Archives for January 2010

K Talk – Why mummy should not go to work.

January 30, 2010 · By ·

Dh always uses this excuse, “Mummy has to go out to work for a short while,” whenever I am out on a girls’ night out.

The next day after a girls’ night out…

K : Mummy go to work last night?

M : Yes, for a short while only.

K : I don’t like mummy to go to work?

M : Why?

K : Because I will miss mummy (complete with a sad face) Mummy don’t go to work ok, stay at home with me.

I had better treasure this response from K while it lasts, probably when he gets to primary school he might start asking me to go to work and get off his back.

Share it:

Related posts:

Categorized: His World ·

Transitions

January 28, 2010 · By ·

After 2 days of torture (for me), waking up 5 times on the 1st night and 3 times last night. I came to realise that K is fully able to self-sooth himself to sleep with a little bit of encouragement. My encouragement comes in the form of total silence and zero body contact. I have also progressed to sitting on the floor next to his bed, while he tries to sing himself to sleep (see link for ‘gradual extinction’ sleep training). Eventually, I hope that I can be outside K’s room and he can fall asleep on his own.

So far, progress have been great. The only thing that is preventing K from sleeping through the night is his habit of waking up to ask for milk in the wee hours of the morning. This is the result of a lazy mom having a laissez faire attitude about leaving it all the helper when it comes to K’s sleeping habits. After 8 months of hardly any sleep, I threw in the towel and handed the responsibility of taking care of K over to my helper. Like most helpers, my helper chose the most convenient way to give herself more shut-eye at nights; which is to shut the fussy baby up by feeding him milk. Despite my insistence to start feeding him water instead of milk when he turned 1 year old, she chose the easy way out. Unfortunately, K did not grow out of this habit and now is a slightly pudgy almost 3 year old with a big stomach, as a result of feeding too much on milk that he really does not need at night. I know I should not be blaming anyone else except myself. Lazy mummy!

So the next hurdle to cross will be to wean K off his dependence on milk feeds from his milk bottle at night. Nana’s advice for me is to rub ginger on the milk bottle teats, a tried-and-tested method that has been used on me and my siblings when we were young. I am quite concerned that this method may just turned K off drinking formula milk altogether as he is a picky eater, and still needs his milk feeds to supplement his solid food intake. Nevertheless, I figured this will be an opportune time to move him to growing up milk and away from his dependence on the bottle.

I have been prepping him up for the transition since the beginning of the week. Telling him that his bottle is going to spoil, it will start to taste funny and we will have to throw it away. While getting him to anticipate his new sports bottle that is on its way. He loves it that he is going to get a sports bottle to drink his milk in, according to him, it’s “like uncle Nick’s”.

camelbak

Gosh, I cannot believe the extent I go to help K with his transitions. People never tell you that parenting will be tough when they keep encouraging you to have more children. Like what I told Dh recently, “I will only have our second child when I decide that I am ready to inflict more torture on myself.”

Share it:

Related posts:

Categorized: His World ·

Sleep training an almost 3 year old

January 27, 2010 · By ·

Last night. I decided that enough is enough. K has been waking up too many times at night and too dependent on my helper to help him to sleep. I told myself that it is time to do whatever I can to get K to learn to sleep on his own.

When K was about 8 months old, I attempted sleep training but failed miserably, as I just was not determined enough. After that I decided to drop sleep training and hope that one day K will just grow out of it. Unfortunately, I soon realised that bad habits that are formed will never be grown out of.

I knew that I have to nip this problem in the bud and address it now, before it gets even harder as he grows older.

In the evening, I told K that I will be helping him to learn how to sleep by himself. I told him that learning to sleep by himself is like learning how to feed himself, dress himself or riding the bicycle. All he has to do is to close his eyes, be quiet, not think about anything and go to sleep, I further added that only babies need to be pat to sleep.

We started at 10.00 p.m. After reading through 4 books together, I turned off the lights, said our prayers and tuck him into bed. I sat at the end of the bed, and did not respond to him when he talked to me. He started with, “Want to pang sai,” then went on to “Thirsty, want water.” Then continued with several other excuses. When he realised that he was not going to get any response from me, the bawling started. Then came frustrated ‘arghhs’, along with coughing and mock vomiting for the next half an hour. He then decided to sleep half an hour later.

It took a total of 1 hour last night. I think I had it easy last night as he was tired out by a whole host of activities earlier that evening; a short game of tennis with grand-dad, he rode his bicycle with Uncle Nick and even went to catch frogs with grand-dad.

I do hope things get better the next few nights. Although I am prepared that things do sometimes get worse before it gets better. All K needs to know is that I. will. not. budge.

Share it:

Related posts:

Categorized: Parenting ·
Next Page »