Category: Baby stuff

Everything about the baby

Music, Lots of Music

Su-fei told Grace she’d downloaded some children’s music for Bryan and that she’d burn some CDs for him the next time she came over. Cool, I thought. She probably got a couple dozen children’s songs or something.

This morning I woke up to a piece of music by Mozart (kinda like Eddie Murphy at the beginning of his 1998 movie, “Coming to America“). Sweet! Then I discoverd a freakin Hello Kitty packet full of discs with tons of children’s music, each one with printed labels of the disc title and name of the songs. What the….

Grace said Su-fei had gone through the trouble of making each disc. That’s a total of 140 songs. Wow! Thanks, Su-fei.

Now I am re-importing everything back into iTunes so that we can put them on iPod for centralisation purposes. It’s also a good thing that my car stereo is MP3-ready so that I can just put everything on one disc for Bryan.

Some researchers claim (here, here and here) that classical music can help babies become healthier and smarter. It may or may not be true. But this is one of those wishful thinkings where you don’t want to risk the opposite. Kalpana (sorry, no picture yet) said that when her daughter Kishoree was born, she listened to classical music a lot. At age of six now (as of August 25th), Kishoree is among the smartest six-year-olds I know (it’s not like I know many). I am sure parent’s influence in education and discipline (besides just the music) probably has a lot more to do with her intelligence and being so articulate with language and manners. But it’s been said that the music stimulates infant’s brain to start getting those billions of neurons (3x the number of adults) to work their ass off.

Good stuff. Thanks to Su-fei again. And let’s not forget to thank those great dead Austrian musicians. And just by association of nationality, thanks to you too, Birgit.

前幾天舒菲告訴葛瑞絲說他下載了一些兒歌要給詠熙聽。本來以為大概就幾首像 “小蜜蜂“ 之類的東西, 結果想不到她燒十片的 CD, 而且每一片還有加印歌曲名稱和順序… 這時候我只能說一句廣東話: “ho sai lei ah!”

人家說給嬰兒多聽音樂 (尤其是古典歐洲音樂) 可以刺激腦部發展, 促進腦部發育… 也不知道是真是假, 反正就給他聽了就是了。

Happy One-Month Anniversary

One month down, 17 years and 11 months to go. Yoohoo!

It was Bryan’s one-month anniversary (is this grammar even right?) on Sept. 1st. We held a party yesterday in his honor (but it was really an excuse for the adults to chit chat). Over 30 people showed up according to Grace’s count. Thanks to mom’s cooking and Grace’s organization, everybody was fed well and happy to have seen Bryan.

Not to loose face, Bryan was up for a long time yesterday “entertaining” guests. I think almost every single adult have held Bryan for at least once. What joy.

Smile, Baby

I am not sure if one-month old infants understand the meaning of “happiness” a smile. But we have been observing Bryan smiling, sometimes even laughing out loud, both when he’s awake and in his dreams. It’s quite a joy to watch him smile (for no particular reason).

What I am finding hard to deal with nowadays is “time”. When Grace is doing house chores, I am usually with Bryan, feeding him or just trying to get him to sleep. Between his waking moments (about every three hours), I am finding it hard to accomplish much in terms of work. Constant interruptions has meant a two day’s worth of project is now taking a week (and more) to do. And because of the interruptions, I have been spending a lot of time getting back into the “groove” to get into the mind frame of whatever projects I was working on.

How do you do it, Brian and Mike? Yo, Mike, you have a 1.5-year-old and a newborn too. How the hell do you get shit done? Now I understand why sometimes I see you online in the middle of the night more often nowadays.

Super Powers

During the first couple weeks of Bryan coming home, some of his senses weren’t really fully developed. But as weeks go by, he’s developed some super senses. As close sighted as he is, he now gets excited with the mobile above his head (which didn’t happen before). His hearing is also more sensitive now. Sometimes he wakes up from hearing the slightest cracking sound from our old wooden floor. That’s why I tiptoe around the house sometimes when he’s asleep.

