Thursday, December 22, 2011

Pregnancy 3: 'Twas a miracle!

I can not thank God enough for granting our desire to have our last child at the specific time that I had requested. Each time I look back at how it all happened, I am truly amazed by His faithfulness..

So here's a little testimony of how our 3rd bub was conceived.

During the start of the year, Mr M & I was so indecisive about whether or not we really should in fact go for a third child. One minute, I was adamant that we must have 3 children and that was it. Full.Stop. But then Mr M would convince me that two was more than enough. I would then get swayed to being content with our status quo. Finally, when I had suggested that we should stop at two, Mr M would then tell me what a joy it would be to have three. This changing of our minds business would go on for half a year.. It was just tiring!

Finally enough was enough. I decided I should just leave it to God. Let Him make the decision. I had made a prayer to Him one night that if it was His will that we have a third child, then by His grace, He would grant us the bub to be born no later than April 30th 2012 (as I want to ensure this child can at least go up a grade so that he/she would only be one year behind Davina even though they would be born technically two calendar years apart). This meant that July would be the absolute latest month to conceive. Now you think this was easy? Think again!

I had been breastfeeding for over ten months by then and I had not had my period for nearly two years (including Davi's pregnancy). So how on earth was I supposed to know when I was ovulating?? What's more, I had said that I would only stop breastfeeding D just before we go to our Europe trip in August so that literally gave us a few weeks in July to strike jackpot!

And... amazingly, I fell pregnant! Not because I am extremely fertile, but because of God's Grace that He had allowed it to happen. I can not for one second comprehend how impossible it would've been for this to happen given the very limited time frame but yet by His doing, it was possible.

I remember at my 12wks scan, I had asked my sonographer for my exact due date.. when he replied April 26th, I was absolutely gobsmacked. That is like 4 days before the due date I had given to God. lol. He definitely has a sense of humour and knows how to teach me patience alright :)

To God be the glory..

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Pregnancy 3: 22 weeks!

So our bb Minga#3 is now 22wks old. And yes we are just over the half way mark! This pregnancy has flown past my eyes that's for sure.

I must say this pregnancy has been very different from the last one and very similar to the first one! First trimester I was pretty sick (not as sick as when I had Z but still I was pretty sick). I didn't want to eat anything so I would force myself to eat just to calm down my morning sickness (as you're supposed to put food in your tummy if you have morning sickness in order to stop it! funny but true!). I vomitted once (when I was at work.. thank God no one was in the toilet). I can't eat anything creamy that includes yoghurt/ice cream etc.

Then second trimester came. My morning sickness settled however I still get the occassional nausea. I would feel like vomitting in the mornings. Unlike my two previous pregnancies, I don't have any cravings.. none at all! In fact, I eat because I don't want to feel nauseous and for the growth of bub of course.. otherwise I would be happy not to eat cos I just don't feel like it.

I am extremely tired with the 3rd pregnancy too. I think this is also the fact that I have two little ones to chase after and keeping me up at night that's for sure!  *yawn*

So far, I have put on 4.5kg! not too bad.. Both Mr M & I have decided on a name and I will also be naming BM3's Chinese name too since it's our last child :)
I go to the toilet like every 2nd hour (including when I am sleeping! grrr). I felt baby's movements (flutter flutter flutter) at around 15-16wks! so yes very early on. Now, BM3 is kicking very frequently to say hello.
My two kids especially Z is very fond of my tummy.. always putting his head on it and tells me 'baby can not come out yet right mahmah?'. Too cute! I am super relaxed this time around to the extent that even the thought of labour doesn't scare me any more.. In fact, I just can't wait until this bub is out and I can finally get my body back once and for all!! Woo hoo!

Anyway, stay tuned for the sex of our Dragon baby in April 2012 :)

Thursday, November 24, 2011

3 Decades.


On the morning of my birthday, I automatically woke up at 6:30am feeling incredibly blessed that by God's grace.. I have finally made it to my 30's! As I reflect upon the years, I felt that I had lived a very fulfilled life (so far anyway) and there was definitely no complaints there.

