Category Archives: Hope

An ode to Ammachy

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This past Sunday, we learned that Ammachy, Chris’s maternal grandma, passed away. She was widowed quite early on in her marriage and had three daughters she ended up raising on her own. She worked hard and made sure they had a good childhood, and they all went on to do relatively well in their respective careers and lives. Because she lived in India and never actually moved to Australia, Chris spent less time with her than he did with his paternal grandma. I had seen her on a number of occasions when she’d be in Australia during Christmas time, and Chris and I also went to visit her in the summer of 2018 during our India trip. She was always soft-spoken and thoughtful, and there was never a time when she was not reading a book (always in extra big print because of her vision problem). We were really looking forward to going to India this summer to visit her and finally have her meet Kaia. I really was excited for her to see Kaia, her second great grandchild, and have them interact with each other, but unfortunately, it was not meant to be. Our India trip this summer will now be a bit different than how we had hoped and envisioned.

Although Ammachy has passed, I still think it’s amazing that Chris got to see both his grandmothers live well into his late 30s/early 40s. While it’s sad that she is now gone, it’s comforting to know that she lived a good, full, long life and had many people who loved her and will always remember her.

Early Intervention (EI) for children

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A lot of people look at the need or mention of “early intervention” in their baby or toddler’s life as a condemnation of their parenting abilities, whether it’s about whether they have done enough for their child, or if it’s something they could have passed down to them genetically that has stunted some part of their development. I’ve generally always been pragmatic about it: if a child needs some additional help, it’s probably better to get them help sooner rather than later, because whatever that developmental delay is, it could cascade and have negative affects on other areas of development if not addressed.

I had a hunch Kaia would be quite verbal this time last year, and I was right: at this point, she can say over 60 different words, which according to developmental milestone charts I’ve read, is at the 2-year old-plus level of speaking. But the area where she hasn’t been that strong is in walking. She easily pulls herself up and gets down. She sits in a lot of different positions. She also is happy to walk while we hold her hands, or when she’s pushing her walker. But she just won’t walk independently, and she will only stand on her own for about 3-4 seconds max. She crawls super fast though, and she’s very, very nimble. Crawling was supposed to precede walking. But still to this day, no walking on her own. I told the doctor this at her appointment today, and she suggested that she recommend Kaia for early intervention to see what we could do to help her walk. Someone would likely reach out to me in the next 2-3 weeks to set up an appointment to come to our home and observe and potentially make recommendations to help.

I don’t really mind it, and I don’t see any harm in having someone evaluate her and watch her closely. I especially don’t mind since it’s fully covered via our health insurance, plus we don’t have to go out of our way to get the help. Who knows – our nanny says that she thinks Kaia is just on the brink of walking and will likely get there before the EI appointment is even scheduled, so we shall wait and see.

Good friends who do anything for each other

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During the course of my now 15-year career, I’ve met a lot of interesting people. I’ve met really inspiring, ambitious people, the types of people who’ve made me look in the mirror and think, “wow, I’m the definition of mediocre.” I’ve met dull, baloney-and-cheese sandwich boring people, the type who brings the same lunch to work every single day and never do anything new because, well, nothing compels them to do so, and they don’t see value in it. I’ve met people who volunteer regularly to help those less fortunate, who donate thousands of dollars each year to charity because they acknowledge that while they’ve had good luck and opportunities in their lives, there are plenty more people who are nowhere as lucky as they were. I’ve also met people who are so selfish that they have said, out loud in front of many others, that they see no reason to help those they do not know personally because they will never see how their help “really paid off.” You meet a lot of people over the course of 15 years, especially when you’re on the road traveling to different places, and especially when you work externally with customers from all walks of life.

Yesterday afternoon, I was on the phone with one of these interesting customers. He’s the kind of person who is very reserved when he’s being recorded on our Zoom calls, but once you get him on the phone, he totally opens up and tells you everything and anything; he loves talking and sharing, and he is truly an open book. Although he is based in Virginia, he had been working from the Bay Area since the beginning of February. One of his very best friends from high school was doing a clinical trial to help with the recurring liver problems she’d been facing, and the side effect of these trials is that they can really wipe you out completely to the point where you could be bedridden for days. She’s a single working mom raising two sons on her own with no family nearby. So my customer, being this selfless friend, decided to drive his car all the way from Virginia to the Bay Area, rent an AirBnB, to help out this friend, plus her two teenagers. He said he drove because he wanted to be able and ready to help with anything from getting her to appointments to doing grocery runs, and he didn’t need the added expense of a rental car for that long period. He got an AirBnB for the first 1.5 months so he didn’t encroach on their personal space since they live in a condo with limited room. He was planning to spend the last two weeks of this month at their home.

