Janice & Jenson

Jenson is already 7 week old

Jenny's gynaecologist, Dr Tan Yew Ghee

We were back to Raffles Hospital on 1 Jun 10 for Jenny's post delivery checkup by her obsterician & gynaecologist, Dr Tan Yew Ghee and Jenson's developmental assessment and vaccination by his pediatrician, Dr Veronica Toh. At 6th week old, Jenson weighs 3.35kg and has grown to about 49.5cm in length. We were glad to have a picture taken with Dr Tan at his office (left). Jenson received his first '6-in-1 + Pneumococcal' vaccination injection from Dr Veronica. Vaccines are for prevention of Hepatitis B, Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Poliomyelitis, Haemophilus Influenza B and Pneumococcal disease.

Janice's collage

Our lovely princess, Janice in her yunnan costume she got from china. Below she is seen giving a peck to nai nai during Mother's Day. She created a heart for her mummy during Valentine Day.:)

Jenson is 1 month old

Jenson is borned premature on 18 Apr 2010 (Sun) when mummy is in her 34th week of pregnancy. While mummy was discharged on 21 Apr 2010 (Wed), Jenson remained in the ICU for 2 weeks before we brought him home on 30 Apr 2010 (Fri). He weighs only 2.0kg when he was discharged. We celebrated Jenson's first month at home on 15 May 2010 (Sat). He has grown a little bigger and now weighs about 2.6kg already. We are happy to see him grow a little each day.

Janice's 6th birthday

We celebrated Janice's 6th birthday at home on 26 Sep (Sat) last year. I just got the chance to view some of Janice's 6th birthday photographs posted by her mummy in her facebook and thought it might be good for me to link it into my blog as well. I particularly like the photographs which were taken in her kindergarten class when she had her birthday celebration with her K2 classmates. From her smile, I can tell that she was really happy when her classmates sang her a birthday song. Papa & Mummy love you, Janice.:)

Jenson, one special Js in my family

While the reigning F1 world champion, Jenson Button raced his way to win the 2010 Chinese Grand Pix in Shanghai on 18 Apr 2010, our baby Jenson raced his way into this world 6 weeks before his term to be with us at 5.41am that sunday morning.

For the last few months, we have been cracking our heads as to what to name our baby boy. Both Jenny and myself decided that we would have our baby name starts with our initials, i.e T or J (for Thomas or Jenny). Thus, names like Thaddeus, Thomasson, Thompson, Thomson, Titus, Tommy, Tony, and Jansen, Janson, Jenson... came into our list.

All this while, Jenny has been very instrumental and courageous in bringing our baby boy into this world and I felt that our baby boy should have her mummy's initial of 'J' more than mine. When I saw the news article of Jenson Button winning the China F1 race on 18 Apr 2010, it convinced me to take the name, Jenson for our baby boy. I related my choice to both Jenny and Janice and they agreed. We named our boy, Jenson Chee Wei Le.

Jenson, which means the son of Jenny, is one special Js in my family. We love you very much, Janice and Jenson.:)

The Story of Jenson's Birth

On 13 Apr 2010 (Tue), on her usual round (33rd week of pregnancy) to visit her obsterician & gynaecologist, Dr Tan Yew Ghee at Raffles Hospital, Jenny is diagnosed to have pre-eclampsia (pregnancy-induced hypertension) with BP reading of around 190/110. She is immediately warded for close follow-up and monitoring.

For the next few days, her BP remained high and Dr Tan Yew Ghee has planned to go for caesarean section delivery the following monday on 19 Apr 2010. He explained that the baby is in a breech position and a natural vaginal delivery would put the baby's or mother's life or health at risk.

However, in the early morning of 18 Apr 2010 at about 3.30am, I received a call from Jenny that she was experiencing some pain and there was some discharge from her vaginal. Over the phone, she told me that they had wheeled her to the delivery ward and had activated her obsterician. I rushed down to Raffles Hospital and on the way up, I bumped into Dr Tan Yew Ghee in the lift at about 4.30am who appeared to have been woken up from his sleep as well. His hair was a little messy and he was in his sandals. He greeted me and I apologised for having to trouble him at this early hour. He told me that the baby heartbeat went down momentarily earlier on but was back to normal again. After assessing Jenny's condition in the ward, he advised us to go for an emergency C-section to deliver the baby as soon as possible. We signed the paper to go ahead.