I remember when I had just turned 25, I encountered a really bad quarter life crisis. Despite the fact that I was doing well in my career and had many close friends and family around me, I still somewhat felt empty inside. I was still single and I really didn't know where God would take me by the time I hit 30. It was that feeling of unknown and the uncertainity of which I allowed it to envelop me. I had always wanted to get married by the age of 26 and to start a family by the age of 28 but at that time, I knew those dreams would only be just that.. dreams .. and not a reality.

Fast forward five years later, as I reflect upon that defining moment of my life, I am overwhelmed by God's favour and love in my life. Never would I thought He would still allow me to achieve it all despite me seeing it with my very own flesh that it would be impossible. Everything that I had always wanted to do in my twenty's, I had done.

In my late teens, I had always asked God if He could kindly grant me the following:
I wanted to get married by the age of 26, I got married at 25.75y.o. (totally unexpected too!) - tick
I wanted to move overseas and live a different culture/lifestyle - tick
I wanted to live in an apartment type of lifestyle before settling down - tick
I wanted to see the world with my husband - tick
I wanted to work in marketing, managing a well known brand in a region (as opposed to a country) - tick
I wanted to have my first child at 28y.o, I managed to have it at 26.75y.o - tick
I wanted a daughter so badly and God decided to grant that to me after our first born son - tick
I wanted to have 3 children by the age of 30 - half tick

Despite the fact that I have not reached a CEO status, nor do I drive a BMW or live in a mansion in Toorak, I am humbled by the fact that everything that was important to me, God has granted...
And so I commit the next decade unto His hand and I pray that His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

To God be the glory and praise..

Friday, November 11, 2011

Product Testing


In Oct last year, P&G acquired a company called Clearblue. Yes! they are the makers of the leading pregnancy tests and ovulation kits! So since two of my colleagues has been assigned to the brand, they couldn't wait to give me a sample for me to test it out since I have publicly declared that I want 3 kids :)

So a few months ago, I did just that.. and I was surprised that no longer do I have to squint my eyes or ask for 2nd or 3rd opinion as to whether or not there is actually another 2nd blue line! lol. Instead, this product actually spells it out for you on whether or not you are pregnant! PLUS it tells you how many weeks you are preggers (up to 5 weeks and then it will say 5weeks +).

Oh how I love this new brand! Sadly or happily, this will be the last time I will ever need or use a pregnancy kit ;)

p/s Oh and yes in case you don't know.. .. we are expecting baby #3~ Coming soon to a hospital near us :)

Saturday, October 29, 2011

DIY Europe Trip!

ok this post is dedicated to my cousin Steph who insisted that I have to give her all the tips for when she finally goes to Europe with her family :)

We have traveled nearly every continents of the world and I had always had a misconception that the hardest travel destination to plan would be Europe because of the following reasons:
1) Language barrier - what do you do when you get lost especially if you decide to hire a car and roam the foreign country?
2) Since there are so many countries cluster into one small continent, how do you actually cross borders without all the hassles?

So because of this, I was originally very reluctant to go on our own but rather book on a tour as free and easy. However, after doing all the financial calculations, I realised it would be much cheaper if we did it ourselves myself despite all the pain in organising it all to the micro detail.

So here are all of my very handy tips of exactly what I did and you can thank me later :)

