JEWELLE TAN

6 months after my daughter was born, I could already fit into all my old clothes and there are even a few items which I had to pull up once in a while.

But this is not a boast to promote any special exercise method, or diet program or even weight loss supplements.

The main reason I shed pregnancy fat very quickly is because I am genetically thin and I have high metabolism. This means I never need to do much conscious effort to lose weight. It happens because my body is built so .

Of course it helped that I lead an active but-not-by-choice lifestyle with having to care for 3 kids.

There is no mystery to figure out when the longest I could sit at one go during the daytime is one hour. My hands and legs are constantly on the move - and what’s more, I am a fast mover and unless there is a pain in my legs, it is not my style to “catwalk”. Not by intention, the staircase became my treadmill and unless I am carrying someone or something, it is my natural tendency to run up.

So it is possible to lose weight without any special effort or extra expenses, but first you have to be born with it and secondly, you have to live like me.

Of course, even with these “privileges”, I too need to work on the hardest-to-shed belly but that is of course easily disguisable, if you so wish.

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One of the most aggravating memory I had when I gave birth to Eu 5 years ago was the conversation I had with the Paediatrician at the clinic where I delivered her.

“Is there anyone who can help you check if the baby turns yellow?“

Perhaps I looked blank - as anyone would I think when ask such a dumb question - that he repeated his question with an annoyed tone. The first of his many ways that say only one thing - poor people skill.

Needless to say, I was glad when the clinic engaged another Paediatrician who is not only kind and patient that the kids absolutely liked her.

But the point is of this post is - jaundice.

Recently I came to know of a few friends whose babies came down with jaundice after birth. And I thought for the benefit of other expecting mothers who might not know of this method, I would like to share my mother’s tip to prevent jaundice.

I have never asked her where she learn this technique from but thanks to her, none of my children had jaundice.

And her tip is the leaves of the noni tree or mengkudu.

When I was expecting Eu, she had some mengkudu bush growing in her garden as that was also the time when everyone was raving about the health benefits of this fruit.

All she did was boil the leaves and used the cooled water to bath my girls - specifically to prevent jaundice.

I cannot promise that this is a guaranteed way but it worked for my girls so perhaps it is worth a try. By the way, she also bought a lot of herbs to bath the girls with - and one of the most interesting one was what the Chinese physician claimed will ensure that the girls never get any pimples!

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When I said I had NO help in setting up my blog in this domain - of course you don’t think that I meant it literally?

Of course I had help and I’m going to share with you some of the things I learn over the last few days.

Some of them will seem very basic for the experts so think of this as the idiot’s guide. Besides, I need to record this down because I will definitely forget it by next week.

1) Get Lilian’s simple 15 steps guides.

If not because of this guide, I would not attempt to do it myself. It’s not all self-explanatory but at least if you’re not sure, you know what to read on.

2) If you’re still deciding on your host, get one with Fantastico.

Not all comes with this but it makes installing Wordpress easy (the alternative is uploading Wordpress using “ftp” - and you don’t want to go there…)

3) Buy and pay your domain name straightaway.

I actually bought another name but didn’t confirmed the payment till the next day - and by then it was “stolen”! Lucky me, I actually regretted my original name and the domain name thief actually “saved” me…

4) Research and Read
I didn’t ask anybody for help because I wanted to try it out myself (even though it actually took me AGES to figure out that my cPanel and Wordpress are not related…) but of course, there are loads of kind folks out there who has written guides on what to do - read, read and read!

So far, it is still confusing but all in all, it’s been kind of fun!

Popularity: 20% [?]