Three weeks after we brought Brevi home from the Korean postpartum centre, he’s put on a lot of weight and is thriving. He’s already doubled the size of his birthweight and now finally resembles something like a little human. Amazing how babies change so much! I can barely keep up with his ever-changing face and sometimes I have to do a double take to make sure I didn’t bring home the wrong baby. Despite still waking up every two hours each night to feed him, I feel more refreshed than ever (and much lighter), thanks to the amazing postpartum clinic I stayed in Korea. Though there were faults in the system that annoyed me a couple times, I believe it was worth the “investment.” And I say investment, because it was so absurdly expensive. but it was definitely worth every cent! Here’s my belated review on the Korean postpartum system and why I chose to give birth in Seoul, Korea, instead of Singapore (where I currently reside) or United States (our original home country)!
Tag: Seoul
Brevi’s Birth Story ♥
Our beautiful bundle of joy is here!
Our little Brevi arrived earlier than we expected at 37 weeks and 1 day, weighing 2.62kgs on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014, at 10: 47am!
What an unforgettable *tear* 🙂
I still can’t believe I’m now a mommy! It feels so surreal. And I never thought I’d ever feel this way, but I am so thankful that I was born a female, for a different reason post this event. Yes, my pregnancy was hard- I had a severe case of morning sickness that lasted from week 6 to week 18 where I was throwing up every few hours every. single. day. I couldn’t stand the smell of basically everything. In the third trimester, my right rib cage went numb because my baby kicked in the same area repeatedly. My delivery- written below- was nothing I had imagined, and really really terrifying (yes, all you expecting mothers. it’s exactly as excruciatingly painful as everyone explained it’d be, and more), but I now have a newfound respect for all those that went through active labor. Yes, I feel so thankful that I’ve been born a female, so that I have the HONOR of experiencing a child kick and squirm inside me (growing from a little bean to a little human! I have grown a human!), and to have experienced giving BIRTH to an another being despite all that I went through for the past nine months.
So this is may be a bit personal, but I thought I’d write about my delivery to mark a truly blessed and humbling moment in my life so that I will forever remember every detail of my labor, which has been shared many many times with my family, friends, and oh, the other mommy’s at the confinement centre I got to know while brestfeeding in the last couple days. I will explain my confinement experience in the later post.
Maternity Photography in Korea
It’s been a bit over two months since I’ve been in Korea… and I gotta say, Seoul, Korea is such an exciting place with so much happening. It’s a bit like New York in terms of variety of things to do but of course, the quality doesn’t quite meet up there yet. Only certain nicer parts of Seoul. But as for quality of service and the price point of products offered, I think I’d rate Seoul as the number one city. It’s def not cheap here either, but you really get the top-notch quality products for the same price you’d pay in US (In US, you’d have to pay A LOT to find this quality) or Singapore (I’m sorry to say, but you’d have to pay A LOT in Singapore to get even the low-end products, if it’s available) Seoul just has too many talented ppl in every market you can think of, thus having too much competition which in return provides low prices for consumers.
Because we got so burnt from the ‘high-end’ popular photographer in the US (see my post below), we decided to look for affordable photographers in Korea for my real maternity photoshoot now that I’m at 36 weeks. And there were many. There was, of course, the high-end one in every city where the celebrities and the rich gawk over (May Studio), but yes no more, I’m not falling into that trap anymore. I’ve visited to find out its price and we were so turned off by the absurd high pricing (though a lot lower than jen huang and it comes with an album and photo editing service. jen huang was just digital copies.) and their inflexibility in providing the original copies. They only provide you with five to ten copies out of the 100 pictures you’d probably take in an hour, and in order for you to buy the other prints, you’d have to pay for them. I guess that’s how it works with certain photographers, but if I’m in it, and if I hired you, then I want it without having to pay five bucks for each piece. I’m guessing it all depends on the photographer but koreans and freelance photographers are usually generous with sharing their unused leftover pictures. Anyway, by now we learned our lesson that expensive is not always better- we’d only go for up-and-coming, talented photographers, not those that are already up there to still hold the drive to want to cater and please the clients.
I searched and searched for the two perfect ones that seem to have both the quality AND the cheap price. It seems photoshoots are an excuse for girls to do a makeover and have fun 🙂 So here are the two that I’ve narrowed down for Korean maternity photography, and they also do regular family shots and professional photos. so check them out next time you’re in Korea! Kindly take note that they are a bit farther out from Gangnam, Seoul. There are many chaeper options there as well, but I didn’t like the quality and concepts at all.
The service and products offered are unbelievable (in US and Sing standards):
We’re in Seoul, Korea! (Sept-March 2014)
We’re in Koreaaaaaa!
We temporarily relocated to Korea for six months due to… me being preggers and for D’s work matters. I leaned towards giving birth in Korea, but it was by chance that D was also able to relocate to Korea for few months.Things have been great this year. We are welcoming our first child in December this year, just celebrated our two year anniversary /babymoon in Phuket, and now we’re in Korea… and I’m welcoming all the change. The timing had worked out perfectly for us because our new condo in Singapore isn’t finished building yet, and our current two-year lease had run out this month. I feel truly lucky that I have the chance to live in so many different cities despite the craziness from the constant move. Packing and moving all of our belongings into storage all in one day before getting on our midnight flight to Korea was just… chaos, but I’m so thankful that we met such great movers and storage rep in Sing that helped me get all the things packed safely or else I don’t know how I’d be here right now.
We’ve relocated to an apartment in Chungdam-dong in Seoul, Korea. For all you potential expats in Korea, this place is worth considering- it’s the Orchard of Singapore and Beverly Hills of Los Angeles, yet the price is VERY reasonable considering its location. There’s a view of Hangang river from our apt, and due to Koreans preferring to live in big mega-projects , there’s an ample room for amenities including hiking trail around the neighborhood. Here’s few pic of the place we’ll be staying at for the next several months:
Post Wedding Rambles Pt. 2
I was organizing all my wedding-related pictures today on my computer and saving them to my portable hard drive (soo many pictures!) and I thought I should upload a few more that I found. It’s actually the ones my sister took with my Canon 5D Mark III. Here are few pictures of the decor:
1. Our photo table. In korea, there are event planners that come and decorate your photo table for around $200~300. I really considered using them because well decorated photo tables really make your venue pop, with beautiful album frames, cakes, boxes, and other wedding lovey-dovey stuff that you normally wouldn’t buy yourself provided and decorated for you. But I decided to just go with what I had because of lack of time in finding the right planner. I’m so glad I didn’t, because it ended up looking just fine and the gorgeous album frames and letters my mom bought from America really stood out. We also hung the date banner we made for our engagement shoot in America.
2. 화환. I’m not sure why this custom exists in Korea, but friends of my and my husband’s family as well as our relatives give this to be displayed at our wedding venue. It supposedly displays our families’ companies in Korea and my dad’s friends hospitals.
3. Wedding Ice Sculpture. Not sure who gave this to us, but we also had a wedding ice sculpture. (We didn’t notice until the pictures)
4. Finger foods. There weren’t many finger food pictures sadly but here’s little of what my sister captured.
and…. a teaser pic. 🙂
Wedding, Cities & Motherhood 