Lazy cook

I've slowed down a lot in my cooking. I'm just lazy.
Most Chinese dishes require lots of stir frying and I personally prefer to steam more than stir fry.

One of the reasons is because the kitchen here is not designed for stir frying. Imagine a white background wallpaper just next to the gas stove? How dumb can a designer be? I am always on my toes when I need to fry stuffs and I have to make sure I wipe clean every single bit of oil stains on the wall so that the management doesn't fine me when we move out.

Another reason is because I don't have a steamer. The only steamer that I have comes together with my rice cooker. Not big enough for anything except steaming frozen pau or herbal drumsticks wrapped in aluminum foil.

Nah... I'm just lazy. My hubby agrees.

Start the ball rolling...

I had my first midwife appointment few days ago at the Bronovo Hospital.
2 weeks ago when I was there to register myself, I already noticed that this hospital is so much more organised compared to the previous one that I visited. This time, I'm impressed.

I spent about half an hour for this first session. The midwife went through a list of questions, just like what the gynae did to me. He recorded the medical history, the due date and also my weight. Unlike other health professionals that I met previously, he particularly asked whether I take any form of health supplements. He recommended me to consider some pregnancy supplements and folic acid, and he also explained to me what are the benefits.

Not that I didn't know, my daily colostrum intake has basically covered my daily required vitamins. But I guess no harm taking another one. I highlighted this because, when I asked my GP what additional vitamins or food that I should particularly take more or avoid, he replied saying that nothing, just normal food will do. The gynae that I met didn't mention anything about health supplements. So, I'm a bit surprised to find that a midwife, whom many foreigners do not consider them qualified, is telling me what I have read in lots of pregnancy resources.

He was also kind enough to let me listen to my baby's heart beat. This time, he used a simple machine (not ultrasound) that, I figured, it is something similar to an amplifier. He rubbed some gel on my tummy and proceeded finding out where is the baby. Of course he had to scan a few rounds on my tummy to find out where exactly is the baby's heart. I'm again amazed at the wonders of "how do you know...", because, as he scanned through the tummy, he was telling me "no, this is the umbilical cord... not here... this is also the umbilical cord..." I was like, how do you know that is the umbilical cord and not something else? And finally he found the heart beat right above the panty.

It was a very secured feeling to be able to listen to the heart beat again.

He also helped me to arrange for my next ultrasound appointment... hehe... this is the 20th week ultrasound which we will be able to know the gender of the baby! I'm excited!!

Oh, by the way, the midwife that I met is a male!

Surprise? Well, I knew that there is a male midwife in Bronovo, but I didn't know that I'm so lucky to meet him in my first appointment. However, it's a Dutch's practice to let the mothers meet with all the midwives in the department before delivery so that we get to know them all. This is because anyone of them can be on duty during that lucky night when your baby decides to meet the world.

So before I left, I asked him, "So, do I call you midhusband?" He said, "No no no... I'm and 'mid' and you're the 'wife', so you still call me midwife." And then he laughed and commented, "I've asked so many English people about a term for male midwife, but they couldn't give me an answer..."

I've also arranged an appointment with Baby Vision in Delft that helps parents to scan their baby in the form of 3D or 4D visuals. The usual ultrasound screen projects a 2D visual of the baby but the machine that Baby Vision has is super high-tech, they can record the 3D and 4D visuals into a DVD. We figured it will be a nice gift for the baby when he/she grows up later to watch himself/herself in the womb. Something which we don't have and technology unable to achieve during our time.

Baby Transport!

Last Saturday, we decided to visit Babypark, a one-stop baby products outlet in Gouda, 20m away from Den Haag by train, 5m by bus and then 10m on foot.

Hubby is getting on with his father instinct, and he has started researching baby gadgets, including pram and buggy. I started with some basic findings, passed the data to him, and he took it on from there. In Holland or particularly Europe, parents spent lots of money to invest in a good buggy. Most named brands like Bugaboo (Dutch), Mutsy (Dutch), Peg-Perego (Italy) originated from Europe. In KL, the most buggy that we see is McClaren type of strollers, light-weight, and usually parents only start using them from 6 months onwards when babies can start to sit up or wanting to crawl out from bassinet.

In Europe, this is totally different. Most type of baby transport systems start with a pram (comes with bassinet) and then it can be converted into a stroller, and depends on the brands, some systems also come with an infant car seat. If you purchase a system, the baby will live through it from birth till around 4 years of age.

We listed down a few systems that we like after checking them out on the internet, and we headed straight to their booths. We couldn't decide between Bugaboo Cameleon, Mutsy 4Rider and Stokke Xplory because they all looked so nice and cool and comfortable. So we decided to play around with the systems. One of our criteria in choosing the system is how easy it is to collapse it within the shortest time. This is because we use public transports often. And guess what, all three of them failed.

They are clumsy and not user friendly at all. Yes they have nice flashy, comfortable seater and useful features like bigger wheels with good suspension (good for all kinds of terrains and baby won't keep waking up during the journey), adjustable seat height (so that the baby seat can actually be at the same level as adults - good when you are dining with them, gone were the days where the baby just watch your feet when you eat in the restaurant), no brake bar at the back (so you won't keep kicking the bar when you push the stroller), big shopping bags, good materials to support the baby body and excellent ergonomics design for parents etc...

The process of collapsing these buggies is so cumbersome that it hurts the fingers and hands. If my hubby have to try a few times to get the collapsing mechanism kicks in, you can imagine how frustrating it is for me to try to make it works.

We literally spent the whole day in Gouda. Both of us were so tired, have backache and sore feet. After we went back to Den Haag, we decided to indulge ourselves for Korean BBQ, which I have been craving for awhile now. It was hard work, but it was fun! We enjoyed every bit of it!