Making our children feel loved

Often times we parents are too caught up with the stresses of work that we unknowingly forget to attend to the needs of our children.  Can we actually leave work in the office and devote our full attention to our kids when we get home?    Some parents may argue that they are working for the kids' future, that's why they cannot devote time for the children.  But our children need our time, attention, and love, not the monetary things we can offer them.

So, What are we doing for baby J to make sure that she is confident in our love?

1.  We bring her with us wherever we go.  Be it to the mall or overseas, we never leave home without baby J.  Some people may argue that couples need alone time as well.  That is true.  But, bringing her along works well for the hubby and I.  He does not want to travel without baby J, even if he has to carry an extra luggage because of her. 

We noticed that travelling has been very good for baby J as well.  She does not get fussy on the plane, she is quite flexible to changes in environment and food, and she is not afraid of people.

2. We do not shower her with toys, but with attention. Ever since baby J was born, we made it a point not to buy her many toys.  She already gets toys from relatives and friends, so we felt that it isn't necessary for us to give her even more toys.  So, what do we do instead? We bring her out to play.  When we're in the mall and she sees a toy store, we allow her to explore inside and play for awhile.  When it comes time to go, we just tell her to say goodbye to the toys and then we leave.  So far, I am happy to say that baby J never had a tantrum, demanding us to buy her a toy.  She is content to just explore and leave them.
We normally bring her to playgrounds as well and just let her run around and explore while we keep a close watch over her.

3. We always involve her in decision-making. Even if baby J is only two and a half years old, we always ask her for her opinion, be it for her preferred meal, whether she wants to go out or not, and even where she wants to go.  We even bring her to check out potential schools for her, to see if she likes the place or not.  We normally tell her things as well, relating to her like a small adult.  We also always take time to explain things to her.  You could see understanding on her face when we do this.

4. Bedtime means lots of hugs and kisses.  We always have a bedtime routine of lots of hugs, kisses, and "I love you's".  I have been telling baby J that when people ask her: "Does your mommy love you?", she should always reply:" Yes, very much!"  I also remind her every night that everyone in the family loves her.  Because of these things, I know she is confident of the love of the people around her.  When I ask her sometimes if her mommy loves her, she will say yes and then proceed to elaborate the names of all our relatives and say that all of them love her too.

5.  Always plan activities with the kids.  Because of hubby's erratic work schedule, we don't have the weekends that other people do.  So, any free day of the hubby is a special event for all of us.  We normally plan a trip, even if it's just a trip to the mall, to the movie house, or a day at an amusement park.  We try to make each day off a special one.  We also try to expose her to new experiences whenever possible.

6.  Always listen to what they have to say.  Baby J involves us in all of her imaginative plays and stories.  So, we make it a point to always listen to whatever she has to say, even if we're tired or sleepy.  Because in her eyes, those are big things.  Whenever she has something to say, we give her our full attention, no matter the time, no matter the place.

7. Always ask how they feel. At the end of the day, I always make sure to ask her if she had fun that day.  I just want to check if she enjoyed her day or not.

8. They are always the first priority. The hubby and I always make it a point to make baby J feel that she is our first priority.  Everything we do is always about her.  

I think all these things are helping to mould her into a happy little girl, confident of her parents' love and affection.

What are you doing for your child today?  Please do share.










http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/15-small-things-parents-should-their-children-every-day-make-them-feel-loved.html?dgs=1&fb_ref=Default

You can never be too careful

The six-year old who fell to her death last April 3, 2015 while playing near an escalator in Kuala Lumpur is all over the news.  This very sad incident should remind all parents out there to be extra vigilant when caring for their kids.


We should not only be vigilant in caring for our babies, we need to be even more vigilant in the care of older children because they are the ones who suddenly run off somewhere before we can even say: "STOP!"


Caring for our children is a life-long process. Our kids need various types of care as they grow older.  Especially with the advent of technology when we can be distracted by our phones, the internet, and what have-yous.


Let this article below remind us that One second of neglect can mean a lifetime of regret.


http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/mum-in-escalator-tragedy-under-probe-for-negligence


Vigilance is key.  Let's keep our children safe and hope it never happens to anyone again.

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.

Weaning ...the frustrations and success

Two years, 3 months and 18 days. That is the amount of time I have been nursing baby J. However, it has been five days since baby J last breastfed.  It  was not voluntary on her part to discontinue latching on, but my decision to start weaning her.


Since I found out that baby number 2 is coming, I have started trying (half-heartedly) to wean baby J.  This was met with a lot of tears and frustration from baby J.  So, in the initial phase, I eventually gave in to the demand to latch on.  Because I wasn't home in the afternoons, it was easy to cut off the afternoon feeding. So, she would only nurse at night and before she woke up in the morning.  These two times were the most important for her, mostly just for comfort and not really for feeding since she has been eating food very well the entire day.


But these two times were the most challenging for me, weaning-wise.  Every time I tried to withhold either of those feedings, she would get frustrated and cry until I gave in.  I thought I would never be able to wean her off, which frustrated me at times and caused a lot of physical discomfort brought about by breast tenderness due to pregnancy.  So, I decided to explain things to her, on why I wanted her to stop nursing soon.  I told her about the baby in Mommy's tummy and the pain nursing was causing me. 


My baby is so mature in a lot of ways.  I believe the adult-speak we have always used on her is helping in her maturity.  She understands our explanations most of the time.  In this instance, I believe this helped me wean her.


