Im currently on maternity leave. Will be off from work for a few months. I took early time off so that we are better prepared to receive the baby. We spent around RM 500 over the weekend for the baby's arrival. I spent almost 200 ringgit on herbs for my confinement while the rest were spent on baby essentials. Baby essentials are so expensive, I wonder how does the poor afford these items. A baby milk bottle is more than 30 ringgit and of course we cannot do with only one. We need at least 2, that also if we are careful with the bottles. Like the lady said, it's good to have back-up just in case we misplace the bottle somewhere whenever we go out. A plastic bottle is 30 ringgit and can only be used for 6 months, after that, it must be discarded as it is said to be unsafe for infants (how environmentally unfriendly) . If we want one that can last longer, we should get the glass milk bottle. But then again, it cost around 60 ringgit and it is heavy. We also bought a set each of clothes, mittens and booties for the baby (I was afraid that the baby would come anytime and would not have anything to wear). Buying the whole set came up to around RM 50 for just a set. Fortunately, we only bought one set because right after we got home, Christine my sister arrived with a bag full of hand-me-downs from Michael Lim, our Bukit Glugor neighbor's 1 year old grandchild. His clothes were good quality ones and almost complete. Yesterday, we received another bag full of baby clothes from Christine's sister-in-law. 5 year old Matthew's clothes we still in really good condition and looked so cute. (honestly, as I unpacked, I tried to imagine how cute my little one will look in those clothes). They also gave us 2 car seats, one was the usual one for transporting the baby, the other one was a convertible car seat which can also be used as an aeroplane seat and stroller. (I was so grateful with those two seats, to be honest, we would not have bought the convertible car seat as I doubt is it cheap and we would not have thought of getting the baby a special seat when it travels with us back to Kuching, now with that seat, travelling will be so much more easier). Matthew's parents also gave us an unused play mat, a baby bouncer (to be used by the baby when it can sit up) and some other little stuff, easily saving us maybe 1 thousand ringgit i supposed if we were to buy those items on our own.

I feel that we are very fortunate indeed to be getting all these hand-me-downs. Some people prefer to buy new items for their precious ones but we are really saving a lot of money by being willing to accept all these good quality stuff and we really thank God for these kind people and their generosity.

Unfortunately, we could not get the baby mattress as planned. The lady from little whiz told us that our cot seemed to be of an odd size and she did not have any mattress that could fit into the cot. We also did not buy the bath tub yet as the one we saw at Tesco costs 30 ringgit and did not give us the feeling that it would last. So still on our shopping list are these two items and a good vacuum cleaner. Both of us are really exhausted cleaning the house. The house that we currently live in is big and needs to be swept and mopped at least once in two days. Unfortunately we have not been able to clean the house so well due to our commitments at work and our preparation for the baby. We both agreed that the vacuum cleaner will help to ease our burden.

So though I'm off from work, there's still so much to do. Just wish that there will be more sunshine these days so that I can wash all the laundry that needs to be washed (it's a lot of laundry) before baby arrives.