People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one. – Leo J. Burke

There are two issues that I find it hard to adjust since we had baby Simon.  The first is the unavoidable interrupted sleep in the nights and second, the lack of routine these days. 

My spouse attributes our baby’s night life to my late night activities during my pregnancy.  I would work on the computer late into the night when my boys were asleep.  He deduced that the baby is merely just following my lively rhythm of night activities even after his birth.

My baby is nocturnal.  He is like a night-owl.  His sleepy day time eyes turn as bright as buttons, shimmering like jewels when night descends like a blanket. 

The nights during the first weeks I brought him home were the hardest.  Since his days are inverted, he would pee and poop at two in the night as if it were morning.  Then, he would give you one of his brightest smiles.  I am sure he means, “Hey mum, wake up.  It’s time to play!”

As I go through the motions of cleaning his bum and changing him into a clean diaper, I am envious of the rest of the world.  Except for the sound of an occasional snore or the barking of a dog, the night is calm and silent. Taking care of baby can be a lonesome affair.
 
With less fuss as possible, I quickly change him and put him back into his cot.   He wriggles and squirms and squeaks.  I ignore him as I climb back into my warm bed.   However, he does not like to be left alone.  He demands for my attention constantly. For a human being as small as he is, he is capable of making loud noises. At first, he calls out repeatedly.  When he realises that no one is responding to his call, he turns more aggressive.  For a human being as small as he is, he is rather clever. He starts to scream until he turns red in the face.  Once he gets started, he never stops until he gets picked up.    

His mother has just fallen into deep sleep.  It would require all of my will power and more to drag my fatigue being out of bed.   Thereafter, he would wake up every other hour. 

When dawn breaks, another child stirs in his warm bed.  He awakens and slowly warms up to his surroundings.  He knows that he must get ready for school soon.  And soon after that, our toddler awakens to enthusiastically greet a new day.  Every other member of our family awakens refreshed except for their mother.  She has just managed to put the baby to deep sleep, and now, a new day harkens.

There will be the regular activities waiting for her.  The children will be waiting for their teeth to be brushed, pyjamas to be changed, breakfast to be fed,  fights to be resolved, temper tantrums to be calmed, stories to be heard, stories to be told,  attention to be given, scraped knees to be kissed, homework to be done, games to be played etc. 

Morning turns to evening, and soon my spouse will be home.   It will be then time for dinner to be fixed, weary shoulders to be rubbed, stories to be heard, stories to be told etc. 

The activities that require my attention are endless.  Soon, once again, night descends like a blanket.  The children wind down, getting ready for bed.  They are exhausted and gladly embrace sleep. 

Later, my spouse joins them in their sweet dreams.  Gradually he falls into deep slumber, getting ready to face a new day tomorrow.
 
My eyes sting.  My bones ache. I need only a simple and basic need.  Sleep.  I look forward to a good night’s rest.

But wait.  My baby is nocturnal.  He is like a night-owl.  His sleepy day time eyes turn as bright as buttons, shimmering like jewels when night descends. 

Oh, how I miss my beauty sleep!  

Good night and Sweet Dreams to you!

I managed to take a nap today while my baby was taking his nap this afternoon.  I get my best rest when I sleep my routine hours.  Taking a nap in the afternoons these days is not routine for me.  Nevertheless, I closed my eyes and tried to get some sleep.

I saw it.  I saw this gigantic, fearsome looking shark in our bathroom.  It was grey and frozen in the deep sea being displayed behind a see through glass in our tiny bathroom.   The big fish was being contained in a huge aquarium with me standing on the outside.  I remember clearly telling myself, if the glass breaks that’s the end of me.     

The fear felt so real that it woke me up.  I could still see the awesome magnificent creature even in my waking moments.  The whole scenario seemed not only senseless, but also impossible.  My bathroom can only contain one baby bathtub.  I keep reminding myself that. 

It’s now one in the morning.  My baby is fast asleep since midnight.  Usually, I would gladly turn off the lights, put up my tired feet and get a good night’s rest, but not tonight.

I asked myself why am I avoiding sleep.  I discovered the simple answer.  I want to avoid meeting that fearsome Jaws again.  I soon realised that my fear is real.  I feel so silly, and yet I could get rid of this fear throughout the day.  I reasoned with myself, the fish was not even moving.  It was like a statue, and frozen!  My need for reasoning made me feel even sillier.   

My children are afraid of monsters and the dark.  I keep telling them that monsters do not exist.  But then again, neither do sharks lurk in our bathrooms! 

I am now more respectful of their baseless fears.

Good night!  And sweet dreams!

“Hear and You will See “ – Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra

Brian is our three year old toddler.  He loves all kinds of fruits; apples, oranges, bananas, papayas, water melons, kiwi fruit, grapes and possibly tens of other different types of fruits.

Normally he eats his fruits twice a day, after his lunch and dinner.  Having two elder brothers has deaden his five senses.  What I mean is, he is no longer sensitive in using his sense of touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell to fully enjoy the beauty of nature and participate in the events around him.

Sometimes in the nights when I put a child to bed, I deliberately turn off the lights before he can find his beloved sleeping pillow.  Expectantly, the child would always ask me to switch on the lights again to search for his pillow. 

“But you don’t need the light on,” I say.

“But I do.  I can’t see,” the child replies. 