It’s very interesting to see Bryan’s development on a weekly basis. It makes me appreciate my unemployment (until the bank is completely dried up). I get to observe everything that’s going on with him.

On diapering, we have also learned that he will almost always pee as soon as we open his diaper. So now we just wait for a few moments before we completely remove his diaper for a fresh one. Also, his poops are getting chunkier. I fear the day when his poop outgrows his diaper… Yuck!

Foot Massages

I accidentally discovered that whenever Bryan gets fussy about pretty much anything, a nice gentle leg massage usually calms him down quickly. He likes to feel our palms brush gentle strokes from both sides of his butt all the way down to his toes. That soothes him.

He’s also spending more time staying awake during the day, which has consistently translated into better sleep for us at night. Ahhh~ Sleep… ZZzzzz…

Early Childhood Development Stages

I was looking for a site that I can quote from regarding attendance to infant cries (and its importance). I came across this site that outlines developmental stages of early childhood. I thought I’d share that information here for easy access.

The site breaks the child’s abilities down to four main categories: physical, mental, language and social.

Flying Crap

This entry is a little disgusting. So consider yourself warned before reading on.

After my last post about Bryan’s crazy pees, there’s been a new experience since. A couple of days ago, Bryan complained about a diaper change while he was half way through with the bottle (he kicked while sucking on the bottle).

If it were me, I’d want to enjoy my bottle of milk with a clean diaper too. So I decided to change his diaper. That’s when the shit hit the fan…

A medium size poop already made its way in the diaper when I opened it. So I proceeded with my routine butt-wiping diaper change. But as soon as I wiped his butt clean, Bryan started to make this funny face…

It takes a short moment to properly interpret the expression… And then OH SHIT!!

Before I open the soiled diaper to catch it, a yellow tube of poop (about 3 cm in diameter and 8 cm long) flew right out of his butt in an arch, passing over my hand and landed on the changing pad. OH MY GOD. I have never seen flying poops before… not to mention having one landed right in front of my face. Thank god it didn’t stink.

To make matters worse, before I could figure out exactly what to do with his warm and soft poop, he started peeing all over the place.

Bryan smiled with a sign of relief. I laughed.

And then just yesterday after we brought Bryan home from the doctor’s, he started another episode of his crazy pees, except this time, it was literally all over the room, even in Grace’s hair (right after she’d showed and dried it, hah hah).

We both laughed so hard till our stomaches ached. I wonder if we’ll still laugh the 5th time it happens…

Cry Babies

Before there was science and logic, “old school” parents have this deeply rooted belief that babies, even the newborns, are the masters of mind manipulations. Those are the parents who are self-proclaimed life-experience childrearing experts, such as my mother (and countless others).

They swear by the ingeniousness and cunningness of babies and how they are all conspired to manipulate us adults. Well, there may be some truth in what they believe in as it turns out. They think they babies cry to manipulate adults to hold them so that the babies don’t have to be alone. To remedy this and to teach them to be more independent (read: lazy parenting), the solution, they argue, is to let them cry themselves to sleep. This way, they don’t get spoiled at a very young age.

What a load of crap. (No offense, moms of the old tradition.)

Every single one of early childhood development and education books I have owned and read (published after my birthday) states this simple fact: infants and young toddlers don’t have the cognitive means to comprehend the meaning of “manipulation”, let alone actually doing it. The only way to explain why babies cry (and why they stop crying as soon as you react to their cries) is just asking for help. Birgit puts it best:

If you didn’t speak any language and you wanted someone to help you, what would you do? If you were really hungry, you’d cry too!

Yeah, no shit. There are only three reasons as to why pre-lingual babies cry:
1. Hunger.
2. Discomfort (wet/soiled diaper, fever, stomach ache… etc).
3. Companionship and love.

Many modern studies show that babies who’s needs are attended to will grow up with more self-esteem, self-confidence and a more positive view of the environment around them (even NPR says so). But having their needs met immediately, they grow up believing that the world is a safe place. This probably has to do with why most of my American and European friends (whose parents most likely subscribe to the more infant-friendly philosophy) have way more self-esteem and confidence over most of my Asian friends (whose parents subscribe to the don’t-spoil-them philosophy). This is not to say that culture and traditions have nothing to do with it though.

