My life has recently been pre-occupied with my gestational diabetes problem such that I haven’t had much time to blog. So this is a really overdued post on the Friso Celebrates Mums-to-be seminar that was held on 6 September 2015 at the Drama Centre, National Library Building. It was organised by Thomson Medical and supported by Frisomum. How nice to attend a free baby seminar that’s not organised by a cord blood banking company for once.
Image credit: Frisomum
My comments on the programme highlights:
Confinement 101
I was most disappointed by this talk as I expected the content to be on tips for confinement and dispelling confinement myths, but it seemed that the talk was geared more towards promoting Thomson Medical’s Chinese Medicine services. The message was that Thomson Medical Chinese Medicine clinic is able to take care of you throughout your confinement period with nutritious food packages and post-pregnancy care. They even offer a confinement nanny service.
Nursing 101 for Healthy Baby
Not much new information for me in this talk as Ms Chen Li Qin went through the benefits of breastfeeding and breastfeeding techniques. These were things I already knew from a previous talk and antenatal class.
Healthy Smiles for Your Kids
Now this talk was something pretty new. Never had a dentist give a talk in the previous seminars I attended. Dr Toh Siew Luan stressed on the importance of giving the right amount of care to your child’s teeth. Tooth decay is more common than you think in children especially because the milk they drink has sugars, so it is important that you start the habit of brushing teeth when your child is quite young.
What to Expect in the Birth Room
Of course everyone was waiting for baby whisperer, Mrs Wong Boh Boi’s talk. Although she went through common topics like the stages of labour and pain relief options available, I think her talk was pretty detailed and entertaining. She even brought a baby doll to show how labour progresses.
Common Childhood Illnesses
Not really a new topic for me, but it did have some new information on what types of illnesses to expect in children.
I do apologise if the commentary is a bit scanty. I should have written this entry a lot earlier when the content was still fresh in my mind. I do also have to stress that at this point, I felt I had more or less gained all the knowledge/information I needed. A lot of information was starting to overlap. So, this might be one of the last free baby seminars that I’ll attend. Incidentally, there aren’t too many free seminars recently. Ones that are chargeable, yes, but not free ones. You can check out what’s available at this page. I update it quite frequently.
Since the seminar was supported by Frisomum, of course they were there to let attendees sample the milk for pregnant ladies. I’ve always hated the taste of milk or rather dairy products in general, and was hoping to stay away from having to sample the milk at the event. But the hubby had other ideas…he made me taste it anyway. Which was a good thing as I found out that the Frisomum milk tasted pretty ok. The vanilla taste is quite strong so it masks the dairy taste that I dislike. I even questioned the promoter to make sure that the sample packets attendees were given was exactly the same as what we were sampling at the venue. Made sure that they didn’t add some vanilla flavouring or sugar just to enhance the flavour of the milk sample at the event. Was mighty pleased that I could finally tolerate the taste of milk and get some nutrients from special milk for pregnant ladies. (How was I to know that I had gestational diabetes and this milk would become a no-no due to the flavouring and sugar content. Sigh. The sample packets are going to my best friend who’s also pregnant.)
Of all the goodie bags I’ve received, this one has to be the most awesome. Ok, not in contents in the bag but the bag itself.
Yup, the bag is a proper baby bag with multiple pockets. I was told by a friend not to ever brush off the multiple pockets feature in baby bags as something unnecessary. You WILL find it very useful in organising the 12782732346123 items for baby. You WILL thank the person who invented the baby bag with the multiple pockets when you are changing baby and need to become octopus mum. Being the cheapskate parents we are, hubby and I were rejoicing over the fact that we would now not need to spend money on a baby bag…at least not at the moment. Of course, free things aren’t of superb quality so we are aware that this might not last too long. But who cares? We have a baby bag and we’re now happy campers. I was most delighted to find that it came with a changing mat as well. It’s a bit thin though so I’ll probably use one of the other free mats I got instead of this. Participants could choose from three colours for the baby bag: pink, blue and orange. Since we’re pretty much settled on gender neutral colours, we chose the orange bag. It’s a bright and cheery colour too!
Other goodies included a set of little tubs for storing formula milk powder or food/snacks and some breast pads. The tubs should come in pretty handy later.