I recently read a personal blog by Daphne Iking (a famous personality in Malaysia) journalizing her life as a new mom. The posts that caught my eye were ones where she talks about breastfeeding. I read the comments section of those posts as well, and am glad that her blog readers were still supportive of whichever path she chose to feed her baby daughter.

Why do some people become so judgmental over mothers who choose to bottle-feed or formula-feed their babies, instead of breastfeed (BF) or breast milking them? I believe 99.9% of mothers out there ideally would love to BF their children. Ideally. Realistically, however, breast feeding doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people, including myself. My damned inverted nipples have me resorting to expressing my milk (thank the Lord for electric breast pumps!), and between caring for my kids and managing the household, the only best time for me to pump is at midnight, which means that I’m sacrificing at least another hour of my already sleep-deprived life. Don’t start with me about those La Leche or similar groups that are suppose to help you with breastfeeding matters, because they’re not available in my country or anywhere close to my vicinity.

So it’s bad enough that non-breastfeeding mothers feel guilty over the inability to BF, but to have others, mostly total strangers giving us such a hard time with it is so uncalled for. Let us moms be moms and take care of our kids the best way we possibly can. And to the non-BF moms out there, remember that at the end of the day, it’s not those bashers and strangers who will be caring for your kids the rest of your children’s lives — it’s you. So go ahead, do what is best for BOTH yourself and your children. Your TLC is what’s going to make your children grow up to be a healthy, beautiful and loving children you hope them to be.

It’s been three weeks since I started teaching Joel how to potty. It’s not working well, to say the least.

For one thing, he doesn’t like his potty; maybe he thinks it’s a little too small for him. He is almost as big as Eric was when Eric was 2-1/2 years old, so it was easier for Eric to sit on the potty compared to Joel. Plus, I was still working and sent Eric to the day care center every weekday, so I suppose Eric also learned a thing or two about going to the potty while he was there. The other issue I had with the potty training is that Joel only knows how to communicate when he wants to poop. He doesn’t signal anything when it comes to him wanting to pee.

It’s only been three weeks, though. I suppose I need to show him the concept of using the potty first before teaching him how to poop in it. Right now, I’m demonstrating to him the use of the potty by throwing his poop into it, then taking him along to the toilet as I cleaned up his potty. That has only happened ten times in the last few weeks, because most of the time when Joel poops, his ah po (Chinese word for grandma) would always beat me to it and cleaned him up. I’ll have to wait until my husband’s parents return to their home before I can hope that Joel’s potty training can work as I planned.

How would you like to connect with new people, promote your blog, and make some extra dough at the same time? There is such a place online where you can do it, thanks to IZEA. It is a new service called SocialSpark, and personally I believe it is a one-of-a-kind service ever provided online.

Because of its uniqueness, I have to admit that when I first tried SocialSpark, I was expecting it to function somewhat very close to how its sister site, PayPerPost, would. I was invited to register with SocialSpark when it went into alpha, and my first reaction was of shock! I was confused as to how I was suppose to use the services. There are so many options that you can use, and so many new features added. I can invite friends, promote their blogs (for FREE!), and accept sponsorships, all in the same web site? It looked too good to be true!

Once SocialSpark went live and I continued to explore its features, I started to get the advantages of using SocialSpark. Would you believe me if I say that SocialSpark actually helped me improve on my blogging? As I have mentioned, one of the uniqueness of SocialSpark is the Spark section, which is a place where you can select and promote web sites of other community members for free, and in exchange helps to increase your reputation among the SocialSpark community. I use Spark for one other thing — the blogs featured in the list as a way to research for topics that I am interested in blogging about, so it’s usually not only about reviewing a web site. So, if you’re not sure what to blog about, just register with SocialSpark and head over to the Spark opportunities for some fresh ideas on what to discuss about in your blog.

My e-mail subscription to BabyCenter led me to an article about the different development-boosting games you can play with your baby. One tip caught my eye, and I just had to laugh when I read its last sentence.

The tip talks about dancing around with your baby in your arms. The writer talks about how her baby gradually became accustomed to the movements and started preferring more aggresive exaggerated ones like bumping, swinging the baby in the air, silly hand movements, or shaking your booty. The writer did advice to take extra precautions when doing so with your baby. But the one invaluable advice when you plan to dance around is this: “close the drapes so the neighbors won’t see.”

Very good advice indeed

Poor Ezra. I don’t know why it took me as long as yesterday to figure out that his gas is due to his milk formula. I’ve been using the Anmum brand intermittently with breast milk ever since he was born. Anmum was something I’ve never used before, as I always stick to baby food products made by Nestle. However, I decided to give it a try after getting a number of small tins of Anmum as free samples from the medical centre.

Last night was the last straw for me, as I looked at Ezra’s bloating tummy and hardened stool, making sleep the whole night impossible for the both of us. Since I made sure to stock two tins of Nestle Lactogen, I changed his formula and ditched Anmum without hesitation. I fed him an ounce of water, and started giving him his new formula. By morning today, he’s no more bloating, and stool filled his diapers. Hallelujah!

Always stick to Nestle, Mommy. Always.