Unfortunately, to much of my dismay, the “let-them-cry” practice is still widely accepted among much of the Asian community. I wonder why they aren’t more educated about the latter method. Even some immediate friends around me still believe in the practice.

Wrap your mind around some new ideas, people. Attend to your babies and don’t just let them cry for hours and on. They can’t talk; they cry for a reason!

UPDATE: Ironically, my mom thinks the infant-friendly practices are just theories; they are not practical. When I brought up the logics behind the infant-friendly practices, backed by countless research and experiments by researchers/authors who are also parents, she brushed them off and said my arguing with her is what happens when one becomes too academic and book smart. Coming from someone who’s whole life has been trying to put more education under our belts is a little confusing and alarming. I have also tried to use similar points and strategies arguing about my sister’s behavioral problems and how the family should deal with them (long story). Her sentiments are the same. Sometimes I do think experience can be a burden to one’s attitude towards learning.

Here’s a list of sites that support the theory:
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/human/pubs/infant.html
http://www.humsci.auburn.edu/abell/beeprogram/links/resourceupdates/infants/crying/crying.htm
http://www.vtaide.com/png/ERIK1.htm
http://babiestoday.com/resources/articles/cry.htm
http://www.brandnewdad.com/monthbymonth/three-months-old/teachyourbabytotrust.asp
http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/parenting/crying_baby.shtml
http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/articles/parenting/cfspoil.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/your_kids/babies_crying.shtml
http://www.drgreene.com/21_5.html
http://www.bchealthguide.org/healthfiles/hfile92b.stm
http://target.com/target_baby/ii_article_07_e.jhtml
http://www.maternitymall.com/homeMInfo.asp?SelectCase=Article&CategoryId=1&PageLp=1&ArticleId=353&SubCategoryId=1

In fact, I challenge anyone to produce a credible study that shows attending to crying infants can indeed spoil them and that they are just manipulative bastards.

Breath Taking

I have been noticing some interesting things about Bryan’s breath patterns when he’s a sleep (which is most of the time). Newborns and infants have short and very quick breathing patterns, almost as if an adult is short of breath. But I discovered that sometimes he’d stop breathing for a very brief moment (simply a short gap between his very rapid quick breathes) before the pattern returns to normal again (not to mention he’s pretty loud when he breathes).

I asked Brian about this, but he couldn’t recall of Laura went through the same phase. Sometimes I worry about the possibilities of SIDS. Although nobody really knows why SIDS happens to some babies, Brian and Birgit believe that it’s possible that some newborns may still think they are inside their mothers’ wounds and forget to actually breathe. I think that theory is plausible. I mean, I remember times when even I couldn’t distinguish between reality and being in a dream and forgot to breathe for long enough moments that I woke myself up. If infants aren’t equipped with the cognitive and physical ability to wake from dreams, they can get themselves into trouble.

As for the “shortness of breathes” and Bryan’s irregular breathing patterns (even the times when he sounds like an old man who needs to be on a oxygen mask), they’re supposed to be normal:

Irregular breathing and short apnoeic pauses are normal in young babies and have no adverse effects.

If not for the Internet (and broadband), I’d be calling our pediatrician quite regularly with the tinniest oddities in Bryan’s behaviors. There’s really no reason why there isn’t a “manual” for small things like “irregular breathings” and frequent hiccups.

Live and learn.

Detachment

Bryan has grown two inches in 18 days. Yipee! Also, his umbilical cord finally fell out today at doctor’s visit. This officially marks the last physical and final detachment of Bryan from his mother. After getting so used to seeing the umbilical cord on this belly, it’s weird seeing his tummy so bare and flat without the visual reminder of Grace’s wound.

Without the umbilical cord, this means we can finally bath him in his new baby tub! I wonder if posting pictures of him in the bath will get me in trouble for “child pornography”…