Jenny was wheeled down into the operating theatre at about 5.15am on level 7. I waited outside at the waiting lounge. At about 5.50am, I was greeted by Dr Tan Mein Chuen, a pediatrician who congratulated me that both mummy and baby were well. I accompanied him and the nurse who wheeled the baby to the neonatal centre on level 8. Dr Tan M.C. told me that as the baby is premature, at 34th week he is still very small and need close monitoring. On the way up, the nurse told me that the baby was delivered at 5.41am. Inside the neonatal intensive care unit, the measurement of the baby was done before he was put into the incubator. Baby Jenson weighs only 1.75kg at birth, 39cm in length and head circumference of 30cm.

I went back down to level 7 to wait for Jenny. At about 6.15am, Dr Tan Yew Ghee came out and greeted me. He told me everything went well and the moment the baby was out, Jenny's blood pressure dropped to normal range. I was relieved and he shook my hands before we parted. Dr Tan told me that he would be back later in the day to see us again. A while later, Jenny was wheeled out and I showed her our baby first photo (left) which I took earlier on in the ICU. She was still weak from the anaesthetic but was happy to learn that our baby is well as we wheeled her back to ward 825 on level 8. She slept well that morning on 18 Apr 2010.

I am glad God has once again given me this opportunity to experience the anxiety in bringing my little baby boy, Jenson into this world. Thank you all, who have in one way or another, helped us bring this joy to our family again.:)

-->The Story of Janice's Birth

Janice started her P1 with Radin Mas Primary School

Janice started her primary 1 class with Radin Mas Primary Schoool on 4 Jan 2010. Both my wife and myself were as excited as Janice, to begin her next stage of school life in her mum former primary school. While my wife took leave from work, I participated in the "Back to School with Dad 2010" event to accompany Janice to school and took part in her school orientation programme.

"Back to School with Dad 2010" is an initiative organised by the Centre for Fathering (CFF) and supported by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) and the Health Promotion Board (HPB). It aims to promote responsible and pro-active fatherhood in its on-going mission to build more resilient families and encourages all fathers with school-going children to accompany their children to school during the first week back to school in Jan 2010. This year’s event also encourages families to be active together and aims to build the parent-child bonding through simple healthy activities such as walking to school or having a healthy breakfast before starting the day.

On the final day of her orientation programme on 8 Jan 2010, there was a Juniors' Parade march pass by the various P1 classes in the school hall . Janice's class of 1F also came in 3rd for the Class Cheer competition. Finally, parents were also invited to present a JP badge to the child to symbolise the child graduation from her first week in school.

Janice has grown up and she is all ready for school on her own now...

Janice graduated from her PAP kindergarten class

Janice graduated from her K2 class with PAP Community Foundation's Radin Mas Education Centres in Nov 09. A Kindergarten Graduation cum Concert was held in Radin Mas Primary School on 7 Nov 09 with MP, Mr Sam Tan Chin Siong, Parliamentary Secretary, Minister of Trade and Industry & Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts, as the guest-of-honour.

A father's reflection

My father passed away in 1975 at the age 40 when I was only six year old. At that young age, I could not remember much about my father or experienced his love as a father towards me. From the numerous chats I have with my mother, I portrayed my father as a compassionate, caring and loving person who always put others’ interests above his own. Besides the few photographs of my father that my mother kept, there isn’t much documents and records that I have of my father to help me seek for knowledge, meaning and understanding of who a person my father was and our interrelationships with one another. This remains the biggest regret in my life for not given the opportunities to get to know more and build up a fuller relationship with my father.

On 29 Sep 2003, I became a proud father of a lovely baby girl, Janice who is six this year. What made it so special for me was that I actually delivered my own child at home. Going through this process of becoming a father myself, I can now fully experience the everlasting love a father would give to his own child. For how much I love my daughter now, I believed my father would have loved me as much for the six short years together.

Since the day Janice was borned, I have been capturing beautiful pictures of her growing up together with us, videotaping of wonderful moments we spent with each other such as birthday parties, family holiday trips, and more recently, tapping on the Web2.0 technologies. Time flies, amazingly, I have been capturing these “works” for the last six years already and I remain convinced that these memorial documents and records (digital photographs, video recordings, DVDs, blogs) will become useful and valuable to Janice someday when there is a quest for knowledge or a search for some understanding or meaning in the later part of her life.

As part of my MSc programme, I took up a course on Archival Informatics. After attending the first class on 13 Aug 09, I begun to realize that archival is more than just acquiring (data/information in memory cards, tapes), formatting (by converting digital video from tape into DVD) and backing up documents (into portable harddisks) which I have done so far.

Looking forward, I hope that after going through this “H6692 Introduction to Archival Informatics” module, I will be able to apply the Archival Principles well to my "home" project so that Janice will be able to access my blogs, documents, video recordings, photographs, CD ROMs and DVDs, etc, for a long long time...

That's me in my dad's arm, together with my mum and younger sister, Lilian.