Being a mom rocks!

Before I got married and had a baby, I always thought about the sacrifices a mother had to make to care for a baby.  The physical changes that would permanently mar your body, the career sacrifices a mother had to make, plus all the attention a child would need.  Because of all of these reasons, I never really wanted to have a baby before.  Until I met the right man and wanted to start a family with him.


Then I had the baby.  Who knew my world would make a 360 degree turn!  The ambitious, goal-driven career woman in me completely took a back seat because I wanted to give my daughter as much of  my time and attention as possible. The woman who did not want to "disfigure" her breast by breastfeeding, breastfed her baby for almost 28 months!  Every decision the husband and I did, we considered our daughter above everything else.  Every trip meant bringing baby J along because not being able to bring her would mean just scrapping the trip altogether.


Motherhood changes a person.  For the better.  I have never appreciated life more, never been happier, never been more content, than when I became a mother.


Of course being a parent to a toddler is not all a bed of roses.   But, I always tell my husband that I think we are still very lucky because our daughter is actually not very difficult to manage.  She would still have the tantrums and the fixed mindset of a two-year old from time to time, but most of the time, she is a very sweet, generous little girl who understands way beyond her years.


But all the sacrifices we feel we have made for our baby are returned to us two-fold by this little person.  The joy she brings us is worth more than anything in this world.


Being a parent is both amazing and unnerving.  Just look at your kids and see how much influence you have on their upbringing.   The way we raise them will be the way they will treat everyone  and  everything around them.  I would like to believe that kids' attitude and behavior are based on the environment  they grew up in.  So, if we shower them with our attention and love, they will grow up believing this is the way the world should be. 


When I watch my daughter during her independent play, I know we have done right by her.  She treats her stuffed dolls the way we treat her.  She would shower her dolls with kisses and hugs pretending the doll is her own  baby.  I know she does this because this is the world she grew up in, full of warm hugs and kisses. 


It is also actually quite funny that the things we teach her, she would throw back at us!   Just this morning, baby J actually told my husband:" Daddy, stop playing with your food!" when she saw my husband moving his spoon around before feeding himself.


Every time I watch my daughter doing her own thing, I am overwhelmed by how wonderful it is to be a mom.  Especially when they come up to you out of the blue and just wants to shower you with lots of hugs and kisses!  It's enough to remove all the tiredness and the bad day that you had, and make you think: "It truly rocks to be a Mom!"

Preparing your first born for the arrival of a new baby

When the hubby and I found out that I was pregnant with baby number 2, we started worrying about how baby J would react when she found out about the new baby.  So even when my tummy wasn't showing yet, I started telling her that Mommy has a baby in her tummy.  Initially, it seemed like she didn't understand and didn't care. 


As my tummy grew bigger, we then started telling her that Mommy cannot carry her anymore because  Mommy has a baby in her tummy, that only Daddy can carry her.  She protested about it for a  few weeks, until one day, she just suddenly told me: " Mommy cannot carry J(referring to herself) because Mommy has a baby  in her tummy.  Only Daddy can carry J."  From then on, I noticed that she never asked me to carry her anymore.  Instead, she would always approach her dad and ask to be carried.  She also started talking to my belly a lot.  She would say: "Hi Baby!  What are you doing?  Are you awake?"  She would also caress and kiss my tummy when she spoke to the baby.


As a mother who was  worried how my only child would react to a sibling, it was quite a relief to see  that my fears were unfounded (for the moment at least, since I am still to see how baby J would react when she finally sees the new baby).  It is also truly amazing how much a two-year old can grasp information.  Often times  we underestimate toddlers thinking they are too young to understand many things so we don't bother explaining things to them.  But I found out very early that no matter how young they are, they do understand the things we tell them.  That is why I told her about her sibling very early.


Another thing we did is maintain everything we normally do with baby J.  We still give her the same amount of hugs and kisses like before.  We still give her our undivided attention.  I think this also helps in making her feel secure that nothing will change when the new baby comes.  I  also always ask her if she will help Mommy take care of the new baby when he/she arrives.


I am still a bit worried how things will be when the baby finally arrives.   But I am pretty confident that baby J would make a very good big sister.  This thought is more than enough to sustain me.