I am sure many stay-at-home mothers have experienced the irritating-father-syndrome, especially with those busy busy daddies. Early in the morning, after giving the baby her morning feed, I am relieved that the baby is still sleepy and could put her back to another 3 hours of sleep, i could use the precious time to do some cleaning and tidying and perhaps some reading. But daddy is going off to work, and won’t be able to see his precious darling until evening time. So he happily walked over to the cot, plant a huge kiss on her and tried to tickle her here and there, hoping that she will return him a goodbye smile. Smile? No. She will most probably send him off with loud wailing, and there goes my precious time.

Evening time. After a good bath, and probably after successfully killing the enemies in counter strike, the happy father decides that it is family time and wants to do some bonding with the kid. But to his disappointment, she is already asleep. Never mind, he thought, just have to wake her up. But i just spend an hour putting her to her sleep!!! And therefore, all my hard work is wasted. Have to pacify the fussy baby again, while the father happily boot up his computer and continues with whatever he wants to do!

This irritating-father-syndrome found its way to us some time ago, until James spread it to me. The virus instantaneously mutated to become the irritated-mother-bug. Luckily, the irritated-mother-bug is very effective in curbing the irritating-father-virus and thus, peace has returned to the family.

As a typical anxious mother, I have been deligently reading books on parenting. My lastest baby manual, “How to Raise a Brighter Child”. Yah, I am on my way into raising a super baby….haha.

Anyway, it enlighted me in quite a few ways. For example, it believes that “developmental landmarks in early childhood can be speeded up by changes in the environment….major gains can be achieved by relatively small changes in an infant’s surroundings.”. I begin to review my baby’s environment and her daily activities. Feeding, diaper changing, cuddling, some playing. I realised my baby’s hands are still mittened ( which is a grieve mistake according to the book, since “baby needs great freedom and opportunity to touch, to move about, to manipulate objects…..from constricting clothing and from a confining bassinet.”), and most of the time, I only watched her play.

So I decide to do a small experiment. Her mittens were removed. She is still placed on her small playmat with some toys hanging above her, but this time, I guided her hands to reach out to bat the objects and opened her hands to let her touch and feel them. Interestingly, she started paying much more attentions to the hanging objects, and her fist wasn’t tightly clasped anymore. On the second day, she begin kicking excititngly when I laid her onto the playmat, before her usual staring and uncoordinated hands movement. About a week has passed with this daily activity (which I myself am getting bored with), something remarkable happened today. She stared intensively at the hanging toy for a minute or so, then reach out her hand and bat at it. This was repeated a few times until her started to feel tired, perhaps frustrated and begin crying again.

Now I am convinced that stimulation does speed up a child’s development. But to what extent should I push her to her next developmental milestone. Should I interfere with the child’s natural development at all? Do I really want to give the child a good head-start, or am I just anxious to satisfied my own ego.

Somehow the news of the baby tendency to cry persistently during evening time got into the ears of my mother in law. The solution? Three days of pomegranate leaves and flowers bath for the baby. She probably thought that the baby had chanced upon some evil spirit and need the holy bath to ward off the undesirable. Gosh, sounds ghostly enough! And there goes my rational sense again. Anyway, the baby’s behaviour doesn’t change much after three flowery spa session (yes, i massage her ever day after her bath, lucky isn’t she?), i guess she just needs more attention during that time. One comforting conclusion though, no evil spirit was hovering around her.

What causes more excitement and happiness then striking lottery? What makes one scream in joy? I have the answer today.

During the first month, i wondered why a newborn poo almost every few hours. Sometimes caught me off guard and was attacked by her projectile like expulsion of waste. I would changed her soiled diaper and there she would do it again. Change a fresh diaper, and she would do it again, and again and again, up to five times. Gosh, what a waste of diapers.

Second month. Finally, less diaper wastage. I am very pleased that she is no longer dirtying my bedsheets while i changed her. Middle of second month, strange things happened. She decides that she doesn’t want to poo so much. Ok, down to once a day. Then once every three days. Still normal but I was a bit worried and seek the opinion of a paediatrician. She said it is alright as long as the baby is eating and behaving as normal. But I am not very convinced . Everyday, I will “unghhhhh unghhhhhhhh” with her, hoping she will try to squeeze out whatever is inside. My neighbour must have thought that I am having a bad constipation. I have been doing that for five days, and she still refuse to cooperate. It affected my mood and I am getting stressed again. And suddenly, I thought i smelt heaven. I knew i have strike lottery! Yeah! She did it. It was a real mess, but i have lots of fun cleaning up.

I remembered saying aloud that I am going to cuddle and cradle the baby whenever she cries. After two weeks of doing so, we finally give up the idea that babies need to be carried when they start wailing. Picking her up whenever she starts crying is too exhuasting and makes us easily frastruated. So, last weekend, we decided to embark her on a training programme.

There ia a very important rule to observe before carrying out the training: make sure the grandparents or anxious relatives are not around! They will most probably ruin your plan.

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I always thought I will raise my baby in a way modern mothers do, to ignore all the old wives tales which we find to be so ridiculous or clueless about. However, now i am beginning to realize why these advices survive thru the generations. Mothers are simply too protective over their children that they cannot think rationally.

Here are three advices which I do not really agree to the rational behind, but is going to implement into my daily routine.
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