New Toy Car..

Baby ZY has got a new toy from Fisherprice yesterday. It can be used as a toy car & as a walker by separating the seat. It has built-in music, light and also 3 colourful balls. ZY likes it very much. :)

Oh ya... and ZY can crawl by himself now... :)

Baby's Early Education

Learning is a lifelong process. Hence, we thought that it would be great if we can start exposing our baby with some simple, fun & basic education through his own senses like watching, touching & hearing.

We have come across some interesting products online, and have purchased some of the recommended products for our baby to start off. We have the colourful flash cards, interactive VCDs, cloth book, wristband & also, a parenting book for us as guidelines. I strongly recommend this book especially to the new parents as it has answered a lot of my question and doubts in dealing with our little one.

We hope he will enjoy playing around with these toys and gadgets, and learning something new along the way. :)

Stemlife Report

Sms received on Friday morning (18th Jan, 2008)

"Eddie & Chiak Theng, Congratulations for your newborn baby. The cord blood volume is 37.8ml, stem cell count is 328 million cells. This amount of stem cell is sufficient to store. Wish you, your baby & family members healthy & happiness"

from Stemlife

Bottle's Up!

We have also purchased some AVENT products like 4x 260ml & 3x 125ml milk bottles, 2x pacifier, a sterilizer, an electronic breast pump & some useful cleansing tools to back us up for the whole milk feeding process.

p/s: for more information on the above AVENT products, pls go to http://www.avent.com/

Supplements for Confinement

2 extra Elken products were added into my wife's supplement list during her confinement period. They were LD Venus & Palace Wine. Both products provides superb detoxification, restoration & enhancement features for laboured women to recuperate their health, beauty & youthfulness.



LD Venus helps to discharge toxin fluids (period) from the body extensively, helps to release gasses, preventing from infections & helps to elevate vigour & revitalize women's physiology & functions.

Meanwhile, Palace Wine enriches the blood & nourishes the "Yin Qi", normalises the menstrual cycle & prevents abnormal virginal discharge & improves skin complexion.

p/s: for more information on the above Elken's products, pls log on to http://www.elken.com.my/

Chinese Herbs for Confinement

Chinese believe that confinement period is like "Tuo Tai Huan Gu" for all after-birth women. During our ancestor age, ladies which were extremely weak or sick were told by their elderly to get pregnant & were believe that they will regain a new life after a good confinement period.

Even though we are now at modern age, but there are still a lot of us believing in the importance of confinement practice. After birth mother are still practising the healing procedure by taking numerous Chinese herbs and remedies during the 30 days confinement period. Some of them even keep up the confinement practises for up to 100 days. There are many "pantang" or "regulations" that need to be followed in order to gain the most benefits during the recovery process & to prevent after delivery's side-effect in future.

Of course my wife will be following the confinement practise as well. My mother-in-law has prepared some of the Chinese herbs remedies during her last visit to Puchong on 7th December 2007. There are at least 10 different herbs she has brought from Sungai Petani, Kedah. The herbs include "Dang Shen", Red & Black Dates, dried "Longan", "Ji Zi", "Dang Gui", "Du Zhong" & many more. My mum also has bought some herbs for my wife to use for bathing, and she has also booked those food ingredient (like pig's Mesentery, kidney, liver, shanks, etc) needed during the confinement. My grandma and my aunt have also prepared some "Fried Raw Rice" & "Bentong Ginger" for us (Picture shown below).

"Fried Raw Rice" mix with hot pure water is use as drinking water during confinement period. Some people also uses black bean instead of raw rice.

Preparation !

Now, it is the time for both me & my wife getting even more busy in preparing ourself for the arrival of our baby boy. It's only about a month left to baby's due date. There are still many things that we have not done yet. E.g washing & drying baby's clothing & napkins, finalising all the necessary items to be purchased, arrangement of our confinement nanny, hiring a house-cleaner, list and buy all the herbs & supplements needed to consume before & during confinement period, finalising on our baby's name, & many many more.






We have also prepared a check-list on items to bring to hospital when it's time to deliver. Picture shown on the left is another photo showing some of the baby stuff we have bought.

The 2 pictures below are the 1st baby's clothing we have purchase for our baby during our shopping at Jusco, Seremban 2. The picture on the left is a long-sleeve shirt with long pants, whereas on the right side one is a short- sleeve with a cap, booties & mittens. And only after the experience of shopping for baby clothing only I realise that these baby clothing can be more expensive than adults clothing! But, they are just cute right?! :p

Baby's Corner

In preparing for the arrival of the new member to our house, we have bought quite a number of things needed for the baby care. And, we also need to think where to keep all these baby's stuff. As such, one of the corners of our house has unofficial becomes the baby's corner, but that will be a temporary solution at the moment. haha...

Picture beside shows a number of our baby stuffs we have purchased for the past few months. We have baby napkins, wet wipes, baby cot, mattress, towel, milk bottles, steriliser, shampoo, lotions, powders & many many more. Oh ya... and also the Stemlife package that we have signed up for the baby! :p

However, there are still many more to come. E.g baby stroller, car seat, breast pump, milk powder, diapers, etc & etc. All these for sure, will come in the later stage.


So, now in my house, we already have a Baby's Corner! Strictly for baby's stuff only...
Hahaha!

Confinement Cookbook

Approximately 7 weeks to go before the delivery date. My wife's GM has recommended a confinement cookbook to us. We have read through it & found that all the recipes were written in simple & easy steps, in Mandarin and English as well. Even, a guy like me who only know how to cook very simple meal like omelets can also transform to become a more professional chef to cook a more sophisticated dish by just following the instructions from the book.