WHERE TO START:
1) You will need to study the map of Europe and mark out which countries you would want to go in the given timeframe you have. I had originally thought since UK is separated by the English channel, you would need to fly out of UK to go to the other European countries. INCORRECT! You can actually travel to most of the countries by train (yes I think they've created tunnels under the ocean to get to the other countries!).
2) RAILWAY - If I could re-organise my Europe trip again, I would arrange my entire itinerary by TRAIN if I could. Because 1) it removes the stress of getting to airports and checking in on time etc. 2) Trains are so easy as you don't really go through customs, it's just a passport check to get in the platform and that's it 3) you don't have luggage restrictions which is always great when you load up on your Zara or Mango shopping ;) 4) You have beautiful views of the countryside of Europe as you travel along to your next destination 5) The carriages are extremely comfortable and they serve food with a bar inside too! One of my favourite train companies would be Eurostar. However, they don't travel to all the countries in Europe (only the main ones), so another alternative would be Raileurope whereby you can by a x amount of days/month pass to travel across any countries in Europe. Warning: Raileurope will need to issue you a physical ticket (not sure why they don't operate on e-tickets) and they usually only send to the European countries + US and not else where. So you might need to pay extra to be sent to your home country or to use a g/f's address in Europe for them to post it to.
3) PLANE - if your destination can't be reached by trains, then you will need to fly! For their cheap budget airlines, you can choose Easyjet (uk owned) or Ryanair (Irish). (warning on Easyjet: you can only carry 1 cabin luggage on board and they even count your handbag as 1 piece so make sure your handbag is super big or you put it away in your cabin luggage, Ryanair - many of their airports are located far away from the main cities. So even though you may save heaps on the airfare, you may waste a lot of money just to get to the airport! don't forget the stress of getting there too especially if you're already unfamiliar with the foreign territory)
4) HOTEL - we used booking.com which basically had all of the hotels around all the European countries in there and at very competive prices (similar to hotels.com for USA). For Paris, we were lucky to catch the Accor (Novotel hotels group) 50% off sale that they hold once a year due to their birthday sale. so we stayed at Ibis for only AUD$88 per night (2ppl) in the heart of Paris (which is SUPER cheap as Paris is very expensive!), one even had a bath too which is rare considering how crammed Paris is :)
5) Getting to Europe from Australia/Asia -  Here's the biggest tip to share - I discovered that it would be much cheaper to fly out of Europe from Singapore! This is b/c Singapore has many routes to all over the world and therefore competition would be greater and thus, a benefit for all consumers thanks to all the discounting.  So the place I went was Singapore's largest travel agent site - Chan brothers. They have a site whereby you can select all the routes from Singapore to wherever and it will spit out all the airlines and the airfare costs. Once you know which airline is the cheapest, you can then hop over to that airline's website and book directly with them as it tends to be at least a couple of hundred bucks cheaper. We had booked our tix from SG-London w Malaysian airlines for around AUD$900pp!
6) So how do I get from Melb/Syd.Perth- Singapore you ask? Easy! fly w Jetstar! They have Friday Frenzy sale every single Friday and I managed to find return tix for $400 incl of tax and incl of 20kg luggage! Yes that's like $200 one way! Super cheap! They also have their birthday sale which happens May every year (or in this year's case, it was June) whereby it's buy one get one free. I think I remember seeing price for $369pax  inclusive of tax & carry-on! Super cheap! This means all up, our trip to Europe was only $1300pp for plane tix alone! Now if I had flown Qantas/SIA which is Melb - London (Via Singapore anyway) it would cost at least $2.2K! no joke! so I had saved myself nearly $1K! All that unnecessary cost meant that I could use it to book all of my accommodation in Europe for the price of a Qantas/SIA ticket! yep! Smart thinking 99 :)
7) Another big tip is to like all the pages of airlines on Facebook that you would travel on. For example, I liked Jetstar Asia as well as Jetstar Australia so when they had their birthday sale, only Facebook fans get the sale at least 1 day prior to the public. This was very handy! Also you get to know what all the promotions are first hand.
8) Another big tip - when you're making your booking in any airline especially Air Asia or Jetstar, make sure you always check the prices for the single ways because if you just bought a return you would've paid in AUD for both ways. Whereas if you selected single and your route was for example KL to Melbourne, then if you had selected KL - Melb, you pay RM instead of AUD and sometimes it works out to be much cheaper!
9) Put all of your itinery in an excel document including hotel name/phone number/booking ref for hotels/railways/flights etc all on one page as it will be much more handy vs printing thousand pages of a different booking confirmations!
10) Make sure you memorise your passport number in case you lose it! Also photocopy it and send it to your private email address as well as your credit card details and contact number just in case someone steals it and you know where all the important numbers are - in your email where you can access it any where around the world!
11) Best time to go to Europe is typically early Summer.. around June-July or even Oct (NOT AUG which was when we went as this is PEAK season and everything is like triple the price esp accommodation!).

