Year in Review – 2009 – Part 3

Here’s the last in the series of posts on our biggest decisions of the year and how they’ve fared.:)

Having the delivery at Thomson Medical Center (Win). There weren’t a lot of choices to begin with: there’s just a handful of maternity-ward equipped hospitals in Singapore, and traveling distance between home and work to the hospital was somewhat a factor in consideration. We figured though that since the delivery was a one-time experience for each birth, the cost of the stay shouldn’t weigh too heavily, and the choice of hospital was in tandem with the gynaecologist that Ling was choosing.

We narrowed our choices down to either East Shore, or Thomson Medical Center, and eventually went with the latter on account of where Ling’s gynae normally delivered at, and also that there had great prenatal courses for mummies and daddies-to-be to attend. While we can’t say for certain what delivery at the other hospitals would had been like, the experience at TMC was excellent – facilities were great, delivery was smooth, and the gynaec a super-cool operator.:)

Confinement nanny (Mix). I think Ling may disagree with me on this one and have a more favorable opinion on the overall experience with our confinement nanny. The fact that she nearly burned down our kitchen on week 1 continues to weigh heavily in our assessment, and that she seemed to side with the in-laws in their appraisal of our post-delivery practices gave Ling a bit of grief even though we were ultimately her employers.

That said, our nanny was trustworthy, did not nag (too much), and was very good with Hannah. So, I think it’s a mix on this score and perhaps leaning slightly on the decision turning out right. The decision on whether to extend her services beyond the fourth week was a very difficult one to make: but we decided eventually to bite the bullet and try handling Hannah on our own.

Infant care (In progress). This was another big decision we’re making, and on account of the fact that we did not want to engage domestic helpers i.e. maids, nor leave Hannah in the care of grandparents every day. Lentor grandies love Hannah, but age has caught up with them and I felt it would had been too much to ask them to look after Hannah for 7-8 hours MON to FRI. We finally arrived at the decision for Ling to do some adjunct teaching work on half-days, and she’d pick up Hannah from infant care in the early afternoon everyday.

On the down side, having so many kids in close proximity also makes each vulnerable to infectious diseases. On the upside, our friends also noted that some of the kids left in infant care showed better development in social skills that was missing in dominantly home-school infants.

Either way, we’re going to keep our fingers crossed and pray that Hannah adjusts well to infant care. Hopefully the outcome of this big decision we’ve made here would be the right one.:)

That’s a wrap then. Fortunately, more ‘Wins’ than ‘Losses’ – so maybe the two of us don’t suck too much when it comes to making big decisions! :)