We then bought the book from Popular bookstore at IOI Mall Puchong. It only cost us about RM20 & we have a better idea now about the confinement meals.

Start wearing your apron & make a good meal now.
Engkau Boleh! Nanny Boleh! Daddy pun Boleh! :D

Knowing more about Good Names

I can still remember about 5 - 6 yrs ago, me & my wife had consulted a FengShui sifu to calculate & analyse both our Chinese character names whether they are in good FengShui or not. We realise by then that each of our Chinese character & its arrangement can affect a person's destiny, characteristics & lucks. E.g Surname represents our ancestors & their inheritances, and the link between the surname & middle name represents the relationship between us & our ancestors or parents, etc.

In the market, there are a lot of books available that talks about importance of having a good names, and also how to find a good name according to your birth date. My wife's brother had shared the book shown here with us, which is quite simple and easy to understand. It has illustrated the explanation with simple guidelines and examples on finding a good name. However, since it is written in Mandarin, I had no chance to learn more from this book. We hope that this will help us in getting a good name our baby boy. :)

Reference Books for my wife

Here is just a small portion of reference books read by my wife during her pregnancy. Most of them are magazines, like Parenting, Today's parents, Mother & Baby, Mama, etc.

The Chinese book shown on the picture beside (Pregnancy during 30's), was bought by us during our honeymoon trip to Taiwan. We would recommended to our friends to have similar reference book, especially pregnant ladies.

It provides quite a detail explanations from pre-prenancy, to 10 months pregnancy period for both the mother & baby, possible symptoms that may occur during pregnancy, what are the dos & don'ts, diet & recommended exercise programs, confinement procedures & diet, the know-how on handling new born babies like breast feeding, & many more.

Supplements for both my Wife & Baby

Here are the supplements taken by my wife during her pregnancy period. It is to ensure a superb healthy condition for both mother & baby.

Supplements prescribed by Dr Jason Lim are folic acid & calcium pills (was taken during the 1st trimester) & also multivitamins, Pramilet (to consume until delivery)


From me, I'm providing my wife and my baby additional 6 supplements products from Elken. These supplements are:-
(from right)

1. Elken Spirulina
= ensuring a balance 46 essential nutrients (especially Vitamin B12) were supply to both mother & baby.

2. Win EPA (start consuming it during the 2nd trimester of pregnancy period)
= supplying Omega-3, Omega-6 & DHA to the baby for better development of the brain.

3. Win Ester-C
= supplying more Vitamin C to the mother, as it will depletes faster during the pregnancy
period.

4. Win Calrich (Ionised Calcium)
= supplying sufficient calcium to both mother (preventing osteoporosis) & baby (for bone development)

5. Win IG6 (Bovine Colostrum)
= providing immune factor & growth factor to both mother & baby.

6. Dr Xeniji
= to further enhance all nutrients taken are fully supplied to the baby through placenta & it also helps to control the growth of the baby's size

Is it too much?! Not at all!
What is the reason we work so hard if is it not to provide the best we could for our family memeber?
For me, the No 1 priority is to provide the best I could to ensure my lovely wife & baby's health condition is always at the optimum level.

p/s: for more information on the above Elken's products, pls log on to http://www.elken.com.my/

Signing up StemLife

On 18th August 2007, me & my wife has visited a parenting exhibition held at Mid Valley exhibition hall. We had come across & get to know more about 3 companies that provide cord blood stem cells storage service. We thought it is a great idea to give our baby, his 1st gift by storing his cord blood stem cells. It will be a very special gift for him. :)



It takes us about 1 1/2 month of research to understand and decide on the company chosen to store our baby's stem cells.

On 24 Oct 2007, we finally sign-up at StemLife.
For more detail on the available package & its facilities, pls feel free to visit this link: http://www.stemlife.com/malaysia/stem_cell/index.html

What is Cord Blood Bank ?

Q: What is Cord Blood Bank?
A: It's a storage area solely provides the highest quality services (collecting, processing & freezing) for stem cell preservation.

Q: Where can I find Cord Blood Bank in Malaysia?
A: There are 3 Cord Blood Banks in Malaysia shown below:

StemLife Malaysia
Establish in 2001 & was the 1st & only Public-listed cord blood bank in Malaysia with more than 14,000 stem cells samples collected until now.
Address: B-7-15, Megan Avenue II, 12, Jalan Yap Kwan Seng, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: +603 2163 8800
Fax: +603 2164 9808
Email: info@stemlife.com
Website: http://www.stemlife.com/malaysia/stem_cell/index.html
24 hr Hotline: +6012 2050 165

CyroCord Malaysia
Establish in January 2002 & was the 1st International Certified (ISO9001:2000) cord blood bank in Malaysia.
Address: 29-2, Jalan PJU 1/41, Dataran Prima, Block D1, 47300, Petaling Jaya,Selangor Darul Ehsan,Malaysia.
Tel: +603 7880 2929
Fax: +603 7880 1919
Email: info@cryocord.com.my
Website: http://www.cryocord.com.my/our.html
24 hr Hotline: 1800 88 3300

Cell Safe International (CSI) Malaysia
Establish in 2006 & was the 1st & only cord blood bank in Malaysia led by Medical Doctors (Blood Specialist).
Office Address: Unit B-10-4, Northpoint
Lab Address: Unit B-10-3, Northpoint Midvalley City, Lingkaran Syed Putra 59200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: +603 2282 0890
Fax: +603 2282 0980
Website: http://www.cellsafegroup.com/mainpage.htm
Email: service@cellsafegroup.com
24 hr Hotline: 1800 88 2355

And for more information about the standards of cord blood bank, please visit
http://www.umbilical-cord-blood-bank.com/