Amani is One Month Old

never have i felt one month would be like one year. with amani being premature, needing constant observation, being no six, being a baby when mummy has reached her 40s, its been very tiring. while i know people go - enjoy while it lasts - i find myself doing countdowns to her first month, and second, and sixth and her weaning and cutting down bottles and sleeping through the night and sitting down.

after amani's first 2 weeks, which were quite difficult, as she would ask for her bottle every hour and she wouldn't sleep and didn't like the cold, it started to get slightly easier. she still sleeps better during the day, maybe as its warmer, but the gap between bottles at night have gotten longer. she can get 3 - 3.5 hours, once even getting a good 5 hour gap between her bottles. but there've been days where she regress and go back to 2-hourly bottles and those days scare and stress me out. i should get naps during the day to cover the lost of sleep but during the day amira would require my attention so i'm neither here nor there, at the moment.

other than her feeding & sleeping schedules, amani is actually pretty easy to handle. she's ok with her bath and diaper changing. she was wonderful when i had my postnatal massages - she slept through the 2.5 hours and then some. she's undisturbed by the hecticness of abangs in between school. she slept through an outing we had one weekend, from the time we left the house til we reached home 3 hours later. yes, she's really good but i pray the feeding schedule would normalise soon.

amani had her check-up a few days after she turned one month old. alhamdulillah, she has put on weight. she was 2.69kg when she was born and lost a bit during her stay in the special care nursery but has put back on some during her first month. she now weighs 3.6kg. i thought amani be getting her first immunisation but her pead said she will only start on her second month check-up. at her first month visit, she was only given general check up.

alhamdulillah, she's growing real well and healthily in her first month. a vast improvement from the frightening first week she had.

Hari Raya Aidilfitri 2017

this year's syawal was very low-key. all the preparations were settled way before raya. everyone's bajus we bought before the fasting month began, rendang was cooked mid-way through the fasting month, cookies were ordered in advance. and well, basically that's it. i wasnt going to cook, i wasnt going to dress up, i wasnt going to actually do much except well...eat.

the week before raya was hectic. with the delivery, amani's admission, my hanging out ouside the special care nursery for 2 days waiting for breastfeeding-calls and waiting for amani's ultimate discharge. she was finally discharged the day before raya and we were juggling 6 under-12s on raya eve.

we put the boys to work, though. they cleaned the guest toilet, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the whole of the downstairs floor, wiped every single surfaces, vacummed between the sofa seats and helped set up the dining table for guests.

it was drizzling on the morning of raya, i went down early and went into the kitchen immediately. i cooked beef rendang a couple of weeks before raya and i had to only heat them up for us to eat throughout the day. hubby helped make nasi impit the day before, they were thrown into the fridge to harden and to wait for it to be cut after he returns from aidilfitri prayers, as with the lemang he bought the day before. the only 'cooking' i had to do was to heat up the prepared & bought kuah kacang from brahim.

hubby and the boys went to the moque for aidilfitri prayers while i stayed at home to get amira and amani ready, as well as put the food (whatever that we have) on the table for us to devour.

when they returned, we took our customary raya family photo and had our salam-and-duit-raya session.

after we had a good meal, we went over to a neighbour's house. we hope to do more houses but we were still getting around with a new baby around so we couldn't this year. my family came over bearing food after lunch and hubby's friends dropped by towards the late afternoon. the kids were happily running around outside, after a month of very limited outdoor activities, they were super excited to be able to have a kick-a-bout in the garden.

i do miss cooking on raya eve and on raya morning, but i'll come back with a bang next year, insyaAllah. very quiet raya, actually. hopefully next year will be more hectic and full of screams and shouts and laughters, just how we like it.