This week I went to visit my friend, Nina, at the Mother’s Care Center. She gave birth almost a month ago and is staying at such a fancy place! I’d never even heard of something like that before! It must be an Asian thing. It’s honestly like a 5-star hotel, but especially adapted for women who have just given birth. There are doctors and nurses on call and they look after the babies. Nina showed me how she just needed to press a button on her TV remote and she could watch her son sleeping in the baby room. The room was huge and super fancy. Their husbands are allowed to stay with them and food gets brought to their room three times a day. They have all these consultations and yoga classes and whatnot, but some of the things cost extra – like the special “weight reduction” postnatal massages and if your baby is on formula as well as the special hair-shaving ceremony – they cut the baby’s hair on the 4th day and it means he will be prosperous and look after his parents one day. Of course it’s all very expensive! It does seem like paradise, but at the same time I could tell that she was utterly terrified of leaving. She leaves the “hotel” next week and her baby only slept with her in the same room for the first time the night before I saw her. She said she had ended up crying as well because the baby just cried and cried even though she’d fed him and changed his diaper. I showed her some ways to hold him and some ways to comfort him – but I had to use a pillow to demonstrate because I wasn’t allowed to see the baby. They’re super strict and when I walked in I had to have hand sanitizer sprayed on my hands, my temperature taken and had to wear a face mask at all times. So, basically, not at all like the real world out there.
Anyway, as smart and lovely as it looked, I think I’d prefer to come back home and get into a routine. I think it’s crazy that what the total cost works out to be is the price of having a part time nanny for 10 months! And apparently that’s only the price of the mid-range ones. They have special “Hello Kitty” ones, too! Good grief. At least the one Nina stayed at was classy. However, it blows my mind to think that she could have gone home and been in a routine already and had some part-time help, but now she is absolutely terrified of going home and having to look after him alone. She said that during the difficult night, she honestly thought that the next morning she was going to get divorced and let her husband take the child! Haha! I told her that all mothers feel like that, especially in the beginning when you’re sleep-deprived and overwhelmed. I told her that when the baby cries, she obviously should try and find out the cause, but that sometimes babies just cry and she mustn’t let it make her panic. She just needs to breathe and remind herself that it’s okay and no one will think she is a bad mother just because her baby is crying. I think she really appreciated my visit and it made her feel much better knowing someone understood, but also hearing that it does get easier and you do learn effective ways to cope.
Now that it’s almost winter I’m reminded of my pregnancy a lot. I just remember how horribly sick I felt ALL THE TIME. I’ll look at some of my winter clothes and think, “Hmm.. the last time I wore this, I was trying not to puke.” Ha! Or I’ll drive to work in the cold and can totally remember how I felt driving around on those days. I’m so, so glad I’m not pregnant this winter!
(oh the irony! I was already pregnant with number 2 then and didn’t know it!)
I do love the cute little winter outfits I’ve been able to put Jay in. So cute! And it’s cold enough now that he doesn’t just try and pull his socks off like he usually does. When he does take them off he doesn’t actually use his hands, or I should rather say that he tries to but doesn’t get it right yet. He uses his legs and feet and kicks, kicks, kicks until he gets them off.
We bought him a walking ring today. We hadn’t planned on buying one because the jumperoo was advertised as being a replacement for it. However, we can really sense that he wants to be mobile and not just in some stationary object. Greg went out to buy some formula from the baby store and called me from there when he found it. I pictured it like those little dinky ones we used to get when I was little, but it’s really nice and fancy. It’s pretty big and has this console with all these toys and it can be removed and then it’s just a little table so he can play with his own toys or be fed whilst sitting in it. If you don’t want him to move, you just slide this thing in at the bottom and then he can’t go anywhere and if you move the part where the wheels are it turns into a rocking chair! It’s really cool. The toys are great because they are things you push and pull and rotate and it keeps him busy. He also loves to stare at the dogs when they get close because when he’s in it, he’s on their level. He still doesn’t really move in it, but it’s only the first day. At least it gives him something else to do. Stella mentioned the other day that he needed more toys because he was getting bored with the ones he had, so we went and got some more and now I think I’ll rotate them so he has different toys every day. The toys on the walking ring include this one you press that squeaks, a wheel that you turn and it makes this sound, a disc you rotate and spin and these things you can press that have different animals on them and it makes the animal sound and then plays this little song. When I want to feed him, I just slide the thing in, remove the toy console and then I can feed him easily and the little table is easy to wipe clean because it’s just plastic.
His favorite game at the moment is peekaboo. He doesn’t actually “play” it, but he watches us as we put our hands in front of our faces and say, “Where’s Mommy/ Daddy?”and then shrieks with utter delight when we open them and say “Peekaboo!” It’s so lovely watching him grow and how he interacts with us more. Everything is going well with him and now that he eats solids, his bedtime sleep has improved and he sleeps close to 10 hours now at night. He still wakes up two or three times , but usually I get in about 5 hours before that first wake-up call. He has started eating this other special infant cereal as well as some special cookies especially for babies that are 4 months old. He can actually hold them and gum them down until there is nothing left. They are quite messy, though, and leave these horrible mushy clumps all over the place. I tried banana on the Monday and he ate it all, but then when Tuesday rolled around he had changed his mind and was anti-banana. So, I’ll just try that again this week at some point. He doesn’t always eat that well, though, as he often likes to play and blow out the food or let it dribble down his chin. He thinks it is hilarious. Me, not so much. Then he tries to grab the bowl or the spoon and often he just grabs the edge and then it’s cereal all over everything. At least now with his new walking ring/chair it’ll be easier to clean. Before we’d either use the mechanical swing or prop him up in his stroller. Of course, that meant I’d have to wash the fabric afterwards, but now it’s easier.
Anyway, let me be off.
Lots of love
Em x
snippets from November 2009 (4 months)
