Brown discharge

I was shocked to see brown discharge this morning. I quickly went online and check the possibilities of having brown discharge when I reached home. I am relieved to see that many said this is due to the growth and is a natural progress and it happened to many others. Really hope everything goes fine.

5th week

I just realized that I am 5 weeks pregnant and my baby is the size of sesame seed.

I didn't know that human gestation takes about 38 weeks from the day of conception to the delivery day. All along I thought it is 40 weeks. The reason why pregnancies are said to last 40 weeks is because EDD is calculated based on first day of last period.  I am using an online baby site (www.babycenter.com) to calculate my EDD. I love this site to bits. It gives week-to-week detailed growth explanation with picture illustration.


I am still feeling nausea sometimes. And feeling hungry more often than usual. I could some pain around uterus. Same as previous pregnancy. According to my previous gynecologist, it is due to placenta is growing into lining of uterus and this is normal.

As I will not be able to visit my gyne until I go back Singapore, I will be using babycenter more often than before to monitor my baby grow.

Beginning of my 9 months journey

I have been feeling a bit nausea and bloated for past few days.  I supposed to have my menses last Saturday but it didn't happen (today is Wednesday). Am I pregnant? I was tempted to use the pregnancy test kit that I brought from Singapore but hesitated at the same time as it is the last kit (I just brought two here). Well.. it is not difficult to get pregnancy kit here.. in fact it is pretty easy to get one.. just that I feel that Clearblue is trusty and I could not find the same brand here.

Since today I made watercess soup (is "cooling", should avoid during pregnancy) for dinner, I thought it is good if I could test it before dinner. This is the result.

Yea... I think I am pregnant. Feeling anxious and uncertain of the test kit result, I bought the kit downstair to show the hubby. We both saw the light vertical line... were feeling very happy and we hugged each other. Our little sweetheart shared our joy and we had a group hug.

Now I have to be very careful in what I am taking. After dinner, I took out chicken essence and maternal milk powder that I brought from Singapore. I got to be more careful this time as we are so far away from home and the medical technology here is not as advanced as back home.

I hope my 9 months journey is a smooth one. I could only do my first scan sometimes in June when I back to Singapore for a week. I will definitely deliver in Singapore as we will all going back in late July or latest early August. EDD should be sometime in Dec 2011.

Happy Sunday in Bahamas

I love our Sunday in Bahamas for many reasons...

1. Waking up late

2. Enjoy a great breakfast @ either McDonald or Burger King. Faith will get a Happy Meal toy if we go to McDonald. She will hop in front of the toy display and say she wants this toy that toy. Although the meal itself might be fantastic, but I enjoy the time being together.

3. Work on an activity together. We just added a new activity since two weeks ago. That is cooking together.. So far, we have tried wrapping wanton together and also baking brownies. This could get pretty messy but is good fun for all.

4. Chill at one of most beautiful beaches in the world. Views are breathtaking. Weather is sunny yet wind is cooling (perhaps due to the current season). Seldom rain in this place. Sand is clean and you feel safe when your kid is playing with it.

We will definitely miss #3 and #4 when we go back Singapore.

Grocery shopping in Bahamas

We allocate Saturday as Grocery Day. We drive to several (yes... not just one) food stores and get our weekly fresh food and also top up our daily necessaries. Prices vary by a couple of dollars (USD) for same item. With soooo many items in different prices in different store, we couldn't remember all the prices for all items. We could only note down the standard items and go to the food store we got it the cheapest previously. I saw some local housewives will bring their notebooks to these food stores and jot down the prices... Yea.. this is a smart way to save your dollars with some planning needed.

These are the food stores we usually go. We don't go to all in one day.
1. City market (I will get washed potatoes and carrots here as I can't find them elsewhere. You could get the cheapest ginger.)
2. Super value (Wide choices of fruit juice. The hubby likes to get Dole juices.)
3. Robinhood (Great place to get broccoli & beef & jam.)
4. Phil's (A place to go for bulk purchase. We will get Florida fruit juices and toilet rolls in this store.)
5. Meat max (Chinese store where you could find limited asian seasonings. We will usually get soda, instant noodles, small snack pack and chicken.)

We will end our outing by getting bottled water. We gotta to bring back the empty bottle to get water at a much cheaper price. To get a 5 gallons of water, it cost us US$2.50 if we have an empty bottle. If we doesn't, we will have to pay $12.50. We are lucky that our weekly house cleaner get an empty bottle from another house she worked with for us to start with.

Shocking credit cards' annual fees charges

Two days ago, I got my past months letters from the hubby's colleague, who collected the letters when she went back in Singapore. I was shocked to see few statements from credit cards' companies charging me annual fees (and GST). In fact, I have paid some of these annual fees without knowing as payments are made via GIRO.

Last night, I made 5 long distance calls to Singapore to request annual fee waiver for 6 credit cards. Out of these 6 cards, I only use one which I used to pay car petrol weekly.

I was very worried that they will not waive them as payments are already made. To my surprise and feeling thankful at the same time, all promised to waive the annual fees.. even for those that I have never made any transaction before.

On the other hand, I wonder why don't the banks waive the annual fee upfront and this will save the customers' hassle to call up and request for waiver. Isn't this consider a value added service in some way? Hmm.. reason I could think of is their payment systems unable to handle the waiver automatically..

Well... For whatever reasons it is.. I guess for now we all still have to call the banks and request for waiver. Hopefully we could see the auto waiver from all banks in near future.

The start

I am a stay at home mom (SAHM), taking care of my little girl's daily needs and also her learning progress. 

A couple of months ago, I have decided to take a few months break from my previous job to have some time to do some self assessment.  Just when I gotta to go back to my working life, my hubby was assigned to a 9 months overseas posting project and after serious consideration, we decided to go along with him this time round so that we could have the whole family together and most importantly, he will not miss out our girl's cutest growing phase.

What's this blog all about?

My daily little thoughts. Bits and pieces of my everyday life. Home teaching. Cooking & snapshots of scrumptious food. Travel.

Home teaching

I started home teaching my 3 years old girl at home about two months ago. Initially we have intended to send her to an international pre-school however transportation is not as convenient as what we think, so we decided to teach her at home instead. 

Cooking & scrumptious food

I don't cook as much back home since we could eat out easily. Been away in this country, delicious Asian food is hard to find and not as convenient. Therefore, I started to my cooking journey. I would definitely like to share recipes that I have invented or found on web.

Travel

Currently, I am staying in Bahamas. I hope I could find some time to explore this place more and also share photos taken in this travel adventure. 

xoxo,

alyssa belle