“It’s really not a big deal,” my customer insisted. “Three plus years ago, I could never do this because we all had to be at the office, but now we’re remote first. So as long as I have a computer and Wi-Fi access, I’m all set to work. So when she told me she had to do this, I knew I had to help. It was a no brainer to me. I’d do anything for her. We’ve known each other for 40+ years. And all my kids are out of the house! So I’ve got no responsibilities!”

Even if you remove the ability to “work from everywhere,” I still don’t know many people, if anyone, who would temporarily relocate for two months across the country they live to help out a friend in this way. I was really awestruck and thought… wow, I must also be an inadequate friend next to this customer…

This is 37

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Every day, we are getting older. Every hour, every minute, every second, we are all getting older. Certainly no one is getting any younger. As Kaia gets older, everyone observes and comments in wonderment, seeing her do things like crawl to walk to run, like holding a ball to actually throwing and catching it. With people of my age, though, in terms of “development,” people just wonder… how old is she against how old she “looks”? Is she getting grey hairs or wrinkles on her face, neck, and other parts of her body? Has she achieved the society-imposed “life milestones” like getting married, having kids, buying a house yet, etc.? “Development” means different things at different stages of life, and the world can sometimes feel like a stage where everyone is watching, waiting to give their opinion about you.

Well, last month, for the first time, I actually noticed wrinkles around my eyes in a photo that was taken of me. I paused for a second when I looked at it and then zoomed in at the corners of my eyes. Are these the beginning of crow’s feet? I thought to myself. Well, crow’s feet manifest a little differently on Asian skin vs. White skin, so I guess this was my version. I’m 37 and noticing these types of wrinkles for the very first time. I’m definitely getting older and approaching middle age. In a lot of ways, I feel very young, almost child like at times when I think about things I like and admire and things I care about. Other times, I feel completely jaded by the experiences I’ve had. I’ve never really quite felt like “my age” if that makes any sense. But now that I’m officially in my late-30s, I feel like at heart, I’m much younger than my numerical age. I’m unsure if that’s a good or bad thing.

Having a child to care for has definitely changed my perspective on life, no doubt. I think it’s made me a better person, someone more cognizant of the challenges that parents and caregivers face every single day without always thinking about it. It’s given me more empathy not just for other parents and caregivers, but for babies and growing toddlers themselves.

I’m not sure what my actual “age” should be if I had to decide what I “felt” like, but I do know one thing for sure: I am grateful for the days I have lived and the experiences I have had, both the good and the bad, because unfortunately, not everyone has been as lucky as I have been to have lived 37+ years on this earth. Ed wasn’t that fortunate. Our friend Raj wasn’t that lucky. And many others will never know what it’s like to be 37. So I celebrate today and am happy for what I have and what hopefully will be. Happy 37th birthday to me.

Decluttering for the new year

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We didn’t leave the apartment at all today. It felt like we were fully unpacked yesterday, but I still had to organize a lot of things today, plus I wanted to declutter and give away/donate a bunch of things. I separated out some baby items I wanted to post in our Buy Nothing group. I got rid of lot of junk and old papers in my drawers. After seeing all the clutter and “stuff” in Chris’s parents’ home, it almost drove me to want to own even fewer things than I already own. And relatively speaking, Chris and I own very few things. We’re confined by space given we live in a New York City apartment with limited storage space. And the less space you have, the less space you have to store and display stuff. But the idea of owning stuff that I not only do not use but am barely aware I even own did not sit well with me.

I tend to give away/throw out stuff almost every year at the beginning of the year to “start the year fresh.” But this time, I really want to cull things I don’t use, even if it’s just half used face masks or shoes I haven’t worn in 3+ years. Less stuff will make me feel better.

Ed turns 43

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This may be the first time I’ve been in San Francisco for Ed’s birthday since he passed, and how funny it is that this time when I am in town for his birthday, Kaia is now here with us. Coming back to San Francisco and leaving have never really been easy for me… pretty much since forever. When Ed was around, I always felt guilt that I was leaving him in the abusive environment of my parents. I always wanted to support him more, but never knew how to. Then, he died. I always have lots of conflicting thoughts and feelings around coming and being home– mostly because of Ed and how he should be here but isn’t; my parents’ mental health; the hoarding and clutter and dilapidated state their home is in. To me, the house is cursed. I still occasionally fantasize about burning it down. But I realize it resembles hell to me only downstairs. As soon as you are on the third floor where my aunt and her roommate live, it actually feels warmer both temperature-wise and in terms of its ambiance. It feels brighter; there is more light. She actually decorates and maintains her home so that it feels pleasant to be in.

