest. I looked in the mirror and realized that I had tiny red bumps ALL over my neck and chest where I applied the serum. My face had tiny bumps on my forehead, and the texture of my face suddenly felt super leathery.

What the heck happened to my skin in the last two years that I suddenly cannot handle higher percentages of BHA? Or is it just that this product had expired? Every morning for the last few mornings now, I feel like my skin is burning when I wake up. I need my skin to get back to normal and stop feeling like I tried to burn it all off.

When baby led weaning really pays off

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Kaia is just a few days shy of 14 months of age. She has about 7-8 teeth in the front, and in the last month, I’ve really noticed how adept she’s gotten at biting and tearing food, especially bread and vegetables. On Sunday, when I roasted brussel sprouts, I was cutting the sprout halves for her, assuming it would be easier to eat, but she rejected them. So I changed it up and instead just gave her whole halves. I figured she was advanced enough to handle this shape, even for the smaller sprouts, so why not try it now? And what did she do? She picked up a brussel sprout half, started pulling individual leaves and shoving them into her mouth. And when a sprout got to be about half the original size, she started tearing it with her front teeth to bite. I had this moment of pride just bursting out of my chest, and I felt so proud to watch my sweet baby developing her eating skills.

And well, that was tempered by her a couple meals later, when she decided she wanted nothing to do with the brussel sprouts. In the baby/toddler eating world, you win some, and ya lose some.

And after an afternoon in the playroom, a 104 F fever

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When we go in for check-ups at the pediatrician’s office, one of the first questions they will ask when you sign in is if your baby is at home or at daycare. There’s clearly a different set of expectations for illnesses for babies in daycare vs. at home, and I think they just want to make sure to ask all the right follow-up questions. We’ve been lucky to have a good nanny and have Kaia at home; it’s kept endless illnesses at bay that we’re ignorant to, but have just heard of. Well, after an afternoon at the play room yesterday, today, after her mid-morning nap, Kaia woke up feeling quite warm and barely ate anything other than a few brussel sprout leaves and some blueberries. We went out to a bakery, and she seemed completely listless the entire time. We went home and took her temperature, and no surprise — she had a fever. It was 104 F.

THAT IS HIGH. EEEEEK.

So we gave her some Dymadon (Australian version of infant Tylenol. No high fructose corn syrup, wee!), and had her take a nap. In a couple hours, she was kind of back to herself and had some appetite. She drank plenty of fluids, and her temperature came down in a couple hours. And then she talked and moaned in her sleep all night long.

Babies are like walking illnesses when they are young, and especially when in daycare. Luckily for us, Kaia is a little trooper and handled her fever well.

Change the shape, and the Pookster will eat it

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I was determined to get Kaia to eat the sweet potato, lentil, and kale fritters I made. There was no way I was going to let her not eat any of them, especially after all the time and effort I put into making them. I figured the “finger” like shape wasn’t working, so this morning before the nanny came, I set Kaia up in her high chair and took the fritters apart, shaping them into tiny half domes and laying them all out in front of her. I told her what they were, and without any hesitation, she reached out and shoved one into her mouth, and then another, and then another, and bam! Suddenly, they were all gone except for crumbs (which, because I am frugal, I squished all together and had her eat, as well). The nanny arrived, and I told her that Kaia was finally eating the fritters.

“I knew she would eat it once the shape was changed!” the nanny exclaimed. She claims she tried to cut them up yesterday, but Kaia still refused to eat them. I guess we just have to do it when she’s not watching, otherwise she will know we are trying to “convert” her.

The best practice with trying to prevent picky eating is to constantly expose your child to different foods, even the ones they continually refuse just for the exposure. They cannot “dislike” food they are never shown. So regardless, even if it’s just one thing, I keep presenting them to Kaia in different ways so that even if she doesn’t touch the food, she will at least see it and know it exists. So far, this is working. It just takes… a LOT of time.

My baby, the true Chindian baby

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Since Chris had his molar extracted on Monday, I decided to make some chicken jook/congee. While I would normally insist on making this with homemade stock, alas, I am not always that lucky to have it at home, so I got a quart of stock from Whole Foods and “Asianized” it. After 15 minutes in the Instant Pot on high pressure and a little simmering, it tasted pretty good, if I do say so myself. And not only that, Kaia has really enjoyed having it as part of her dinner the last couple of days. Even though she’s only been exposed to jook one other time, which was when we were in San Francisco last August, she still clearly loves her jook. She cleaned her bowl completely both nights she had it for dinner. Our nanny said she was extremely happy with dinner both times I had her serve it. I also made some masoor dal, and despite it being a bit on the spicy side, she has eaten that well today with red quinoa. So while she may be wavering on certain vegetables and “fritter” preparations I’ve been doing, it is very clear: she is still true to her Chinese and Indian roots.