What are you waiting for? Start booking your ticket in advance, pack your bags and don't forget to buy me a souvenir once you're there ;) Bon Voyage!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Greetings from Doha, Qatar!

Who would've thought I would say this.. but Greetings from Middle East! Just finished 10 very long days of business trip flying with Qatar airlines business class which was a 14hour journey to Doha, 2 hour transit and then a 6 hour journey to Frankfurt. I was exhausted. Nonetheless, it has been a very great trip both personally and professionally. I learned so much on Braun and can't wait to replicate some of the best in class plans that Germany has in our ANZ market!

My boss and I had the most fun trying all the local dishes each country had to offer! As much as I love going to Europe, I was totally missing my babies who were all sick at home with fever, tonsilitis and all sorts of nasty coughs. Both of my little babies were crying for me on the phone when we did Tango video con. sniff sniff.

Here were two highlights from the trip:
1) When we went to Lyon France for a day trip, we took our 2hour train ride back to Geneva from Lyon. Two hours had passed and it was already 8:30pm and still we were not in Geneva, Switzerland. Then we both looked at each other and had this sinking feeling. We saw everyone getting off and I asked one of them where are we now? He replied 'France'. Oh both you should've seen the horrid on our faces!
We quickly got off to this small little station with no one in sight (not even any station staff) except two ladies in their early 20s. One of them spoke really good English, another only spoke French. I asked the English speaking French girl when the next train to Geneva was departing.. she pointed to the board and it had read 09:20. I thought.. great that's only in less than 1 hour. She replied '9:20AM tomorrow morning'. We felt even more sick. We were literally stuck in a foreign land without speaking any word of French. Plus, we had no maps, no idea where the nearest hotel was. No sign of any taxis. It was just a disaster until.. the girl replied 'my g/f here is going to Geneva right now.. she can drop you off at the tram if you like'. Omg.. talk about luck being on our side that day. So we hopped on the car w her and in less than 20mins time, we were in Geneva! Praise God! We ended up giving her 20 Francs and a block of Swiss chocs. lol.

2) On our way back home to Melb, we were supposed to catch our flight back to Melb. It turned out that the planed had a engine failure and it took them 6hours to finally confirm that the flight was canceled so all up we spent 7hours waiting in the airport for answers! Qatar ended up putting us at a 4-star hotel nearby amongst hundreds of stranded, angry passengers. We ended up being delayed by one full day with no compensation except hotel stay and meals! I am so going to write a complaint letter. Grrr..

Anyway, so we are now 6hours down with 2 hour transit here in Doha and another 13.5hrs flight home from Qatar to Melb. I can not wait to see my 3 babies! I swear it feels like a whole month since we've been gone!

To finish, here are snippets from the trip! Enjoy & Au Revoir!

Frankfurt Germany
 Kronberg Germany

 Geneva Switzerland

 Frankfurt Germany
 Lyon - 3rd largest city in France


Saturday, October 22, 2011

Saddest part of the human heart...

One of the most devastating thing in life any human being has to endure is when they lose a child. I just cry and tear every time I hear or read a story of when a parent loses their child. It's truly an uncomprehensible thought, an unbearable feeling that suffocates every body cell in your body.

I have been following the story of princess Charmaine from My feisty little princess blog for quite some time now. It's a true story about a Singaporean single mother sharing her pain, triumphs & journey of her sick young daughter fighting the battle of cancer. Moreover, if this was not bad enough, her little girl was diagnosed of cancer just after her husband had left her for her best friend leaving her all by herself to look after their son & sick daughter.

It's truly a moving story and I had hoped that it was going to be a happy ending. Sadly, she passed away two days ago after a long two plus years' battle. I am devastated because I have been following her journey now and then and finally finding out she has lost the battle at such a tender age. My heart shatters a thousand pieces for her mother who has lost her own flesh and blood forever.

Life at times can truly be so unfair..  May you princess Char, finally rest in peace.

You can read their full story here.