When I tell her that I am hurting from the nursing, she would then bargain with me and tell me that she will only nurse "fast".  So I would allow her to do this and when I tell her it's hurting me already, she would stop and request for "the other side".  We had this routine for a few weeks.  Because we have been nursing for shorter periods already, she would then request for her milk after nursing.  She would then ask me to hug her or tap her until she fell asleep.  Until 5 days ago, when she didn't ask to nurse before bed.  She just cuddled up to me and promptly fell asleep.  The morning after, she also didn't ask to nurse when she woke up.  We just went directly to the breakfast table.


In a way, I guess this was also baby-directed weaning for us coupled with gradual weaning.  Since she would nurse for comfort before going to bed, I just made sure that we cuddled a lot before bedtime and kept her close as she drifts off to sleep.


Baby J still asks to nurse every time I put her to sleep.  But when I tell her that we don't breastfeed anymore, she doesn't put up a fuss anymore.  She would just cuddle up to me until she fell asleep.  Personally, I think she only does this to try her luck and see if she can get lucky.  That's how cheeky my baby is! Haha.


After months of trying to wean her, I have finally succeeded!  And this is a very sweet victory for both of us.  I did not rush baby J, I waited for her to finally be ready.  Surprisingly, I was not saddened by this sudden loss of intimacy with baby J.  We still do a lot of cuddling before she goes to sleep, possibly even more cuddling now than ever before. 


So, moms out there, don't get frustrated when you try to wean your babies/toddlers.  They will do it when they are ready, in their own sweet time.  Good luck!

The beauty of being a Mom

In the first few months after I gave birth to baby  J, I couldn't imagine myself going through the whole pregnancy process again.  Sure, I knew my baby had to have a sibling, but, the thought of getting pregnant again, with all the symptoms I had plus going through the post-op pain of a C-section, I didn't even want to think of getting pregnant.


But, I fell in love with my daughter; and the hubby and I have been having a blast raising her that after awhile, I felt myself wanting to be  pregnant again. When I saw pregnant ladies  in the mall, I would think to myself how nice it was to be pregnant again.  That was my cue that I was ready for another baby.  I no longer remembered my past pregnancy discomforts, rather, I remembered how much  fun it was to have a little person in the house.


And so, here we are, on another exhilarating journey of pregnancy, but this time, with a two-year old to take care of as well.  This is why I haven't been able to write in the last few months. Between work, family, and pregnancy symptoms, I am bushed!


Things have been more difficult now compared to the first pregnancy, since you not only have to take care of the baby growing inside you, but also the little lady jumping and running around the house who also needs your love and attention.


But of course, with all the difficulties, comes the joy of knowing that soon, there will not  be one, but two sources of joy!  And being the resilient human beings  that we are, we trudge on through the nausea,  vomiting, and what-have-you to experience this overwhelming joy all over again.  That is the beauty of being a mom! 

A story of hope

As parents, the only thing we always ask for when we're on the family way, is to have a healthy baby.  We may have gender preferences when we find out we are pregnant, but as soon as you hear your baby cry for the first time, gender will not really matter anymore.  We all fall in love with our babies at first sight (maybe even before we see them).


When I was pregnant with baby J, I vowed to myself that I will try to be as healthy as I possibly could.  I tried to do everything that would make her as healthy as possible.  I stopped eating sashimi, stopped drinking caffeinated beverages, took vitamins and drank milk religiously, and tried not to expose myself to viruses. So, naturally, I had a very smooth pregnancy.  All our check-ups were normal and baby J was at par with age every step of the way.


Because everything was normal, we knew we had a healthy baby.  When I delivered, we naturally agreed to everything that would benefit our baby (that included Hearing screening, Neonatal screening, vaccines, etc.).  We never worried about anything because even my delivery went smoothly.


But three weeks after delivery, I suddenly received a call from baby J's pediatrician.  The Neonatal screening test results were back!  And there was something wrong with my baby.  Based on the screening test, baby J tested positive for Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PD).  Being a doctor, I knew it was not a serious problem, that we just had to be very careful with her food, environment, etc.  But, despite this, my world still crumbled at the news.  I cried after I put the phone down because I was already thinking about how her life would be when she grew up, with so many restrictions (on food, on drugs, even on the environment).  I started educating my relatives about the restrictions for baby J when she got older. 


At the same time that I was educating my family about G6PD, I was questioning the validity of the result because both the hubby's family and my family never had a relative with G6PD.  I could not reconcile the positive result with the absence of a family history.  The hubby and I decided to go to the National Institute of Health (NIH) to get a confirmatory test for baby J as well as for both of us, plus a cousin of mine.  Baby J's result confirmed G6PD, and all our results didn't help either.


Despite the confirmatory test, I was still questioning the probability of baby J having it.  So, during one discussion with a pediatrician about this, I was told that we can have the test repeated when baby J turned 6-8 months.  So, when we moved back to our country of residence, I told baby J's new pediatrician about the result and the absent family history.  Baby J's pediatrician then told me that we can do another test when she turned 8 months.  So when the time came, I requested to do the test for baby J, despite knowing that she had to suffer another blood extraction.  I was still hoping that we would get a different result since a lot of factors can affect the initial result.


After about two weeks, I then got a call from the pediatrician.  The result for the test was... NORMAL!!!  I felt so relieved and happy about it.  I trusted my instinct and knowledge of science. 


This is the first time I am openly sharing this.  But I just wanted to share how an unhappy situation had a happy ending.  I guess, there really is some truth to a mother's instinct!  There's more than enough sad news out there, I hope this story sends out a message of happiness and hope.