Baby led weaning – baby recipe testing

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Since Kaia turned 6 months old, I’ve mostly been doing baby led weaning (BLW) with all of her solid food eating. Although I have seen lots of articles, blogs, and social media posts about “BLW” food made specifically for babies (things like zucchini fritters, sweet potato/lentil fritters, etc., I wasn’t sure I really wanted to make any of them… because what if Kaia didn’t like these foods, and I ended getting stuck eating them, as Chris probably wouldn’t care for them? Plus, she would get more long term benefit just eating modified versions (no salt/sugar added) of what we’re already eating.

But then in the last month I figured, there wouldn’t be harm in trying to get different foods into her in different ways, and it would also be a little fun for me experiment with different recipes and how she could consume various vegetables or beans in fun ways. So I went a little nuts and I made three different things for her in the last couple of days: egg, cheddar, broccoli, red quinoa “muffins,” sweet potato, lentil, kale, and harissa fritters, and banana, chickpea, and peanut butter sugar-free “biscuits.” All of these recipes took quite some effort, especially since my food processor is quite small and not that strong (I’ve had it since I was 14, so that means this thing is 23 years strong!!). And when I was done making them, I felt quite proud at how they looked and came out. But the real test was: would she like eating these?

She took to the banana/chickpea/peanut butter “biscuits” right away. She’s happily eaten 3-4 of them every single day since Monday, as part of lunch and her afternoon snack. The egg bites she seemed fond of – she eats them but doesn’t seem to care when it runs out. And the sweet potato/lentil fritters? Well, she wants nothing to do with them. Two days in a row, and she just stares at them and swats them away. She will barely look at them, let alone touch them. Then she whines when it’s the only thing on her tray at meal time. What joy!

I might continue making the chickpea biscuits and will definitely keep making different combinations of mini egg muffins for her. But some of these recipes are just a bit too laborious to keep testing out to see if she’ll take to them. I’m way better off just giving her the exact food I’m making for Chris and me and seeing if she likes that. That will be far more sustainable in the long run, anyway.

When the nanny calls out sick and your entire family is either sick or exhausted

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Our nanny texted me last night to let me know that she likely ate something bad at the wedding she attended on Saturday and felt terrible. Her entire body hurt and she couldn’t keep any food down, so she would likely be taking a sick day today.

That’s just great, Chris and I both thought. This is exactly what we needed after a hellish weekend. But it is what it is, and we’d have to suck it up. I took the day off to care for Kaia Pookie while Chris went to have a back left molar extracted and chiseled away. It was an exhausting day of childcare, cooking, more childcare, and cleaning. At least Kaia ate better today and wasn’t as upset. I went to buy some things to make Chris some jook since he needed soft food, and I figured it would be good, simple, comforting food for all of us to have now. And when I checked my work email and Slack, I felt so overwhelmed looking at all the things I had to follow up on. I was NOT looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, already feeling behind, and knowing I also had an 8am presentation to do, likely with some challenging characters.

This is why being a working mom can really suck. There is literally always something to do, always something that you forgot to do or are behind on, and always someone or something waiting for you to do something else. And you really cannot have it all, all at once, ever. And when you have external childcare, it doesn’t always work out, and there’s really nothing you can do about it but just take a deep breath and try your best to power through it all. That’s why we just have to take it day by day.

And when it rains, it pours: the jelly bean that fractured Chris’s tooth

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And as though things could not have gotten worse this weekend…

At some point on Friday night, Chris was rummaging through our pantry, trying to find something sweet to eat that was not part of the Australian stash he hauled back from Melbourne. He found a small bag of jelly beans that a friend had gifted me last spring and started eating them. Lo and behold, one of the jelly beans manages to hurt one of his back molars. He told me about the pain on Friday, but he didn’t make too much of it. I knew it was bad when on Saturday morning, he asked me to text our dentist to see if he could come in to see them today: the pain had gotten really severe, and he wasn’t feeling well. The dentists said they wouldn’t be in Manhattan this weekend, but if he wanted, he could come up to see them in Yonkers. Chris ended up getting a Zipcar to drive up there to see them. They took an x-ray of his tooth to find that the stupid jelly bean had actually fractured his tooth, and the fracture was so severe that the entire tooth needed to be extracted.

