I almost broke my baby’s neck this morning! I was sitting her up against pillows and bolsters, hoping that she could look at her hanging toys from a different perspective and be entertained. As i was adjusting the bolster for better support, in a split of a second, her head lost balance and dropped forward, followed by a loud loud scream. my heart almost stop beating! i quickly held her up and cuddle her, still wouldn’t stop crying. i remembered saying sorry to her a hundred times, promising her that i will be very very very careful in future and will never ever hurt her again. i was thinking if i need to rush her to the children’s hospital A&E. until i put her in her favorite upright head over my shoulder position, i managed to pacified her. phew! what a frightening experience. i must remind myself to be super ultimate extra careful in future.

I think i am suffering from weekend depression these days. Actually, it should be happy family time weekends when the baby is going to be with us two whole days, as she is with my father during the afternoons on weekdays. It used to be computer games, making the house clean and tidy (which i enjoy doing), shopping, cooking, movies or just lazing around. It is so different now. With a baby crying and me clueless about her fussiness, it transforms into a process of holding her or feeding her more food round after round. I can’t get much things done and i feel so trapped.

Luckily, friends always pop by occasionally during weekends and help me babysit while i could get a proper meal fixed. Really hope the baby can hold her head firm or sit up soon so that she can entertain herself. Or is that going to be the beginning of another nightmare?

On Becoming Babywise is a the top-selling and highly controversial childcare guide authored by Gary Ezzo and endorsed by Robert Bucknam, a pediatrician. While there is a huge camp of parents that support Babywise’s “parent directed feeding” method as opposed to demand feeding, it seems that the outcry from medical and child development experts, lactation consultants and parents against PDF is getting very loud.

This book had been my sole baby survival manual. I find its philosophies very reasonable, logical. It promises that PDF infant will be independent, healthy baby with predictable eating and sleeping schedule, and will sleep thru the night from about the 8 week if we follow its flexible (parent directed) 2-3 hour feeding routine, with a feedtime-playtime-sleeptime in each cycle. Although it tells the parents to feed the baby if he shows sign of hunger, following the routine closely is recommended.
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Have you noticed that young babies always stare intently into some blank spaces? Sometime, she will raised her head and absorbed herself staring up the ceiling, some other time, she will stop fidgeting suddenly and stared at the white walls. I thought there might be some lizards on the ceiling that caught her eyes (impossible, she can’t have such good eyesight yet!) or the painting on the walls had caught her eyes. But no, they are empty!! Freak me out sometime, especially when i am with her alone and she suddenly started crying after her staring act. Can’t help wondering if there are some “things” out there that babies can see and we adults can’t! Did something silly to convince myself there isn’t any invisible beings around. I looked into her eyes to see if there is any scary images. luckily, there isn’t any so far.

For the past eight weeks or so, before i stripped my baby for her morning bath, she will engage herself in this weird routine. She raised one of her legs, and it goes “shake shake shake shake” for about five seconds. Very amusing to the adults’ eyes. After some weeks, her movements weren’t so jerky anymore, she started doing leg raise. These daily activities really looked silly and funny to me until recently, i realized she was doing them for a reason. She has been practicing rigorously for this stunt called “roll over”! She can’t really roll over yet, could only roll over from her back to her sides. Babies, we don’t really need to train them, they will roll and crawl and stand and walk when they know they are ready.

Good food is always welcomed, but as long as they are edible, healthy and keep me from starvation, i am fine, until I became pregnant. Everybody started telling me to eat healthy, and eat more. Each time i visited my gynecologist, she would tell me the baby’s size was at the lower percentile, “eat more! eat more! you need to increase your protein intake!”. On the next visit, she would say ” drink more water! your water is on the low side!”. “eat more, drink more” became my routine prescription.

So, I up-sized all my meals. From two slices of white bread for breakfast, it became four slices of wholemeal bread, one egg, two slices of cheese and a glass of milk. Lunch and dinner portion were doubled, with a lot of meat and vegetables. I ate at least two big apples a day, bananas whenever available. There was a special vegetable soup consisting of carrots, tomato, red dates and another chinese herb every other day (suppose to be good for the baby’s complexion). But my gynecologist still tells me to “eat more, the baby is still small” after i began gorging myself like a pig. I need to deploy new strategies. Tonic soup came into the picture. Birdnest and cordyceps soup every week. Powerful! Then my friend told me adding abalone into the cordyceps soup is very nourishing, so i rushed off to get it. Expensive! Next, durian came into the picture too. And i started eating durians. Sinful! When i couldn’t find durian, i would substitute with durian roll. The end results, my baby is not that small after all and a horrible 18kg of weight put onto myself.

History seems to be repeating itself again, this time, because of breastfeeding. No spicy food, diary products intake moderated, no “windy” food…blah blah blah. I heard fish soup and black bean soup are good booster for milk, and am considering drinking them everyday now. For the baby’s sake, have to postpone my dieting project.

Just learnt from Dory that breastfeeding mothers are blessed with prolactin that will slumber crying babies easily. And that is what i have been doing every night for the past weeks, drugging my precious with some natural “sleeping stimulant”. I must admit that I couldn’t endure letting her cry to her sleep, the traumatic independent training program has been called off, to the baby’s advantage, and for my peace of mind.

Anyway, the baby is still fussy every night. It has become her routine and maybe a habit to her. Since i can’t make her stop fussing by reasoning it out with her, neither could i discipline her with a rod, i have to work around it and do it her way. Comfort nursing is the answer to my call. Every evening, upon reaching home after dinner at my father’s place, I will dash into the bathroom for a really quick shower. Extra time in the bathroom is an extravagance, the baby is going to cry in any minute. Evening time equals nursing time. Having to nurse the baby spare me little time to do things i used to do. No more computer games, no more afternoon naps, no more swimming…blah blah blah. Seems to miss out a lot. Multi tasking is not my forte, but i realized that i could read and it becomes a good time to catch up with my reading. Four session of 30minutes nursing allows me 2 good hours of reading. The rewards of breastfeeding does come in many forms.