In my parents’ home, it does not feel welcoming at all. It feels dark, desolate, and there is literally a cold draft running through the house that you can feel if you are walking barefoot. It comes from the sunroom. The level of clutter and hoarding always seems a little worse every time I come home. In my mind, there are a few times when it’s gotten heightened: the first time I really noticed it was my first visit home a year after I graduated from college; every subsequent visit there has been more accumulation of junk. And it really skyrocketed after Ed died. It’s almost like to make up for Ed’s presence, my dad started hoarding more things and having most surfaces of the house that are meant for sitting… not sittable, if that’s even a word (it doesn’t look like a word). The breakfast table seats have perpetually been covered in food stuff, cans, and appliances. My mom said that my bed and Ed’s are always covered with piles of paper and other random things when I am not there. The physical clutter always makes me feel more stressed and annoyed every time I am there. And when I say even the slightest thing about it to my mom, she gets mad and tells me I am causing trouble and to just stop talking about it.

I always hoped that as my parents aged that they would finally do things to enjoy life and be more comfortable: renovate the kitchen and have it be easier to use instead of having all these random tables and stools everywhere with paper bags and old newspapers everywhere; create fixtures in the bathroom that would make it easier to bathe and shower in; actually make use of all the space they have in their house, which actually is a LOT of space for two people. But instead, they do nothing and seem to only make it more uncomfortable as time goes on. The amount of time my parents spend separating out compost and trash is completely insane. My hope is based in just that: hope. It’s not rooted in anything they’ve ever indicated they wanted. I really don’t know what they are doing with their lives. I wonder what Ed thinks looking down at all this, wondering what the hell our parents are doing. I have no idea what they live for. My mom loves to talk about how depressed she is, but she doesn’t do anything to help herself, and this was even before Ed died, so it’s not just because of that.

I wish our parents the best. I really do. I just wish they’d learn to stop and enjoy life and all the privileges they had instead of picking fights about stupid, senseless things. It probably won’t happen, but I still wish it would.

I wonder if Ed were still alive today if he’d still be at home. It would be an even worse hell in many ways if he was still living there with them, likely getting tortured alive. My mom was never going to be at peace with Ed, alive or dead, as awful as it sounds.

Happy 43rd birthday, Ed. I am happy you are free from the hell that is that house on 20th avenue and that you are enjoying yourself truly, somewhere out there. You are free… free from all the pain, suffering, torture of that miserable house. You are free. But our parents are not and likely will never be.

Memories of milkies

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“How much did you pump?” Chris asked, as he passed me in the kitchen this morning.

“270 ml,” I responded, while tipping out the last few drops of milk into a bottle before dumping all my pump parts into a bowl to wash.

Our nanny’s eyes widened. “You just pumped 270 ml in one session?! Yvonne, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a cow! That’s like 8 ounces!”

“Actually, that’s 9 ounces,” Chris said.

I told her that was relatively normal for my first morning pump since it’s all the milk that had accumulated overnight, as I no longer do a middle of the night pump. But we’d come a long, long way from my early days of struggling to even get 30 ml / 1 ounce per pump session.

I recalled the times early on when I just didn’t understand the concept of “supply and demand” with milk supply, when I didn’t realize my baby wasn’t sucking hard enough on my breasts to create a proper “demand.” Those days, I was lucky to get even 30 ml per pump session. I pumped so little milk that after refrigerating the milk to combine with other pumps, Chris would try to consolidate the milk, and to get every drop and fat residual on the sides of the pump bottles loosened, he’d run our hot water tap over the outside of the bottles like a crazy person. But he ran so much hot water over the bottles to get every last drop of breast milk that one day, the hot water tap tank actually ran out, and so we had to wait for the water to refill and get heated again. It was a hilarious moment when he told me this. But on the other hand, I felt really embarrassed and ashamed that I was producing so little then that he felt like he had to get every last smidgen of milk possible to feed our baby. That also reminded me of how I used to cry and blame myself, erroneously thinking I actually had low milk supply because of my own body as opposed to lack of sufficient demand.