“You don’t need to see.  Just use your hands to feel.  You know how your pillow feels like,” I reply, encouraging him to feel his way around.

And almost always, the child discovers that to feel is just as good as to see when searching for his pillow.

Brian eats his fruits in different environments.  Sometimes he eats with the TV turned out with its loud sounds and colourful moving pictures.  Other times, he is screaming and playing with his brothers before pausing for a moment to eat another fruit helping.   And then, the screaming and playing continues.  Or he might be eating and playing with his china-made Optimus Prime transformer at the same time. 

In short, there is constantly too much noise pollution and distractions for him to truly savour the fruits of our earth. 

Last Sunday, Brian was home with the baby minus the two elder brothers.  They went for Sunday school and left him behind.  As expected, the noise pollution at our home was greatly reduced.  The TV stayed dark and tuned out, plus there was no screaming and yelling.

Instead, there were sounds of a different kind.  We could here the shrill singing of a morning bird and a distant car passing by.  When the wind blew, we heard the rustling leaves of our palm tree. 

Then, it was time for a fruit.  Brian had with him one green apple sliced into six pieces.  He stopped talking long enough to take one bite, and then another.  He was sitting beside me while I was nursing the baby. 

I heard it first.  It was the sound of a mouth watering crunch as he took a bite.  He bit the crunchy green apple again and stopped.  He looked at me and said, “Mummy, my apple can make sounds.” 

He enjoyed listening to the crunchy sounds of his apple so much he did nothing except to sit still and use his pearly white teeth to create the music of apple crunching for the next few minutes. 

I am sure he enjoyed his fruit immensely that day. 

Cheers! And a good weekend to you.   

Breastfeeding a baby creates a lot of time for me to interact with my other children.  There is just simply not much interaction I can do with them except by verbal communication. 

Most of the time, the boys talk about their favourite cartoon character in action or ask mindless questions like, why is heaven up and hell at the bottom after watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon show.  I usually give them a blank stare that shouts volumes.  “Don’t ask me mindless questions like that!”

Being their mother, I prefer to be kind and so I politely say “I don’t know.” 

Well, one fine day I thought it would be a good idea for me to ask a meaningful question instead.  And so, I asked each individual child this same question at different times. 

“What do you see when you see baby Simon?”

From each child, I got similar answers.

“I see two eyes, one nose and a mouth.”

To that I replied, “He could be the next president, or the next Olympic champion.”

It was my turn to get blank stares. 

Sitting down breastfeeding can be the dullest experience sometimes.  It happens after reading that same Reader’s Digest magazine for the tenth time, and there are none other reading materials within reach. 

And so to humour myself, on different occasions, I collected a few drops of breast milk and asked the boys to sample it.  This is what they said it tastes like.

Brian said, “Sugar!”

James said, “ Like… sweet berries!”

Daniel said, “Cow’s milk!”

Cheers to you!  And have a good day today.

“If sex and breastfeeding weren’t pleasurable, we wouldn’t have evolved this far.”  - Anonymous

We brought baby home, and all of us were happy again being together as one big family.   Baby must be happy to be home as well as he slept blissfully, oblivious to his surroundings and our noise. 

Might I just add that, if this were a movie production, this would be where the story ends where everyone lives happily ever after before the end credentials roll in.  It was obvious that baby Simon didn’t read the script because he was screaming throughout the first night we were home.  I was seriously thinking of returning him to the hospital if not for the help extended by my mother. 

It has been more than a month now since that screaming first night.  Nowadays, both of us have fallen into this routine of    “every time the baby cries, I offer him the breast” no matter what time of the day it is.  This is called demand feeding.   I termed it ‘agressive baby bossing’.

Baby Simon is happy with this agreement.  I know this simply because he stops crying and starts cooing every time the breast is offered.  The household is happy as well because the baby has finally stopped crying and peace reigns once again.  The only other person who felt restricted due to this arrangement is probably the person with the breasts.   

Initially, I would try to hasten the process. “Baby, drink faster,” I would say.  “There is much to be done.  There are other children waiting for me to attend to them.  And I have my precious sleep to catch up on.”  

The baby, well, he sets his own rules.  And he expects his mother to follow them.  He would suckle for thirty minutes, and then fall asleep.  I would put him down, and he would wake up crying in the next twenty minutes.  I would proceed to feed him again for what seemed to be like eternity.  This has been my daily life for the past six weeks. 

I have since stopped trying to hurry him along during our breastfeeding times.  Life seems to have slowed down for me.  I sit to feed the baby at the same spot as I had fed Brian three years ago.  Looking out of our bedroom window, I thought to myself, how big and strong our palm tree has grown.  Time is passing by too fast.

Sometimes I sit still to listen to the baby’s rhythmic breathing.  He truly is a miracle, I say to myself.  I look into his beautiful eyes and asked myself, why did I ever doubt that God exists.  I hold up one of his tiny fist to inhale his baby smell.  Since when was the last time I used my sense of smell as a pleasurable experience, I thought aloud. And so it goes, on and on I have these long conversations with myself now. 

I simply slowed down.  I started listening to my own breathing.  I sat feeding my baby and took the time to sort out my various different thoughts.   I started acknowledging my insecurities, and redefining my dreams.  Sometimes a child would come into my room and I would be his captive listener.  I listen with genuine interest whatever the topic may be.  After all, I was not in a hurry to go places.