WHAT???

So, they made a call to an oral surgeon to see if they could fit Chris in for a consultation Monday morning. All I could think when he came back from the dentist with his painkillers and antibiotics was… seriously? All because of a stupid little jelly bean….

And if you aren’t familiar with adult tooth extractions, especially molars… let me tell you something. It’s not just a little visit going to a dentist where they give you anesthesia and pull the damn thing out. Nope: it’s full on anesthesia where they pull out your entire tooth and have to hammer away and break and pull out roots and everything — disgusting, painful, miserable, with plenty of lingering pain and after effects for days on end afterwards. It’s considered real oral surgery. The only reason I am even aware of this stuff is because my mom had to go through it, and she told me all the gory details that happened.

My poor baby…. well, my poor big baby Chris.

When your baby’s teething is so bad that she won’t eat anything

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“When a child refuses to eat, it can destabilize the whole family,” Solid Starts writes on their site.

Yep. That is so damn true.

I really enjoyed those weekend mornings throughout the summer and fall when I would sit with Kaia and introduce endless new foods to her. She was so curious, always willing to try and eat pretty much everything. Even the things she wasn’t a huge fan of then, like sweet potato, potato, avocado, banana, she happily eats now. I took endless videos of her eating and was so proud when again and again, she’d gobble up all her green vegetables and eat spicy chicken curry, dal, and everything else with lots of fervor. I thought I was doing all the right things to prevent picky eating. I was going to be the Super Mommy, the one whose baby loved to eat EVERYTHING. I HAD this, I thought to myself each day, preparing her a mini “tasting menu” for each meal as Chris called them.

And so, yes, it felt very destabilizing, if you want to call it that, to watch her suddenly, out of nowhere, start rejecting foods she always loved in December back in Australia. And it felt even more frustrating to watch it continue to happen after we got home this month. I just didn’t understand it: what the hell snapped in her in those weeks in Australia to suddenly have her turn on all the foods she once embraced? Was it really just the fact that she turned one year old, and thus overnight, developed opinions and preferences on what she wanted to eat or not…?! And now, coupled with endless teeth all seeming to pop up at once, she’s in pain, which makes her refuse even more food. Today at dinner, she didn’t eat a single thing and cried endlessly in her high chair. She even refused her favorite things, like rice noodles and blueberries. That’s when we REALLY knew it was teething and not just a preference for certain foods.

It made me feel so sad to see my baby not eat a single thing I had prepared for her, not to mention cry and yell nonstop. No parent wants to see their child go hungry, but for me, it was especially brutal because of how much I love food. And my stomach still wasn’t 100 percent today, so even I barely ate. It has not been a great start to the weekend — that’s for sure.

Doing things for oneself

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I think I may end up pumping until the 14-month mark, so about February 10 now. I’m only producing about 30ml/day…ish, but somehow, it still gives me purpose. I was telling a friend of mine today how ridiculous this was. You would think I would feel so free, so liberated, to be near my last pump, but I actually just feel sad. It’s like one of my biggest life’s purposes, to provide sustenance for my baby, is being taken away, and that feels hard and emotional to me. I always thought I’d feel free… but instead, now I feel sad and like I don’t want to let go of it. So for now, the moving target is to pump once a day before bed until February 10. It’s not like I have much else to do before bed anyway, so why not?

But I have done little things for myself since I’ve come back. I’ve already read two books this year, and we’re not even in February yet. I want to start reading more often again, and not just long-form articles from The New Yorker like in the second half of last year. I want to read books, fiction and non fiction. I’ve lit candles to enjoy. I’m masking more frequently, and I got new clay masks as a way to treat myself (even though my husband just mocks me and calls me “big spender”….). I want to start cooking “project” dishes again. I’ve also been doing slightly longer workouts at the gym and focusing on stretching and strengthening again. And it feels good. I hope to get back into yoga again and toning my core, as in the last year, I mostly focused on cardio. It’s important to remember what makes you “you” outside of being a parent… because that can easily take over your life if you allow it to. Being a parent is important, but it’s not everything.