So, I remember those painful and emotional moments when my nanny praises me now, not only for how diligently and on schedule I pump, but for how much I am producing to feed my baby. Like the concept of “you should never trust a skinny chef,” she said she used to think that if a woman had small boobs, she’d never produce much milk to feed her baby. Apparently, I proved her wrong with that since she always tells me that I am a small woman with tiny boobs but a ton of milk!

Most moms already would have given up on pumping by now, my nanny always says. “But you still keep going,” she’s said to me a few times. “That shows how much you love your baby. It is an extremely selfless act. Your baby will never understand this until she one day becomes a mother and tries to breastfeed her own babies. Even other women who don’t have kids don’t get it.”

Rolling, crawling, and eventually walking

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Being a mother is definitely the most tiring job one can have, especially while your child is still a baby and 100% dependent on you. But it’s also one of the most gratifying jobs, especially when you are able to watch your child grow and develop. Even the littlest things that my baby does fascinate me as I observe her. Lately, she’s been working on pushing her butt up into the air and getting on all fours, likely so that she can attempt to crawl. She is not quite crawling yet, but is more pushing and sliding her body around the mat to move places. Sometimes, it looks like she’s going to start doing push ups. Other times, she looks like she’s doing downward dog, the yoga pose, or trying to do a side plank by lifting one arm high in the air for stability. I realized she puts her arm in the air for stability in an attempt to begin rolling, and it’s the cutest thing. And then, there are the times when, in Chris’s words, it looks like she is “dry humping” the floor, constantly coming up and down and pushing down. She’s learning her different body parts and how to properly use them.

I’ve also been standing her up on her two feet more over the last couple of weeks to see how stable she is while attempting to stand, and it’s clear she’s getting stronger and stronger. She is able to put a lot of weight on her two feet, and a few times, it actually felt like I could *almost* let go and have her stand on her own for maybe 2-3 seconds. It’s crazy to think that she is almost eight months old and now getting ready to crawl and eventually walk. My sweet little baby is growing up.

Asian greens baby

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Today was Kaia’s second day having mustard greens. I blanched the mustard greens I got from Brooklyn Chinatown with a little oil, and I separated the leaves from the stems, as the leaves can be a choking hazard unless finely minced for babies. I gave her three stalks yesterday afternoon, and she happily grabbed and gnawed on them, sucking their juices out. I was very pleased with her first exposure. Then today, the nanny reported back to me that she gnawed and chewed away at another set of three stalks to the point there was barely any vegetable left. The membranes were all broken down with little left.

I hope my baby grows up to love all green vegetables, but to especially embrace Asian greens. They are her mommy’s favorites, and I hope she knows just how special and delicious they are. Mustard greens are particularly good because it’s her first exposure to something that is slightly bitter. “Bitter” is a good flavor for babies to develop a taste of early on, so I hope this is a good sign. Who knows – I may introduce bitter melon to her next!

When you become a pumping mama resource

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A couple days ago when Chris’s parents were still here, I was hand expressing milk to “prime” my breasts for the pump in the second bedroom. I came out with the collection bottle in my hand, and Chris looked at the bottle, a little incredulous.

“You got that amount out just using your hands?” he asked. “Once upon a time, that’s how much milk you got during an entire pump session.”

Trying to conceive was a journey. Pregnancy was a journey. And breastfeeding/pumping has been its own journey full of many ups and downs. I’ve definitely come a long way not just with my output to feed my baby, but also with my knowledge of breastfeeding and pumping in general. Now, I actually frequently answer questions about pumping from colleagues as well as a neighbor friend who recently gave birth. She is about eight weeks postpartum and had a hard time feeding her baby directly from the breast. If I didn’t know it any better, I’d say we were the exact same person with the same problems. She, however, had me as a resource since the beginning, so I’d been sharing pumping resources and tips with her since before she even gave birth. She took me up on a lot of my suggestions and read through my resources, and this morning, she texted me a photo of her first morning pump, the largest one she’d ever had to date, which was approximately seven ounces (210ml). I don’t think I got to that level of output in a single pumping session until after the 12-week mark, but then again, I also didn’t have all the resources then that I shared with her now.

I’m happy to help other mothers who are struggling to breastfeed in any way I can. I only wish I had all this knowledge and help back then. But it’s one way I can “give back” to help others who are going through their own downward spirals and just trying to help their babies eat, grow, and be healthy. I know if I did this again, even though it would be challenging, I’d have a lot more experience and resources at my fingertips so that I wouldn’t be as upset as I was in the beginning of this journey. But that’s what all moms need: more support, more resources, and more help.